Guest Lecture

  • Date: 28 November 2024, 15:15–17:00
  • Location: English Park, 16-1044
  • Type: Seminar
  • Lecturer: Taylor Strickland
  • Organiser: Department of English
  • Contact person: Erik Smitterberg

Higher Seminar, Department of English.

Abstract
A poetry of place is found in some of the earliest literary expression, both oral and written. Homer’s Odyssey charts its voyage across the Aegean, the bucolic poems of Theocritus depict rural life, and then further east, Meng Hao jan through a Zen lens matches mountain with man. But place in contemporary Anglophone poetry is unique: a sustained lyric focussing on a locale’s specificity, so concentrated, the scene itself merges with the subject, either as a point of reflection, a moment for animism or anthropomorphism, the interplay of folklore and grimoire, and more.

This talk will investigate the origins of place poetry but argues the current term’s usage is Anglophone in nature. Exceptions and challenges will be considered on balance. The talk will conclude on the Scottish context, seeing it as a development to reconnect with nation, history and sociolinguistic foundations that, after the Scottish Renaissance, set Scottish poetry apart from its southern neighbours. Indeed, place poetry has perhaps found its richest expression in Scotland, where independence, devolution and political autonomy all remain unresolved.


***Talk includes poetry recitation, film poem in Gàidhlig and English, and q+a

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