Book Binding Workshop (experimental confessionalism + the fantasy of authenticity)

A poetry + bookbinding workshop with Emji Saint Spero, author of disgust and almost any shit will do

Confessional language draws us in, creating a sense of intimacy, of vulnerability. We live in a society that celebrates, encourages, and makes a spectacle of confession, from autobiography to memoir to the production and performance of the self in social media. This performance is in itself an artistic practice. How can poetry serve to critique this “fantasy of authencity”?

In this workshop we will use personal ephemera from our own lives (language from texts, diaries, spam mail, medical records, lists, receipts, etc) to collage an autobiography of sorts, a kind of “self-on-self drag” (as poet Trisha Low writes in The Compleat Purge).

We will compile our poems together and learn bookbinding techniques to create a collaborative chapbook. Each participant will walk away with a deconstructed sense of self and the skills to own chapbooks in the future.