Oxford Weekend

Attended a very interesting poetry symposium and read at Teddy Hall over the weekend. Met Mina Ebtehadj-Marquis for Sat brunch, and spent time with Anna, Adam, James, and Reuben, whom I stayed with.

Organized by Kristin Grogan and Hugh Foley, "Special Relationships: Poetry Across the Atlantic Since 2000," Friday, May 19, Rothermere American Institute:

Panel 1
Mary Jean Chan (Royal Holloway) - Spatial and Spiritual Subalternity in Kei Miller's The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
Dave Coates (Edinburgh) - Awards Culture and Whiteness in Contemporary Poetry
Dai George (UCL) - The Salt Aesthetic: American Influence in British Poetry's Experimental Mainstream

Panel 2
Jess Cotton (UCL) - Performing (In)visibility: Bhanu Kapil, Sileutas, and the Supine Body
Jewel Pereyra (Georgetown) - Resisting a Legar Grammar: Poetic Embodiment and Tidal Memory in M. NourbeSe Philip's Zong! and Claudia Rankine's Citizen
 Jee Leong Koh (The Brearley School) - Complication as a Form of Explication (A reading of my work-in-progress Does grass sweat)

Panel 3
Pierre Monot (Ludwig-Maximillian) - The Poetics of Democratice Self-Limitation (on George Oppen)
Jack Belloli (Cambridge) - The Hatred of Prosody: Or, On Not Wanting to Talk About Prose and Verse Any More
Rosa Campbell (St. Andrews) - Eileen Myles's Transatlantic Tweets: The New York School in the Era of Social Media

Panel 4
Josh Robinson (Cardiff) - Borders, Boundaries, Limits: The Poetics of Andrea Brady
Mohammad Shahidul Islam Chowdhury (East Delta University, Chittagong): The Enigmatic Self in Alice Oswald and Brenda Shaughnessy
Bridget Vincent (Nottingham) - Staging Sorrow: Vicarious Apology in Geoffrey Hill

Poetry Roundtable
Sandeep Parmar, Sarah Howe, and Oli Hazzard, chaired by Erica McAlpine

--

The reading at Teddy Hall on Saturday, May 20, was organized by Peter J King. I read with Erica McAlpine, who took Horace as her chief inspiration for her first book of poetry. In sapphics, she wrote about birds, flowers, and beasts with great facility and charm. It was also good to hear Peter read again. We first met at Albion Beatnik Bookshop two years ago when I was there to launch Steep Tea.

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