Montana Book Festival 2018

“What’s So Funny?” is a poetry workshop I developed to talk about how one can use humor in
poetry as a coping mechanism to confront despair. Poetry that employs absurdist humor acts as
a perfect foil to political and social climates that create surreal experiences that defy rational
thought. Drawing on a diverse range of influences like Saturday Night Live’s Jack Handey’s
“Deep Thoughts,” poetry by Jennifer L. Knox, Eileen Myles, and Charles Simic, along with
stand-up comedians like Maria Bamford, the workshop will dissect how syntax, rising tension,
and surreal imagery work together to elicit laughs from readers and prepare them to confront
existential topics in poetry.

The workshop begins with an ice-breaker that asks students to consider what they think is
funny, transitions into a PowerPoint presentation that offers context for absurdism in poetry as
an act of defiance, then concludes with a discussion of three prompts that students would use
during the workshop to free-write and generate poem drafts.

This workshop is open to as many as 20 beginning to experienced writers who want to write
new poems and would like to think seriously about being funny. The would arrive to the
workshop with either a laptop or writing instrument/notebook to use during the generation
portion of the workshop.