Call for Papers for Performing Poetry, edited volume on Performance Poetry

   In recent years the performance of poetry has become an  
increasingly popular art form in different countries and cultural  
environments. The development of the art form is unusual: Performance  
poetry was developed outside of the traditional literary circuits and  
as an alternative to institutionalized North-Western poetry. Thus, it  
was - and in some cases, still is - associated with marginalized  
groups and dissident opinions and practices. However, in recent years  
performance poetry has developed its own literary circuit, and some of  
the characteristics that in earlier years marked the art form as  
dissident have undergone a process of commodification and  
commercialization that has yet to be responded to by poets,  
organizers, and scholars.

   Indeed, performance poetry has received little scholarly attention.  
On the conceptual level it has usually been discussed under the  
umbrella of beat poetry or language poetry. With Performing Poetry, to  
be published in the series Thamyris/Intersecting (Rodopi, Amsterdam)  
in 2010, and edited by Arturo Casas from the University of Santiago de  
Compostela and Cornelia Gräbner from Lancaster University, we will  
present a volume of articles that analyse performance poetry as a  
poetic genre in its own right and in an international and  
intercultural context.

   Articles should analyse any aspect of the poetry performance or of  
the genre of performance poetry, its practice, conditions of  
production and distribution, contextual elements such as music, other  
sounds, visual elements, theatrical devices, the poet's voice, etc.,  
and poetics. Articles should engage one or several of the following  
concepts:

   ·         Place
   The importance of place is manifested in a variety of ways in the  
poetry performance. For one, the performance of poetry establishes a  
link to the locus of enunciation of the poem, i.e. the venue. The  
conditions of the venue contribute to the finished poem and have to be  
analysed as elements of it. More recently, sound and video recording  
invite a critical reflection on this attachment to place.
   Place is also of particular importance for the analysis of  
performance poetry because this genre was frequently developed in  
diasporic contexts, thus problematizing notions of place and  
belonging. Also, in some cases performance poetry is associated with  
left-wing nationalisms and with liberation movements. Thus, analyses  
of performance poetry have the potential to bring out a tension and  
sometimes, a connection between diaspora and nationalism.
   ·         Sexuality and Gender
   Performing Poetry invites contributions on any aspect of sexuality  
and gender as they are addressed and performed in poetry performances.  
So far, few scholarly texts on performance poetry have addressed  
issues of gender and sexuality and Performing Poetry seeks to fill  
this gap in the academic analysis of performance poetry. We are  
particularly interested in the public figure of women poets and in  
analyses of specific genres, such as domestic dub poetry.
   ·         Race
   Performance poetry has been developed largely in diasporic  
contexts. Hence, race has always been an important issue, not only in  
terms of the race of the performers, but also in terms of the address  
of racial discrimination and racist violence. In contrast to Black  
cultural identity, whiteness has almost not been addressed in the  
analysis of performed poetry, even though the majority of non-white  
poetry performers should make it clear that whiteness, too, signifies.  
Performing Poetry invites contributions that address “race” as a topic  
of the poetry performance and as integral to the poetry performance.

   Articles must be made available to the editors in the English  
language. Articles may address any variety of performance poetry, but  
we particularly invite contributions that focus on performance poetry  
in languages other than English. Please send your proposal of 250  
words by 15th November 2008 to the following email-addresses:  
[log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask] You will be notified by  
15th December whether you proposal has been accepted. The final  
version of the article, which must not exceed 7500 words, must be  
submitted by 15th March 2009.



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