Indra's Net Poetics
June 12–July 9, 2016
Poetry. Fiction. Translation. Letterpress Printing.
Week 1 :: Hive Mind :: June 12–June 18
From the vernaculars of social media to the transformative possibilities of artistic exchange, we’ll explore density, migration, diversity within collectivities, and networks of connections. Where do we find our imaginational selves amid all the swarming discourses? The life of the mind is distraction, is speed, the rhizome is our form of feeling now, but we also feel the curse of our “media selves,” mediated along and through the networks of capital. How do we work with these materials, their particular densities, and the situations out of which they emerge? And the call to be a “citizen” therein?
Yet to swarm also means to leave the home and form a new body. We know nearly all these movements, migrations, and displacements are not undertaken in liberty, but rather are forced by war, by famine, and economic immiseration, and by political repression; in 2014, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reckoned more than forty-six million people––the internally displaced, the stateless, refugees, and other asylum seekers––under its concern, and this year has only seen this swarming of human persons intensify. Refusing absolutely the reactionary discourses that further insist on false borders, and the identities that they reify, how can we build a sufficient welcome through writing? How can writing lead us to that new body?
We’ll yet ask the original questions: where are your dreams, and where do you live in your poetry, as we write towards what Will Alexander has called “the life of euphoric solar trees.”
Will Alexander
Samiya Bashir
Anne Boyer
Rikki Ducornet
Ruby Kapka
Ruth Ellen Kocher & Megan Kaminski
J. Michael Martinez
Anne Tardos
Simone White
Lewis Warsh
"The sum of a field's forces [become] what we call very loosely the 'spirit of the place.' To know the spirit of a place is to realize that you are a part of a part and that the whole is made of parts, each of which in a whole. You start with the part you are whole in." -Gary Snyder
The co-rising and interconnectedness of the multiverse, safety net of community, labyrinth of communication and performance, and the curses and blessings of social media. The wilderness of the archive, decolonized mind, hive mind, wild mind, grids and mappings. Print Shop, recording studio, meditation, and collaboration.
The Summer Writing Program is a four-week-long convocation of students, poets, fiction writers, scholars, translators, performance artists, activists, Buddhist teachers, musicians, printers, editors and others working in small press publishing. Programming includes workshops, lectures, panels, readings, special events, and more.
In dialogue with renowned practitioners, students engage in the composition of poetry, prose fiction, cross-genre possibilities, inter-arts, translation and writing for performance. Participants work in daily contact with some of the most accomplished and notoriously provocative writers of our time, meeting individually and in small groups, so that both beginning and experienced writers find equal challenge in the program.
All four weeks (or any combination of weeks) are open to any interested participant for noncredit. Students from other institutions or degree programs may also elect to attend for undergraduate or graduate credit.
Artistic Director and curator: Anne Waldman
SWP Director: Jeffrey Pethybridge
Both Credit and Non-Credit Students may Register! Naropa University welcomes participants with disabilities. Please contact Jeffrey Pethybridge at jpethybridge@naropa.edu to inquire about accessibility and disability accommodations needed to participate fully in this event before May 15th, 2016. For more information or questions regarding program curriculum, please contact SWP@naropa.edu.