CRW 5331 - FALL 2026 - WEISE

This course is primarily a workshop, so all reading for the course will support the primary goal: to write poems. We are writing in a time when administrations scrub websites of words. One day there was an Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at FSU. The next day there was no such office. At the national level, PEN America reported, in an article titled "Federal Government's Growing Banned Words List Is Chilling Act of Censorship," that banned words include accessible, activism, affirming care, anti-racism, bias, bisexual, Black, carbon footprint, climate, community, COVID-19, critical race theory, disabilities, discussion of federal policies, diversity, elderly, equality, ethnicity, exclusion, feminism, gay, gender nonconformity, Gulf of Mexico, H5N1/bird flu, hate speech and very many more. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes: "Poets made all the words and therefore language is the archives of history." Given poets made all the words and we are poets, how do we feel about banned words? What is a "chilling effect" on free speech and are we experiencing it? Which poets, throughout time, have written despite censorship? And what can we learn from them? I will also want to learn from you, as a community of writers, and what troubles you about censorship. There may be a "final project" where you "adopt" a poet whose work has been censored, and also central, to your development as a poet. Introduce us to the poet's work and why it matters to you.