15 Mar CfP: Out of the Ordinary: On Poetry and the World
A University of Canberra Conference, December 5-7, 2022
C.D. Wright was described in the New York Times as a poet who “belongs to a school of exactly one.” For Randall Jarrell, “The good in poetry is always a white blackbird, an unusual and unlikely excellence.” Poetry seems to have exceptionalism at its core.
But poetry is also a practice of the commonest medium there is – language. People within all classes and groups cherish its use: the well-landed expression, irony and word plays, subtle forms of power.
Poetry’s status as the oldest and most widespread of the verbal arts likewise implies a close link to tradition. All the same, a residual strangeness seems to pertain to poetry in all cultures. It may be that tradition is a stranger thing than we tend to imagine.
How do poems relate to the world they proceed from or create? What is the world of a poem?
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Proposals for 20 minute papers, or 90 minute panels, are invited, in relation to the poetry or poetics of any language or historical period. Proposals may address the above questions, or any related themes involving poetry and poetics, including:
- politics
- repetition
- gender
- catastrophic climate change
- habit
- rhythm
- composition
- excess
- ethnicity
- rhyme
- personae
- emotion
- ellipses
Please submit your proposal to [email protected]
(along with: Title of paper, Name & affiliation, 250-word abstract and 100-word bio).
Deadline for abstracts is 1 June 2022
For all further information: