Call for Papers – Out of the Ordinary: On Poetry and the World

A University of Canberra Conference, December 5-7, 2022

For Randall Jarrell, “The good in poetry is always a white blackbird, an unusual and unlikely excellence.”

Poetry seems to have exceptionalism at its core.

But poetry is also a practice of the commonest medium there is – language. People within all classes and groups cherish its use: the well-landed expression, irony and word plays, subtle forms of power.

Poetry’s status as the oldest and most widespread of the verbal arts likewise implies a close link to tradition. All the same, a residual strangeness seems to pertain to poetry in all cultures. It may be that tradition is a stranger thing than we tend to imagine.

How do poems relate to the world they proceed from or create? What is the world of a poem?

Proposals for 20 minute papers, or 90 minute panels, are invited, in relation to the poetry or poetics of any language or historical period. Proposals may address the above CFP or any related themes involving poetry and poetics, including

  • politics
  • repetition
  • gender
  • catastrophic climate change
  • habit
  • rhythm
  • composition
  • excess
  • ethnicity 
  • rhyme
  • personae
  • emotion
  • ellipses

Please submit your proposal to info@ucpoetry2022.info as follows: Title of paper, Name & affiliation, 250-word abstract and 100-word bio.      

Deadline for abstracts is 1 June 2022

(NB Attendees will be asked to submit proof of travel offsetting, as one plank (alongside carbon-neutral catering, public transport, low energy accommodation and paper eradication) in the conference’s strategy of achieving Climate Active certification as a Carbon Neutral Event) 

For all further information: https://ucpoetry2022.info/