In anticipation of the 2022 Annual Convention of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Languages Association (to be held at UCLA, November 11-13, 2022), we seek proposals on the intersections of politics and poetry in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  This session affords a space to assess the past century’s poetic/political interventions, exploring how poetry and poetic experience have lent themselves to critiquing the status quo, imagining radical futures, mobilizing collectivities, and resisting the present in various ways.  Of particular interest are abstracts that are adjacent to the conference theme –“Geographies of the Fantastic and Quotidian” –or which specifically engage with the poetry of Los Angeles as a site for scholarly excavation.  However, we invite all kinds of engagements with the potentials of poetry as political praxis, including, but not limited to, the following:

• studies of individual poets as political and social agents;
• inquiries into the political efficacies of particular poetic movements;
• explorations of radical poetry’s relationship to other cultural practices;
• interventions into critical debates about committed art;
• celebrations or critiques of poetry’s activist uses

At this moment of ceaseless political upheaval and strategic uncertainty, let us renew our inquiries about poetry’s ongoing relevance and its perennial appeal to those seeking explanation and inspiration. This special session is hosted by the Center for Contemporary Poetry and Poetics at California State University, Los Angeles.

Inquiries may be directed to panel organizer Dr. Andrew Lyndon Knighton at aknight@calstatela.edu.  Abstracts may be submitted through May 15, via the following link:  https://pamla.ballastacademic.com