Workshop - Intertextual Freak: Pushing the Lyric “I” Through Found Text

Radical Assemblage: Found Poetry and the Erotic Self

The Deeply Felt “I”: The Erotic Power of Found Poetry 

Combining Audre Lorde’s redefinition of the “erotic” with found poetry techniques, we will ecstatically push the lyric expression of the I to create poems that sound strange, defy conventions and rational logic, resist habituation to received forms, and offer our readers a poetic assemblage of the self that troubles the vulgate.

About Arisa:
Arisa White is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College. She is the author of Who’s Your Daddy, co-editor of Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart, and co-author of Biddy Mason Speaks Up, the second book in the Fighting for Justice Series for young readers. In collaboration with composer Jessica Jones, Post Pardon: The Opera marked Arisa’s debut as a librettist. Her poetry is widely published, and her collections have been nominated for both the NAACP Image Award and the Lambda Literary Award. She has also won the Per Diem Poetry Prize, the Maine Literary Award, the Nautilus Book Award, an Independent Publisher Book Award, the Golden Crown Literary Award, and the Airlie Press Prize. The poem installation, look after your heart is permanently displayed at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. She is a Cave Canem fellow and serves on the Community Advisory Board for Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. arisawhite.com