Workshop: the Poetics of Resistance in Gainesville and the States

**Zoom registration at: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_mkUNwMsfT0WXVynkR6oOLg **

The Matheson is hosting a poetry workshop with Alejandro Aguirre in partnership with ARTSPEAKSgnv’s Bard and Broadside: North Central Florida Poetry Festival. The festival runs from April 13-16 and this year’s theme is “Unity in the Community Through Text and Image.” https://www.artspeaksgnv.org/north-central-florida-poetry-festival

This workshop explores the place of poetry in response to a history of segregation. Following a discussion of examples from Natasha Trethewey, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Jericho Brown, visitors will compose a collaborative poem via the “exquisite corpse,” a technique invented by the surrealists. A paper will be passed around the room. Each visitor will add two lines to its poem and fold away the first so that the following contributor may only draw inspiration from the last line. (Those less inclined to writing original lines may write an erasure poem instead, transforming transcripts of oral histories from the exhibition into poems.) Responding to the exhibits at the Matheson, particularly We’re Tired of Asking: Black Thursday and Civil Rights at the University of Florida, guests will leave the workshop with a new poem of resistance to recite and share.