Erica Hunt is CPCW Fellows in Poetics & Poetic Practice, 2005-06
Dear students: An amazing new course is being taught this spring, called "Words into Sound: an Exploration of Poetry and Jazz/New Music." It is being taught by the remarkable poet ERICA HUNT. She is closely connected to the jazz scene in NYC, where she lives and works, and aside from being a much-admired poet, she is also president of The Twenty-First Century Foundation, which supports organizations that address root causes of social injustice affecting the Black community. (She has recently been very, very active in helping Black businesspeople and communities in Katrina-affected areas of Louisiana.) Erica is our 2005-06 Fellow in Poetics & Poetic Practice at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing. Much more info below. If you want to be part of this course, you must email jazzpoetry@writing.upenn.edu. Best wishes, Al Filreis Kelly Professor of English Faculty Director, the Kelly Writers House Director, the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis writing.upenn.edu --------------------------------------------------------------------- spring 2006: English 111.302 Words into Sound: an Exploration of Poetry and Jazz/New Music taught by Erica Hunt Thursdays 1:30-4:30 PM COURSE DESCRIPTION: "Words into Sound: an Exploration of Poetry and Jazz/New Music" examines poetic composition and collaboration through several lens: historical, cultural and structural frames. Music, often thought too abstract for words, escapes the lyric trap to meet words as elements of composition, inseparable from the form. Class will listen and write/score, using words to chisel, count time, pattern and give texture, not as accompaniment, but as a voicing of the moment of performance. The historical range--from the post war Bebops and Beats to the Black Arts movement to the performance/spoken word pulse of today. We'll look/listen to Langston Hughes, Babs Gonzalez, Tom Waits, Lord Buckley, Amiri Baraka, George Lewis, Nate Mackey, Ann Waldman, Tracie Morris and Sekous Sundiata and others who have collaborated to create poetry/music compositions that explore language terrain with complexity and insight. The course will feature visits to the class by important and interesting figures in the jazz/poetry world. Enrollments in this special creative writing seminar are strictly limited. Students who want to take the course should send a short email application to jazzpoetry@writing.upenn.edu and send: * your name, year, major * a very brief description of your interest in the course * any relevant experience or background This is a special course taught by the 2005-06 Fellow in Poetics and Poetic Practice at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing. BIO PROFILE: Erica Hunt works at the forefront of experimental poetry and poetics, critical race theory, and feminist aesthetics. She has written three books of poetry: Arcade, with artist Alison Saar, Piece Logic, and Local History (Roof Books, 1993). Her published and forthcoming essays include "Notes for an Oppositional Poetics" (The Politics of Poetic Form,, ed. Charles Bernstein), "Parabolay" (Boundary 2), and "Roots of the Black Avant Garde" (Tripwire, forthcoming). Hunt's poems can be found in Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women (ed. Mary Margaret Sloan), Iowa Poetry Review, and the Virago Anthology of Women's Love Poetry. Hunt has also worked as a housing organizer, radio producer, poetry teacher, and program officer for a social justice campaign. She is currently president of The Twenty-First Century Foundation which supports organizations addressing root causes of social injustice impacting the Black community. For more of Erica Hunt, see http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Hunt.html