In many ways, all conflicts, all tensions arise—in homes, in public, in politics, etc.—because of objects in finite space. A peaceful room becomes chaotic with the arrival of another character, human or not. A car quietly parked and waiting for its owner gets damaged because another vehicle crashes into it. Two nations war because they can’t coexist on one piece of land, as vast as the land may be.
In this five-week, online workshop, we’ll learn to move objects around in the settings of our poems, smashing them as if we were in the Large Hadron Collider, searching for the unexplored secrets, the God Particle, that can take our writing beyond what we ever expected. We’ll begin our journey in the first week by taking a mental photo of a setting and describing this image in detail, focusing on all the objects captured within the frame of the photo. From there, each week we’ll move, delete and add objects, including people, from this space and create poems based on the impact that such movement has on the image and the tensions held within the space, allowing us to explore how much power is held in the spaces between us. Class sessions will meet synchronously via Zoom, and assignments, poems and critiques will be shared via Wet Ink.
Workshop Details
Chiwan Choi is a poet, writer, publisher and lifelong seer of ghosts. He is the author of four full-length books of poetry: The Flood (Tia Chucha Press, 2010) and the Daughter Trilogy, three books that explore his lost daughter as ghost: Abductions (Writ Large Press, 2012), The Yellow House (CCM, 2017) and my name is wolf (2022). He is also the author of multiple poetry chapbooks, including Time Out of Space and lo/fidelity lovesongs. He wrote, presented and destroyed the novel Ghostmaker throughout the course of 2015 as part of his ongoing examination of the meaning of a book and the conjuring and nurturing of ghosts. Choi has published his poetry, fiction and essays in numerous journals and magazines, including the New York Times Magazine, ONTHEBUS and Poem-A-Day. He is a partner at Writ Large Projects, an indie publishing and media company.