Week One Workshops and Faculty

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4

Rebecca Brown | Junior Burke & Bobbie Louise Hawkins | Jack Collom | Samuel R. Delany | Renee Gladman | Brad Gooch | Anselm Hollo | Laird Hunt | Joyce Johnson | Eileen Myles | Janine Pommy Vega | Julia Seko | A.B Spellman |Basil & Martha King

Week One: June 15-21
Outrider: Jack Kerouac School Lineages

This summer, the Kerouac School celebrates its 35th year. Drawing on our audio and video archive, we will celebrate the incredible array of lineages that have passed through the Kerouac School. From the Beats to Black Mountain, from the San Francisco Renaissance to Black Arts and Umbra, from the New York School to Language Poetry. The feverish ongoing conversation around the artist’s role in society has helped make the Kerouac School what it is today—a field of experimental, postmodern writing and an alternate nontraditional community. A powerful “temporary autonomous zone,” in the words of Hakim Bey. We will also pay special homage to the prophetic William S. Burroughs, a former resident guest faculty at Naropa University, who played a major role in the school’s inception. Robin Blaser, a poet of great depth and vision and one of American poetry’s most distinguished “elders,” will also be a special guest this week.

Noncredit Course #: WRI 052, tuition: $475 per week
BA Course #: WRI 452, tuition: TBA
MFA Course #: WRI 752, tuition: TBA

Rebecca Brown Kerouac's Haibun Lineage

Jack Kerouac's Desolation Angels is written in haibun, an ancient Japanese form that incorporates passages of poetry, often haiku, in longer passages of autobiographical prose. In this class, we will study the origins and development of haibun from 11th century diaries and miscellany books up through Kerouac and beyond. We will read and write our own haibun. Suitable for writers of poetry and prose.

Suggested Reading:
Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels (Riverhead)
Matsuo Basho, Narrow Road to the Interior (Shambhala)

I have written a dozen books and defaced many others. My own titles include American Romances, The Terrible Girls, The End of Youth, The Last Time I Saw You, The Dogs (all with City Lights); The Gifts of the Body (HarperCollins); Excerpts From a Family Medical Dictionary (University of Wisconsin). I do cut n paste to books and I have collaborated with dancers, painters, actors and musicians.

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Junior Burke & Bobbie Louise Hawkins Creating performance text

We will examine what elements go into an effective monologue. How words on the page are transformed into effective Spoken Word. How a narrative piece is structured and ultimately delivered. By the end of the week, each writer will have a piece that has been written, re-written and polished with and eye toward performance.

Bobbie Louise Hawkins founded the prose fiction concentration in the Writing and Poetics Department at Naropa where she still teaches. She was awarded a National
Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Literature, and has 16 books of
fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and performance monologues to her credit. Her
one-woman shows include Life as We Know It and Take Love for Instance.

Junior Burke is a novelist (Something Gorgeous), dramatist (Soft Trumpet, Slow Guitar) and lyricist (While You Were Gone). Chair of Naropa's Department of Writing & Poetics, he is also Director of the Low Res MFA in Creative Writing. He is the founder and (with Maureen Owen) editor of the online literary magazine not enough night. In addition to his Naropa life, Mr. Burke teaches screenwriting in the University of Colorado's Film Studies Department.

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Jack Collom Comedy & Nature

Henri Bergson said that what’s funny is always “something mechanically encrusted upon the living.” Also, “language is too rigid to be an accurate mirror of an infinitely fluid universe.” Sounds like a wacky combo biology and physics lecture? Historically, “The Fool” may well have begun with intoxication. And incongruity may have been first played as animal heads jammed with human bodies. This course will explore conjunctions of nature and comedy, and what to do.

Jack Collom was born 1931 in Chicago. Birder and woodswalker from an early age. Early onto humors of language. Moved west at 15, attended Forestry school in Colorado. USAF four years. Worked in factories 20 years, writing poetry on the side. Two NEA Fellowships, 23 books and chapbooks. Works with kids a lot. At 76, he’s writing more than ever. Thinks everything is funny, perhaps also very sad. Latest book Situations, Sings, with Lyn Hejinian.

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Samuel R. Delany Some of the Ways they Wrote…

In this workshop, we will look at some of the ways writers associated with Naropa’s Summer Writing Program from its inception have used to write poetry and fiction. We’ll try out some of theirs and see what it tells us about some of ours.

Samuel R. Delany is a novelist and critic who lives in New York City and teaches English and creative writing at Temple University in Philadelphia. His novels include Dhalgren, Trouble on Triton, The Mad Man, Phallos, and Dark Reflections. His Novel, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders is forthcoming. His short fiction has been collected in books such as Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories and Atlantis: Three Tales.

