“An ingenuity too astonishing”: The Poetry of Amy Clampitt

36th Annual Conference of the American Literature Association, May 21-24, 2025 (Boston)

We are seeking 15–20-minute paper proposals on the work of Amy Clampitt for a session at the annual American Literature Association Conference, to be held in Boston, May 21-24, 2025. We are interested in abstracts that examine Clampitt’s work from a variety of perspectives. As such, we have kept this call fairly capacious. Potential topics may include but are in no way limited to:

• Clampitt’s “predecessors”: the influence of a wide variety of poets on Clampitt’s poetry—Keats, Hopkins, Shelley, the list seems delightfully endless.
• Clampitt and the baroque
• The poet’s politics / the politics of her poetry
• Clampitt and the effusion of language
• Clampitt as a poet of the natural world

We hope to shape this panel around CFP submissions rather than to impose boundaries at this stage. As Clampitt’s work remains desperately under-studied, there remains so much ground to cover. We hope that keeping the brief general will facilitate a more productive conversation both before and during the conference.

Those interested should send a roughly 250-word abstract to Lara Meintjes (larameintjes@berkeley.edu) no later than December 5th, 2024. Please include your academic affiliation (if any) and a brief biographical note with your abstract.