Poetry & Revolution

Event description

This event is free - please register here

Programme

The current crisis makes it possible to think what couldn’t be thought before. With its echoes of previous crises of modern society, it places on the agenda a reappraisal of revolutionary art from the point of view of the necessities of the present. Poetry has always had a vital relationship with revolution, notably in the 17^th and 18^th century bourgeois revolutions (Milton, Blake, Shelley, Victor Hugo are some of the obvious names, as well as popular radicals of the 17c and later) and in revolutionary movements of the 19^th and 20^th century (Rimbaud, Khlebnikov, Maiakovski, Brecht, Tzara, Vallejo, Neruda, Baraka, to name just a few).

In fact, the names indicate that revolutionary movements have shaped the mainstream of poetry. Conversely poets have articulated the truth enunciated by revolution with a force not to be found anywhere else. It is also true that revolutionary thought, such as Marx’s, cannot be properly understood without giving attention to its poetics.

The conference will explore how poetry and revolution historically have been intertwined and in current practice are vital to each other.

Keynote talks: Joan Retallack, Mark Nowak, Jack Hirschman
Readings and performances: Tom Leonard, Joan Retallack, Jack Hirschman, Ziba Karbassi, Sean Bonney, Harry Gilonis, Ulli Freer, Keston Sutherland, Marianne Morris, Maggie O'Sullivan, Abdullah al-Udhari, Ulli Freer

The conference is co-organised and supported by the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre