Event Type
Poetry has a long and complex history in colleges and universities, but higher education is in a weird spot. Cultural pressure, debt, decades of adjunctification, schools closing: this panel will explore how poetry might help us think about education, institutions, and what’s still possible. Panelists will share recent poems that touch on issues of labor and learning–as educators, administrators, students, and workers–and then discuss topics such as: fantasies of higher ed and their fallout; obstacles to solidarity and to writing in the academy; the poetics of precarity; and creative writing after the “boom” of writing programs. We’ll ask where we see ourselves in five years. We’ll ask how poetry can both be put to work and use all its sick days.