Event Registration
Ekphrasis as Widening the Flashpoint, A 10 session Workshop with Andrea Abi-Karam
Admission
- $400.00
Location
Zoom
Summary
Wednesdays, July 9-September 10
7-9pm ET
Virtual
Nicaraguan poet, priest, and revolutionary Ernesto Cardenal stated that "the cell of a revolutionary movement is like the cell of a monastery." In this ten-session workshop, we'll explore the nexus of revolution and mysticism, studying how mystical consciousness and revolutionary praxis have converged across diverse poetic traditions and political movements, including Nueva Canción, Palestinian Resistance, Liberation Theology, Black Arts Movement, Marxist Mysticism, Revolutionary Christian Mysticism, Indigenous Spiritual Resistance, Irish Literary Revival, Engaged Buddhism, Négritude, and more.Through close readings, generative prompts, and collaborative discussion, we’ll engage with the works of various key figures at the vanguard of these movements and traditions, developing writing that considers how social consciousness can animate political commitment and how revolutionary awareness can deepen mystical insight. Potential figures include Victor Jara, Refaat Alareer, Mahmoud Darwish, Ernesto Cardenal, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, César Vallejo, Simone Weil, Thomas Merton, William Blake, José María Arguedas, dg nanouk okpik, W.B. Yeats, Joanne Kyger, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kahlil Gibran, Denise Levertov, Aimé Césaire, and moreIf we break open the ekphrastic mode beyond static visual art, to moving image, mixed media, performance, events, & protest, what does this aperture offer us? A critical mass of collective experience? How can a moment as transient yet as powerful as a flashpoint be recorded as a blueprint for ongoing resistance? How does the proliferation of poetry around a moment create nets of connection, strengthen collective resistance, and build narrative/anti-narrative power? When thinking of Cecilia Vicuña’s lines “A poem only becomes poetry when its structure / is made not of words but of forces,” we are moved to transform language into the physical. In this generative workshop, I wish to complicate Vicuña’s lines: from linear (poetry→action) to parallel circuitry where the “resistance” to collective action falls—through the simultaneity of strategy:
For inspiration, we’ll look to: Ana Mendieta, Adrian Piper, David Wojnarowicz, Renee Gladman, Edward Salem, Dionne Brand, Gwendolyn Brooks, Juliana Spahr, Etel Adnan, & Nicolas Moufarrege.
Bio: Andrea Abi-Karam is a trans, SWANA, punk poet-performer cyborg. They are the author of EXTRATRANSMISSION (Kelsey Street Press, 2019), Villainy (Nightboat Books, Sept 2021), and with Kay Gabriel, they co-edited We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Nightboat Books, 2020). They are currently writing a poet's novel about crushes & a murder mystery.
Event Registration is closed.
7-9pm ET
Virtual
Nicaraguan poet, priest, and revolutionary Ernesto Cardenal stated that "the cell of a revolutionary movement is like the cell of a monastery." In this ten-session workshop, we'll explore the nexus of revolution and mysticism, studying how mystical consciousness and revolutionary praxis have converged across diverse poetic traditions and political movements, including Nueva Canción, Palestinian Resistance, Liberation Theology, Black Arts Movement, Marxist Mysticism, Revolutionary Christian Mysticism, Indigenous Spiritual Resistance, Irish Literary Revival, Engaged Buddhism, Négritude, and more.Through close readings, generative prompts, and collaborative discussion, we’ll engage with the works of various key figures at the vanguard of these movements and traditions, developing writing that considers how social consciousness can animate political commitment and how revolutionary awareness can deepen mystical insight. Potential figures include Victor Jara, Refaat Alareer, Mahmoud Darwish, Ernesto Cardenal, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, César Vallejo, Simone Weil, Thomas Merton, William Blake, José María Arguedas, dg nanouk okpik, W.B. Yeats, Joanne Kyger, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kahlil Gibran, Denise Levertov, Aimé Césaire, and moreIf we break open the ekphrastic mode beyond static visual art, to moving image, mixed media, performance, events, & protest, what does this aperture offer us? A critical mass of collective experience? How can a moment as transient yet as powerful as a flashpoint be recorded as a blueprint for ongoing resistance? How does the proliferation of poetry around a moment create nets of connection, strengthen collective resistance, and build narrative/anti-narrative power? When thinking of Cecilia Vicuña’s lines “A poem only becomes poetry when its structure / is made not of words but of forces,” we are moved to transform language into the physical. In this generative workshop, I wish to complicate Vicuña’s lines: from linear (poetry→action) to parallel circuitry where the “resistance” to collective action falls—through the simultaneity of strategy:
For inspiration, we’ll look to: Ana Mendieta, Adrian Piper, David Wojnarowicz, Renee Gladman, Edward Salem, Dionne Brand, Gwendolyn Brooks, Juliana Spahr, Etel Adnan, & Nicolas Moufarrege.
Bio: Andrea Abi-Karam is a trans, SWANA, punk poet-performer cyborg. They are the author of EXTRATRANSMISSION (Kelsey Street Press, 2019), Villainy (Nightboat Books, Sept 2021), and with Kay Gabriel, they co-edited We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Nightboat Books, 2020). They are currently writing a poet's novel about crushes & a murder mystery.