Poetry Books in Multiple Versions: Editorial, Critical, and Pedagogical Issues

This one day conference was organized as part of a three-year research program led by the Observatoire du Recueil Poétique (ORPo) on “Poetry Books in the Digital Age”. It was endorsed by VALE, LARCA and Labex OBVIL, and was organized by Juliette Utard, Aurore Clavier and Gwen Le Cor. The conference looked at “Poetry Books in Multiple Versions” from an editorial, critical and pedagogical perspective. * Isabelle Alfandary argued in her keynote address that, while being central to the poet’s st..

Performance, Hybridity and Convergence in the Poetry of Alice Oswald and Kae Tempest

This paper looks at two poets, Alice Oswald and Kae Tempest, whose works are largely influenced by oral performance and exist on a plurality of media that are made easily accessible by the Internet. It posits that all actualisations of the poem – whether in a poetry book, a recording, a video, or a live performance – are equally important and must be studied in contrast to one another as part of the poetry collection. The latter term is therefore defined as the gathering of all the actualisations of the poem and their relationships. It then examines the poetics of hybridity that such intermedia poems produce and the plural poetic experience they create. It considers the poems in the light of Henry Jenkins’s concept of “convergence culture,” before suggesting that cette convergence is related to the emergence of a poetic community – i.e. a community produced by the oral poem and its plural versions, which is mirrored by the poem itself. Finally, it suggests that such interest in the community may provide a fruitful way of grouping together and comparing works in the diverse field of contemporary British poetry

From spoken word to public utterance : writing performance in contemporary British poetry

Depuis les années 1980, la poésie britannique contemporaine se caractérise par l’émergence de voix minoritaires et la diversité des formes et des pratiques. Cette expansion de la carte poétique est souvent lue à l’aune de ce que Sean O’Brien a décrit comme une dérégulation, en référence aux changements politiques et sociaux qui ont affecté la société britannique depuis le thatchérisme. Cette thèse se propose d’examiner un facteur essentiel de ce phénomène, à savoir la centralité accrue d’une conception du poème comme parole publique. En s’appuyant sur un corpus de poètes présentant des voix minoritaires ou invisibilisées, à mi-chemin entre la poésie spoken word et d’autres pratiques de performance, elle souligne que le pluralisme poétique est le fruit d’une pluralisation du poème même. Le texte poétique se transforme sur d’autres médiums et d’autres formes artistiques (musiques populaires, cinéma, peinture), permettant un décentrement et une remise en question de toute forme de centralité. Le poème hors du livre devient un geste à la fois esthétique et politique. La figure publique du poète que construisent les œuvres est un jeu de masques qui tente de défaire les assignations, entre fiction et parole lyrique. Le poème comme parole publique problématise le rapport du corps au texte en performance, mais aussi la matérialité du poème sur la page. Ce faisant, il interroge donc nos modes de réception de la poésie contemporaine. De même, le rapport structurel de cette poésie à la présence d’une communauté durant la performance suppose d’envisager des figures du commun et de la parole collective malgré la multiplication, voire l’éclatement, du poème sur une pluralité de médiums.Since the 1980s, contemporary British poetry has been characterized by the emergence of minority voices and a diversity of forms and practices. That expansion of the poetic map is often read through what Sean O’Brien called a deregulation, in reference to the social and political changes which have influenced British society since Thatcherism. This thesis looks at a central aspect of that phenomenon: the development of a conception of the poem as public utterance. By focusing on a range of poets representing minority backgrounds or unheard voices and working across spoken word poetry and other types of performance poetry, it demonstrates that poetic diversity is the result of a pluralization of the poem itself. Poems are transformed by other mediums and by exchanges with other art forms (popular music, cinema, painting) which in turn questions hierarchies and dominant poetic forms. Poetry off the page becomes both an aesthetic and political experiment. The poet’s public figure constructed by the poems is an elusive mask which oscillates between fiction and lyrical poetry. The poem as public utterance interrogates the relationship of the body to the text in performance, as well as the materiality of the poem on the page. In so doing, it also questions the way contemporary poetry is received and discussed. Similarly, in spite of the multiplication or atomization of the poem on several mediums, the structural relationship of this type of poetry with the presence of a community in performance creates representations of the community and collective utterance

