Apologies for cross-posting.
I thought that list members may appreciate a brief report on the above which
took place on June 30th and July 1st.
As a general comment, I found the event very valuable in that it brought
together academics and practitioners - although sadly not enough poets -
with interests in both mainstream and what I'll call non-mainstream
poetries. It was also an opportunity to meet several people off this list
and other lists which is always good.
The keynote address was by John Kinsella who had much of interest to say
about the role of the editor, collaboration, centre and periphery and the
internet.
This was followed by a series of parallel sessions. It's not possible to go
to everything so I can only list the things I heard that impressed me.
Scott Thurston gave a detailed reading of John Wilkinson's 'Attention and
Interpretation'.
Alan Munton [who I think said he was a colleague of Tony Lopez's] gave a
paper on the British paratactic sentence 1914-2000 which was a kind of
playful response to US Language poets. Lilias Fraser gave an extremely
interesting paper on the early history of poetry on the radio. Giles Scott
made a double reading of Harrison's Gulf War poem 'A Cold Coming' and
Michael Palmer's 'Seven Poems within a Matrix of War'. I didn't know the
Palmer work and was pleased to encounter it. It certainly showed up the
poverty of Harrison's political commentary doggerel - although this was not
the main thrust of the paper. Malcolm Phillips gave us a quick and dirty but
suggestive tour around prose poetry called 'Writing in a Border Zone'. James
Keery talked about the Apocalyptic poets of the 1940s. Finally, Derek
Attridge spoke on poetry's singularity arguing that this derives from its
performativity. The q and a sessions were good, containing plenty of playful
slap and tickle as well as more standard intellectual cut and thrust.
Liverpool Uni Press had a bookstall where the new Roy Fisher book was on
sale at a tasty discount. I also ran a bookstall in between sessions. There
was keynote reading by Geoffrey Hill which I didn't attend but which seemed
to impress everyone who did.
There are plans to repeat the conference every two years. If there were more
readings throughout by a wider variety of poets then I think it could become
an important event.
But anyway, in light of the fact that poetry is supposed to be a minority
interest, it was refreshing to find so many people studying it so
enthusiastically and being prepared to engage with challenging texts as well
as with the usual suspects like yer man Feamus Seamus and Our Ted. In
contrast to some conferences I have attended, there was a really friendly
atmosphere throughout. And it was good to find quite a number of people
attending from France and Germany.
cheers
David
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