Artwork: She Prefers Fires, 2008, Ink and cotton on fine art paper, Tamryn Bennett, www.tamrynbennett.com

Just yesterday I got hold of the program for the Poetry and the Contemporary Conference to be held in the Victorian Trades Hall next week from Thursday 7th July. Just today I figured out I can make the trip to Melbourne UPDATE: Nope can't make it after all!

The conference is convened by Michael Farrell and Anne Vickery of Deakin University and promises (from the intro):

'Poetry and the Contemporary' is a symposium designed to foster critical and creative conversations between poets and scholars, primarily from the Pacific region. It also showcases the exciting work of a range of new and established writers. It follows on from the two "Home and Away: A Trans-Tasman Symposium" that were held at the University of Auckland and the University of Sydney respectively in 2010.

Here's the full program (featuring several Sydney Poetry members):

Thursday 7 July
2.30-3.45
"Poetics and Future Scenarios: Poems and Poets in an Age of Energy Descent and Climate Chaos" Roundtable
David Holmgren/Sue Fitchett/Patrick Jones/Peter O’Mara
Chair: David Herd

3.45-5.00
Sally Evans: "Mez Breeze and the Cyber-Syntax of Code Poetry"
Tamryn Bennett: "Towards Comics Poetry"
Mark Young: "Stochastic Acts: The Search String as Poetry"
Chair: Aden Rolfe

5.15-5.45
Pam Brown: "Complaints Department: what I've heard - a few gripes about the incorporation of Australian poetry; plus some whining about poetic content, or, what's wrong"
Chair: Corey Wakeling

5.45-6.15
Vivienne Plumb: "Fact or Fiction: Meditations on Mary Finger"

6.15-7.00
Grand Parade launch: Pete Spence and Benjamin Frater
(with Alan Wearne, Kris Hemensley and John Hawke)

7.00
Michelle Cahill Vishvarūpa launch
(with Jill Jones)

Friday 8 July
9.30-10.30
"Poetics of Unimprovement" Roundtable
Jill Jones/Claire Gaskin/Bonny Cassidy
Chair: Jack Ross

1030-11.45
Kent MacCarter: "Calculated Enjambment: Continuity and Discontinuity in
August Kleinzahler’s Poetics"
Andy Carruthers: "Sonic Ekphrasis from William Carlos Williams to Jackson Mac Low"
David McCooey: "The Poetics of the Digital Audio Workstation"
Chair: John Hawke

12 -1.15
Jack Ross: "A Brief Poetics"
Scott-Patrick Mitchell: "this is what it sounds like: performance poetry beyond postmodernism"
Peter Minter: "Writing Country: Indigenous Poetics and the Open Field"
Chair: Mark Young

1.15-2.15
"Periphery." Poetry collaboration led by Michele Leggott.

2.15-3.30
Janet Charman: "An Encounter with Chen Li’s ‘Wooden Fish Ballad’ as
translated by Chang Fen-Ling"
Jessica Wilkinson: "Voice, Music, Sound: Poetic Histories Beyond the Printed Word"
Linda Weste: "Poetic and Narrative Interplay in Three Contemporary Verse Novels"
Chair: Ella O’Keefe

3.45-4.55
Stuart Cooke: "The Problem of the Heart in Contemporary Australian Poetry"
Lindsay Tuggle: "Alice Notley’s Contemporary Mythopoetics"
Kate Lilley: "Jacket and the Worlding of Australian Poetry"
Chair: Bonny Cassidy

6.00-8.00
Martin Edmond: "Alan Brunton: Charismatic Absurdist"
with Ruby Brunton
David Herd/Michele Leggott/Atief Khery/Kate Lilley
Michael Farrell and Ann Vickery MCs


Saturday 9 July
9.30-11.10
Lisa Samuels: "Six Types of Experiment in New New Zealand Poetry"
John Tranter: "Hidden in Plain View: Constructing the Poems in Starlight"
Michelle Cahill/Carol Chan: "Durga, Kali, Sita, Krishna and Feminist Identities in Asian-Australian Poetics"
Astrid Lorange: "There is No Future, and The Future is Spanking"
Chair: Ali Alizadeh

11.25-12.40
Joel Scott: "Under the Influence: Leaving Bloom Behind"
Jen Crawford: "Death and the Poetics of Teeming in Yeow Kai Chai’s ‘Memento Mori’ Poems"
Matt Hall: "As the Text Bears Witness: A Reading of ‘Es Lebe Der Kong,’ Prynne’s Elegy to Paul Celan"
Chair: Sam Langer

12.40-1.40
Lunch
Astrid Lorange: Eating and Speaking launch
(with Michael Farrell)
Apoetic Announcement

1.40-2.55
Siobhan Hodge: "Contemporary Poetics and Sapphic Mythologies"
Duncan Hose: "Give Me Vidas and Razos: The Life of Troubadour
Technologies in the Poetry of Ted Berrigan"
Sam Moginie: "Entrepot Poetics: John Forbes’s Critique of the Contemporary"
Chair: Justin Clemens

2.55-4.10
Ali Alizadeh: "Naming the Voids of Multiculturalism in ‘Biral Biral’: A New Reading of the Poetry of Lionel Fogarty"
Kate Fagan: "Form and Field in Contemporary Australian Poetry"
David Herd: "Towards the Pleasures of Merely Circulating: Contemporary Poetry and the Status of the Document"
Chair: Pam Brown

4.25-5.35
Tim Wright: "Things to Do With Perth"
Tom Lee: "Poetry As Writing As Vector"
Martin Harrison: "‘Australian Poetry" and Some Reasons Why We Don’t Need It"
Chair: Ann Vickery

Bella Union (Upstairs)
6.30-7.00 Lisa Samuels Gender City launch
(with Jen Crawford)

7.00-8.00
Duncan Hose One Under Bacchus and Liam Ferney Career launch

8.00-
Steamer and Rabbit Special: Readings by New Poets
MCs: Sam Langer and Jess Wilkinson

The Home and Away symposium held last year in Sydney was a great meeting of the Australian and NZ tribes of poetry, and this conference promises to continue that dialogue and also grow the conversation. Find out more about that conference on the NZEPC site. Photos.