October Poetry Café: Exquisite Corpse Poems

Exquisite Corpse by André Breton in 1932.

Join us for our monthly Poetry Café in the Great Hall. Our October Café will follow a slightly different structure, as we will be writing together and creating Exquisite Corpse poetry. Exquisite Corpse is a collaborative poetry game that traces its roots back to the Parisian Surrealist Movement. It is played by several people, each of whom writes a line of poetry on a sheet of paper, folds the paper to conceal it, and passes it on to the next person for their contribution.

We will be creating several Exquisite Corpse poems during the Café, so come ready to write! If you have an Exquisite Corpse poem from previous writings and would like to share it, feel free to bring it. Participants from our Nonet Poetry Café in April will recall our collaborative Nonet. Folks are welcome to come and listen without participating, although this exercise lends itself well to poets and non-poets alike.

Please register below. 

There is some debate on the origin of the phrase “Poetry Café.” Some argue it refers to the Modernists (Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, TS Eliot, etc.) sharing their work in the cafés in Europe. As spoken word poetry has gained traction and the genre of slam poetry has evolved, some trace the phrase to the Nuyorican Poets Café in Manhattan. The café was founded in 1973 by Rutgers professor Miguel Algarín and gave Puerto Rican New York poets a place to meet and share their work. Although the café was closed for several years in the 1980’s, it continues to serve as an arts center for the Nuyorican community.