Poetics web collaboration goes live

A new international collaborative web event on the work of major American poet Alice Notley has gone live today. Constellation: Alice Notley features the work of 34 writers and poets, and includes videos, poems and essays.

Alice Notley is one of the most distinctive and exceptional voices in contemporary American poetry. On 10 May 2008 she came to the Birkbeck Contemporary Poetics Research Centre (CPRC) for a symposium shaped around her voice, which aimed to celebrate her extraordinary writing and generate its own creative ‘work’ of discussion in response. She read throughout, alongside short ten-minute talks by a small group of participants – poets and poet-critics – each of whom had chosen one poem or a short part of her work to explore.

"Constellation: Alice Notley is both a record of that exchange, revised for a new format, and a wider communal collaboration," said Dr Carol Watts, co-director of the CPRC. "It brings together the participants from the day with a more extensive network of connections and voices. It’s a remarkable document which shows how vibrant the current international scene for poetry is, and the way the web is transforming it."

The web event is curated by the Centre's co-director Carol Watts, Edmund Hardy of ‘Intercapillary Space’, and Steve Willey and Alex Davies of Openned.

Click here to explore the work of the collaboration