Clown Poetics: One-Day Generative Workshop w/ Henry Goldkamp

Sunday July 21st 1-4 pm

Henry says:

🎪 clown poetics coming to town… 🔴
i’m teaching my first ever generative poetry workshop @yeswecannibal on july 21. if you wanna ride from new orleans lmk, ive got room in my clown car. i’ve done nothing but read clown books and noam chomsky and sianne ngai this summer. ive duct taped them all together to make a new sacred text.

this class is designed for the physical thinker who would like to learn erudite theory alongside a whoopie cushion. we will study the gag as cultural artifact, the semiotics of clown make up and costume, as well as investigate the ways in which clown is represented by both famous and lesser known works of “poetry.” we shall see the clown car of our minds can hold an unlimited number of possibilities of what it means to clown around in the power structures that exist (namely, “the page”), how to subvert those norms and be transgressive in our practices in order to champion the oppressed, everyday person. ignorance as a form of meaning-making and knowing. there will be ample time to write; i have dozens of new clown prompts to offer that hopefully will blow open your approach to writing a poem.

[Image Credit: Bruce Nauman. “Clown Torture.” 1987. Four-channel video installation, two projections, four monitors, color, sound. The Art Institute of Chicago. Watson F. Blair Prize, Wilson L. Mead, and Twentieth-Century Purchase funds; through prior gift of Joseph Winterbotham; gift of Lannan Foundation. © 2019 Bruce Nauman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York]