I’ll be teaching a peer feedback workshop for poetry, doing a faculty reading, and giving this talk:

RISKING GOOFINESS: HUMOR, PLAY, AGENCY, AND THE POLITICAL

Can a poem make you laugh? And think at the same time? And want to act for social change?? In this talk, I’ll explore the craft of using humor in an exciting variety of ways in contemporary poetry. I’ll consider how humor is a racialized and gendered phenomenon, rejecting notions of universality in favor of a communal and contextual approach. This talk will weave personal narrative with close readings of poems by Sarah Gambito, Mary Ruefle, and Justin Chin. All texts will be provided as a handout. As poets and academics alike love saying, I hope this will ultimately be more of a conversation, a dialogue, rather than a lecture. But really. Seriously. And though poetry will be my focus here, I welcome all genres.