Week Two Courses

Considering both human and non-human elements, where does our writing practice intersect with others? A sense of empathy, one evidenced in the mirror neurons of chimps, attracts our attention. From flowers, spiders, to the wooly mammoth, we will consider our ongoing investigative projects in “nature” as templates for radical shifts in research and imagination. Eros suggests we fall more in love with our world and the dharma suggests we do the same. What does it mean for locals here at Naropaland, who continue to struggle with the karma of Rocky Flats plutonium waste?

Noncredit Course #: WRI 052, tuition: $475 per week
BA Course #: WRI 452, tuition: $1215 per week
MFA Course #: WRI 752, tuition: $1620 per week
(plus $120 registration fee)

Photo:Michelle Hood

Photo: Jane Augustine

Jane Augustine & Michael Heller Poetical Ecologies & Radical Observation

Ecology: the totality or pattern of relationships between organisms and their environments. Poetry: the radical observation and expression of those relationships, words springing up between self and other, individual and world. Hybrid works by Basho, Blake, William Carlos Williams, H.D., Lorine Niedecker, George Oppen, and W.G. Sebald will be our reference points for exploring and writing out some old and new ways of forming that dialogue.

Jane Augustine has published four books of poetry, most recently A Woman’s Guide to Mountain Climbing; numerous essays on H.D., Lorine Niedecker, and other modern women writers; an edition of H.D.’s unpublished novel, The Mystery; and an essay on poetry and Vajrayana Buddhism in The Emergence of Buddhist American Literature (eds. John Whalen-Bridge and Gary Storhoff). She lives in New York City and Westcliffe, Colorado.

Michael Heller is a poet, critic and essayist. His most recent book of poetry is Eschaton. Also recently published are: Two Novellas: Marble Snows & The Study and Speaking the Estranged: Essays on the Work of George Oppen. His many honors include the Dim Castagnola Prize of the Poetry Society of America, a New York Foundation Fellowship, a National Endowment Poet/Scholar grant, and an award from the Fund for Poetry.

Caroline Bergvall Marks and tracings

We'll explore writing as a form of tracing. We'll reflect on what it means to leave traces, explore physical presencing of language through mark-making. This opens up to questions of site study; notions of time in relation to materials; documentary methods and researching evidence. Getting lost, feeling one’s way. Learning anew. Pain and politics. Opening to other structures. We’ll look at works that display such impulses and methods. There’ll be ongoing writing assignments alongside our discussions.

Caroline Bergvall is a French-Norwegian writer and artist based in London. She works across media, languages, and artforms. Projects alternate between books, audio pieces, performances and language installations. Books include: Fig, Recent presentations: PhonoFemme (Vienna), MukHa Museum (Antwerp), Poetry Marathon (Serpentine Gallery, London), Digital Writing/Tate Modern (London), MOMA (NY). She is currently an AHRC Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts. Online critical pieces and various samples available on her website.

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 78, he’s writing more than ever. Thinks everything is funny, perhaps also very sad. Latest book: Situations, Sings, with Lyn Hejinian.

Samuel R. Delany A Writing Workshop

How do you mold objective description so that the reader knows the narrator's most subjective fears and feelings? In this workshop—about how to suggest far more than we say—we shall read, observe, discuss, and write, while we try to learn something about all four processes.

Samuel R. Delany is a novelist and crirtic whose fiction includes Dhalgren, Dark Reflections, and The Mad Man. His novel Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiderswill appearin November, 2010,from Alyson Books, and he is the author of the nonfiction About Writing. He teaches English and creative writing at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.

Photo: Nina Subin

Alan Gilbert The Avant-Garde Is a Corpse, and We Are Necrophiliac

This workshop will examine current trends in contemporary poetry, including conceptual poetics, cross-cultural poetics, ecopoetics, flarf, hybrid poetry, as well as recent developments in digital, sound, and spoken word poetry. We will think about the ways in which these practices duplicate, modify, and discard aspects of last century’s avant-garde. Workshop participants will share their own writing, as we make connections − or not − between our own work and these current modes.

Alan Gilbert is the author of Another Future: Poetry and Art in a Postmodern Twilight, a collection of essays on socially engaged poetry and visual art. His writings on poetry and art have appeared in a variety of publications, including Artforum, The Believer, The Village Voice, and various exhibition catalogues. His poems have been published in Bomb, Boston Review, The Nation, and elsewhere. He lives in New York City.

Photo: Elizabeth Winder

Brenda Hillman Our ecopoetics, her inner life, its vocabulary, your-my-and-their activisms

Our ecopoetics shimmer in a multifaceted way. Using models from San Francisco Renaissance poets and others, we will initiate and continue conversations having to do with land, the elements, and the material word. How do locale and mental life intersect? How do you access the vocabulary that transitions between inner and outer nature? We will consider poetics of social conscience and activism. Participants will write during the week and will bring new work every day.

