Against Assimilation: A Workshop on Estranging Language

As part of Poetry@Tech's Community Workshop initiative, join us for a unique generative and revision-oriented poetry workshop with Jenny Xie on Sunday, 3 April 2022 from 2:00 to 4:00 pm EDT.

This event is free and open to the public. However, due to space constraints, please RSVP for the event so we may save you a spot. You can request a spot by filling out the RSVP form (https://gatech.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e9zzRgyXfgekd1Q)

For more information and directions, you may contact Travis Denton, at travis.denton@lmc.gatech.edu .

Here's more about Jenny's primary topic of discussion:

Workshop Synopsis

Against Assimilation: A Workshop on Estranging Language

Reflecting on her own singular Southern idiom and Ozark twang, C.D. Wright wrote, “Poetry should repulse assimilation. Each poet’s task is to fight their own language’s assimilation.”

In this generative and revision-oriented workshop, we’ll repulse assimilation in our poems by finding ways to enliven and estrange our language. Together, we’ll read and discuss work by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Paul Celan, and Sahar Muradi, and engage in exercises meant to de-domesticate, and de-discipline, our lines and upend the usual assumptions about what language can, and should, do.

Jenny Xie

Jenny Xie is the author of Eye Level (Graywolf Press, 2018), finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry and the PEN Open Book Award, and recipient of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets and the Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University. Her work has appeared in Poetry, New York Times, and Tin House, among other publications. She has been supported by fellowships and grants from Kundiman, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Poets & Writers. In 2020, she was awarded the Vilcek Prize in Creative Promise.

Jenny has taught at Princeton and NYU, and is currently on faculty at Bard College. She lives in New York.

Poet's Website  Poet's Bio