Build new poems from inherited language, recurring music, and the charged materials of cultural memory.
The cento and the bop offer poets two radically different ways to make language communal, musical, and newly strange. Through close reading, discussion, generative exercises, and brief sharing, participants will explore the cento’s collage of borrowed lines and the bop’s movement through argument, refrain, and release. We will consider quotation, attribution, sonic pattern, cultural memory, ekphrasis, and the productive tension between influence and originality. By the end of the workshop, each participant will have drafted either a complete cento or the central architecture of a bop, along with strategies for revising it. No preparation is required, though participants may bring a favorite poem, song lyric, artwork, or small collection of language they would like to work from.
Live video conference: This workshop will be held via our online video conferencing platform, Zoom. You can view brief tutorials on using the platform here. On the start date or the day before, participants will receive an email with login info (please check your spam if you don’t see it).
In this workshop you’ll learn:
- How to construct and properly attribute a cento
- How to organize the bop’s three-part movement and recurring refrain
- How repetition can accumulate pressure, variation, and emotional meaning
- How to transform source material through juxtaposition and arrangement
- How to use music, artwork, memory, and archival language as generative material
Materials
- All reading materials will be provided.
If you need an accommodation for this workshop, please contact us at access@writer.org. We will attempt to fulfill all requests, but advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility services.
