School
for
Poetic
Computation
“Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the goal of the dominant mode of production. It is not a mere decoration added to the real world. It is the very heart of this real society's unreality.” —Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord “Poetry isn’t revolutionary practice; poetry provides a way to inhabit revolutionary practice, to ground ourselves in our relations to ourselves and each other, to think about an unevenly miserable world and to spit in its face. We believe that poetry can do things that theory can’t, that poetry leaps into what theory tends towards. We think that poetry conjoins and extends the interventions that trans people make into our lives and bodily presence in the world, which always have an aesthetic dimension. We assert that poetry should be an activity by and for everybody.” —We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, Andrea Abi-Karam & Kay Gabriel Presence, the root system of accountability and reflection, is both an internal and relational practice, informed by the constant fluctuations of our day-to-day experience. The mundanity of one (logging into Instagram, for example) is inexplicably tied to the multifaceted and globalized oppression of millions more (Congolese cobalt miners). How can poetry and the tenets of radical and experimental poetic expression help us remain present in the face of concurrent global violations against life? And how is poetry useful in accosting the manipulation of language towards capitalistic ends? Participants are encouraged to keep a daily analog journal throughout the five-week class, an exercise meant to foster a daily reflective practice while simultaneously mapping the connectivity of the participant’s internal world to various social movements. Weekly readings, discussions and writing prompts will focus on themes such as labor, environmental (in)justice, land rights and extraction, gender liberation and more.
Final writing projects can take on any form or medium. The only requirement is the final project was conceived and/or inspired by writing done in our 5 weeks together.
By taking this class, you can expect to:
This class may be for you if:
Gabrielle Octavia Rucker is a poetic practitioner, writer, editor and teaching artist from the Great Lakes currently living on the Gulf Coast. Their work reflects on the complexities of inheriting not only only the unfinished business of past generations but also the silent, often overlooked burdens, such as languages and histories lost to colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. A poet of Black American and Mexican descent, Rucker uses explorative, ritual poetics and asemic writing—a form of wordless script that suggests meaning without linguistic structure—to transcend the constraints of English, a language that is both violent (forced upon her) and limiting (not their mother tongue) in its ability to fully express their poetic intent. Their work considers the dormant and unsayable, reanimating the intangible elements that shape one’s capacity for and understanding of legibility, myth, inheritance and ritual. Rucker is a 2020 Poetry Project Fellow, a 2016 Kimbilio Fiction Fellow, and the founder of the The Seminary of Ecstatic Poetics, a non-traditional learning space for the poetically inclined. Her debut poetry collection, Dereliction (2022) is currently available via The Song Cave.
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Margot Armbruster is a writer, editor, educator, and SFPC alum based in Brooklyn. Margot has worked as a researcher, writer, community organizer, and musician at The Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice, the National Humanities Center, Yale University Press, SFPC, and elsewhere, most recently at a Manhattan-based educational media company. Margot's writing appears in The Guardian, USA Today, Belt Magazine, and The Adroit Journal, among other outlets, and focuses on music, math, linguistics, philosophy, disability, and prayer. Margot earned a B.A. in English and Political Theory at Duke University, where they picked figs and took long walks in the campus gardens.
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Applications open until Applications closed on August 4, 2024.
You can expect to hear back from us about the status of your application on . Please email us at admissions@sfpc.study with any questions you have.
For 5 classes, it costs $750 + processing fees, for a one-time payment. We also offer payment plans. Participants can schedule weekly or monthly payments of the same amount. First and last payments must be made before the start and end of class. *Processing fees apply for each payment.
SFPC processes all payments via Withfriends and Stripe. Please email admissions@sfpc.study if these payment options don't work for you.
For more information about what we look for in applicants, scholarships, and other frequently asked questions, please visit our applicant FAQ.
Interested in more learning opportunities at the School for Poetic Computation? Join our newsletter to stay up to date on future sessions and events, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter. Support our programming through scholarships. Get in touch over email.
