French poet Paul Géraldy once wrote that “memory is a poet, not a historian.” Poetry, in other words, subverts our engagement with documentation, organization, and “re-collection”—all components of archival work. This workshop invites you to engage with poetry, in all its fugitive forms, as a way to “re-member” and “re-collect” the archives of contested history: family memories, refugee histories, war narratives, and more. We will draw from the “hodgepodge” methods of poets hailing from a variety of oral and cultural traditions, and generate material of our own. We’ll practice our own mix of language, image, and collage; and we’ll use our hands, ears, and eyes to engage with paper, language, and ultimately memory. Is the poem an archive? Or is the archive a poem? (Images above are borrowed from Diana Khoi Nguyen's Ghost Of, which will be one of the workshop's materials.)
This event is Pay What You Can! Your generous contributions will help us continue our work as volunteers.
*Tea, snacks, and writing materials will be provided! Feel free to bring your own writing utensils and materials, as well.
Facilitators
This workshop is facilitated by Kaitlan Bui from An Việt Archives:
- Kaitlan Bui is a Vietnamese American writer and scholar from Orange County, California, currently based in London. Her critical-creative work explores transnational Vietnamese memoryways: how stories of Vietnam (including but not limited to the Vietnam-American War) are inherited, manipulated, and un/documented, and how they can be obedient as well as recalcitrant. Her work has been published with the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists’ Network, HAD, and Public Books, and exhibited at local theater and museum exhibitions. Kaitlan previously taught at Cao Đẳng Sư Phạm Bà Rịa Vũng Tàu as a Fulbright Scholar. She is now studying Migration, Diaspora Studies, and Vietnamese at SOAS, University of London as a Marshall Scholar; and on staff with An Việt Archives.