Dan Machlin will be teaching a ten-week long Saturday afternoon workshop, beginning February 13, 2010. The class will meet in the Neighborhood Preservation Center from 12-2 pm.

When poets or artists create work as part of some greater artistic or social project, this context dramatically impacts the way that we read or perceive their work. In this workshop, we’ll look beyond individual poems and examine writing that exhibits a strong project-based sensibility. We’ll read and try experiments based on diverse writing projects such as Ted Berrigan’s The Sonnets, Brenda Coultas’ The Bowery Project, Jill Magi’s Threads and Dodie Bellamy’s Vampire-inspired epistolary novel: The Letters of Mina Harker. We’ll also look at examples of projects from other genres —Chris Marker’s film La Jetée, the work of artists Sophie Calle and Robert Smithson, and playful endeavors from the world of music like Sufjan Stevens’ Fifty States Project. By inhabiting other artist’s projects, we will strengthen our own. We will compose or refine existing project statements for our own work, begin to write poems to populate those projects, and map out new directions and possibilities for our projects both on the page and beyond Guests for this workshop will include Brenda Coultas, Jill Magi plus other surprise guests.

Dan Machlin is a native NYC poet, performer and publisher. His books include Dear Body (Ugly Duckling Presse), 6×7 (Ugly Duckling) and This Side Facing You (Heart Hammer). Dan is the founder and senior editor of Futurepoem books.