Past Events

Symposium Archive 2003

Societies of American Poetry
Dissenting Practices

A symposium & festival at Georgetown University and the Folger Shakespeare Library
February 20, 21, & 22, 2003

"What does not change / is the will to change."
--Charles Olson

Symposium Panels | Symposium Schedule

Whatever it is that motivates writing, it's safe to say that poetry has some definite relation--of critique, indifference, support, reflection, determination--to the society in which the writer lives. Over time this relation will be thought in any number of ways, at one focus, to put it crudely, the notion of the private subject writing for ends that remain private or unknowable and autonomous from designs of utility, and at the other an explicit programmatic intention to influence the reader?s own political commitments and conduct. "You're the only one who's earning any money and yet you think that you can afford to have opinions." So then, in the spirit of Brecht, this symposium will seek to prompt opinion & reflection from poets on the sociality of art. The tacit problem could be phrased in this way: what entanglements, collusions, collisions, reverberations may be said to exist between poetic practice and the states of America, in this era? Thinking America broadly as the site of imperium and fluctuation--fissures--in the meaning of "our": poetry in our America. That's the general drift and bearing perhaps upon the areas below, each one meant to test poetry 2003, what it is or might be.

Border Zones
There are borders within the United States--between languages, races, neighborhoods, categories in the census. Religions. A culture unsettled, impure, double-crossed, bastardized--"another bastard in a world of bastards" (W.C. Williams)--by flows in and out of bordered spaces--people with their memories and speech--that fit in, that do not fit in. The complex situation of border zones--how to talk about poetry from such spaces, or poetry as such spaces made legible?

Field Work
The archive: written, read, preserved, circulated, lost, retrieved, suppressed. Field work initiates a dialogue between practice and its contexts. How might one understand editorial, publishing, archival, or documentary work in relation to "art's social presence?" (Adrienne Rich) What does this sort of work imagine for contemporary or future writing?

Performance Media
The move away from the orthodoxy of the book and printed page--towards what? Poetry in the age of Story Space and Disney. Orality, digital environments, body, image: a vigor, an expansion in the codes for legitimate expression? An investigation into codes? Other sites for poetry but with what cultural capacity, what interference into the general cultural static?

Social / Lyric
An inquiry into agnosticism. How much does one know, does one need to know, about effects? About intentions? Poetry is an individual affair--expressive, subjective, fat with personality, aesthetic form. What does lyric poetry do? Can one think of poetry as useful? With a social function? If social, how is this function manifested? How to talk about the relation between "social" and "lyric?" Where is the intersection meaningful?

Thursday, February 20, 2003

5:30-7:00 p.m.
Opening Reception (Copley Formal Lounge)

7:00-9:00 p.m.
Poetry Reading & Performance I (Copley)
Ward Tietz, Sharan Strange, Rod Smith, Elizabeth Willis, Mark Nowak, Jean Donnelly

9:00-10:00 p.m.
Open Mic Reading (Copley)

Friday, February 21, 2003

10:00-11-30 a.m.
Field Work Symposium I (311 New North)
Peter Gizzi, Mark Wallace, Cole Swenson, Mark Nowak, Lisa Jarnot, Tom Orange

11:45-1:15 p.m.
Border Zones Symposium II (311 New North)
Juliana Spahr, Mark McMorris, Rod Smith, Harryette Mullen, Rodrigo Toscano

3:00-4:30 p.m.
Performance Media Symposium III (311 New North)
Tracie Morris, Buck Downs, Bill Howe, Edwin Torres, Ward Tietz

7:00-9:00 p.m.
Poetry Reading & Performance II (311 New North)
Edwin Torres, Tom Orange, Lisa Jarnot, Mark McMorris, Cole Swenson, Juliana Spahr

9:00-10:00 p.m.
Open Mic Reading (311 New North)

Saturday, February 22, 2003

1:30-3:00 p.m.
Social / Lyric Symposium IV (Folger Library Haskell Center)
Myung Mi Kim, Elizabeth Robinson, Jennifer Moxley, Sharan Strange, Elizabeth Willis, Beth Anderson, David Gewanter

3:30-5:30 p.m.
Poetry Reading & Performance III (Folger Library Theatre)
Harryette Mullen, David Gewanter, Rodrigo Toscano, Mark Wallace, Bill Howe, Jennifer Moxley

7:00-9:00 p.m.
Poetry Reading & Performance IV (Folger Library Theatre)
Tracie Morris, Elizabeth Robinson, Buck Downs, Myung Mi Kim, Beth Anderson, Peter Gizzi