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Renee Gladman The Novel in Brief

In this workshop, we will investigate compressed narrative spaces, using the "novel" as our area of play. Students will be assigned the task of writing a certain kind of novel over the course of the week, thus should come to the class with an idea of the "about" already in hand.

Required Reading:
Diane William, It was Like my Trying to Have a Tender-hearted Nature (FC2)

Suggested Reading:
Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar (Houghton Mifflin)

Renee Gladman is the author of one collection of poetry, A Picture-Feeling (Roof Books, 2005), and four works of prose, Juice (Kelsey St. Press, 2000), The Activist (Krupskaya, 2003), Newcomer Can't Swim (2007), and most recently Toaf (Atelos, 2008). She is the publisher of Leon Works, a press for experimental prose and other thought projects based in the sentence, and teaches at Brown University.

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Brad Gooch The New York School

The course will concentrate on the New York School of Poets, especially Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler. Besides looking at fine poems mostly—though not exclusively—of the fifties and sixties, attention will be paid to manifestos, reviews and letters written by these “downtown” kin of Kerouac and Co. Students will write imitations of each of these poets to increase their own powers and tactics. These imitations will be shared with the class. The instructor is also available to look at other styles of student work.

Suggested Reading:
Frank O’Hara, Selected Poems (Knopf)
Brad Gooch, City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara (Harper)
James Schuyler, Selected Poems (FSG)
Kenneth Koch, Selected Poems (Libary of America)

Brad Gooch is the author of Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor. His previous books include City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara; as well as Godtalk: Travels in Spiritual America; three novels—Scary Kisses, The Golden Age of Promiscuity, Zombie00; a collection of stories, Jailbait and other Stories, a collection of poems, The Daily News; and two memoirs, Finding the Boyfriend Within and Dating the Greek Gods. He has received a Guggenheim fellowship, an N.E.H. fellowship, and is a professor of English at William Paterson University.

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Anselm Hollo How to Say What You did not Mean to Say

A look at various ways to overcome the fear of the blank page, including the "cut-up technique" (Burroughs, Gysin), Dadaist methods of composition (Tzara), The Oulipo Group’s theory and practice, and Bernadette Mayer’s and Charles Bernstein's long list of "things to do" when the Muse does not descend.

Anselm Hollo, poet and literary translator, is a Professor in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. His most recent books are Notes on the Possibilities and Attractions of Existence: Selected Poems 1965–2000, which won the San Francisco Poetry Center's Best Book Award for 2001, and Guests of Space, published 2007.

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Laird Hunt Beats and Other Exceptional Outriders: a Fiction Workshop

Fiction by Kerouac, Burroughs, di Prima, Brautigan, Berlin, Acker, as well as Stein, Lautréamont, Kafka and other signal outriders will be the focus of our conversation this week. Students will produce their own writings for consideration and helpful critique.

Laird Hunt, a graduate of the Kerouac School, is the author of The Impossibly, Indiana, Indiana and The Exquisite (all Coffee House Press).

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Joyce Johnson The Observant I

Memoirists and creative nonfiction writers will examine the process of writing from life, exploring the development of a strong first-person voice as well as the use of memoiry and the devices writers such as Kerouac, Virginia Woolf, and Nabokov have borrowed from fiction to shape and heighten their stories. New student work will be generated by a series of exercises. Ongoing projects will also be discussed.

Suggested Reading:
Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody (Penguin)
Jack Kerouac, Visions of Gerard (Penguin)
Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being (Harvest)
Vladimir Nabokov, Speak Memory (Vintage)

Joyce Johnson's 1983 Minor Characters: A Beat memoir won a National Book Critics Circle Award. Her most recently published books are Missing Men: A Memoir and Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters (both Penguin). She is currently writing a biography of Jack Kerouac.

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Eileen Myles Gender Hike

We could also call this class genre hike. I’m thinking we will connect with the beat tradition by means of the nextness to nature we celebrate here in Boulder—by getting up into it most days if not every day as part of our practice. We will write poetry and prose and look at Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, Donna Harraway, Judy Grahn, Judith Butler, Renee Gladman and Barbara Guest as pioneers of invasive forms and natures.

Suggested Reading:
Jack Kerouac, Dharma Bums (Penguin)
Donna Harraway, How Like a Leaf (Routledge)
Judy Grahn, Edward the Dyke (Women’s Press Collective)
Renee Gladman, The Activist (Krupskaya)
Barbara Guest, Selected Poems (Sun & Moon)
Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (Routledge)

Of Sorry, Tree (Wave Books), her most recent volume, Chicago Review says: “Her politics are overt, her physicality raw, yet it is the subtle gentle noticing in her poems that overwhelms.” Eileen Myles is among the ranks of the officially restless, a poet who writes fiction (Chelsea Girls, Cool for You) and an essayist whose The Importance of Being Iceland, for which she received a Warhol/Creative Capital grant will come out in spring 09 from Semiotext(e)/MIT.

