Erasure Poetry Workshop - 30th National Poetry Month Erasure Symposium
The Erasure Poetry Workshop is a participatory session within the 30th National Poetry Month Erasure Symposium, hosted by University of Michigan Library in the Hatcher Gallery. The symposium brings together scholars, practitioners, artists, and community members to explore how erasure operates across institutional, archival, cultural, and political contexts — and how it is challenged in practice.
This erasure poetry workshop emphasizes shared inquiry, hands-on exploration, and collective reflection. Led by poet & educator Caro New, the session will begin with a brief introduction to erasure poetry — including questions of authorship, found text, and the ethical implications of erasure — followed by guided creative exercises.
This session is designed to be accessible to participants from a wide range of disciplines and roles. Participants will work directly with existing texts to create their own erasure poems, experimenting with language, absence, and meaning through material and embodied practice.
Participants can expect:
Brief framing remarks and provocations from the facilitator
Guided small-group discussion
Opportunities to reflect on erasure as it shows up in your own work, research, or community
A structured but flexible space for dialogue rather than debate
No advance preparation is required.
Facilitator: CAROLINE HARPER NEW
Raised in the South of Georgia, poet Caroline Harper New's work is rooted in the precarious landscape of the Gulf Coast, where she reckons with love’s potential for violence in human and animal worlds.
As a scholar and an artist, her practice spans anthropology, poetry, sculpture, painting, film, translation, and the tendons in between. Her recent work deals with human & non-human entanglements, ruptures in temporality, and the relationship between death and extinction.
New is the author of A History of Half-Birds (Milkweed Editions, 2024) winner of the Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry. Selected by poet Maggie Smith, this debut collection of poems explores the aftermath of history’s most powerful forces: devotion, disaster, and us. She has a chapbook, If I Call This Cave a Garden (2025 winner of the vinyl45 chapbook prize) forthcoming with YesYes Books in 2026.
New has been awarded multiple Hopwood Prizes for her poetry, drama, and nonfiction works. She earned her M.F.A. in Poetry at the University of Michigan, where she is currently a Ph.D. student in Anthropology.
To support thoughtful and respectful engagement, participants will be asked to:
Listen with openness and curiosity
Speak from personal or professional experience
Respect confidentiality when sensitive experiences are shared
Allow for disagreement without dismissal
This workshop prioritizes care, complexity, and mutual respect. If you have accessibility needs or questions about participating in this session, please contact j. Oceano Idyllwild (oceano@umich.edu). We are committed to making this workshop as accessible as possible.