COMMUNITY
Dom Witten serves as a Co-Founder and Program Director alongside Mitchel Dipzinski for the Poetics Lab (tPL). tPL facilitates inclusive spaces for communities to engage with identity through poetry and performance of the self. tPL hosts hybrid open-mics, facilitates the annual Summer Workshop Series and publishes the Community Chapbook. You can find more information about donating or ordering the Community Chapbook on tPL's Make a Donation Page.
Participants will in this program will:
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Explore language’s importance in forming identity
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Gain insight into the creative process of writing poetry
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Engage with their community through performance
IG: tPoeticsLab Facebook: The Poetics Lab
tPL 2021 group photo taken in the Art in the Loft. Back row left to right: Tami Dipzinski, Mitchel Dipzinski, Bret Finzel and Pam Rensberry; middle row left to right: Mia Lenning, Nycki. C and Tisha Erkintalo. Front row left to right: Dom Witten and Susan Buslepp.
The Sit Down Podcast was founded by Cydney Gardner-Brown in partnership with AM1700 radio. The Sit Down was a 13 episode pilot radio show focused on the 3am conversations that college students have. The challenge: producing that conversation on air at 10am with only coffee as the guiding force. Dom appeared as a frequent guest on the first six episodes of the pilot season alongside other influential students at the University of Michigan.
Left to right: Mitchel Dipzinski, Cydney Gardner-Brown, Dom Witten.
Late Night at Studio A
Studio A is a live edited recording of Dom's poem "Momma wants to know if I write letters to God" produced by film students at the University of Michigan.
Performance in Poetry Club
Performance in Poetry Club was founded in 2017 through the Lloyd Scholars for Writing and the Arts (LSWA) living-learning community at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor by Dom Witten and Mitchel Dipzinski aimed at introducing first year students to performance poetry. Each week students were given a poem to analyze and model any intriguing facets they saw in the poem. Dom focused more on performance and narrative poetry, while Mitchel focused more on what can be done on the page and form. Together, they encouraged students to create original work and perform it in front on their peers at the end of each semester.
When Mitchel graduated in 2019, Dom lead the club by herself until 2020. During this year Dom welcomed guest facilitators to teach form and breaking form (Mitchel Dipzinski), music and poetry (Armando) and a group workshop (Alejando Derieux) .