There is a separate application process for this course. If you have not been accepted into the Iowa Young Writers' Studio Summer Residential Program you are not eligible to enroll.

Poetry with Gilad Jaffe. The Time Being.

Time unfolds and recoils, bends, flies, and waits for no one. To some, time is money. To others, it’s a storm. It’s a language, an illusion, or a clock on the wall. A rollercoaster, a houseplant, an instrument, or a god. But no matter how we choose to define it, time lives within and without us—and what better tool to explore our multi-dimensional friend than a poem?

In this course we’ll figure out how writing into and out of time—rather than about it—can help fortify and open up our practices as poets. Together through daily writing experiments, readings, games, and field trips about town, we’ll focus on accessing the How of When: the poetics of time, the unapparent time signatures of everyday items, and the vastly intricate inner networks of the world all around us.

Being “in time” is effectively what poet CD Wright refers to as “doing poetry.” The texts we will spend our time with (especially your own) will show us how playing with form, sound, imagery, syntax, and the variety of other textures we have at our disposal can bring us so much closer to “the time-being.” Poetry can’t blossom in a vacuum, so we will also examine a range of other art forms that seek to broaden our understanding of what a poem can be, as well.

By the close of your time here in Iowa City, you may not merge completely with the watch on your wrist. But with the help of our new, uncontrollable community of poets, I bet you’ll find it endlessly more inspiring. As Paul Celan reminds us in his poem, Corona,

“It is time that the stone took the trouble to bloom, that unrest’s heart started to beat. It’s time for it to be time.

It is time.”

Gilad Jaffe Gilad Jaffe is an Iowa Arts Fellow and MFA candidate in poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Originally from New York City, he holds a BA in Written Arts from Bard College where he was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize, and has served on staff with the John Cage Trust, Conjunctions, and AmeriCorps at the Providence Children's Museum. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bennington Review, Colorado Review, Cream City Review, Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Iowa Review, [PANK], Salt Hill, and TriQuarterly, among others. Gilad has received generous support from the Abrons Arts Center, PEN America, and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts.

REGISTRATION & FEES

The fee for this course, which includes the fee for the 2-week session of the Summer Residential Program, is $2,500. Payment in full is required to enroll in the course.

Note: Your credit card payment will be processed by an external provider and will appear on your credit card statement as “UI Writing—Magid Center."

Cancellation Policy: If you cancel or withdraw before June 1, 2023 a $100 cancellation fee will be deducted from your refund. Thereafter no refunds are available. 

QUESTIONS?

Contact the Iowa Young Writers' Studio: iyws@uiowa.edu.