Workshop: MEANDER & UNRAVEL: THE POEM, UNDONE, with Lara Mimosa Montes

Sun. Mar. 22 | 1-4 PM CDT | In person at Woodland Pattern

Sliding Scale fee of $20–$150 (Please give what you can; all donations will go directly to the instructor)

Lately I’ve been thinking about poems that have a way of meandering and perhaps do something like, in the spirit of that Björk song, . In this unravelling, which might involve elements of free association or improvisation, I’ve been wondering about the poetic and creative techniques that fuel such a process. The kinds of poems I have in mind are those whose sequences ravel out of reach, suggesting it is possible to break, bend, or yield while still refusing notions of closure. How does such a free object hang together in the presence of so much chaos? Such durational works submit to some other kind of force and compositional logic to the degree that their language, syntax, or sense of the line and even the page appear undone. But to recall Lyn Hejinian, “Undone is not not done.” How does one write as if it were not possible to exhaust one’s subject or the possibilities of poetic utterance? How does one begin a poem that refuses to end?

Lara Mimosa Montes is most recently the author of The Time of the Novel (Wendy's Subway, 2025), in addition to two previous books of poetry, THRESHOLES (Coffee House Press) and The Somnambulist (Horse Less Press, 2016). She lives in Minneapolis.

***Lara Mimosa Montes will also be giving a reading on , with Roberto Harrison.***

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