Jaswinder Bolina’s fourth collection English as a Second Language and Other Poems (or The Usual Entertainment) is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2023. He is author of three previous books of poetry, The 44th of July (2019), Phantom Camera (2013), and Carrier Wave (2007), and of the digital chapbook The Tallest Building in America (2014). His debut collection of essays Of Color (2020) is also available from McSweeney's. He teaches on the faculty of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Miami.
Workshop
Wordsmithing
Stéphane Mallarmé famously declared to the painter Edgar Degas that “Poems are not made out of ideas. They are made out of words.” But what does that mean in practice? In this workshop, we’ll study how close attention to wordplay, syntactic juxtaposition, and line construction can turn our vital, abstract ideas into vibrant, imagistic poems. We’ll read a diverse selection of writing by contemporary and canonical poets to serve as inspiration while engaging in exercises designed to strengthen our skills at chipping, chiseling, sculpting, and refining our language into scintillating new work.
