Event Type
We are proposing a generative workshop grounded in perfume. This workshop will focus on collaborative scent-writing. We will split the session into two parts: a practical introduction to writing scent encompassing the different approaches to describing smell and scent memory via language, and guided generative writing which will allow participants to experiment and collaborate.
In the first part we will discuss the physical experience of the olfactive membrane and connect this experience to the vocabulary of top, heart and basenotes, and deconstruct the chronological narrative of a scent. Then, we will conduct a generative workshop, centered around a single fragrance, where participants work on both individual poetry writing and, to finish, create a collaborative poem with the larger group. We would hope to partner with a local perfumery, such as Bourbon French Perfumes, to get samples to share with the group, either on paper or some other way.
In our own poetic and pedagogical practices, we each use perfume as a tool for poetic composition, and as a lens through which to see into—to smell into—the systems and concerns of the wider world. We believe that scent in general and perfume in particular is largely misunderstood and underappreciated as a poetic subject and method. This workshop would seek to introduce poets to new writing methods and techniques, and to explore putting language to the artistry of perfumery through something like—to borrow a term from Heidi Czierwiec—ekphragrance.