Documentary Poetics Workshop with Diana Khoi Nguyen – Writing as Witnessing & Transformation
With Diana Khoi Nguyen | Begins July 24, 2025
👉 Register Now at WeAreUrbanHaiku.com
Step Into a Literary Practice of Witnessing, Listening, and Transformation
Join award-winning poet and multimedia artist Diana Khoi Nguyen for a five-week immersive workshop in Documentary Poetics—a powerful, multidimensional approach to poetry that intersects deeply with memory, identity, historical accountability, and contemporary truth-telling. Starting July 24, 2025, this generative and contemplative space invites you to explore what it means to document, curate, and resist through the act of writing.
This isn’t just a writing class. It’s a collective reckoning through poetic experimentation—where archives meet embodiment, and history is filtered through your living, breathing, feeling voice.
🖋️ What Is Documentary Poetics?
As defined by poet Mark Nowak, documentary poetics has no single founder, no rigid formula, no fixed form. It thrives in archives, on the internet, in lived conversation, in protest, and in prayer. It moves between the autoethnographic first-person and the objective third-person witness—not to merely inform, but to expose, interrogate, feel, and transform.
We’ll examine documentary poetics through:
Historical texts and erasures
Polyvocal narratives and collage
Found texts, journalism, and family records
Audio-visual artifacts, and emotional landscapes
This course helps you respond to violence, silence, legacy, and memory—while grounding you in ethics, care, and a listening practice that refuses to repeat harm.
📚 Course Overview and Reading Lineup
We begin by honoring foundational texts like Muriel Rukeyser’s “The Book of the Dead”, then journey toward the voices of contemporary trailblazers such as:
Tyehimba Jess
CD Wright
Claudia Rankine
Layli Long Soldier
Anne Carson
Divya Victor
Don Mee Choi
M. NourbeSe Philip
Asiya Wadud
Jake Skeets
Anthony Cody
Fady Joudah
Paisley Rekdal
Philip Metres
Phillip B. Williams
Each writer illuminates a different way of translating lived and collective experience into poetic form—breaking binaries between fact and feeling, truth and technique.
When and How
Five Thursdays on Zoom
🗓 Dates: July 24, 31 • August 7, 14, 21
🕒 Time: 4:30pm–6:30pm EST / 1:30pm–3:30pm PST
💻 Platform: Zoom (recordings available for enrolled participants)
💸 Sliding Scale Pricing & JEDI Spirit
We believe in Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, and offer a pricing scale to honor varied financial realities:
$500 – You are financially secure and able to help sponsor others
$400 – You have some access to healthcare, housing, and recreational funds
$300 – You are under/unemployed or experiencing limited resources
Need support? We welcome requests for payment plans, work exchange, or sliding scale assistance. Reach out at anya@weareurbanhaiku.com—we want this space to be accessible for all voices, especially those historically underrepresented.
🧠 What You’ll Explore
What is the poetic potential of documentation?
How can we write from a place of ethics, refusal, and care?
What does it mean to witness violence without re-enacting it?
How do we become curators of the archive, not just recipients?
How do we center the silenced and marginalized in our own work?
Through close readings, group dialogue, and creative experimentation, you’ll generate new work, deepen your understanding of poetry’s role in historical discourse, and connect with a literary community committed to truth and transformation.
🌟 About Diana Khoi Nguyen
Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Root Fractures (2024) and Ghost Of (2018), a finalist for the National Book Award. A Kundiman and MacDowell fellow, she’s received a 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and is part of the Vietnamese artist collective She Who Has No Master(s). Her work spans poetry, video art, and hybrid forms that interrogate grief, exile, family, and history. She teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and the Randolph College Low Residency MFA Program.
✍️ Who Is This For?
Writers and poets (of all levels) interested in archive-based, political, or personal poetry
Artists engaging in multimedia or hybrid forms
Educators and students of contemporary literature
Anyone looking to use writing as a tool for witnessing, healing, or resistance
BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and diasporic voices seeking community in craft and expression
📣 Conclusion: Let’s Document Differently
Documentary Poetics invites you to reimagine what writing can do. To move beyond self-expression into self-responsibility. To turn your attention outward without losing your internal compass. To transform observation into offering.
With Diana Khoi Nguyen as your guide, you’ll embark on a poetic path that is just as intellectual as it is emotional—grounded in care, curiosity, and a refusal to stay silent.
Spaces are limited. Register early to secure your spot in this generative, healing, and radically honest space.
❓ FAQs
1. Do I need to be an experienced poet to join?
Not at all. This course welcomes all levels—from curious beginners to published writers. If you’re open to reading, writing, and reflecting, you belong here.
2. Will sessions be recorded?
Yes! Live sessions will be recorded and shared with participants. Perfect if you can’t make a session live or want to revisit discussions later.
3. What materials will I need?
A notebook or word processor, a reliable internet connection, and a willingness to engage deeply with texts and your own writing.
4. Will I receive feedback on my work?
While the course is generative, there may be opportunities for feedback through peer sharing or optional instructor comments depending on the session flow.
5. Can I pay in installments or request financial aid?
Absolutely. Email anya@weareurbanhaiku.com to discuss sliding scale support, trades, or payment plans. We want this space to be as inclusive as possible.
