CASS EDDINGTON
PROCESS & PEDAGOGY
writing/living
In response to authority, its tendency to create dependency, I turn toward self-made rituals and durational acts of meaning-making. Direct experience as a site toward self-sovereignty and meaningful creative work is a basic tenet: learning by doing and through the activity of desire, writing in response to shifting environments, their consequent constraints. We learn to trust we'll know what we need as we go, an expansion made possible in relation to others. In constellations of care and action, creative work is made viable.
gendered experience
Movement as a process is an entry into performance and transformation. This process has allowed me to further embody my own transness, which is not about efficacy but love. Travel as an attempt to uproot one’s origins, make them visible. Per Michel de Certeau, the walker “condemns certain places to inertia or disappearance and composes with other spatial ‘turns of phrase” that are ‘rare,’ ‘accidental,’ or illegitimate.” I give way to gestures and syntax through which my body reveals itself and queer subjectivity and experience unfolds. Visibility shouldn’t come at the cost of erasure, of translating noise into song. My work is invested in so-called illegible forms of materiality and embodiment necessary to highlight and dismantle power.
creative process & pedagogy
Creative work requires foraging, gleaning, trailing impulse like a scent without knowing what will come. All matter is holy. Like visual artists working with found materials, trash, in my writing and in my teaching I foster a space for creative revelations found in what surrounds us. Folds of meaning In our daily uncompensated labors, we create in every gesture and point of contact. Through our daily rhythms, we generate material which can become visible to ourselves through both ordinary and disruptive processes.
BIO
Cass Eddington is a poet, teacher, and editor. They are the author of Vernal Hurt (Magnificent Field) and TRANSIT (Spiral Editions) with recent work found in luigi ten co and Annulet. A PhD candidate in the University of Denver’s Creative Literary Arts Program and former Denver Quarterly Poetry Editor, they hold an M.F.A. in Poetry from Colorado State University where they also teach for CSU Online's Creative Writing minor. Cass has also taught ESL/ELL to adult learners and facilitated creative writing workshops for incarcerated youth. They live with their dog Jupiter on the rightful territory of the Cheyenne, Ute, Arapaho, and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ peoples (so-called Denver, Colorado) where they also teach at Lighthouse Writers Workshop and work as a regenerative landscaper.
WORK
TEACHING
- in collaboration with Regis University Mile High MFA, Fall 2023
- Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop
Denver, Colorado / Spring 2020 – present
- University of Denver, English Department
Denver, Colorado / Fall 2019, Spring 2020
- Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO // CSU Online Creative Writing Minor: August 2018 – Present // English Department / Instructor of Record: August 2016 – August 2018; August 2009 – May 2015; Internship Coordinator: July 2017 – July 2018
- Freelance ESL/ELL teacher
Berlin, Germany / September 2015-June 2016
COLLABORATIONS
INSTALLATION
- Auricle (installation piece, some photos pictured right), Art Farm, September 2021 - with co-collaborators: Peach, Z, Jenny, Grace, Ed, Cindy, Rae, Hannah, Mitchell, Liza, Natalie, Leslie, Olivia & Simone, Phoebe, Walker, Josh, Sam, and Ed.
EDITORIAL WORK
- Denver Quarterly 56.3, Haptic Acts folio, co-curated with Emily Altman
- Denver Quarterly Poetry Editor, 2020-2021
- Denver Quarterly Conversations Editor, 2019-2020
- interview with Jos Charles (“Where what doesn’t fit a composition becomes a composition”) Denver Quarterly, Vol 53, No 3, 2019 [print]
CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT AND ARTS ORGANIZING
- Curriculum Co-Developer and Instructor for CSU's Online Creative Writing minor: August 2017 – August 2018, Summer 2019, Summer 2020
- Curriculum Developer and Instructor of Record, with CSU’s Bridge Scholars: May 2017 – August 2017
- Creative Assistant to the Director for the Crisis and Creativity Symposium (Dan Beachy-Quick): August 2014 - July 2015
ROUTE // RESIDENCIES AND WORK TRADES
- Lithic Press, Fruita, CO (April-June 2022)
- Paradise Lost, Northwest Arkansas (September-October, December 2021)
- Art Farm, Marquette, NE (August-September 2021)
SELECT WORKS
POEMS
- "physical belonging," "holler" | luigi ten co, Fall 2023
- excerpt from The Manifold | annulet, No. 1, Spring 2022
- excerpts from VERNAL HURT | Deluge, No. 14, Spring 2020
- excerpts from VERNAL HURT | DREGINALD, Issue 19, Spring 2020
- Topographies I & II | La Vague, Issue 10 (2018)
- excerpts from if the garden | kelsey street press blog (2017), featuring work of Firsts! competition finalists
- "the fold” | La Vague, Issue 3 (2014)
- “an other history,” “a grotesque,” “Under story” | Word for/Word, Issue 23 (Winter 2014)
- fragments from “the hungry matter” \ Gazing Grains Press’ miniature series (March 2013) [print]
- [untitled serial poem] | ditch (Winter 2011)
- way water when secret | Otoliths, Issue 18 (Fall 2010)
CHAPBOOK
TRANSIT | Spiral Editions, Spring 2023
VERNAL HURT | The Magnificent Field, Spring 2020
