A Reciprocal Affair, Student Work

Word and Image Lab

A survey of the Bennington curriculum by Briee Della Rocca

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The Making of The Word and Image Lab

Thorsten Dennerline and Mark Wunderlich

In this hybrid Literature / Visual Arts course, students will experience the full range of the poet’s creative process, from the conception of the poem, to writing it, shaping and editing it, designing its printed material aspects, setting it in type, printing on the letterpresses, and producing the work in a readable, distributable form. The process will be a dialogue between written and visual representation of ideas in which students work in the interstices between language and image. Students will work as writers participating in a peer critique workshop, and as printers and visual artists designing, setting, illustrating, and printing their text. We will also study the history of artist’s books and poet-printers such as William Blake and Virginia Woolf, and look at work by contemporary printers, artists, and visual poets. All students will be expected to write and print, participate in workshop discussions, and attend to the work of the letterpress lab.

Prerequisites: Three page writing sample of poetry or creative prose, one course in printmaking, or permission of instructors Credits: 4 • Time: W 10:10am–12:00pm; W 2:10pm–4:00pm • Maximum Enrollment: 14