Pushing a Visceral Limit with Asiya Wadud

Six Thursdays, October 11–November 15

What does it mean to slowly revisit an observation, to prolong a simple study, to extend the limit, to push the border so it becomes porous? What new poetic information reveals itself to us when we sit with a thing well past the moment that it is comfortable? How do we transition from observer to witness, and do we? In this generative class, participants will push the visceral limits of themes (of their choosing), teasing them apart in order to explore their many elements. The idea is to hone, delve, and to turn the same stone different ways. We will begin by reading Georges Perec’s An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris and by watching Okwui Okpokwasili’s Lincoln Center performance of Poor People’s TV Room. We will also read the work of Wingston Gonzalez, Clarice Lispector, and Aracelis Girmay, among others.

Class Dates:
Thursday, October 11, 6–8:30 PM
Thursday, October 18, 6–8:30 PM
Thursday, October 25, 6–8:30 PM
Thursday, November 1, 6–8:30 PM
Thursday, November 8, 6–8:30 PM
Thursday, November 15, 6–8:30 PM

Asiya Wadud is the author of the chapbook We, too, Are But The Fold; her first full-length collection Crosslight for Youngbird; and two other forthcoming volumes. She is a third-grade teacher by day and an ESL instructor to immigrants and refugees at night.