Cirrus@Austlit

In this class students are encouraged to consider the intersectional environments (natural, urban, cultural, historical etc.) that they interact with and within, and how their sensibilities differ living away from home to contemplate how a sense of place can be conveyed through writing. We will engage with a diverse range of readings – featuring many Australian authors – and discuss technical elements and affective poetics to learn how to ‘read as a writer’. Weeks are devoted to crafting the short story and poetry. Students will complete weekly ‘microfiction’ homework exercises based upon images they take or find, and participate in in-class writing exercises, all of which will contribute to the writing journal submitted with the final work. The class emphasises the importance of embodied interaction with the city through a field trip using ‘The Disappearing’ – a downloadable app featuring over 100 site-specific poems spanning a ‘poetic map’ of Sydney, created by The Red Room Company. Students will think about the possibilities of marrying new technologies with writing as they navigate using poems as landmarks. Students workshop their drafts during the course, learning how to effectively communicate critical feedback and how to be receptive to constructive critique. This takes the form of a discussion in-class and students are required to submit written critical feedback on their classmates’ drafts in an online forum. At the end of the course students will have the opportunity to showcase their work at a reading night to the rest of the NYU Sydney student body and invited faculty.