Hi Peter,

your mail has raised a number of the key concerns I was hoping this conference would address.

the first being the issue of an Irish national identity and how in Ireland and often in discussion of Irish poets the main concern is this sense of "Irishness" and how this national identity is often linked to a rural or religious identity. due to issues of post colonialism Irish poetry and Irish politics has strived to be seen as independent of Britain and Europe. so much so that most Irish innovative poetry, modernist / post modernist (what ever term you want to use yourself) has been ignored or spoken about with disdain in this country. Irish poetry that is engaged in international modernism often has to look elsewhere for publishers / funding / jobs / life. a lot of people and poets who do not identify themselves with the very narrow national stereotypes have often emigrated to live and make a living. some of these people have returned many have not.

I often feel that innovative Irish writers often only get spoken about as an offshoot or British traditions or movements. and I wanted to address this along with these issues of national identity.

yes the subject categories are very broad, which is an attempt not to be restrictive. a problem granted in that the focus only comes in choosing the papers and is reliant on receiving abstracts.

I do find your declaration, that the inclusion of three poets that you call "English" are random, surprising.

if i am not mistaken both of Maggie O'Sullivan's parents were Irish and this has and continues to play a role in her work. one of or both of John James' parents also hail from west Cork. Tom Raworth's Irish connection is well known and he does or at least did travel under and Irish passport. there are a good number of poets i left out of the list because i felt the connections were too weak. because of Ireland history and tradition of emigration i think these issues are very relevant. what traits do people take with them and what gets passed down. is the way Maggie O'Sullivan reads influenced by the fact that her father was a traditional Irish singer?

anyways. over shadowing the Irish is also a question of how useful and relevant national / geographical classifications are? do any two writers have similarities based on their nationality or location. and what happens to that work if people move? should we ever use the term "Irish" poetry anymore then we should use "British", "American" "New York "Cambridge" or "London" School. anyway. all this is much more rambled then I would like but the sun is shining and want to eat my lunch outside. I

am hoping that the conference will raise and deal with some of these questions / issues.

hope to see you there :)

best

Jimmy

www.defaultpublishing.com
http://defaultpoetry.blogspot.com/
"DE-FAULT, the two best words in the English language"

From: Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, 15 March, 2011 12:14:58
Subject: Re: Innovation in Irish Poetry Conference

This is all very encouraging, but it's also quite a strange announcement. The interest in "innovative" techniques seems to be greater than the interest in Irishness. Indeed I've never before seen a declaration from Ireland which dismissed national Irishness as "provincial". Of what can it be a province but Britain? The subject categories are so broad that they could be interpreted as "almost any poetry we like", and the list of possible poet-subjects confirms this by the fairly random inclusion of three English poets. Tom Raworth does particularly well for this sort of thing, having been previously included in a conference on women's poetry. John James was in a Welsh thing last year. Well good luck to them, I don't know how they do it. The anomalies thrown up by a poetry world split into two are endlessly entertaining.

On 15 Mar 2011, at 11:34, JIMMY CUMMINS wrote:

apologies for cross posting

please not that the deadline has been extended until March 28th. also could you please forward it on to anyone else who might be interested.

very best

Jimmy

Call for Papers: deadline extended until March 28th

Conference: Innovation in Irish Poetry. University College Cork, Ireland. July 12th 2011

This conference investigates issues surrounding innovation in Irish poetry. Its aim is not only to re-examine the influence that Irish writers have had on 20th Century literature, but also to explore the current status of Irish innovative poetics in the 21st Century.
Due to the historical, and yet ever present, issue of emigration from Ireland , this conference will not restrict itself to provincial ideas of national identity. Instead it aims to consider “Irish poetry” as transnational, considering not only poets born, raised or living in Ireland, but also those who have emigrated, those who are part of the Irish diaspora and those who have been significantly influenced by Irish innovative writing. The conference will take place in University College Cork on the 12th of July 2011 so that it coincides with the 15th SoundEye festival of the Arts of the Word (13th – 17th). Papers should be approx. 20 minutes in length.

Some possible areas of interest for papers might include
- Cadence in Irish poetry
- The influence of international poetics on Irish poetry
- The influence of Irish modernism on British and American writers
- Irish poetry and the historical avant-garde
- Constructions of Irish Modernism
- Irish small presses
- National identity
- Religion
- Post colonialism
- Emigration
- Irish poetry’s engagement with critical theory
- The Irish poetic canon

Below is a possible, but not exhaustive, list of writers whose poetry papers could explore.
W.B. Yeats, Mary Devenport O’Neill, Sheila Wingfield, Blanaid Salkeid, Thomas MacGreevey, Denis Devlin, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Brian Coffey, Michael Smith, Trevor Joyce, Geoffrey Squires, Maggie O’Sullivan, Tom Raworth, John James, Catherine Walsh, Billy Mills, Randolph Healy, Maurice Scully, Mairéad Byrne.

Abstracts should be 300 words in length (approx) and should be emailed [log in to unmask] no later than the new deadline March 28th 2011.