Contemporary Poetics, Communities, and Publics
Inaugural European Association of American Studies Poetry Network Symposium
University of Göttingen | May 16-17, 2025

How does poetry circulate within or through contemporary everyday spaces, and how do networks of poets, publishers, and readers inform its evolving role in public discourse? This inaugural EAAS Poetry Network symposium aims to examine poetry not as an individual expression but as a collaborative practice deeply embedded in collective experience. By exploring how poetry engages public spaces, we also hope to address questions of accessibility, inclusivity, and to redress the boundaries of poetic form.

This symposium invites the full range of poetry in a contemporary sense, which includes its publics and expands a definition of the lyric “I”. We contend our task as scholars to involve reimagining and enabling relations between poets and their readers. This requires approaching poetry as a sphere of collaboration and dialogue, while understanding sociability and networks as historically central to even the most personal and subjective poetic voices. Our work thus aims to look outwards, towards the civic and communal, where a definition of poetry is constantly being renewed as it exists in a generative relationship with its readers and the places they occupy and create.

We invite papers on the following topics, which are suggested but not limited to:

• Poetry and civic space
• Poetry’s Peoples
• Letters between poets/digital networks between poets
• Readerships and audiences
• Poetry As… (e.g., Resistance; Public Voice; Politics)
• Poetry in (response to) crisis (e.g., climate crisis; international war)
• Poetry and race
• Poetry festivals
• Poetry awards
• Revising, editing, interviewing, mentoring 
• Poetry presses, pamphlets, and magazines
• Poetry’s relationship to other literary forms
• Poetry and medium
• Poetry and archive
• Poetry and translation

The symposium welcomes proposals from all scholars, poets, and industry professionals, and especially from postgraduates and ECRs. Please submit a 300-word abstract, along with a short bio, to "poetrynetwork.eaas@gmail.com" by 5pm on Friday, December 13th.

Organizers:

• Lucy Cheseldine (University of York)
• Gulsin Ciftci (University of Münster)
• Andrew Gross (University of Göttingen)
• Philip McGowan (Queen’s University Belfast)

One of the first things we have learned about poetry is that we cannot define poetry. What we can do, however, is experience it.

It starts with reading.

Reading again.

And again.

Just when you think you "grasped" the poem, read it again in the company of others. Only to discover more, to see a formerly invisible path, a sign, a possibility.

We might not be able to determine whether Henry David Thoreau was right in saying that "[p]oetry cannot breathe in the scholar’s atmosphere."  In Poetry Parlor, we take poetry outside the scholar’s atmosphere, outside seminars. Gardens, lawns, cafés become our second classroom for reading poetry.

Please note that this "class" is not a part of the regular modular system and is limited to 10 interested students each semester. It is designed to practice a close reading of poetry. Weekly readings will not exceed two poems a week and will be decided upon collectively. Participating students will be requested to read the poems in advance, but then we will use class time (usually one hour) to read them once again together, paying particular attention to how formal characteristics such as rhyme, meter, and imagery help the poems dramatize their meanings. Our main model here will be the methods developed by New Criticism; we will read closely. Students who participate in this special class will leave not only with an understanding of how poems work but also with the skills needed to analyze poetry and other literary texts.

Interested in joining our parlor? Feel free to send an email to gulsin.ciftci@uni-muenster.de for further information.