[Workshop] Deep and Strong: Writing Readable Writing with Claire Star Finch

Join us for a writing workshop with poet Claire Star Finch. Following in the footsteps of poets who use constraints to generate unexpected and powerful works we will explore Easy-to-Read’s Language’s constraints to experiment with a language of radical simplicity, full of rhythms and sounds. We will cut, move, and rearrange words to create texts that are both accessible and unique.

Limited places, registration required: info@rile.space

*This workshop follows a launch of Claire Star Finch's novel Fuck me Judith on the 8th of November. Find out more about the event here.

Schedule

11h00 - 13h00 writing workshop at rile* books

About

This workshop uses Easy-to-Read language*.

Easy-to-Read changes complicated texts into simple texts.
Easy-to-Read is very useful for:
people with disabilities,
people with dyslexia,
older people,
people learning a language.
In this workshop, we will play with the rules of Easy-to-Read.
We will do this to write poems that are simple and powerful.
Many poets play with the rules of language
to write their poems.
We will read some powerful poems together.
We will use these poems as examples.
We will experiment with:
making our poems more concise,
learning where to break each line of poetry,
and using words as pictures.
Many poetic methods are very close to the rules of Easy-to-Read.
By experimenting with these methods,
we increase the openness and the strength of our poems.

*Elena Lespes Muñoz invited me to create a first version of this workshop, and helped to make this description readable. Thank you Elena!

About Claire Star Finch

Born in the United States and based in Paris, Star Finch writes and performs weird experimental pornography, at the intersection of theory and poetry. Their literary performances are regularly presented in art institutions in France and internationally (Palais de Tokyo Paris, ICA London, CAPC Bordeaux, Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe). Their ongoing research interests include vomit and dildos, exploring how these materials function as literary technologies. In 2024, They received a doctorate from l’Université Paris 8 in Gender Studies for their dissertation that traced the literary queerfeminsms of Kathy Acker, Hélène Cixous, Violette Leduc, and Audre Lorde. With the collective RER Q, they stage the performance of sexually explicit literary texts. They are the author of the novel Fuck Me Judith (After 8 Books, 2025) and the poetry collection Crache dans ma bouche puis crache dans mon autre bouche [Spit in my mouth then spit in my other mouth] (Les petits matins, 2024). Their other literary projects include Kathy Acker 1971-1975 (Éditions Ismael, 2019), and contributions to Lettres aux jeunes poétesses [Letters to young poets] (l’Arche, 2021) and Kathy Acker: Get Rid of Meaning (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Cologne, 2022). With sabrina soyer, they translated the poet Lisa Robertson into French, in Debbie: une épopée [Debbie: An Epic] (Joca Seria, 2021).