Last
weekend, I was fortunate enough to attend much of Kanada Koncrete: Material Poetries in the Digital Age, the Canadian Literature Symposium at the
University of Ottawa for 2018, organized by Robert Stacey and Claire Farley. I’ve
been to a number of the annual conferences at the University of Ottawa over the
years, from the Long Poem Symposium back in 1996, to conferences on Modernism,
Al Purdy, Postmodernism and Robert Kroetsch, but this was far and away the most
vibrant and exciting conference I’ve attended (and I was able, in case you hadn’t
seen, to produce some chapbooks specifically for the conference – Derek Beaulieu,
Amanda Earl, Arnold McBay + Gregory Betts and Tim Atkins – as well as some very
recent titles by other participants (who hadn’t actually mentioned “I’ll be in
your city two weeks after you produce that”) – Dani Spinosa, Kate Siklosi and
Sean Braune – so the whole conference, between them and a variety of others,
felt awash with above/ground press authors (Porco! Barwin! Baker! Anstee!
Schmaltz! Davey!).
There
were some remarkable papers presented, from Tim Atkins’ paper exploring some of
bill bissett’s early, pre-Vancouver influences, Cameron Anstee’s paper
exploring some of his ongoing work on the late artist Barbara Caruso
(specifically her presspresspress), Zane Koss on the poetry networks of Louis
Dudek and Marshall McLuhan in the 1950s, Natalie Leduc’s paper on Rupi Kaur as
poetry activist (she presented a great argument for such), Paul Barrett on
Sandra Djwa’s digital work from 1970, and Michael Nardone exploring the
differences and constructs of digital archives vs. repositories, specifically
UBU Web, PennSound and the Electronic Poetry Center.
What
was impressive, as well, was the fact that there were so many performances, all
of which (unfortunately) I managed to miss, due to overload (and the
requirements of children), including an evening of some twenty-one poets
performing (all of whom were also presenting papers at the conference), and
sound poetry by Gary Barwin and Stuart Ross, and jwcurry’s sound poetry ensemble Quatuor Gualuor. It would
be difficult to highlight every paper that struck me, as that really would be
the bulk of what I saw, but some of what I did find quite amazing included:
Jessica Bebenek’s work translating T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” into a
knitting pattern, exploring the canon of the male genius through textiles;
Amanda Earl and Eric Schmaltz’s artists talks, both of which focused on their
own works, from Earl’s work-in-progress “The Vizpo Bible” to Schmaltz’s debut
poetry collection, Depths of Surfaces (Invisible); and David Jhave Johnson’s “Aesthetic
Animism: A Synthesis,” which moved at such a rate and depth of knowledge and
information that it left all in the room reeling. While I did miss a handful of
papers, including Johanna Drucker’s talk on Saturday afternoon, the Closing
Plenaries on Sunday by Gregory Betts and Derek Beaulieu were spectacular, with
Betts exploring the origins of Canadian concrete and visual poetry emerging
almost entirely and organically from visual art and an interest in the multi-discipinary
(and almost completely unaware of international movements concurrently
happening worldwide), while Beaulieu went through a series of contemporary
female practisioners currently exploring new realms of concrete and visual
works, including Helen Hajnoczky and Erica Baum.
And
of course, jwcurry brought some prints of concrete/visual poems to display around the
space, including works by P. Cob, Daniel f. Bradley, Judith Copithorne and Michael e. Casteels, such as a piece printed directly onto a cinder block.
All
in all, stellar. I’m just disappointed that they couldn’t get funding for this
conference. How the hell does such a conference not get funding? A book needs
to happen from this conference. There was too much going on that requires
recording, reading and further discussion.
I’m
abuzz after so much activity, myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment