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Meet THe Team
In this one-day workshop, we’ll read poems that are hot, wet, unbuttoned, and intimate. We’ll study the moves that poets such as Adrienne Rich, June Jordan, Fred Moten, Sawako Nakayasu, and Aaron Shurin use to seduce, tease, manage tension and release, get sonically tactile, and generally turn up the heat. We’ll consider, in the fluid dissolve of one and another—or several others—what bodies, selves, and relationships are (re)conceived, or even revolutionized, in these poems. We’ll read, beyond pure desire, for the complexity of feeling that emerges in these poems, for the risks that they require, and for the alternate, more pleasurable realities that emerge from these minor moments of contact. We’ll borrow their moves to write generatively into hot, new work or into existing work that needs a touch of the erotic. Overall, I hope it will be a pleasure.
• In-Class Writing Lift: Medium
• Homework: None
• Workshopping Drafts: None
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Leah Nieboer is a poet, Deep Listener, graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, and PhD Candidate in English at the University of Denver. Her debut book, SOFT APOCALYPSE, the winner of the 2021 Georgia Poetry Prize (UGA Press, 2023), was named a best debut collection of 2023 by Poets & Writers Magazine, and her work has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Oversound, Poetry Daily, HERE, and elsewhere. A former resident of Nashville, she is the winner of the 2022 Mountain West Writers’ Contest in Poetry and the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of Denver, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts at Mt. San Angelo and the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus in Schwandorf, Germany. She currently lives in Denver, where she co-hosts The Ritter, a new literary and cultural podcast. Find more online at www.leahnieboer.com or via social media (@mznieboer).
"Leah has an uncanny ability to create a space that is both deeply thoughtful and refreshingly playful - these sacred little pockets of time that seem to operate outside of daily life. She approaches creative practices with equal seriousness and silliness, and she gives her students permission to do the same! I signed up expecting a standard writing workshop, but I walked away with a holistic reset for mind, body, and spirit. Very grateful for the care and intention Leah put into every session!"
