Special topics in African American literature.

“The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives….it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are, until the poem, nameless and formless-about to be birthed, but already felt.” —Audre Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” (1985) During the last four decades of the 20th century, the Black feminist poets Lucille Clifton, June Jordan, and Audre Lorde produced a massive body of vivid and accessible writing that both confronted injustice and explored the complexities of intersectional identity, often using their own lives as material. From Jordan’s indictments of violence in verse dedicated to her students, to Clifton’s poems about motherhood and reproductive rights, to Audre Lorde’s chronicle of breast cancer treatment as a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” these authors declared that the personal was political. They put African American women’s experiences at the center of work that called for a broadening of the definition of political activism, and used Black selfhood as a window onto world literature, current events, and historical processes. In this creative writing workshop, we will read poetry by these three eminent writers and use it as inspiration for our own creative work. Over the course of the semester, we will explore such themes as Black childhood; race, place and space; teaching and learning; literary ancestors; literary enemies; and the nature and meaning of poetry itself. We will learn about poetic craft by reading a range of poems, essays, and autobiographical prose by Clifton, Jordan, and Lorde; listening to and viewing archival footage of their poetry readings; and writing our own poems in some of the forms and modes in which they worked (including news poems, love poems, letter poems, list poems, and persona poems). The class is designed for students at all levels of creative writing proficiency, from fiercely dedicated poets to people who have never written a poem (but would like to try). It is part of a year-long celebration of the life and legacy of June Jordan, a gifted and prolific writer, a powerful activist, an innovative teacher and a longtime member of the Department of African American Studies here at UC Berkeley. Students in the course are invited (but not obligated) to attend Spring Semester campus readings by contemporary poets whose writing has been shaped by Jordan’s work, including Joshua Bennett, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Tanea Lunsford Lynx, and P4P alums Samiya Bashir and Solmaz Sharif.

Repeat Rules