LOUISVILLE 2012

It's a long walk to Louisville, to paraphrase the Staple Singers. 2012 marks the 40th anniversary of the conference formerly known as the Twentieth Century Literature conference, now rechrisitened as the University of Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900, or "LCLC" antiacronymically. I was there to participate in the first of a rolling series of panels on the life and legacy of Gil Scott-Heron, featuring papers by Tyrone Williams and Stephane Robollin along with mine. The next of these panels will be at CLA in Atlanta later this month, with Tony Bolden and Mickey New, and a third will be presented at ALA in San Francisco at the end of May. Keynoters at Louisville this year included Simon Critchley, Karen Tei Yamashita, Tom McCarthy and Dee Morris. Though there were no keynote poetry readings this time out, Dee's presentation on digital poetries was a great way to close out the conference. As in past years, we retired to La Casa Golding for poetry and partying once we had all the sessions behind us. The party poetry reading will go up on Penn Sound shortly.