Poetry on the Move: Inhabiting Language

This issue is connected to a one-day symposium to be held during the Poetry on the Move Festival, 13-17 September 2018, hosted by the International Poetry Studies Institute (IPSI) in the Faculty of arts and Design at the University of Canberra.

This Special Issue of the Axon journal aims to explore ways in which contemporary poetry ‘inhabits’ language, and the extent to which poetic language may be understood as inside and/or outside of human experience.

We are particularly interested in papers that relate to:

• How poetic expression and form may be said to ‘inhabit’ language.
• How poetry inhabits its language differently from prose, and how poetry dwells in the possible (remembering that Emily Dickinson wrote that she dwelt ‘in Possibility’ and that this was ‘a fairer House than Prose’).
• The ways in which poets ‘inhabit’ language in order to write their works.
• Poetry’s capacity to inhabit various and divergent languages through translation.
• The relationship of poetry to experience and knowledge.
• Poetry and autobiography.
• The space and time of poetry.
• The connection of poetry to ideas of home, place or belonging.
• Poetry’s connection to the quotidian.
• Poetry’s ways of ‘inhabiting’ diverse identities.
• The way poems ‘house’ ideas and emotions.
• Poetry as a way of knowing and/or inhabiting the ‘other’.
• Poetry and its relationship to language more broadly.
• Ways in which lyric utterance may be said to ‘belong’ inside human experience.

What we would like from contributors:

1. A 150-word abstract of your proposed paper by 20 April 2018.
2. If your abstract is accepted, a full written paper of between 3,000 and 6,000 words by 15 August 2018.

The editors of this issue of Axon: Creative Explorations journal are Professor Paul Hetherington, Professor Jen Webb and Shane Strange.

All abstracts, papers and related correspondence should be addressed to Shane Strange at Shane.Strange@canberra.edu.au