Description
Welcome to Button University!
Sign up today for Hailey Tran’s 2027 Multi-Week Workshop!
Author of AN EVERYDAY OCCURRENCE
The Pen as a Paintbrush: Visuals and Poetics
Poetic form is how we discuss the ways in which our words adhere to patterns and structure. Form can exist beyond stanzas, meter, line lengths, and syllable counts. In this course, we will see visual poems as distinct pieces of art that cannot be fully understood by simply reading or hearing them. Visual poetry allows our language to take shape in infinite ways, asserting that this poetic form carries with it its own inherent call to bend and break stylistic conventions. When our page becomes a canvas, our words can communicate to our audience more than once: once as a unit of language and once as an object that is manipulated, placed, and configured. In this workshop, we will construct poems that exist in conversation with the shapes and images they create. Each week we will explore various approaches to incorporating visual forms including, but not limited to: calligrams, concrete poetry, collage poetry, erasure poetry, and pattern poetry. No prior experience is necessary to participate. Come experiment with the composition of your words and transform your pen into a paintbrush!
Class Dates and Times:
Sundays in February
2:00pm CT | February 07 – February 28, 2027
Class Duration: 2 hours via Zoom
PAST WORKSHOPS WITH HAILEY TRAN:
Poets as Historians and Record Keepers
Artists have often been bestowed with the responsibility of recording truth, stories, and history through their work. Poets, in particular, use the pen as testimony: a vehicle to let the world know they have been witnesses to events both big and small, earth-shattering and ordinary alike. Historical events, as they touch our memory through media, textbooks, and legal documents, are often filtered through the perspectives of those in power. Who has the right to write history, and what role do poets play in challenging dominant sociopolitical narratives shaped by extremity and division?
In this workshop, poets will create their own poetic artifacts as nuanced responses to the world unfolding around them. Each week, we will turn to poets of witness and writers responding to political catastrophe, exploring how their work illuminates perspectives that might otherwise remain absent from historical memory. Participants do not need to arrive with any pre-made material or poems; however, it is important to consider which historical or current events you might like to reimagine, rewrite, or challenge.
Have questions? Visit the Button Workshop FAQ page or contact support@buttonpoetry.com
About Hailey M. Tran
Hailey M. Tran is a DC-based and Lowell-raised dreamer. They are a queer Asian American Latina spoken word and performance poet, who believes in the transformative power of storytelling and art. Hailey has their BA in Political Science… MORE