Writing Silence

Instructor: Aiman Tahir Khan

 

All poetry is governed, in some measure, by silence: that which precedes a poem—the title and first line, the white space, the full stop, the line break, and finally the silence which comes after the poem ends.

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There is much in these pauses, or so little. The task of the poet is to manipulate the pauses so that silence is no longer the absence of speech and to make something of it: a brief, breathless anticipation inside the body.

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Then there are the longer, interior silences that govern a poet’s life, when we must grapple with what refuses to be said. And, of course, there are all the terrible silences—omissions, suppressions. Silencings. How do we speak of the unspeakable?

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In this workshop, we will consider the ellipsis… the unsaid and the suggested. We will engage with the work of Carl Phillips, Li-Young Lee, Etel Adnan and Agnes Martin. We will write poems that attempt to make birds out of the silences within our own lives.

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