‘A miraculous fragility’: Male Vulnerability in Andrew McMillan’s Physical

Giving a voice to the voiceless while making the unseen visible has been one major preoccupation of contemporary British poetry since the 1980s. Andrew McMillan’s debut collection Physical, which exposes gay male desire in a raw, unflinchingly honest, and sometimes shocking way, has gained him a large array of critical accolades. The poems’ confessional exploration of the male body does not lead to a celebration of virility and strength; instead, they insist on its frailty and pay attention to the invisible details and changing rhythms of intimate relations. This paper aims at showing that, despite McMillan’s insistence on physicality and concreteness, his work is also, and probably mostly, about exposing the unseen vulnerability of male experience. It attempts to demonstrate that the celebration of those bodies is a way to overcome several layers of invisibility: the taboo of gay sexuality, a certain male repression of the truth of decay and mortality, and the unspoken, fleeting rhythms of desire. The article then focuses on McMillan’s celebration of the male body’s vulnerability: in his poems, the drive for sincerity leads to a vulnerable mode of writing where the fragility of physical existence is granted a surprising and paradoxical form of holiness. It finally looks at McMillan’s typographic exposure of breath as a sign of vulnerability in a collection devoid of any punctuation. In conclusion, it suggests that the risk-taking inherent in McMillan’s ethical and aesthetic ambition could be fruitfully interpreted in parallel with his experience as a performer of his work

Kabeiroi by Punchdrunk

International audienceRevue de la Société dʼétudes anglaises contemporaines 54 | 2018 (Re)constructions/(Re)inventions/(Re)mediations in 20th Century English Literatur

Kabeiroi by Punchdrunk

Punchdrunk, a British company founded in 2000 by Felix Barrett, appears as the ‘pioneer’ and most emblematic company in the field of immersive theatre—a form of theatre where the audience is placed ‘at the heart of the work’ (Machon 22). The company defines itself as follows: ‘Punchdrunk has pioneered a game changing form of theatre in which roaming audiences experience epic storytelling inside sensory theatrical worlds’ (Punchdrunk’s website). Since the foundation of the company, these ‘thea..

Kabeiroi by Punchdrunk

Punchdrunk, a British company founded in 2000 by Felix Barrett, appears as the ‘pioneer’ and most emblematic company in the field of immersive theatre—a form of theatre where the audience is placed ‘at the heart of the work’ (Machon 22). The company defines itself as follows: ‘Punchdrunk has pioneered a game changing form of theatre in which roaming audiences experience epic storytelling inside sensory theatrical worlds’ (Punchdrunk’s website). Since the foundation of the company, these ‘thea..

Traduire le "spoken word" : deux poèmes de Jacob Sam-La Rose et leur traduction française

On 5 October 2018, Jacob Sam-La Rose was invited by VALE, POEM (Sorbonne Nouvelle) and Sorbonne Université to perform his poems at the Institut du Monde Anglophone in Paris.The performance was held in the main lecture hall of the Institut du Monde Anglophone, in Paris, an unlikely venue for a spoken word event. Yet Sam-La Rose’s wit and his enthusiastic use of the hall’s acoustics made for a memorable performance, one that certainly made the poems “take place.” In order to record something of that special part of the conference, Jacob Sam-La Rose has agreed to let me translate two of the poems he performed.Le 5 octobre 2018, sur l’invitation des centres de recherche VALE, POEM (Sorbonne Nouvelle), et de Sorbonne Université, Jacob Sam-La Rose est venu performer ses poèmes à l’Institut du Monde Anglophone, à Paris. L’événement s’est déroulé dans l’amphithéâtre de l’Institut, c’est-à-dire dans un endroit passablement improbable pour ce type de manifestation poétique improvisationnelle. Et pourtant, Jacob Sam-La Rose a si bien su déployer des trésors d’esprit et d’enthousiasme que cette performance est restée dans les mémoires – par la voix du poète ces poèmes ont “eu lieu” à maints égards. Afin d’en laisser une trace, Jacob Sam-La Rose m’a autorisé à traduire deux des poèmes qu’il a performés à cette occasion

Esthétiques de l’absence

Ce numéro de la revue Sillages critiques est le fruit d’une journée d’étude organisée par le groupe de recherche OVALE, le laboratoire des doctorants de l’équipe VALE. Les contributions qu’il réunit examinent les diverses esthétiques de l’absence dans la littérature et les arts anglophones. Bastien Goursaud, Elsa Lorphelin et Deborah Prudhon sont les guest editors du présent volume, publié avec le soutien de Geneviève Cohen-Cheminet