The way I start a piece is that the materials turn me on. —Betye Saar

The artist Betye Saar is noted for constructing her pieces with found materials, “combining the remnant of memories, fragments of relics and ordinary objects” to “assembl[e] the pieces and put . . . them together.” We will rummage around in a series of writing prompts and research exercises in the spirit of Saar scouring flea markets, yard sales, and swap meets for evocative knickknacks and geegaws. In the ekphrastic tradition, we’ll assemble and fabricate poems inspired by Saar’s art, using these scavangings from found texts and our own writing to open up poems and perspectives. Along the way, we’ll explore related work by a variety of contemporary poets, including excerpts from Bluest Nude by Ama Codjoe, a collection of ekphrastic and archival poems spurred by the work of Betye Saar and others. Our aim will be an adventure in what Saar calls “organized chaos,” marshalling energies of juxtaposition, discovery, transformation, and play.

What does it mean that a culture has a concept of garbage, waste, refuse? Does it need to be this way? What better teacher might we imagine for poetry than a downtrodden, reviled, forgettable entity like trash? How culpable are regimes of disposability in our current endlessly escalating ecological spasm? Drawing on the plastic insights and scrappy poetics of Max Liboiron, Tommy Pico, and Jordan Abel, this workshop will use a group analytical exercise to break down and reorganize lines of a specific text into a communal poem–not erasure but subversive upcycling. Participants should bring in a piece of garbage that has a story behind it, leading to a conversation about the ethics and aesthetics of waste, and ultimately a writing exercise emerging from the formal techniques we’ve examined and explored together. Together, we will seek to find some salve in salvage.