AbstractsPosted by Lasse Gammelgaard Thu, October 15, 2009 12:23:53Oú vont les chiens?
Poetry today exists by and through its own negation. With the radical alterations which poetry was exposed to towards the end of the 19th century (Baudelaire among others), the tension between affirmation and negation becomes the basic term of poetry. Poetry loses its specificity, its generic constituent – the genre of the lyric. Thus, the poetry that succeeds “poetry” – the post-poetry – lacks a poetic label. With Sorties as point of departure, this talk aims to describe how post-poetry exists exactly outside a poetic space. One of the main points in the talk is to elucidate the internal exits which are created through post-poetry – internal exits from what is widely recognised as the traditional poetical circus ring.
Jean-Marie Gleize is professor in French literature at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon where he is chairman of Centre d’études poétiques. He is also the founder and editor the review Nioques. His fields of expertise include: the poetic works of Francis Ponge and Rimbaud, post-poetry, literalism and poetic objectivism. Gleize is also a poet himself.
Selected writings: Poésie et figuration (1983), Poésie et figuration (1983), Simplification lyrique (1987), Léman (1990), A noir. Poésie et littéralité (1992), Le principe de nudité intégrale (1995), Les Chiens noir de la prose (1999) Néon (2004), Sorties (2009).
AbstractsPosted by Lasse Gammelgaard Tue, October 13, 2009 10:05:41Reading by Fractions: Some of
Robert Lowell’s Sonnets
Many
of the ways in which the study of literature has conceived, defended and
marketed itself over the last 20 years or so have been more or less explicitly
“ethical”. Literature, in such a context, is fundamentally entangled with
questions of right or wrong, can do us good (in a suitably complicated
post-poststructuralist way), or, at least, can help us do the theoretical work
of meta-ethics or moral philosophy. Poetry, particularly modern poetry, has
often seemed much less amenable to this kind of approach than prose fiction.
This paper considers some texts that might seem particularly unaccommodating –
five of Robert Lowell’s sonnets “about” his daughter and ex-wife – and seeks to
bring out some of their provocative ethical potential, particularly in relation
to questions of quantification and commensurability.
PhD,
University College
London, 1994.
Worked at during the 90s at universities in England,
Poland, USA and Wales. At Aarhus
since 1998. Professor of Literatures in English since Nov. 2008. Books: Authorship,
Ethics and the Reader: Blake, Dickens, Joyce (Macmillan, 1997); Literature,
Identity and the English Channel (Palgrave, 2002); articles in journals
such as Discourse, Dickens Quarterly, Film-Philosophy, European
Journal of English Studies. Current projects include a book on literature,
ethics and quantification.
AbstractsPosted by Lasse Gammelgaard Mon, October 12, 2009 14:21:45Poetic
Economy
The
new experimental/conceptual literature and art have in recent history developed
in smaller scenes and within modest publicity frames – in artistic, social and
political systems and networks beyond the dominant culture. These scenes have
created alternative infrastructures – for the publishing and distribution of
artistic material, based on certain relational and organisational conditions;
conditions that have generated new aesthetic options. With a view to
introducing the contemporary experimental publishing scene of literary small
presses, printed matter and little magazines, this talk will focus on the
tendencies based on a breaking up in the publishing culture and publishing
strategies in Scandinavia for the last years.
Marianne
Ping Huang is Head of the Department of
Arts and Cultural Studies. Before joining the department, she was Associate
Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Aarhus.
She is coordinator of the Danish Research Network of Avant Garde Studies and
the Nordic Research Network of Avant Garde Studies, and she has been involved
in establishing the European Network of Avant Garde and Modernism Studies. She
is currently working on auditory aspects of literature in readings, media art
and print literature. She has been member of the Danish Literature Council and
since 2003 member of the Committee of the Nordic Council's Literature Prize.
Audun
Lindholm is the editor of Vagant, he runs the small publishing company
Gasspedal, he is the co-editor of Tekstallianse and Audiatur.
AbstractsPosted by Lasse Gammelgaard Wed, October 07, 2009 10:18:36Poetic Movement
Whenever we read verse – seated in the armchair while
at the same time, in a space both imaginary and real, walking through the poem
– a phenomenon which we frequently encounter is that of syntactic incompletion
at the end of the poetic line. At this point, at which meaning as carried by
syntax may be felt to break down, if only momentarily, are we then to ‘soften
the blow’ of the line-end, gliding along to the next line to find syntax
completing itself as if seamlessly? Or, conversely, are we to stop, to pause,
aligning ourselves, as it were, with the interruptive force of the linear
end-point, savouring, so to speak, the moment of syntactico-semantic breakdown
inflicted by it? – Phenomenologically, this question is fundamental. Any attempt
to answer it would seem to require an investigation into the very fundamentals
of the experience of reading verse. Glimpses of what such an investigation
might reveal, now, are such as we shall be attempting to catch.
Cand.phil. in Danish, Research Scholarship (1999-2003), Assistant Professor (2004-2007) and Associate Professor (2007-2008) at the Department of Scandinavian Studies and Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen. Vistiting Scholar & Fulbright Fellow, New York University (1999-2000). President in the Nordic Poetic Company. Author of Sprog versus sprog: Mod en versets poetik (2003). Recently submitted a doctoral thesis titled The Body in the Line: Steps to a Phenomenology of Verse.
