Braiding Uncertainty and Possibility: A Poetic Exploration

Enrollment limited; early enrollment advised. Visitors not permitted. Internet access required.

This UCLAxOpen session is led by special guest instructor Raffi Joe Wartanian. Raffi Joe Wartanian is a writer, musician and educator who teaches writing at UCLA and serves as the inaugural Poet Laureate in the City of Glendale, California. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, University of Texas Press, Miami Herald, The Baltimore Sun, Lapham’s Quarterly, Outside Magazine, and elsewhere; and his poetry has appeared in The Los Angeles Press, No Dear Magazine, The Poetry Lighthouse, Armenian Poetry Project, LAdige, Ararat Magazine, and beyond. Raffi has taught writing to veterans at the Manhattan VA, incarcerated writers at Rikers Island, youth in Armenia, and undergraduates at Columbia University, where he earned an M.F.A. in Writing. He is the recipient of grants and fellowships from The Fulbright Program, Eurasia Partnership Foundation, and Humanity in Action. As a musician, Raffi has released two albums of original compositions: Critical Distance and Pushkin Street. Recent commissions include film trailer music for The Tale of King Crab, and a soundtrack for a production of William Saroyan’s Pulitzer-winning drama The Time Of Your Life staged by the UCLA Department of Theater. For Pacific Standard Time ART, Raffi collaborated with creative technologists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on “Earth Speaks,” an interactive poetry installation contributed to the group showcase Blended Worlds: Experiments in Interplanetary Imagination on exhibit at the Brand Library & Art Center from September 2024 to January 2025.

This course is held via video teleconference. As such, instructors use Zoom to offer a live class meeting at the designated time. Students must be present at the course meeting time to participate in the class.