Personal Machines: Invented Forms with Danez Smith

​What if we go beyond sonnets or sestinas and instead choose an experiment of our own design? In this workshop, explore wonders found in recently invented forms like the bop, the burning haibun, and the Molotov sonnet before turning our attention to forms we will pattern ourselves. This workshop is for those looking to push the limits on their work as well as those looking to take the brakes off completely. In times of great violence and hope, can we break from the received forms of the times and become fugitives into new shapes and possibilities? In this workshop, we will trouble those answers together.

​​​​​FAQ

• ​​​​​I'm unable to join live. Will the event be recorded?
  Yes! The event will be recorded and shared with ticket-holders via email the following day. You will have one month to watch the workshop before the recording expires.

• ​​​​​How can I participate during the event?
  You will be joining a Zoom Meeting for this event. We encourage you to have your camera on, but remain muted until prompted. We also recommend that you to come prepared with writing materials!

• ​​​​​I live outside the U.S. Can I still join?
  Yes! We have many international members in Sustenance. We'd love to see you there no matter where you're tuning in from.

​​​BIO:

​Danez Smith is the author of four poetry collections: [insert] boy, Don’t Call Us Dead, Homie, and, most recently, Bluff. They are also the curator of Blues In Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes. For their work, Danez was won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and have been a finalist for the NAACP Image Award in Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the National Book Award, as well as an array of grants, fellowships, and residencies including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Princeton Arts Fellowship. Danez lives in the Twin Cities with their people and teaches at the Randolph College MFA program and the Black Youth Healing Arts Center in St. Paul, MN.