Forms & Features with Jasmine Dreame Wagner

When we inspect the walls of our room, what we find isn’t a flat surface but the sun illuminating and moving over the surface as the light modulates from dawn to dusk. Likewise, when we click on a lamp, we don’t witness the room but the emergence of the room’s contours as our eyes adjust from darkness to light. When we write about a field, the potency of its image isn’t necessarily located in the land’s expanse or the solitary blade of grass, it’s located in the moment a finger bends the grass’ blade, and how when we retract our hand, the blade leaps. 

When we read a poem, we experience a series of changes and transformations, not a sequence of static and isolated images. The image is never static. It’s a fluid site that’s charged with potential. As we process a text, its images transport us through the changing landscape of the page.

What to expect in this workshop: 

• We’ll examine images as capsules for a constant pulse of change. 
• We’ll read poems by contemporary poets with a focus on the image and how it is an active site. 
• We’ll look at a poem as a unified field and on a granular level, moving from image to image to inspect how each provides an opportunity for liberation even in formally-constricted stanzas of apparent stasis.

This workshop is for participants aged 18 and older, of all backgrounds and experiences with reading and writing poetry. Registration is required; space is limited.