Dear List,

I am posting this CFP on behalf of the conference organiser, Dr J. Mark Smith, who emphasises that proposals for papers on German poetry in English translation (or indeed poetry translated from any other language) and on the process of translating poetry are very welcome.

With all best wishes,

Chantal Wright

McCain Fellow in German

Mount Allison University, New Brunswick, Canada

Poetries of Numerousness: Singularities, Movements, Idealities

Poetries of Numerousness, a two-and-half day conference on contemporary English language poetry and poetics, will be held at Grant MacEwan College, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, May 14-16, 2009. Plenary events will feature the following poets and critics/scholars: Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Steve McCaffery, Erin Mouré, and Les Murray.

George Oppen's "Of Being Numerous" (1968) announced some sort of shift in twentieth century poetry's conception of itself. Poetry, Oppen implied, had not kept up with the modern form of life, urban concentrations, democracies, the masses. Traditional forms of poetic representation had collided with newer aspirations: the "unearthly bonds / of the singular" were threatened by "shipwreck." And yet the lyric — unique word-work, courtly artifact evolved to represent the singular value of the person — shows no sign even now of vanishing from the world. How to explain the persistence of lyric, even when the immortality of a handful of poems down the centuries has been achieved at such cost ("the bitter logic of the poetic principle," in Allen Grossman's words)? What is it about contemporary conditions that — not for the first time — call for new dispositions and dispensations of poetic energies? What inclusions / exclusions are likely to lie ahead? what repetitions? Steve McCaffery has characterized the contemporary scene as a "post-Babelism," and quoted approvingly the Romantic theorist J. G. Hamann's account of a world in which "every court, every school, every profession, every corporation, every sect has its own language." Theory since Romanticism has supplied terminologies for the discernment of multiplicities and ideal multiplicities. But, for all their variousnesses, have the poetries of modernity ever been able to forsake the ideal of singularity?

Recognizing that there has been a divide in the last decade or two among those who write experimentalist or avant-garde poetry, and those loyal to the modernist and/or traditional virtues of verse, one of our key aims is to promote amicable conversation among poets and scholars of different filiations and theoretical allegiances.

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers, and for panels of papers, on a wide range of topics, such as:

* points of contact between experimentalist and lyric (and/or narrative) poetries

* communication and influence among poets of the different Englishes

* poetic translations and imitations in the Englishes

* argots and jargons and dialects

* "the one:many / mechanism we everywhere seek and renounce" (Ammons)

* poetries aspiring to the other arts

* hoaxes, forgeries, counterfeits

* alternative and/or innovative prosodies

* explorations and/or appraisals of particular bodies of work, schools, alliances

* the persistence of modernisms / post-modernisms

We will consider papers dealing with any facet or aspect of "numerousness" in English-language poetries from the late 18^th century to the present day so long as their thematic concerns pertain in some way to the current moment.

Please submit conference paper proposals of not more than 250 words, along with a very brief bio of not more than 100 words, to [log in to unmask] . Deadline: Jan. 15, 2009.

We intend to develop, edit and publish a volume of select writings from the proceedings.

Conference organizers: (Dr.) Roger Davis and (Dr.) J. Mark Smith, Dept. of English,

Grant MacEwan College, Edmonton, Alberta.

Conference registration and information at: http://www.macewan.ca/poetries