Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents “Resisting Genre: Poetry as Hybrid and Experimentation”: A Writers Workshop

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Resisting Genre: Poetry as Hybrid and Experimentation” a workshop led by Clayre Benzadón on December 8, 2021, from 6-7:30 PM. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).

This workshop aims to explore the concept of genre, particularly within the scope of poetry. Does a poem need to be strictly defined as a prose poem? What if it also reads/contains elements of the “lyric essay”? In this workshop, participants will be introduced to this concept of challenging form through the Surrealist and Language poetry lens/movements (discussing poets such as Lyn Heijinian and Frank O ‘Hara). Participants will focus on the hybrid / experimental possibilities embedded within poetry, such as multilingual poetry which not only refers to different languages themselves, but also referring to “language” in broader terms, such as through the medium of coding (ex.: Uri Sacharow’s “Code Monkey Barbie”), or math poetry (ex.: Stephanie Strickland), or through the experimentation of form itself (Cecilia Vicuña, M NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!, text from Layli Long Soldier’s Whereas.

While there is no fee for this workshop, those who are able and appreciative can make direct donations via Venmo @Clayre-Benzadon or PayPal @clayrebenz

Clayre Benzadón received her MFA at the University of Miami. She is a Split Lip Magazine poetry reader and Broadsided Press’s Instagram editor. Her chapbook, Liminal Zenith was published by SurVision Books. She was awarded the Alfred Boas Poetry Prize for Linguistic Rewilding and her full-length collection, Moon as Salted Lemon was a finalist for the 2021 Robert Dana-Anhinga Poetry Prize. She has been published in places including 14poems, SWWIM, Fairy Tale Review, ANMLY, and forthcoming in Grist. Find more about her at clayrebenzadon.com.