A Throw of the Dice: Generative Writing with Chance

Much of the literary landscape in recent years has been dominated by the Internet: ebooks, digital media, Instagram poems, BookTok. Now, with the rise of AI, it can feel especially necessary and rejuvenating to break out of algorithms and prioritize poems that live exclusively outside the digital world. This workshop offers ways to center interactivity and chance in one's writing practice. How might we invite chance—fortune—into our writing practice? Can we utilize accident and recognize serendipity, harnessing the surprising recombinations that lie beyond logic and association? We invite you to embrace fortuity as an opportunity to collaborate with the universe through play with everyday materials. This workshop will begin with a brief introduction to modernism's automatic writing and (deliberate!) incorporation of randomness into poetry. We will then share various examples/tools you can use in your own work, including paper die, "cootie catcher" origami, and "beautiful corpse" collaboration. We will have tarot decks, playing cards, paper and books as raw materials for you to use, but please feel free to bring any additional items you'd like to work with.