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Janine Pommy Vega Poems of Resilience: Lucille Clifton in Our Time

This course introduces poetic techniques from Clifton's Blessing the Boats and other contemporary poets. Human resilience in our witnessing of daily life provides the raw material for great writing. The event or memory serves as focus. Pablo Neruda says perceptions of the struggle keep making us who we are. Writing assignments will include a praise poem, persona poem, allegory and eyewitness account from one's own history. Students will write at least four poems.

Required Reading:
Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats (Boa Editions)

Janine Pommy Vega is the author of eighteen books and chapbooks since 1968. The latest is The Green Piano (Black Sparrow Press). Her first CD, Across the Table, recorded in Woodstock, and from live performances in Italy and Bosnia, came out in November, 2007. An Italian translation of her travel book Tracking the Serpent: Journeys into Four Continents (City Lights) and an anthology of her translations from Spanish of migrant workers' poems, Estamos Aquí (YBK), were both published in 2007.

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Julia Seko Voices Take Form: Letterpress Printing

Printing has historically given a material voice to radical thought. In this introductory workshop we will explore the ways of metal, ink, and paper to create artful and provocative dialogue.

Julia Seko is a letterpress printer, book artist and the proprietor of PS Press. Trained in letterpress printing at the Women's Building in Los Angeles, she teaches at Naropa University, where she helped set up the letterpress studio. She is also active in the Book Arts League, a nonprofit community book arts organization. Her work is in university and private collections and has been exhibited in the US and abroad.

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A.B. Spellman Building the Poem

This is a one-week course in poetry revision. Participants will be asked to bring multiple copies of typed poems to the class so that others may follow as the author reads aloud. Critique will be offered to determine what works or doesn't according to the poem's own standard. Issues to be covered include: What is voice? How is poem's appropriate measure determined? How are enjambments set? What should be cut and what should be added? Also, participants will be asked to present and defend their favorite poets.

A.B. Spellman is an author, poet, critic and lecturer. He was a poet-in-residence at Morehouse College, in Atlanta, Ga. He taught various courses in African-American culture; offered courses in modern poetry, creative writing and jazz at Emory, Rutgers and Harvard Universities. Spellman is an occasional television and radio commentator. He offered reviews and commentaries on National Public Radio’s Jazz Riffs series, including the NPR Basic Jazz Record Library program. Mr. Spellman is a graduate of Howard University. He has published numerous books and articles on the arts, including Art Tatum: A Critical Biography (a chapbook), The Beautiful Days (poetry), and Four Lives in the Bebop Business, now available as Four Jazz Lives (University of Michigan Press). His poetry collection, Things I Must Have Known, recently was published by Coffee House Press. Mr. Spellman has served on numerous arts panels including the Rockefeller Panel on Arts, Education and Americans; the Awards Panel of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP); the Africa Diaspora Advisory Group, the Jazz Advisory Group, and the Advisory Group on the African-American Museum for the Smithsonian Institution. Between 1975 and 2005, A.B. Spellman worked at the National Endowment for the Arts, first as the Director of the Expansion Arts Program and, for the last decade of his term at the NEA, as Deputy Chairman. In recognition of Spellman’s commitment and service to jazz, the National Endowment for the Arts in 2005 named one of its prestigious Jazz Masters awards the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy. Also in 2005, the Jazz Journalists Association voted to honor Mr. Spellman with its “A Team” award. In March, 2006 he received the Benny Golson Award from Howard University for his service to jazz. A.B. Spellman is married to the former Karen Edmonds. They have two daughters: Toyin, an oboist, and Kaji, a minister. Mr. Spellman is also the father of Malcolm Spellman, a screenwriter in Los Angeles, CA.

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Special Guests

Basil King

Basil King is a painter/poet, born in England before World War 2 and living in Brooklyn since 1968. He attended Black Mountain College as a teenager and completed apprenticeship as an abstract expressionist in San Francisco and New York. He began to write in the 1980s and now practices both arts daily. His books include mirage: a poem in 22 sections, Warp Spasm, Identity, and most recently 77 Beasts/Basil King’s Beastiary.

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Martha King

Martha King was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1937, attended Black Mountain College in 1955 and married Basil King in 1958. She edited the free zine Giants Play Well in the Drizzle (1983–92) and has held many day jobs; she’s currently head of publications for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Her poetry books include Imperfect Fit; her prose works, Little Tales of Family and War and most recently North & South.

Basil and Martha King will present their Film, Fully Awake: Black Mountain College, on Tuesday, June 16.

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