Welcome to the archived home page of E318L: Performance and Poetry, an undergraduate creative writing workshop taught by Susan Somers-Willett at The University of Texas at Austin. This course was taught in a computer-assisted classroom using the resources of UT Austin's Computer Writing and Research Lab.

From the bards to the Beats, performance has been an important part of the shape of poetry and the movements poets form. However, the majority of literary criticism considers poetry as merely a textual entity. Is our experience of a poem ever just textual? How do our understandings of poetry expand when we consider orality and performance as important aspects of a poem? How do we distinguish a poetry "reading" from a "performance"? How are traditional notions of poetry transformed by current movements such as rap, hip-hop, and poetry slams?

In this Substantial Writing Component class, we consider the functions of textuality, orality, and performativity in our own writing and in the work of twentieth-century American poets. To facilitate our discussion of these issues, students read essays and poetry by a wide variety of authors. Students also produce their own poems in response to themes brought up by these readings. Throughout the semester, students perform solo and collaborative pieces, and they produce critical work addressing the class theme.

Class topics include:

• An introduction to the craft of poetry
• Discovering the audience: textual poetry vs. oral/performative poetry
• The roots of 20th c. performance poetry, including the Beat and the Black Arts movements
• Slam poetry
• Poetry and its performance in alternative media such as film, television, popular music, and the Internet

Susan Somers-Willett's Office: Parlin 408
Spring 2002 Office Hours: W 12-2 or by appointment

Parlin 6 CWRL Lab Hours: M-Th 9-9 and F 9-5

All content of this site © 2002 Susan Somers-Willett and the The University of Texas at Austin.
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