CONVERGENCE ON POETICS III

Saturday started out with a panel on poetics and new media (Clark Lunberry, Joe Milutis and Ron Silliman), and Poetics and Other Arts (Rebecca Cummins, Ted Hiebert and Barrett Watten).  After lunch and general hanging out, there was a second session on poetics and other arts featuring Charlie Altieri, Lyn Hejinian and Brian Reed.  The afternoon brought us to the first of the "postings" sessions, shorter presentations by individuals and groups that ranged from the weighty to the disembodied.  Niko Vassilakis shared the new LAST VISPO ANTHOLOGY with us, a book that will get a lot of attention, though my old friend and publisher Crag Hill wasn't able to join Niko as planned for the posting.

Left to Right: Rebecca Brown, David McAleavey, Aldon Nielsen (recognizable by the Taylor Guitars cap). Rebecca and I were both studying at George Washington University at the same time.  To this day I remember her reading the first draft of a great piece on Annie Oakley. Poet David McAleavey was a professor to both of us.  This was the first time we'd all three been in the same place together since about 1985.

CONVERGENCE ON POETICS II

My primary duties at the grand convergence came on the first full day.  I was on a panel dealing with cross-cultural poetics, speaking alongside Evie Shockley and Leonard Schwartz.  I spoke from on-going work on race and contemporary reading practices.  Other panels that day included Tisa Bryant, Tyrone Williams and Carla Harryman waking us all up with a great session on the "state of the art," and a second panel, on ethnography, featuring talks by Marie Annharte, Sarah Dowling and Candice Rai.  Following an afternoon panel in the course of which Lee Ann Brown and Michael Davidson embodied good presentation practices along with addressing the topic of embodiment, we all found our way to dinner, with a large contingent of us converging on a nearby restaurant, and that evening we had the first of the great group readings.

CONVERGENCE ON POETICS

 I'm just back from the University of Washington, Bothell (think "bottle" with an "H" - I kept imagining a real estate commercial, "Living in the Bothell"), where poet/professor Jeanne Heuving and her friendly staff organized a "Convergence on Poetics," partly to mark the commencement of their new MFA program.  These few photos are from the opening evening, which featured a panel with Charles Bernstein, Rebecca Brown and Rachel Blau DuPlessis.  Rebecca was a student at George Washington University back during my grad school days and this was the first time I've had a chance to really catch up with her since, though I've been reading her work all these years.  I'll be uploading posts about the following days of the conference as time permits.