Poetickall
Bombshells
For many groups of writers and poets, the 1950s and 60s were a period of dissent and battles with political conformity and other side effects of apparently universal socio-economic prosperity in the USA. Several of these groups, circles or coteries formulated explicitly non-conformist poetics, either implicitly in their writings or explicitly as manifestoes, programmes etc.
This workshop invites papers that examine any aspects of these attempts at a poetics of nonconformity, but particularly papers that focus on poetics of constraint. Such constraints may be argued to illustrate how the writers aspire towards non-conformity, paradoxically through conforming locally to self-imposed, ‘alternative’ aesthetic and political rules and norms which keep them bound to a sort of constraint imposed from within and forming part of the creative process.
As examples one could mention constraints relating to the length of line or stanza (f. ex. use of the haiku form), strictures of stanza forms (f. ex. Ashbery’s sestinas and villanelles), format of paper either in production or reproduction of the poem (f. ex. Kerouac and Ammons’ spools and loops), collaborative and intergeneric art forms (f. ex. O’Hara and Rivers’ lithographic poems), presence and absence of titles (cf. The New York School), disjunctive writing (f. ex. Olson’s ‘enactment’), or use of the natural rhythms of the body, such as units of the breath (cf. Ginsberg and McClure).
Papers dealing with representatives of The Beat Generation, The San Francisco Renaissance, The Black Mountain Poets/Objectivists, The New York School, The Merry Pranksters and other circles of writers, poets and artists are welcome.
Conveners:
Bent Sørensen
Aalborg University, Denmark
Nephie Christodoulides
University of Cyprus
Session 1 -
1. Franca Bellarsi, Université
Libre de
Bruxelles, Belgium: AllenGinsberg and
Michael McClure: Physical Embodiment as
Textual Constraint
2. Olivier Brossard, Université de Paris VII, France: "Too hip for the squares and too square for
the hips": Frank O'Hara's Poetry
3. Erik Ronald Mortenson, University of Erlangen, Germany: "Apocalyptic Orgasms": The Paradox of Beat Sexual Liberation
4. Bent Sørensen,
Aalborg University, Denmark:
The Spools, Loops and Patches of Jack
Kerouac and A.R. Ammons
Session 2 -
5. Vincent Brogua, Université de Paris
XII,
France: John Cage's Poetics of
Nonconformity?
6. Camelia Elias,
Aalborg University, Denmark: Exquisite Crossings: Andrei Codrescu's Rules of
Conventions
7. Anastasia
Stephanidou, University of Athens,
Greece: Poetry as Political Performance