PERSONAL & POLITICAL: Unpacking Rick Barot’s The Galleons
The Galleons elegizes the speaker’s grandmother and reflects upon Spanish colonialism’s lasting impacts. All the while, Barot situates “ordinary” stories of lived experience within historical, cultural, and political contexts, meditating on “what is included, what is made important.” Barot’s poems provide a rich model for writers grappling with material that is both personal and political. Join us to unpack the craft moves that give his poems power, including juxtaposition, metaphor, cinematic movement, associative leaps, turns, and more. Book required.
All students in this class will receive a discount at Elliott Bay Book Company to purchase the course reading list.
Dilruba Ahmed
Dilruba Ahmed is the author of Bring Now the Angels (Pitt Poetry Series, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020). Her debut book of poetry, Dhaka Dust (Graywolf Press), won the Bakeless Prize. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry. Her poems have also been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2019 (Scribner), Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books), Literature: The Human Experience (Bedford/St. Martin’s), Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry (University of Arkansas), and elsewhere. Ahmed is the recipient of The Florida Review’s Editors’ Award, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Prize, and the Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellowship in Poetry awarded by the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. She holds degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers.
Website: www.dilrubaahmed.com
Instagram: dilruba_ahmed20, https://www.instagram.com/dilruba_ahmed20/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dilruba.ahmed Web: https://www.dilrubaahmed.com/writing-lab
