CALL. 01.10.2018: Fleshing Out Words: Poetry on Objects, from Classical Epigrams to Modern 'Ligh
FECHA LÍMITE/DEADLINE/SCADENZA: 01/10/2018
FECHA CONGRESO/CONGRESS DATE/DATA CONGRESSO: 09/03/2019
LUGAR/LOCATION/LUOGO: University of Warwick (Warwick, England)
ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Paloma Perez Galvan ; Alessandra Tafaro
INFO: web - fleshingoutwords.warwick@gmail.com
CALL:
When in 2012 the artist Robert Montgomery placed the aluminium letters of his poem ‘All palaces are/ temporary palaces’ in an empty swimming pool (Stattbad Wedding, Berlin), he deliberately embodied the written word into a physical context. With his ‘light poems’, he demonstrates how poetry can be a billboard, a tattooed body or even a gift to exchange for coffee: this interplay between word and object was already a quintessential feature of Graeco-Roman 'epigrammatic' poetry, which could be scratched or carved into walls, statues and stones. In our era of ‘Instagram poets’ and the quotation-culture of tweets, bits of poetry are spread across urban landscapes and social networks in the most variated forms, ingeniously combining words and objects, and making us aware of our inheritance of ideas developed in different ways in classical antiquity, linking poetry, materiality and objects.
The ancient epigram, a poetic form conscious of its ‘writtenness’ which originated as inscription (on gravestones, monuments and other objects) and which in fascinating ways lives on in our contemporary society, foregrounds questions about the materiality of texts in ways that we will take as a point of departure for this inter-disciplinary conference. When poetry is engraved on stones, scratched into walls, written on an object, how does the nature and use of that object affect our interpretation of the text? To what extent and how does the medium on which a poem is viewed influence the reader/viewer’s perception of it? This conference aims to investigate the shift between the epigram as embodying an inseparability of text and materiality, as conceived in the classical period and in the Renaissance (Neo-Latin epigram), and the modern re-interpretation of poetry on objects.
The conference aims to create cross-disciplinary discussion amongst scholars in Classics, Arts, Comparative Literature, Renaissance.
We therefore welcome proposals engaging with - but not limited to - the following topics:
• Theoretical/ philosophical perspectives on poetry and materiality;
• The epigram book/ epigram as inscription;
• Continuities and differences between the conception of object and text in ancient/Renaissance epigrams and the new material expressions of modern poetry;
• (Responses to) the visual context/visuality of epigrams;
• The extent to which readings of ancient and/or Renaissance epigram might spur new perspectives on the contemporary production and consumption of poetry;
• The extent to which ‘epigram’ is a useful category/ recognizable poetic form in the modern world;
• The emergence of the Neo-Latin epigram.
Abstracts for 20-minute papers of no more than 300 words should be sent to fleshingoutwords.warwick@gmail.com by Monday 1st October 2018 (end of the day).
Please include in the body of your email: name, university affiliation and current position. Following the conference, we intend to submit proposal to the Warwick Series in the Humanities (with Routledge) for a collected volume: potential speakers should state with their abstract whether they wish to participate in this volume. Abstracts should be attached in PDF format with no identifying information.
We will inform participants of our decision by 31st October 2018.
Please see our conference website https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/hrc/confs/words, follow us on twitter (@fleshingw) and feel free to contact the organisers at fleshingoutwords.warwick@gmail.com for any queries.
We are looking forward to receiving your abstracts!
The Conference Organisers:
Paloma Perez Galvan (p.perez-galvan@warwick.ac.uk) and Alessandra Tafaro (A.Tafaro@warwick.ac.uk).