Brenda Hillman has published three chapbooks and eight collections of poetry, including Pieces of Air in the Epic and Practical Water. She has edited an edition of Emily Dickinson’s poetry for Shambhala Publications, and, with Patricia Dienstfrey, co-edited The Grand Permisson: New Writings on Poetics and Motherhood. Hillman is the Olivia Filippi Professor of Poetry at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California. She is involved in non-violent activism as a member of Code Pink,
a women-initiated social justice group working to end war.

Photo: Thomas Evans

Lisa Jarnot Investigative Poetry!

In this course, we will attempt to recreate the 1977 Investigative Poetry Group, led by Ed Sanders. Students will choose a topic of local interest out of the Ecosphere and collaboratively carry out poetical investigations culminating in a publication for the benefit of the community.

Lisa Jarnot was born in Buffalo, New York. She received a BA from the State University of New York and an MFA in Creative Writing from Brown University. She has edited two small magazines (No Trees, 1987−1990, Troubled Surfer, 1991−1992) as well as The Poetry Project Newsletter and An Anthology of New (American) Poetry. She is the author of four collections of poetry: Some Other Kind of Mission, Ring of Fire, Black Dog Songs, and Night Scenes. Her biography of Robert Duncan is forthcoming in 2010.

Tracie Morris Sound Poetry

In this course we will consider the relationship between sound poetry and performed text. We will consider the context of "experimental sound". If saying poems out loud is the precedent for writing them (historically), is sound poetry that "avant-garde"? In this course we will listen to and develop sound poetry, and present sound poems in a public reading. Please be advised that there will be substantial listening and writing assignments outside of class hours.

Tracie Morris is an interdisciplinary poet and scholar who has worked extensively as a sound artist, writer, bandleader and multimedia performer. Her installations have been presented at the Whitney Biennial, Ronald Feldman Gallery and the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning. She holds an MFA in poetry from Hunter College and a PhD in Performance Studies from New York University. Dr. Morris is an Associate Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt Institute.

Photo: Tobias Klukte

Daniel Pinchbeck Writing and Illumination

We will explore writing about personal illuminations, whether in nonfiction, fiction, or poetic forms. How does one convey these often intensely personal experiences in a way that makes them universal? We will look at examples from Aldous Huxley, Rainer Maria Rilke, Virginia Woolf, and others. We will analyze successful descriptions of illumination, satori flashes, mystical epiphanies, and share some of our own

Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of Breaking Open the Head and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl.
He is the editorial director of the web magazine Reality Sandwich and co-founder of Evolver.net.
His essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, ArtForum, and many other places. He is the co-editor of Toward 2012: Writers on the Next Age.

Photo: David Flores

Evelyn Reilly Ecologies of the Unpoetic

How can apparently “non-literary” sources help us expand our writing and thinking? Can the un- or anti-poetic be of use in projects such as depoeticizing nature in order to reform our relation to it? This class will explore unusual sources − data sets, images, sound, technical languages, historical archives − as inspiration in our own work and that of others, from Mac Low’s light poems to Will Alexander’s cosmic sampling to Robertson’s and Goldsmith’s weather reports.

Evelyn Reilly’s newest book of poetry, Styrofoam, was published by Roof Books in 2009. Recent work has also appeared in Aufgabe, War and Peace, How2, EOAGH and Critiphoria, and in the chapbook, Fervent Remnants of Reflective Surfaces, published by Portable Press at Yo Yo Labs.
She has taught visual poetics at St. Marks Poetry Project and for four years was a co-curator of
the Segue Reading Series in New York City.

Elizabeth Robinson & Helen Howe Braider Wordscapes

This class combines word-crafting with sculpting materials such as wood and stone. Our experiments look beyond the environment of the classroom to the landscape around us. How do word and form interact? What does it mean to scavenge materials and reshape them into new meaning, only to see them erode and reshape again? We will consider works of Ian Hamilton Finlay and his Little Sparta, among others. Be prepared to, literally, roll up your sleeves and hammer away.

Elizabeth Robinson is the author of over ten collections of poetry, most recently Also Known As and The Orphan & its Relations. She has been a winner of the National Poetry Series and the Fence Modern Poets Prizes. She has also been the recipient of grants from the Fund for Poetry and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Robinson lives in Boulder and co-edits EtherDome Chapbooks and Instance Press.

Helen Howe Braider has been living and working in Boulder for 17 years. She trained in Dublin, Ireland, Paris, and Boston. She has participated in Open Studios for many years and recently had a show at Exhibitrek. In the past few years she has moved from stone and wood carving into painting. Her work can be seen at helenhowebraider.com.

James Stevens Shock of the (Old) New: Writing of New World Nature

This course will focus on how research into both the natural and political world around us affects poetry. The nature of this “new” world quickly turns to the political. Consider the Amik (from the Anishnaabe) or Canadian Beaver and how it quickly turned to the fur wars, leaving divisions still in the North country. Be prepared for some research − the fun kind − but research nonetheless.

