Spring Cleaning:
Rediscovering and Revitalizing the Artifact
University of Calgary Free Exchange Graduate Conference
16-18 March 2007
Calgary, Alberta
For more information, please visit Free Exchange at www.english.ucalgary.ca

Poetics of the Artifact

In many ways, poetry can be approached as the forgotten artifact in the
cluttered basement of the popular literary genres. It conceals more than
it reveals but it often has the potential to open the floodgates of
possibility with a single monad: an object leads to a thought, a memory, a
word, a letter, a comma, or a space. The carved ivory swans left behind by
an extinct civilization prompt Al Purdy's wandering "Lament for the
Dorsets," just as the stone hammer which sits atop Robert Kroetsch's desk
becomes the site of sustained poetic exercise. From Keats' Grecian urn, to
Sharon Olds' "Photographs Courtesy of the Fall River Historical Society,"
this call invites proposals which address the poetic artifact and the
artifact's poetics. This general panel seeks to engage with the ways that
poets have used, abused, alluded to, dismissed, ignored, or celebrated the
artifact, as well as the ways that poetry and poems themselves have become
cultural or literary artifacts. How have Emily Dickinson's fascicles
suggested how we might approach her body of work? What can we know of
Beowulf from its single damaged manuscript, and how can we know it? The
possibilities surrounding the poetic artifact, like those surrounding
poetry itself, are endless…

Proposals could explore, but are certainly not limited to, the following
topics:

*poetic object as artifact
*the poem or manuscript as artifact
*revisions as reflection of artifact
*art/if/acted: performance and spoken word as translation
*artifact as metaphor/metonym
*poetic interpretations of artifacts
*the avant garde/experimental artifact
*the artifact of a poetic era or moment

Deadline for submissions: 2 February 2007
Please submit 250 word proposals (for papers approx. 15 minutes in length)
to panel chair Owen Percy at odfpercy_at_ucalgary.ca. Attachments should be
in Rich Text or Word format only, and please include your name,
professional affiliation, and contact information in the body of your
email.

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Received on Sat Jan 06 2007 - 18:56:44 EST