charles theonia


Going Long


a 4-week generative writing workshop at Poets House

How does a long poem hold itself together? How do other texts turn up in ours? Where does the inside of a poem meet its outside? How do we keep going? How do we know when it’s over?

Looking to longform and serial works by Dionne Brand, Renee Gladman, Tan Lin, Stacy Szymaszek, and others, we’ll extrude methods of inventory, grazing, bibliography, metatextuality, slipping between the textual and visual, emptying our pockets, and exceeding our containers. In our time together we’ll read, discuss, and write towards the production of a long poem.

In Person | 4 Wednesdays | Jan 28 – Feb 18 | 6:30 – 8:30pm ET

Registration open now.


The Collectors


a 1-day workshop at the Poetry Society of New York

Arranged in a cabinet of curiosities or in piles of “equivocal objects introduced as bric-a-brac” (George Eliot), a collection “takes out a little bit more reality from the world than it puts back in” (Tan Lin).

This generative workshop will be an open space of accumulation. Together, we dilettantes will dip into (and contribute to) a pool of works by artist and writer Joe Brainard and singer and composer Julius Eastman.


"You Have to Be Willing to Totally Fail": Collaborative Methods



a 1-day zine-making workshop at BOMB Magazine + Hampshire College

This visual art and creative writing workshop considers queer collaborative projects from pairs and collectives. How can we mutually apply the methods of collective organizing and collaborative art? How can we lovingly collaborate across difference? How can we find the inner and outer resources necessary to take risks alongside our collaborators, especially when they’re our idols, friends, lovers (or, best of all, all three)?

Co-taught with Solomon Brager