Registration required:
Online, 3 sessions / $125
Registration Begins August 1.
Whether the archive presents itself as digital or physical, we each carry with us a lifetime of language: emails and correspondences, photographs, social media accounts, to-do lists, transcripts, manuals. In this workshop, we’ll discuss different theories of value applied to the personal archive, from the organization of information to the coded distinctions between moral and aesthetic utility. We’ll consider the nature of archives—whose histories are omitted, how are sources of knowledge produced, how are they accessed?
Through the works of Victoria Chang, Rainer Maria Rilke, Kiki Petrosino, Janine Joseph, and other poets, we’ll use our first and second sessions to engage in generative exercises that explore aspects of polyvocality, omission, illegibility, and ekphrasis. Students will be introduced to somatic exercises with which they may choose to engage with a personal archive. These may include preparing a gift for an archival custodian, creating metadata parameters, documenting material deterioration (we’ll discuss these practices during the class). For the third session, students are invited to present a work-in-progress or planned project that utilizes the personal archive, spurred by thinking generated in the first and second class sessions.
Students will also participate in guided exercises to explore how curating a personal archive might shape their poetic practice. This workshop welcomes writers of all experience levels. Before the first workshop, consider one to three documents or objects that you would like to incorporate into your writing (these items do not need to be in your possession).
Class modality: Online synchronous (real-time attendance required)
Class size: 8 to 25 students
Required textbooks: No
Recorded: Yes
In-class & prompted writing: Yes
Workshopping & feedback: Yes
Asa Drake is a Filipina/white poet in Central Florida. She is the author of Maybe the Body (Tin House, 2026) and Beauty Talk (Noemi Press, 2026), winner of the 2024 Noemi Press Book Award. Her chapbook, One Way to Listen (Gold Line Press), is the winner of a 2023 Florida Book Award. A National Poetry Series finalist, she is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest, Kenyon Review Residential Writers Workshop, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Storyknife, Sundress Publications, Tin House and Idyllwild Arts. Her poems can be found on The Slowdown Podcast, The American Poetry Review, and Poetry Daily. A former librarian, she currently works as a teaching artist.
A limited number of need-based scholarships are available to cover the enrollment costs of Poetry Society classes. To receive and fill out a scholarship survey, email parker@poetrysociety.org.
