TWFest: WRITER’S CRAFT—STEPHANIE BURT 

POETRY AND TALKING THINGS WITH STEPHANIE BURT 
Who speaks a poem? Is it the poet? Is it the reader? What if it’s a window, or a Muppet, or a giant toad? We’ll look at the history of poems in the voices of characters who do not exist in our world, of animals that can’t talk, and of inanimate objects, going back to ancient Greece and forward to today’s farrago of robots, mutants, and self-portraits as many things. We’ll ask why poets draw on this resource, long ago and today. And we’ll find out—if we can—what’s queer about this kind of poetry, what’s contemporary about it, and how it speaks to the kinds of persons that you—yes, you—might be, or hope to become.