Lost & Found: A Found-Poetry Workshop

Sometimes language amazes us: words that we see on the street, hear in a song, read from an online review. And when we borrow this language and repurpose it for our own writing, this is often termed as found poetry. The result of working with found language can be liberating—it frees us from our usual ways of how we use language. The “lost” part of the "Lost & Found" title refers to this process.

In this 2-hour workshop, we will begin by exploring our surroundings and collecting “found” language wherever we can find it: overheard conversations, advertisements, signs, text messages, etc. When we return, we will look at some models for how to construct our poems, and we will create new works using the found material. Finally, we will have the opportunity to share our workshop poems with the group. Arabic and English writers are welcome to attend but instruction will be given only in English.

Join us first at 5pm for the poetry workshop with guest poet, Robert Fitterman, followed by a poetry reading at 8pm with Robert and Taghrid Abdelal at Barzakh.

Robert Fitterman is the author of 14 books of poetry including: No Wait, Yep. Definitely Still Hate Myself (Ugly Duckling Presse), Rob the Plagiarist (Roof Books), and Metropolis—a long poem published in four volumes. He often builds poems through recontextualizing found texts that articulate a subjective relationship to social themes with broad critiques of cultural institutions such as social media, online reviews, museums, etc. He lives in New York City and teaches writing at New York University www.robertfitterman.com

To attend the workshop, please register through this link: https://forms.gle/kxWEMqJXg9FZieQL9