Heather Christle Poetry Craft Talk: What Is the Language Using Us For?

This craft talk will focus on strategies for collaborating with words as living beings. How do we make ourselves available to their arrival? How do we treat them when we meet? What do they desire? What do they hate? We'll look to possible clues from poets, writers, and critics who knew language before us, as well as theories nabbed from neuroscience and predictive coding. We will not actually answer the question posed in the talk's title, which is borrowed from the Scottish poet W. S. Graham, but we will marvel at the sensations (and writings) it can produce.

Heather Christle is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Paper Crown. She has also published two works of nonfiction: In the Rhododendrons: A Memoir with Appearances by Virginia Woolf and The Crying Book. Her work has appeared in London Review of Books, The Nation, The New Yorker, and Poetry. She teaches creative writing at Emory University.

This event is colloquium credit eligible.