To attend the conference at the Institut Universitaire de France, located in the Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche, ONLINE REGISTRATION is REQUIRED. Please register by Friday 24 June HERE
From Wednesday 29 June to Friday 1 July, the conference will be held at Institut Universitaire de France. On Saturday 2 July, the conference will be held at Université Paris Cité.
- Wednesday 29 June – Friday 1 July: Institut Universitaire de France
Amphithéâtre Gay Lussac
25 rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève
75005 Paris -
Saturday 2 July: Université Paris Cité
Salle des thèses 580F
Bâtiment Halle aux Farines
10, 16 rue Françoise Dolto 75013 Paris
9, 15 esplanade Pierre Vidal-Naquet 75013 Paris
This is the closing conference of a 5-year research program on the history of US poetry and poetics, in relation with the Poets and Critics program in Paris.
What has been happening on the US poetry scene over the past twenty years? According to what criteria and principles can the field of US poetry be read today? In the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the scene was structured and defined by poetic, aesthetic, and political tensions: is this still the case today? Or should it be approached differently, by inventing new categories? How is poetry as a genre defined today, and particularly in relation to other genres, and other forms of art? How have the internet and digitization changed the production and distribution of poetry? Who or what authorities legitimize poetry? What relationships do poets develop with institutions? With academia? How is poetry taught? How does poetry redefine the uses of language? How does it incorporate languages other than English? How important is translation in North American poetry today? What privileged connections are being established between the poetry of the United States and the poetries of other countries, especially its North American neighbors (whether the Caribbean, Central America, or Canada)? Are the local and regional poetry scenes as active as in the 1960s? Or do poets tend to associate on a larger scale based on professed identities? How do gender, race, and class call for and enact redefinitions of the poetic spectrum? What are the sociological specificities of North American poetry today? What are the preferred forms for poetics and the critique of poetry? What forms does formal exploration assume?
The ambition of this conference is to explore the field of contemporary poetry in North America over the past twenty years and to identify the relevant notions and concepts that will allow us to map its current configurations. We invite papers which focus on English-language poetry as well as bilingual or multilingual works including English as one of their languages. We welcome submissions that question and recontextualize the term “North American.” We are particularly interested in groups, poets, and works that stem from the modernist and experimental traditions even as they may question and overturn this legacy. We also invite submissions focusing on poems and poetics, groups and distribution networks, the geography and sociology of North American poetry, with the hope that they will contribute to sketching a recent history of North American poetry.
Program
- Wednesday 29 June:
1:30 pm Coffee & Welcome address
2-3:30 pm Panel 1: National, Transnational, Moderator: Michel Delville
1. Elizabeth Brunazzi, scholar, editor, with Charlot Lucien, storyteller, poet and visual art artist, “Contemporary Haitian Performance Poetry in and around New York, Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area and Montréal”
2. Zoë Skoulding, Bangor University, “Cross-border Ecologies of Translation”
3. Aurore Clavier, Université de Lille, “Place, Site, Nation : Joy Harjo and the multiscalar poetics of ‘Living Nations, Living Words’”
3:30-4 pm Coffee Break
4-5:30 pm Panel 2: Renewed Ecopoetics Constellations, Moderator: Jennifer Scappettone
1. Evelyn Reilly, poet, critic, “Lucretius, Extinction Rebellion, and the Poetics of Love and Rage”
2. Marta Werbanowska, University of Vienna, “African American Ecopoetics and Black Atlantic Ecological Thinking”
3. Joshua Schuster, Western University, Canada, “After the Last Avant-Gardes: Environmental Poetics as Extreme Writing”
7:30pm, Opening Reading
Atelier Michael Woolworth, 2 rue de la Roquette, 75011 Paris :
Sara Larsen, Srikanth (Chicu) Reddy, Lisa Robertson
- Thursday 30 June
9:15 Coffee
9:30-11 am Panel 3 Rethinking Montage, Moderator: Lacy Rumsey
1. Michel Delville, University of Liège, “Erasurist Poetics and Politics in North-America: 1998-2016”
2. Peter Middleton, University of Southampton, “The Politics of Repetition in Juliana Spahr, Layli Long Soldier, and Srikanth Reddy”
