Women Walking in Poems: A Craft Talk with Jennifer Chang
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Poetry at Bennington—Spring 2023
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | We will look at a few poems by women poets about walking and consider how the external constraints of women walking, especially in the "wilderness" and in natural and cultivated environments, complicate decisions about form and language. If walking poems have historically highlighted the intellectual and physical freedom of the men writing these poems, then what does a walking poem by a woman suggest about the gender of freedom? This is a craft talk that enthusiastically invites discussion from attendants.
Jennifer Chang is the author of Some Say the Lark (Alice James, 2017), winner of the Poetry Society of America’s 2018 William Carlos Williams Award; and The History of Anonymity (University of Georgia Press, 2008). She serves as the poetry editor of New England Review and since 2003 has been on the staff of Kundiman, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature. A professor in the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin, she is also on the faculty of Bennington College’s low-residency MFA program.