Call for papers

“I sing the body electric” (Walt Whitman)

Noting that poetry takes its key terms from corporality (e.g. enjambments, feet, volta) and that poets are deeply engaged with the body in both personal and political ways, this conference explores how poetry maps new body identities. Poetry Now II invites papers on bodies poetic: about how poetry writes bodies politic in private or public spaces, and as individual or collective entities. Our premise is that poetry expands images of the body through interrogation of stereotypes, defamiliarization, and imagining alternative realities. Crip poetry reorganizes language along non-ablist parameters. Queer poetics redefine genre to understand gender. Protest poetry calls for recognition of bodily identifications that incorporate race, ethnicity, and gender. And sound poetries challenge habits of listening and definitions of noise in shared spaces. We are interested in papers that explore connections between poetry and the body, with wide interpretations of the latter.

Please submit a short (300-word) abstract along with a brief CV by June 30th to poetry.now2017@gmail.com

Deadline: June 30, 2017