Social Poetics

(Paperback)

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Nowak's work, as a poet as well as an activist sits right at the intersection of both the philosophical and the lived experiences of the personal as political. He's been doing this work for a long time, well before the recent renewed interest in poetry that speaks to social justice, and this book should interest both those who have been in the trenches for decades as well as readers who are just becoming familiar with the radical tradition of poetry. Social Poetics ties the concerns of the present-creative practice under late capitalism, who can make art and who it is for, resistance in contemporary social movements-with labor history and theory, and it has the potential to do very well in the academic market as well as the non-academic poetry market. Nowak regularly speaks at academic and political conferences, and these audiences will be excited for this new work. Coal Mountain Elementary and Shut Up Shut Down are contemporary classics of political and working class poetry and mainstays on creative writing syllabi. Coffee House has enthusiastically published all of Nowak's work, and we're just as excited for this new book that gets to the root of the question of why "workers'" poetry needs to be "legitimized" in the first place.

Reviews

Entropy, March 2020 Most Anticipated Small Press Releases

[A]n invaluable archive of an otherwise little-documented field. Poetry Foundation

If a creative writing text ever raised a call to the barricades, its this one. . . . The work deserves a place on the shelf of any thinking teacher in the field. Anyone can use a breath of fresh air, a bracing reminder of arts power to change the world. Brooklyn Rail

Nowaks work follows in the tradition of Langston Hughes. . . . Social Poetics records an enduring tradition of people chronicling their conditions and discovering their own language as a resource for sharing their experiences and organizing. Nowaks focus on workshops, from Attica to the Worker Justice Center of New York, powerfully re-envisions what literary communities might look like, and how they can expand the range of poetic expression, enliven social movements and foster solidarity across oceans. In These Times

[B]oth an attempt to recuperate a forgotten literary canon (literature made for and inside working-class struggle) and an effort to summon forth new structures of organization, expression, and literary culture. . . . These incredible displays of vision, heart, and solidarity demonstrate that poetry, so often associated with the snooty, the stuffy, and the sequestered, can absolutely resonate with working-class peopleso long as issues of concern to working-class people hold relevance to the world of poetry. Poetry Northwest

Social Poetics focuses on the history of poetry workshops from the perspective of working-class people who attempted to spark social change despite being largely overlooked by society. Chronogram

[A]n exciting addition to poetrys grail quest for a first-person plural, a collective enunciation. Nowaks writing is attuned to the needs of today in what feels like a new horizon taking shape, part of a larger appreciation for the poetics of relationality and experience. . . . Provides powerful witness to the verb of poetrypoetry as a social act, whereby workers reclaim autonomy over their creations. Full Stop

Whether unpacking Mikhail Bakhtins unity of the emerging idea, demonstrating the practical application of alliteration, or recalling his daughter teaching youth prison poets origami, Mark Nowak testifies to the urgency and intimacy of poetry in our prisons, union halls, and workers centers.Social Poeticstracks what happens when people gather around poems: conjunctions, dialogues, imaginative militancy, solidarities. This supple, comprehensive book is a study in the poetics of bearing witness, bearing tools, and bearing possibilities.Terrance Hayes

Social Poeticsmaterializes imaginative militancy. With a litany of the social as pervasive and intimate, and political memories of life-and-death struggles for justice, Nowak crafts a transformative workshop for the collective. This is an important record of how the peoples power, poetry, and history maintain us and the beauty of our world(s).Joy James

Praise for Mark Nowak

[Nowak is willing] to submerge his own voice beneath these other accounts, privileging other voicesthose of survivors, widows, journalistsabove his own. He is a legislator whose job is allowing others to be heard. Leslie Jamison, New York Times, By the Book

The aim of making poetry to make change, to make history, is what makes Nowaks work most radical and most daring, moving into the realm where knowing is a kind of collective being and doing. Philip Metres, Kenyon Review

Mark Nowak is restoring the perspective of working class Americans to contemporary American poetry. The Buffalo News

The several long poems that make up this book build into each other with devastating force and understatement, breaking poetic boundaries, regenerating the rich tradition of working-class literature. Adrienne Rich

Coal Mountain Elementary is an imaginative and shocking reminder of what it means, in the most human and poignant terms, to be a miner, whether in this country or in China, or for that matter anywhere in the industrial world. It is also a tribute to miners and working people everywhere. It manages, in photos and in words, to portray an entire culture. And it is a stunning educational tool.Howard Zinn

Mark Nowak encounters the whispers of creation and cultural remembrance in his eminent, visionary poetry. Revenants is an original return to a splendid ethos of ancestral word patterns, and the images bear the solemn pleasures of time, place, and singular landscapes. Gerald Vizenor

One of the most original collections of poetry Ive read in years. In it, the curling smoke of myth mixes with the smoke from cooking sausages, and heavy steps of history are crisscrossed by the indelible birdtracks of particular places, recorded by the poet in his fieldnotes. Forrest Gander

Revenants is a meta-ethnography, a palpable social and psychic cosmos made visible by fiery dislocations and upturned names. I have seen few manifestos as incandescent as this one. Juan Felipe Herrara

Author Bio

MarkNowak is the author ofCoal Mountain Elementary, Shut Up Shut Down,andRevenants.He is the recipient of the Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism and fellowships from the Lannan and Guggenheim foundations. Nowak has led poetry workshops for workers and trade unions in the US, South Africa, the UK, Panama, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. He is currently a professor of English at Manhattanville College and the founding director of the Worker Writers School.