Lines of Inquiry: New Approaches to Poetry

This one-day symposium will showcase new scholarly approaches to twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry.

At a time when poetry is more visible than ever in digital spaces and popular media, when it is produced and consumed by an increasingly diverse and connected global community, when distinctions between different modes of poem-making continue to blur, and when small presses and lively collectives are reshaping the landscape for publishing and performance, poetry scholars have also had to adapt. 

This online event will offer a space for sharing new critical approaches. The half-day will feature a series of 10-minute lightning talks from scholars across the globe, exploring new approaches to poetry and technology, poetry genres, and poetic ways of working. See below for further details of these talks.

The day will conclude with a plenary roundtable with authors of recent monographs on poetry, reflecting on challenges and trajectories in poetry criticism more generally, including: Jahan Ramazani (author of Poetry in a Global Age, 2020), Natalie Pollard (Poetry, Publishing, and Visual Culture from Late Modernism to the Twenty-first Century, 2020), JT Welsch (The Selling and Self-Regulation of Contemporary Poetry, 2020), and Jeneen Naji (Digital Poetry, 2021).

Registration for Zoom access to all sessions is available here.

Programme

New & Old Technologies (12.30-2pm)

• Jon Stone (Winchester), 'Poems are Toys'
• Shenhao Bai (Beijing), 'Resurgence of Critique? Generation Z’s Learning of Poetry in the Age of AI'
• Victor Gauci Borda (Malta), 'De-Virtualising Poetry'
• Emily Roach (York), 'Performance Poetry and Participatory Culture'

New & Old Genres (2-3pm)

• Karen Jane Cannon (Southampton), 'Seeing Nature Without Sight'
• Bridget Vincent (Nottingham), 'The Argument of the Lyric Essay'
• Aileen Lobban (Stirling), 'Proverbial Thinking in Louise Bennett's Poetry'

New & Old Ways of Working (3-4pm)

• Antony Huen (Open University of Hong Kong), 'Hong Kong Ekphrasis'
• Will May (Southampton), 'Writing In Our Mentors: Literary History and Poetic Process'
• Francisca Fernández Arce (York), 'Writing in tune: Being in the work and Ciaran Carson’s musical aesthetics of performance'

Roundtable: New Approaches to Poetry (4-5pm)

• Jahan Ramazani (Virginia, author Poetry in a Global Age, 2020) 
• Natalie Pollard (Exeter, author of Poetry, Publishing, and Visual Culture from Late Modernism to the Twenty-first Century, 2020)
• JT Welsch (York, author of The Selling and Self-Regulation of Contemporary Poetry, 2020)
• Jeneen Naji (Maynooth, author of Digital Poetry, 2021)