AbstractsPosted by Lasse Gammelgaard Tue, October 06, 2009 14:18:47The
Newness of Poetry
My
talk takes as its point of departure Derek Attridge's concept of the 'newness'
(as contradistinguished to the 'originality') of poetry. Through a reading of a
poem by William Wordsworth I propose to exemplify and to discuss the quality of
the new in poetry - and to raise the question: Is newness the specific force of
poetry?
Lis
Møller, mag.art. et lic.phil., associate professor, Department for Comparative
Literature, Aarhus Universitet, Co-Founder of Dansk Selskab for Romantikstudier
(Danish Society for Studies of Romanticism), author of the monograph The
Freudian Reading (1991) and many articles on various subjects, especially
on English Romanticism and Scandinavian Modernism (Ibsen).
AbstractsPosted by Lasse Gammelgaard Tue, October 06, 2009 14:17:18Hearing
Voices
Considerations
of the ontology of sound in recorded voice, considering the implications for
poetry of one hundred years of voices on tape. The conjuring of voice
unattached has a profound significance for poetry as a medium. The
grammaphone reverses the Jakobsonian definition of poetry: it incites the
perception of mechanical sound as if it were speech. The grammaphone is a
reverse order poetry machine. The recorded voice only speaks; the
possibility for dialog or response always present at a reading – where the
presence of an audience intimately affects what is being presented – is
illusory, making our close listening across the electrostatic barrier all the
more our own private affair. The recorded reading reenacts the conditions for
dialog without its actual presence, unless we want to consider the presence of
the imagination. For the imaginative projection solicited by close listening to
the grammaphonic poem is the one writing has required all along. For teachers,
one obvious implication of the archive of recorded poetry becoming more
available is that listening to the poem read by the poet might become a
commonplace feature in any course. The sound file would become, ipso facto, a
text for study, much like the visual document. Another central issue is the
effect that sound files might have on scholarly editions.
Bernstein
is Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania. With Bruce Andrews, he
edited L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. From 1990 to 2003, he was
David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters at the State University of New York
at Buffalo and
Director of the Poetics Program, which he co-founded, with Robert Creeely. In
2002, he was appointed SUNY Distinguished Professor (the university's highest
rank). Bernstein has been writer-in-residence or visiting faculty at Columbia
University, Princeton University, Brown University, Temple University, Bard
College, the New School for Social Research, Queens College, and the University
of California at San Diego and is an associate faculty member of the
Transdisciplinary PhD Program on "Languages, Identities, and
Globalization," Faculty of Arts & Sciences, University of Coimbra
(Portugal). Charles Bernstein is the author of 40 books, ranging from
large-scale collections of poetry and essays to pamphlets, libretti,
translations, and collaborations.
AbstractsPosted by Lasse Gammelgaard Tue, October 06, 2009 14:15:17Lyric Story-Telling
Poetry is one of the few literary modes perceived to be situated outside
the ever-widening narrative realm. Indeed, its non-narrativity is often cited
as its most salient characteristic, with the lyric mode allegedly being all
that the narrative is not: a-temporal, non-spatial, non-dynamic, non-specific,
anti-illusionist.
This paper attempts to
demonstrate that the lyric is and always has been heavily reliant on
narrativity and its various textual strategies. While poetry does indeed at
times present itself as a text type which features a disembodied,
linguistically self-conscious voice reflecting on the timeless truths of the
human condition, it rarely does so without resorting to devices of a clear
narrative nature in order to heighten a text’s mimetic and emotional appeal.
Eva Mueller-Zettelmann is an associate professor at the University of Vienna. She studied in Graz
and Oxford, has
collaborated with Monika Fludernik and Ansgar Nuenning and has been appointed
external expert to the Hamburg Interdisciplinary Centre of Narratology. Her
work focusses on narratology, the theory of poetry, cognitive theory and
contemporary British poetry.
ProgramPosted by Mathias Kokholm Tue, October 06, 2009 11:53:0620TH OF OCTOBER12.30 – 12.45: Welcome
12.45 – 13.30: Charles Bernstein: HEARING VOICES
13.30 – 13.45: Discussion
13.45–14.30:Dominic Rainsford: READING BY FRACTIONS: SOME OF ROBERT LOWELL’S SONNETS
14.30 – 14.45: Discussion
14.45 – 15.30: Lunch & Coffee
15.30 – 16.15: Jean-Marie Gleize: OÙ VONT LES CHIENS?
16.15 – 16.30: Discussion
21ST OF OCTOBER10.15 – 11.00: Frank Kjørup: POETIC MOVEMENT
11.00 – 11.15: Discussion
11.15 – 12.00: Eva Müller-Zettelmann: LYRIC STORY-TELLING
12.00 – 12.15: Discussion
12.15 – 13.00: Lunch & Coffee
13.00 – 13.30: Lis Møller: THE NEWNESS OF POETRY
13.30 – 13.45: Discussion
13.45 – 14:45: Panel Discussion: POETIC ECONOMY
- feat. Audun Lindholm & Marianne Ping Huang
***
Poetry has traditionally enjoyed a privileged position within
literary studies in grade school, upper secondary school and at the
universities. Even though literature departments at many universities
today seem to embrace issues of multiculturalism and globalisation, the
production of poetry proliferates. The aim of this seminar is
threefold, inquiring into: what kind of poetry is written today and how
is it distributed? From a critical point of view, which reading
strategies are fecund when approaching (contemporary as well as
canonical) poetry? And finally, what is the specific force of poetry?
What will be missed in its absence? Distinguished scholars from various
countries and dis- ciplines have been invited to reflect on these
pivotal matters.