James Thomas Stevens (Akwesasne Mohawk) attended the Institute of American Indian Arts and received his MFA from Brown University. He also attended Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics on a Gerald Red Elk Scholarship. He is currently creative writing faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is a 2000 Whiting Award recipient and his books include Combing the Snakes from His Hair, A Bridge Dead in the Water, Mohaw/Samoa: Transmigrations and Bulle/Chimere, among others. He lives in Lamy, New Mexico.

Mary Tasillo Material as Muse

Engage your hands with the environment, your senses to the smell and feel of your materials,
and your full body in producing texts. In this printshop class, we will construct texts directly in the composing stick, and print on paper made with plant materials from our surroundings. We will return the printed pieces to the environment, installing our work in the local landscape.

Mary Tasillo is an artist based in Philadelphia, PA. She is also a somewhat itinerant teacher, writer, and independent scholar. As part of the collaboration, Book Bombs, Mary’s recent work focuses on site-based public art using printmaking techniques and paper made from invasive weeds harvested in urban lots. She is also a columnist for the Hand Papermaking Newsletter and holds an MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA.

Special Guests

For the IAIA Panel and Reading

Sherwin Bitsui

Sherwin Bitsui is originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. Currently, he lives in Tucson, Arizona. He is Diné of the Todich’ii’nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tl’izilani (Many Goats Clan). He is the recipient of the 2000−01 Individual Poet Grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, a 1999 Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship at IAIA, a Lannan Foundation Marfa Residency, and a 2006 Whiting Writer’s Award. Books include Shapeshift and Flood Song.

Jon Davis

Jon Davis is the author of six collections of poetry, including Preliminary Report and Scrimmage of Appetite. He has received numerous awards, including a Lannan Literary Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets. For the past twenty years, he has been professor of creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.

Santee Frazier

Santee Frazier is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. He holds a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Syracuse University. He is the recipient of various awards including: The Truman Capote Scholarship, Syracuse University Fellowship and a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship. His poems have appeared in American Poet, Narrative Magazine, Ontario Review, and other literary journals. His first collection of poems Dark Thirty was released by the University of Arizona Press in the spring of 2009.

Allison Hedge Coke

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Reynolds Chair of Poetry & Writing, authored books include: (American Book Award) Dog Road Woman and Off-Season City Pipe poetry; Rock Ghost, Willow, Deer, a memoir; and Blood Run, a verse-play. Hedge Coke has edited eight additional collections. She came of age cropping tobacco and working fields, waters, and working in factories. Hedge Coke was born between paternal oratory and sudden maternal madness; somewhere north of the condor and south of raven.

Layli Long Soldier

Layli Long Soldier is Oglala Lakota—her family is from Pine Ridge, South Dakota and northwestern Idaho. She holds a BFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is a two-time recipient of the Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship. She is also a recipient of the 2009 Naropa University Poetry Scholarship. She has served as editor-in-chief for Native Language Network and other publications for the Indigenous Language Institute in Santa Fe, NM. Her first chapbook of poetry is titled, Chromosomory.

dg okpik

dg nanouk okpikis Inupiaq, Inuit from Alaska. She is a graduate from Salish Kootenai College, Flathead Reservation Montana with an AFA in Liberal Arts, an AFA and BFA in Creative Writing from The Institute of American Indian Arts. She will graduate in January 2010 with a MFA in Creative Writing at University of Southern Maine, Stonecoast College. Her work has been published in Many Moutains Moving, NYU Washington Square and featured in The Academy of American Poets Fall issue 2009 of American Poet by Arthur Sze her teacher for six years.

Orlando White

Orlando White is from Tólikan, Arizona. He is Diné of the Zuni Water’s Edge Clan and born for the Mexican Clan. He holds a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Brown University. His poems have appeared in Bombay Gin, The Kenyon Review, and Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics. He teaches at Diné College and lives in Tsaile, Arizona. Bone Light is his first book.

For a Special Film Event (Sunday, June 27, 1–5 p.m.)

Filmmaker Ed Bowes' Recent Work

Boulder Public Library Cinema Program & The Naropa Summer Writing Programpresent an afternoon of films by Ed Bowes and a conversation with Bowes and poet Anne Waldman.
1001 Arapahoe Avenue., Boulder, Colorado

During the past five years, Ed Bowes has made three fictive movies, working with writers and performers from the Naropa and Boulder communities. The films mix parallel streams of image, text, story, and presentation to investigate how we think, what we want, the ways of our seeing and visual memory, the patterns and phrases that float through out mind.

In describing “Entanglement,” Bob Holman writes:

“Entanglement is a walk-in poem, and when you’re inside the only way out is to go further in. Finally you walk through Eleni Sikelianos’s pupil and then… Well it has to do with the ambiguity of the human and human body, richness and intellect, simplicity and mystery. Love and terrifying beauty abound.”

Ed Bowes has made ten major films and has been involved in numerous collaborations with other artists. He teaches at the School of Visual Arts, where he directs the MFA program in video.

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