平特五不中

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Overview

As a nexus among students, faculty members, and poets, Poetry Matters has pursued different projects every season. This year, we are partnering with the 平特五不中 Writing Centre,听 currently launching a group of new courses in creative writing, to develop a suite of extracurricular workshops on the craft of poetry, guided by the theme of ekphrasis. Our supporting research engages the question of how "poetic attention" might relate to forms of "ethical attention."听

Modes of attention

As environmentalist Bill McKibben observed last year, 鈥淚t鈥檚 hard to imagine a better prescription for this fraught moment than: pay attention.鈥� Shaping these workshops is our network鈥檚 new research on how engagement with poetry, from both creative and readerly perspectives, can play a significant role in fostering forms of what media theorist N. Katherine Hayles calls 鈥渄eep attention鈥� (2010) and what cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf theorizes in Reader, Come Home (2018) as 鈥渄eep reading.鈥� The initial stages of this project were presented at the American Comparative Literature Association (2021) in a coauthored paper from the Poetry Matters project entitled 鈥淒eepening Attention, Changing Minds鈥� (M. Hickman, J. Perkins). This project joins contemporary work on attention with historical research on the work of pioneering British literary critic I.A. Richards: in the aftermath of WWI and the influenza epidemic of 1918, a moment that resonates with ours, Richards addressed how close attention to poetry could affect restorative work at the neurological level, transform minds, and support post-war culture in regaining what he calls 鈥渆quilibrium.鈥� Workshops will explore such a transformative and reparative force of poetic attention.

Participants will have opportunity to reflect on our own modes of attention鈥攊n this era of online, onscreen life, what N. Katherine Hayles calls 鈥渉yperattention,鈥� intensified by pandemic, how can we become more aware of patterns of attention prevalent in our daily lives? How can we draw upon chances afforded by poetry to cultivate forms of sustained 鈥渄eep attention,鈥� the 鈥渟low time鈥� of Keats鈥檚 ode, Wordsworth鈥檚 鈥渜uiet eye,鈥� for greater awareness of and intentionality about habitual practices?

Ekphrastic poetics

Stepping onward from the received understanding of ekphrasis as writing responsive to visual art, we construe it more broadly as intermedial creative practice developed out of intentional attention to works of art, artifacts, and other objects. Accordingly, our workshops for 2021-22 aim to address forms of deep, transformative attention entailed in close description of work in one medium in the language and terms of another.

Our focus is especially upon the ethical valences of ekphrastic process, sited in both the mode of deep attention involved and the turn outward from the self this process entails. We also start from the premise that the experience of the pandemic has generated conditions conducive to innovation and transformation of habitual practices with ethical potential. Cued by Susan Sontag鈥檚 reading of 鈥渁ttention鈥� as fundamental to both the writer鈥檚 work and the moral life, we maintain that intentional attention can in turn serve what we imagine as transformative 鈥渆thical redirections鈥� of habitual assumptions and patterns of attention and reading. To this end, we engage a range of resources at 平特五不中 on decolonization and anti-oppression, through the Indigenous Studies and Community Engagement Initiative and beyond, to think actively and critically about the ethics of ekphrastic attention.

Collaborations and community partnerships

To design and facilitate these workshops in light of our network鈥檚 recent research on poetry, attention, and ekphrasis, we are collaborating with poet Sarah Wolfson of the 平特五不中 Writing Centre, and 平特五不中鈥檚 Visual Arts Collection (VAC). Designed in consultation with 平特五不中鈥檚 VAC, workshops feature work by Indigenous artists in Canada such as Caroline Monnet, Sammy Dawson, and Norval Morrisseau, as well as Canadian artists such as Marian Dale Scott and Marcel Barbeau. Although covid-related restrictions have obliged us to step to some virtual sessions, the primary commitment of this year is to develop a suite of small-scale in-person workshops, conducive to creative attention.

This year, we are also working with , a network of composers, musicians, philosophers, and writers; as well as and the , coworking spaces in Montr茅al seeking to promote work in the arts. Workshops will draw upon art and artifacts鈥攁vailable to students on the 平特五不中 campus and elsewhere in Montr茅al鈥攁s points of departure for reflective exercises in how we pay attention and guided exercises in creative writing.

We would also like to thank the following people for consultation in the initial stages of designing these workshops:听Gwendolyn Owens (平特五不中 VAC);听Hannah Deskin (平特五不中 VAC);听Jana Marie Perkins (PhD program, SIS, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign);听Karis Shearer (UBC Okanagan);听Marianne Stenbaek (平特五不中, Department of English);听Michelle Macleod (平特五不中 VAC); Mirabel (MA program, Linguistics, 平特五不中; Montr茅al-based poet and journalist);听Robert Lecker (平特五不中, Department of English);听Sara Dunton (University of New Brunswick); Sarah Wolfson (平特五不中 Writing Centre); and 鈥嬧�嬧�嬧��Shane Neilson (McMaster University, University of Ottawa).

Opportunities for students

Workshops allow students to explore ekphrastic process through staged writing projects. Participants pursuing several workshops will have a chance to develop portfolio of several poems honed through work in ekphrastic attention. There is opportunity at 平特五不中 to submit work to the , , and the .

Please stay tuned for events culminating the season鈥檚 work, as well as a lecture and workshop by poet Dr. Medrie Purdham of the University of Regina. (Little Housewolf, Montr茅al: V茅hicule Press, 2021).