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| CAConrad, purveyor of (soma)tic poetry rituals, at Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market. |
As we reach our penultimate project for the semester, after our long session of poetry performances, I think it's worthwhile to remember the place of the body — our eyes observing, our hands writing, our voices speaking — within the poetic process.
Our work this time around will be influenced by the poetry of CAConrad, who's pioneered the field of somatic poetics over the last several years. Below you'll find a few excerpts from his 2012 book A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics, which begins with "The Right to Manifest Manifesto," where Conrad gives some background on the practice:
Our work this time around will be influenced by the poetry of CAConrad, who's pioneered the field of somatic poetics over the last several years. Below you'll find a few excerpts from his 2012 book A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics, which begins with "The Right to Manifest Manifesto," where Conrad gives some background on the practice:
We'll read several somatic rituals and the poems that they yielded; recordings of select poems can be found below: [PDF]I cannot stress enough how much this mechanistic world, as it becomes more and more efficient, resulting in ever increasing brutality, has required me to FIND MY BODY to FIND MY PLANET in order to find my poetry.
(Soma)tic poetry is a praxis I've developed to more fully engage the everyday through writing. Soma is an Indo-Persian word which means "the divine." Somatic is Greek. Its meaning translates as "the tissue", or "nervous system." The goal is to coalesce soma and somatic, while triangulating patterns of experience with the world around us. Experiences that are unorthodox steps in the writing process can shift the poet's perception of the quotidian, if only for a series of moments. This offers an opportunity to see the details clearer. Through music, dirt, food, scent, taste, in storms, in bed, on the subway and at the grocery store, (Soma)tic exercises and the poems that result are just waiting to be utilized or invented, everywhere, and anytime.
- distorted torque of FLORA'S red: [MP3]
- a little orange bag believe it or not CAN hold all that remains: [MP3]
- we're on the brink of UTTER befuddlement yellow hankie style: [MP3]
- say it with grEEn paint for the comfort and healing of their wounds: [MP3]
- rehab saved his life but drugs saved mine at the blue HOUR: [MP3]
- smells of summer crotch smells of new car's purple MAjestY: [MP3]
- from the womb not the anus WHITE asbestos snowfall on 911: [MP3]
- Guessing My Death: [MP3]
You might choose to recreate one of Conrad's projects, but I'd be even more interested in you devising your own set of rituals, constraints, and/or sensations to guide your poetic process. Our "Orange Immersion" in-class writing session today can and should offer you firsthand experience of the ways in which these prompts work. Your responses to this prompt should be in written form, but can include audio components. You should also include some sort of explanation of the processes that resulted in your poem — this doesn't need to be long or complicated, but will be useful in helping us understand what guided your work — and should be sent to the group no later than our class meeting on Monday, November 16th.
Here's our randomly-determined schedule for workshop session 9:
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