somafrazier

Last year, for AWP, a group of Cogswell College undergrads and I flew to Tampa to present on the intersections of technology and the arts–and how a small, non-writing-focused college could use simple tools and complex literature to launch an international publication.

Next, we’re Portland-bound! (Please find the event description for our AWP 2019 event below.) And while we’re there, I miiiiiiight just hop on over to a top-secret event, details TBA, to celebrate the release of my new prose chapbook.

The publisher has yet to make the announcement, so it’s all very hush-hush, but I couldn’t help leaking just a little, like an incontinent gymnast or a stained coffee mug sprouting a few cracks.

AWP, here comes COG!

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o   Event Description

The Sundance Channel was one of the first premium networks to air animated poetry. Now, this titillating marriage of forms is gaining visibility. But bringing poetry from the page to the screen requires strategy, skill and technology. Undergraduate students and faculty from a top polytechnical college offer collaborative strategies – and explain how they’ve  partnered with 2015-2017 U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera and others to adapt poetic work.

o   Statement of Merit

“It took a long time for us to put those two together. But then again, it took a long time for us to put the wheel and the suitcase together,” Billy Collins said of animation and poetry. This panel of emerging and established writers, animators and audio engineers explains not just the process of high-caliber adaptation, but the nuanced considerations involved in bringing poems to life onscreen as 2D and 3D shorts.

o   Panelists 

Soma Mei Sheng Frazier (moderator, Cogswell ENG/HUM/SSC Chair), July Westhale (poet, Cogswell faculty), David Perry (animator, Cogswell faculty), Julius Dobos (digital audio professional, Cogswell faculty), Joseph Fortuno (COG superstar, Cogswell student)

(Stay tuned: the 2019 event schedule is forthcoming from AWP.)