Documentary poetics is a branch of poetry that draws from interviews, legal documents, videos, and photographs to reframe our shared and personal histories. It blends research, cultural commentary, personal narrative, and mixed media to create projects rich with intention and purpose.

Tracing Ghosts is a four-part remote workshop exploring documentary poetics as both genre and practice. Over the course of our time together, students will be introduced to a range of techniques used by contemporary documentary poets, including ekphrastic response, somatic writing, the lyric essay, collage, and erasure. We’ll explore poetry projects incorporating archival photographs, writing over and around government documents, and interacting with real and imagined historical figures.

Drawing inspiration from writers like Etel Adnan, Claudia Rankine, CAConrad, and Mahogany L. Browne, we’ll examine how modern poets connect us to hidden communities—and how poetry can write life into the silences of history.

By the end of this class, you will have explored your own archive and interpreted the works within it in various creative forms. We recommend early registration, as some materials will be distributed one week before your first class.

At a time when truth is contested and memory is fragile, documentary poetry offers us a way to speak clearly and honor what’s been overlooked. It’s a chance to tell the stories that matter most—starting with our own.

Tracing Ghosts: Documentary Poetry & Practice