Features

Poetry Communities

A conference companion

Image of keynote panel
Maria Damon, Steve Yao, Brian Reed, and Craig Dworkin at Kelly Writers House, April 2012.

This feature is a companion to Poetry Communities and the Individual Talent, a conference that took place at the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania on April 13–14, 2012. The feature includes versions of papers that were given as part of the conference, reviews and commentaries related to the conference, as well as articles, reviews, and interviews that relate to poetry and community more broadly.

Dialogues with M. NourbeSe Philip

M. NourbeSe Philip. Photograph by A. L. Nielsen.

Recently the Canadian Caribbean poet M. NourbeSe Philip has begun to experiment with collaborative public readings of her book-length poem Zong!

Discourses on vocality

Vanessa Place, Kim Rosenfield, Rachel Zolf, and Myung Mi Kim

l-r: Divya Victor, Vanessa Place, Kim Rosenfield, Rachel Zolf, Myung Mi Kim.

The discourses with the poets Vanessa Place, Kim Rosenfield, Rachel Zolf, and Myung Mi Kim are records of developing notions of performance, composition, and authorial agency. We center on the work of the “voice” in its many, glossolalic manifestations, asking how the poetic “voice” (through speech, performance, ventriloquy, enunciation) witnesses the contemporary moment. These discourses hover around the opening in the lower part of the human face, surrounded by the lips, through which the discourses are taken in and from which interviews and other views are emitted.