Murmur Poetry Workshop
curated by Murmur
Poetry Workshop
by Claire Star Finch
Lavanderia
Via Lamarmora 26, Milan
Murmur Poetry Workshop is a series of events dedicated to poetry.
It serves as a space for listening, discussion, and exploration, focused on working with texts and sharing writing processes.
This workshop with the poet and performer Claire Star Finch explores writing that is maximalist, plagiarized, gossipy and sexy (queer), that blends theory (as a vocabulary source and textural component) with poetic form. Participants will explore ways of bedazzling their own unique poetic voices, by grafting their work with external materials.
- Information
To participate, please send an original text written by you in English to [email protected]. Texts you consider unsuccessful are especially welcome, as they will provide a valuable starting point for our shared work.
The workshop will be held in English.
Star Finch or Claire Star Finch is an experimental writer & performer. Their books include Fuck Me Judith (After 8 Books 2025), Crache dans ma bouche puis crache dans mon autre bouche (Les Petits Matins, 2024), I Lie on the Floor (After 8 Books 2021), Kathy Acker 1971-1975 (Éditions Ismael 2019) and contributions in Lettres aux jeunes poétesses (L’Arche 2021), Kathy Acker: Get Rid of Meaning (Buchhandlung Walther König, 2022). They’ve translated into French Lisa Robertson (Debbie une épopée, Joca Seria 2021) and Kathy Acker (Stripper Disintegration, Éd. Suck Campari Dyke 2019). They give hybrid lectures on themes like dildos and vomit as literary technologies, like the ones that they gave at Universität der Künste Berlin (“Livid Residue” 2021), or the ICA London (“Are You Surprised Kathy Acker Is an Aries Because I’m Not” 2019) or Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe (“My Construct: A Cunt” 2018).
They have taught workshops on literary piracy, queer pedagogy, and hybrid performance at École des Beaux-Arts de Valence, École des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, Villa Arson Nice, Espace Khiasma Lilas, Syndicat Potentiel Strasbourg, Transpalette Bourges.
Their scholarly research on the SM contract as a literary form and also the work of Kathy Acker and Hélène Cixous has been published in Littérature, Gender Forum, New Formations.They’re part of the queer & nonbinary & dyke collective RER Q and together they’ve toured spreading radical queer pornographic tenderness and poetry (Centre Pompidou France, Mimosa House London, L-Fest & Midis de la Poésie Brussels, Le Lavoir Public Lyon).
Maria Luce Cacciaguerra (Palermo, 1997) began her research in the field of concrete poetry. In 2022, she founded the Murmur collective and serves as editor of the Remedia series for Pungitopo. She recently edited the publication Almanacco Murmur (Paint It Black). Winner of the Meridiana Prize, sponsored by the Madre Museum, she is currently exhibiting the project Santa du pao oco. She was selected for Dial-A-Poem Italy, in collaboration with the John Giorno Poetry System.
Allison Grimaldi Donahue (Middletown, Connecticut, USA), a poet and translator, is the author of The History of Breathing (2025), OnEndings (2019), and Body to Mineral (2016). She has recently presented poetry performances, installations, and collective actions at the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation in Venice, Luci d’Artista in Turin, MACTE in Termoli, the Madre Museum in Naples, Kunsthalle Bern, Sonnenstube in Lugano, ShortTheatre in Rome, and Prosopopoeia in Vienna. She is the recipient of the Italian Council’s Talent Development Award and the Gallarate Prize. She holds a PhD in philosophy from the European Graduate School.
Murmur is a contemporary poetry collective founded in Milan in the winter of 2022 with the aim of revitalizing the art of poetry through encounter. The collective was founded by Maria Luce Cacciaguerra and Greta Sugar, and is curated and led by Maria Luce Cacciaguerra and Allison Grimaldi Donahue. We organize poetry readings and workshops.
