PSNY Virtual Workshop: Poetics of Destruction

An all-levels generative virtual workshop with poet Gabriel Ridout!

"No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader," we sometimes say. But how can we truly disrupt and change our ways of thinking? For some poets and artists, destruction is the key. David Bowie wrote some of his most enduring songs by cutting up and rearranging fragments of novels and newspapers, ransom note style. In her performances, writer and theatre artist Emma Frankland frequently stages the destruction of texts, ripping and eating pages from The Complete Works of Shakespeare, burning issues of The Sunday Times. The poet Dawn Lundy Martin courts fracture and absurdity to generate what Cathy Park Hong has called "cyborg enunciations out of shredded text, music and lived experiences." In this workshop, we'll explore the realm of excess and absurdity, practicing poetic techniques that suggest the relation between destruction and creativity. First-time poets, devoted avant-gardists, and David Bowie fans-- all are welcome!

About the Instructor: The winner of an Academy of American Poets University Prize, Gabriel Ridout is a mixed Filipinx-American poet-scholar, currently working toward a PhD in English at Washington University in St. Louis, where Gabriel serves as co-Editor-in-Chief of literary magazine The Spectacle. Poems are featured or forthcoming on poets.org, in Hoxie Gorge Review, in Nightboat Books’s Permanent Record anthology, and elsewhere.

**This workshop will take place on Zoom.**