3. Steven Zultanski, poet, critic, “Genre and Process in the Poetry of Tan Lin”
11-11:30 am Coffee Break
11:30 am-12:30 pm Panel 4 Documentary Poetics, Moderator: Hélène Aji
1. William Dow, University Gustave Eiffel, “Metabolizing Genres: American Poetry and Literary Journalism”
2. Naomi Toth, University Paris Nanterre, “Poetic justice? Appropriating legal documents in contemporary North American poetry”
*
2-3 pm Panel 5 Queer & Feminist Interventions, Moderator: Sophie Seita
1. Claire Finch, University Paris 8, “Kathy Acker’s Cuntemporary – feminism, fuck you’s, and avant-garde literary technologies”
2. Héloïse Thomas, University Bordeaux-Montaigne, “‘It’s a poem I memorized to stay alive when everything in me screamed otherwise’: Poetry, Form, and Liberation in the 21st Century”
3-3:30 pm Coffee Break
3:30-4:30 pm Panel 6 The Poetics of Care and Health, Moderator: Daniel Katz
1. Adam Clay, University of la Rochelle, “Politics and aesthetics of care in Brandy Nalani McDougall’s poems”
2. Toni R. Juncosa, University of Barcelona, “‘Every day is a funeral and a miracle:’ Danez Smith’s Poetry, HIV, and 21st-Century Elegiac Genre”
- Friday 1 July
9:15 Coffee
9:30-11 am Panel 7 Anthologies, Race, and Identities, Moderator: Olivier Brossard
1. Maria Manning, University College Cork, “‘This anthology is meant to expand the idea of who a poet is and what a poem is for’: Identity and Action in Breakbeat Poetry”
2. Samantha Majhor, Marquette University, “Indigenous Rising: Native Voices in the 21st Century North American Poetic Landscape”
3. Patrick Durgin, Art Institute of Chicago, “Xenophobia, Cosmopolitanism, Our Heuristic Conditions”
11-11:30 am Coffee Break
11:30 am-1 pm Panel 8 Xenoglossia, Accents, and Polyvocality, Moderator: Zoë Skoulding
1. Jennifer Scappettone, University of Chicago, Visiting Professor, Université Gustave Eiffel, “Glottal Stop: Xenoglossic Breathing and Poetic Transmutations of the Mother Tongue”
2. Andrew Eastman, Université de Strasbourg, “Listening with the body: poetics of accent in the work of Cathy Park Hong”
3. Shiv Kotecha, New York University / Rhode Island School of Design, “Side Kicks: Not White Fabulation in White Poetry”
*
2:30-4 pm Panel 9 Digital Poetics and Mixed Media, Moderator: Peter Middleton
1. Alessandro De Francesco, Turin Academy of Fine Arts, Bern Academy of the Arts, and Danny Snelson, University of California, Los Angeles, “Immersive Poetry and VR Poetics”
2. Joe Milutis, University of Washington-Bothell, “Attack of the Vernacular: Internet Poetics, Platforms, Pedagogy”
3. Zsófia Szatmári, Université Paris 8 / Eötvös Loránd University, “Abigail Child’s ‘Foreign’ Poems”
4-4:30 pm Coffee Break
4:30-6 pm Panel 10 The Politics of Teaching, Moderator: Vincent Broqua
1. Hélène Aji, Ecole normale supérieure, “Modernist Hangover : Bob Perelman, ‘poet, teacher and critic’”
2. Chloé Thomas, Université d’Angers, “Revisiting the poetry workshop”
3. Michael Barnholden, poet, artist, scholar, “The Kootenay School of Writing: A political intervention more than anything else”
7:30 pm, Collective Poetry Reading,
Michael Barnholden, Alessandro De Francesco et Danny Snelson, Patrick Durgin, Claire Finch, Toni R. Juncosa, Shiv Kotecha, Charlot Lucien, Joe Milutis, Evelyn Reilly, Jennifer Scappettone, Sophie Seita, Zoë Skoulding, Steve Zultanski
Maison de la poésie de Paris, 157 Rue Saint-Martin, 75003 Paris
- Saturday 2 July
La salle des thèses se situe au 5e étage de la Halle aux Farines (Hall F, accès par le Hall E, allée paire, ascenseur F, Salle 580). Vous pouvez y accéder par le 10, rue Françoise Dolto ou par le 9, Esplanade Vidal-Naquet.
The Salle des thèses is located on the 5th floor of the Halle aux Farines (Hall F, access by Hall E, allée paire, elevator F, Room 580). You can access the building at 10, rue Françoise Dolto or 9, Esplanade Vidal-Naquet.
10:30 am Coffee
11 am-12:30 pm Panel 11 Listening to Poetry, Moderator : Abigail Lang
1. Alexander Bell, University of East Anglia, “Lisa Robertson’s Prosody”
2. Lacy Rumsey, Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon, “Directions and Limits in Twenty-First Century Prosody”
3. Sophie Seita, artist, writer, researcher, “Poetry Live: A Playlist”
*
2-3:30 pm Panel 12 Poetics of Address
1. Paulina Ambroży, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, “The Unfindable Self and Poem-as-Habitat in Evelyn Reilley’s Echolocation and a. rawlings’ Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists”
2. Andrew Gorin, New York University, “Lyric Noise: The Phatic Subject of Poetry in the Mass Public Sphere”
3. Daniel Katz, University of Warwick, “‘These Feelings of Futurelessness’: Peter Gizzi’s Now It’s Dark“