FOTODOK x WORM: Writing Workshop with Joyelle Mcsweeney (USA)

Dream Gardens of the The Necropastoral is a workshop by Joyelle McSweeney taking place on the occasion of the exhibition Radiations of War by Yana Kononova, hosted by WORM and initiated by FOTODOK. McSweeney contributed to the first artist’s photobook published by FOTODOK and XYZ Books and launched during the exhibition opening. We are glad to welcome her in Rotterdam for a special meeting with our audience!

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP
What is a nature poem in 2025? What kind of language might we need to use — or invent– to describe that border where the natural meets the unnatural, the technological, the human? How might poetry, as a heightened, intense, and even unnatural use of language, allow us to articulate these emergent zones of exchange and possibility, allowing us to envision and manifest dream gardens of memory, joy and survival?

In the first half of this session, we will discuss these questions and use prompts and generative exercises to build up an intense, various, multiplicitous bank of language known as "hyperdiction". In the second half, we will use our hyperdiction to envision the dream gardens of the future, a complex, complicated, mutant zone of possibility, collaboration and growth.

Participants should bring their writing materials of choice.
We have limited spots available, your ticket includes coffee, tea and soup!

TIME:
10:00-10:30 walk in and coffee
10:30 workshop starts
in between: soup break
14:30 workshop ends

ADDRESS:
S/ash Gallery at WORM, Boomgaardsstraat 71, 3012 BN Rotterdam

BIO
Guggenheim Fellow Joyelle McSweeney is the author of ten books of poetry, drama and prose, a well-known critic, and a vital publisher of international literature in translation. McSweeney’s latest book, Death Styles, appeared from Nightboat Books in Spring 2024; her previous title, Toxicon and Arachne (2020), was called "frightening and brilliant" by Dan Chiasson in the New Yorker and earned her the Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America.

McSweeney’s 2014 essay collection, The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults, is widely regarded as a visionary work of eco-criticism. Her debut poetry volume, The Red Bird, inaugurated the Fence Modern Poets Series in 2001, while her verse play, Dead Youth, or the Leaks, inaugurated the Leslie Scalapino Prize for Innovative Women Performance Artists in 2014. With Carmen Maria Machado, she was the guest editor of Best American Experimental Writing 2020. She lives in South Bend, Indiana and teaches at the University of Notre Dame.

Image credit: image of art piece/experimental essay "Strawberry Necropastoral" by A.M. Marraccini.