‘Material Poetics: Drafting, Duration, Form’

Schedule

Wed, 05 Nov, 2025 at 10:00 am

UTC+00:00

Location

Senate House, London | London, EN

Advertisement
Call for Papers: ‘Material Poetics: Drafting, Duration, Form’

Deadline for submission: 10 September, 2025.
One-day conference at Stewart House, Russell Square.
Event date: November 5, 2025.

Poetic practice today is inevitably shaped by its material engagements, from the varied energies of the drafting process, embodied inscriptions, and engagements with the social world. This one-day symposium centres on ‘material poetics’ broadly conceived. ‘Material’ foregrounds the movements and velocities of the hand in ‘maximally excited’ wanderings (Hejinian 42). Rather than erasing stray marks, how might poetic practice retain the movements of what the textual scholar Marta Werner writes of as the ‘erring hand […] its labor, its risks, its inhabitation of time and history’? (63) In turn, how does the inscription of process into the work – ink-splashes, typos, fingerprints on the page, tears, stains – change our reading habits and interpretations? In Noise That Stays Noise (2011) Cole Swensen formulates the hand-written poetic line as itself ‘a slippery instance at which writing actually becomes visual art and visual art becomes language’ (82). Here we necessarily return to the movements of the body as part of the conceptual undertaking of the work, such as CAConrad’s (soma)tic poetics. We are interested in work that explores themes of writerly embodiment through processes and procedures of poetic practice, especially those that posit resistance to societal norms, including but not limited to those imposed by restrictive, exclusionary and/or oppressive constructions of race, ethnicity, gender, disability and class.

We invite proposals for 15-20 minute critical or practice-led presentations that may engage with the following topics:

- The extended duration of the long poem
- Embodied mark-making
- Archival poetics
- Site responsive works
- Intermedial and translative practices
- Process materialities of the book and related forms
- Handwriting, drawing, typing, gesturing
- Compositional strategies
- Embodied practices such as walking and dancing
- Digital writing technologies
- Manuscript practice
- The contemporary poetry archive
- Structures of revision, editing, and re-drafting
- Process-based works

Please send a short 250 word abstract and a brief biographical statement to Serafina Lee ([email protected]), Sara O’Brien ([email protected]) and Max Shirley ([email protected]) by 10 September, 2025. Participants will be notified by 17 September, 2025.

More info: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/07/28/material-poetics-drafting-duration-form
Advertisement

Where is it happening?

Senate House, London, United Kingdom

Event Location & Nearby Stays:

Royal Holloway Poetics Research Centre

Host or Publisher Royal Holloway Poetics Research Centre

It's more fun with friends. Share with friends

Discover More Events in London

Phew + Freddie Murphy - Live in London!
Tue, 04 Nov at 07:30 pm Phew + Freddie Murphy - Live in London!

ICA Institute Of Contemporary Art

FESTIVALS ART
R\u00d3IS
Tue, 04 Nov at 07:30 pm RÓIS

St John on Bethnal Green

MUSIC ART
Trivium in London
Tue, 04 Nov at 07:30 pm Trivium in London

Centennial Hall

ART LIVE-MUSIC
Tottenham Hotspur vs FC Copenhagen - Champions League 2025-2026 Tickets
Tue, 04 Nov Tottenham Hotspur vs FC Copenhagen - Champions League 2025-2026 Tickets

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

CALENDAR
Amenra in London
Tue, 04 Nov at 08:30 pm Amenra in London

Scala

ENTERTAINMENT CONCERTS
SNEAK RAVE @ XOYO - TUESDAY 4TH NOVEMBER \/\/ \u00a34 DRINKS!!
Tue, 04 Nov at 11:00 pm SNEAK RAVE @ XOYO - TUESDAY 4TH NOVEMBER // £4 DRINKS!!

XOYO LONDON

ART NONPROFIT
Zara Larsson at OVO Arena Wembley
Wed, 05 Nov at 06:00 pm Zara Larsson at OVO Arena Wembley

OVO Arena Wembley

TRIPS-ADVENTURES
Turnstile London Tickets
Wed, 05 Nov at 06:30 pm Turnstile London Tickets

Alexandra Palace

TRIPS-ADVENTURES
Benson Boone: American Heart Tour
Wed, 05 Nov at 06:30 pm Benson Boone: American Heart Tour

The O2

TURNSTILE - THE NEVER ENOUGH TOUR
Wed, 05 Nov at 06:30 pm TURNSTILE - THE NEVER ENOUGH TOUR

Alexandra Palace

Wed, 05 Nov at 06:30 pm Kandace Springs in London

Ronnie Scott's

ART LIVE-MUSIC
Turnstile, High Vis, The Garden in London
Wed, 05 Nov at 06:30 pm Turnstile, High Vis, The Garden in London

Alexandra Palace

CONCERTS MUSIC

What's Happening Next in London?

Discover London Events