Rabbit Holes and Research Poetics: A Free Poetry Workshop

Through presentation, discussion, and writing exercises, attendees will explore the connections between research and poetry. What is the relationship between poets and researchers? How can you use outside sources, personal obsessions, and borrowed texts as poetic material? How can you turn your niche interests, hyperfixations, and late-night internet wanderings into an original body of work? ABOUT THE FACILITATOR August Smith is a poet, musician, and editor. He received his MFA from University of Massachusetts Boston in 2017 and is the author of Visitors from the Red Star (Apocalypse Confidential, 2024), a collection of poems about the UFO/UAP phenomenon. In addition, he's published nine chapbooks, released a book of Icelandic translations, and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Post-Pop Lit, an online avant-garde literary journal. He lives in Austin, TX, where he organizes literary events and performs music under the name Plum Wooer. His work can be found at augustsmith.net. ABOUT THE VENUE And&And Studios is an artist-owned creative space in East Austin, home to a small community of working artists and art advocates. This venue is wheelchair accessible. Contact the venue: (512)825-9267 [email protected] LAYERS OF PLACE: AUSTIN Is a civic augmented-reality art exhibition produced by MIT Open Documentary Lab in collaboration with local artists, scholars, and community workers. Layers of Place: Austin consists of six site-specific AR art installations scattered across downtown Austin. Each installation explores the city's layered pasts and presents, transforming Austin’s public spaces into portals for memory, dialogue, and imagination. TRACES Beginning in Summer 2026, six Austin poets were commissioned to spend deep time with the Layers of Place: Austin artworks, creating an original poem in response to each project. Follow their poetic traces through memory, history, and the living present.