All Hooks: Repetition and Revision FTW

So, I was listening to Beyoncé’s “Formation,” trying to figure out why it caught my ear the way it did; then I realized, the whole song is a series of hooks, choruses, layered throughout the mix. Repetition is groove, loop, hook, a serious tool in Black aesthetic trickbags. In this generative workshop, through a selection of readings and recordings and various writing prompts we will explore and engage elements of repetition: chime, pun, and recursive constraints to engage poems that move even when they seem to stand still, work refrain till it don’t stop, and catch you reading twice when you think you’re only reading once. Participants should leave the workshop with new work and new ways of thinking about work.

Douglas Kearney has published seven collections, including the National Book Award-longlisted Sho (Wave Books, 2021), Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry, and California Book Award silver medalist (Poetry). M. NourbeSe Philip calls Kearney’s collection of libretti, Someone Took They Tongues (Subito, 2016), “a seismic, polyphonic mash-up.” Kearney’s Mess and Mess and (Noemi Press, 2015), was a Small Press Distribution Handpicked Selection that Publisher’s Weekly called “an extraordinary book.” WIRE magazine calls Fodder (Fonograf Editions, 2021), a live album featuring Kearney and frequent collaborator, Val-Inc., “Brilliant.” Kearney is the 2021 recipient of OPERA America’s Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, created and generously funded by librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell. His operas include Sucktion, Mordake, Crescent City, Sweet Land (the Music Critics of North America’s Best Opera of 2021), and Comet / Poppea commissioned by AMOC (American Modern Opera Company). He has received a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, residencies/fellowships from Cave Canem, The Rauschenberg Foundation, and others. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Altadena, CA, Kearney teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities and lives in St. Paul with his family.