Intended for all audiences, visiting poet and researcher Laura Jaramillo will lead Visual Media for Poets, on how to use visual media to write poetry, even for people who have never written it.

While many assume poetry is incomprehensible or not for them, almost everyone has a favorite television show or movie that makes them feel things. This workshop takes those feelings as the material of the poem.

Participants will look at and discuss samples of written poetry that are in dialogue with the moving image such as Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee and Tisa Bryant’s Unexplained Presence. We will pay special attention to how these writers use movement between image and text to draw out questions of biography and identity.

Squeaky Wheel will provide journals and writing tools; bring your laptops, but laptops can also be requested from Squeaky Wheel. Just bring yourselves!

Bio of the instructor

Laura Jaramillo is a critic and poet working at the intersection of film and media theory, lyrical poetry, and essay. She received her PhD in critical theory from Duke University where she wrote her dissertation on avant-garde Latin American and Spanish cinema. She is the author of two books of poetry, Material Girl (subpress, 2012) and Making Water (Futurepoem, 2022). Her writings on film and contemporary media have appeared in JumpCut, Feminist Media Histories, and IndyWeek. She is currently at work on a book of essays about the death and rebirth of Colombian cinema during the neoliberal era.

Squeaky Wheel’s Workspace Residency is generously supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, County of Erie and County Executive Mark Poloncarz, the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the office of Governor and the New York State Legislature, and individual members, businesses, and supporters. Learn more about the program here.

Image: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Other Things Seen, Other Things Heard (Ailleurs), 1978, documentation of performance (rehearsal) at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1978. A woman is seen with her back turned against us, holding two rope like objects going down to the floor. In front of her is a wall with a projection on it that says “Redemption.”