Experimental Life Writing: How we live is how we write

THE LIMIT OF MY LIFE IS THE LIMIT OF MY LANGUAGE: DO WORDS DESCRIBE A LIFE OR CREATE ONE?

About the course:
What is life? What is writing? Who, these days, lives anything even close to a straight life? With this idea in mind, Experimental Life Writing provides the tools and the environment for us to explore and our lives through a variety of innovative forms—and the experimental forms with which we can reshape and reimagine our lives. We’ll read a wide range of writers: Bernadette Mayer, Konrad Bayer, Eleni Sikelianos, Kobayashi Issa, Kevin Killian, Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, Lyn Hejinian, and Ntozake Shange, amongst others, and see how their chosen experimental forms allow them to shape their lives through their writing. In-class lectures, readings, workshop exercises, discussions and close readings all make up important parts of the module. What is life? Start writing and find out.

What to expect:
The course will mix a multimedia-based lecture with a workshop. You will write and get feedback at each lesson; at the end of the course, you will have created a portfolio of experimental poems. This course will look at different ways of describing and/or imagining a life through looking at different experimental poems and forms. Some of the forms and ideas include:

• List poems
• Constraint
• Found text
• Text & image
• Hybrid forms

This course will have a maximum of 10 students.

Please note you have to be over 18 to join our courses.

COURSE LENGTH: long course: 11 weeks
TYPE: online, syncronous (live)
LEVEL: all writing levels are welcome
SCREEN TIME: 2 hours/week
WRITING TIME: 2 hours/week
START DATE: 2 June 2026
END DATE: 11 August 2026
TIME: 7PM UK time (7–9:15)

COURSE SCHEDULE AND OUTLINE:
Tuesday 2 June: What is Life? What has writing got to do with it? Key writer: Joe Brainard
Tuesday 9 June: Form as an organising tool: Key writers: Lyn Hejinian & Ron Silliman
Tuesday 16 June: No ideas but in Things: Key writer: Kevin Killian
Tuesday 23 June: Life as landscape: Key writers: Eleni Sikelianos & Christopher Dewdney
Tuesday 30 June: Life as torture, Life Writing as Complaint: Konrad Bayer
Tuesday 7 July: Word Order = World Order, Part 1: Key writer: Bernadette Mayer
Tuesday 14 July: Word Order = World Order, Part 2: Key writer: bill bissett
Tuesday 21 July: Haiku Life: Key writer: Kobayashi Issa Tuesday 28 July: Is nothing sacred? Is everything sacred? The (im)possibility of the beyond. Key writer: Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī Tuesday 4 August: The Journal as a creative tool.
Tuesday 11 August: End of Life Class! Summing up & sharing.