CALL FOR PROPOSALS - is now closed.
5th International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry
Botanical Garden at University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
October 8 (beginning 8:00 am) – October 10 (closing 4:00 pm) 2015
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The poetic image is not subject to an inner thrust. It is not an echo of the past. On the contrary: through the brilliance of an image, the distant past resounds with echoes, and it is hard to know at what depth these echoes will reverberate and die away. Because of its novelty and its action, the poetic image has an entity and a dynamism of its own; it is referable to a direct ontology.
~Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 1958 |
We begin by honouring the programme that accompanied the groundbreaking image for the first poetic gathering, where “poetry as a way to know the world” (Leggo, 2007) and “poetic forms of inquiry within qualitative social science research practices” (Prendergast, 2007), unfolded into the biennial International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry. From west coast Canada, to east coast Canada – Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, across the Atlantic to Bournemouth, UK, then westward to Montreal, we circle back to the fecund ground of Vancouver.
The Centre for Place & Sustainability Studies and Faculty of Education at Lakehead University, the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta, and the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia invite you to partake in the 5th International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry to be held in the Botanical Garden at UBC in Vancouver from October 8-10, 2015. In returning to the fertile place of the first symposium, we seek to burrow deeper into poetry as ontological – “as a way to be and become in the world” (Leggo, 2007) and poetry as epistemological – as ways of knowing and forms of inquiry. Drawing from echoes of past symposia themes and moved further by its dynamism, we seek to attend to poetry as ecological – the spaciality and interrelations of all things, where “nothing stands alone” (Griffin, 1992, p. 207) and poetry as imaginal – as a way to bring life, timelessness, and newness to the not-yet seen.
We call for imaginative kinds of participation through proposed performances, readings, exhibits, and presentations. As a growing community, we are particularly interested in submissions for collaborative encounters and warmly welcome poetry readings as symposium submissions. We invite reverberations of the past – readers’ theatre, visual art, theatre, panels, poetry readings, dance, and drama as well as the novelty of the new – posters, workshops, interactive sessions, exhibitions, and other imaginings. Most importantly we call upon engagement with poetics so to explore its power of connectivity, its nuanced ways of conjoining what might be seen as contradictory even unrelated so to imagine new and sustainable configurations. Just as a garden can be a site and an occasion for a labour with nature, a collaboration that can potentially transform both nature within and nature without, poetry too can potentially transform our world and us. A garden, likewise, is a symbol of connection, a place of healing, entanglement, retreat, and labour. In extending this metaphor, we offer this image:
The Centre for Place & Sustainability Studies and Faculty of Education at Lakehead University, the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta, and the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia invite you to partake in the 5th International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry to be held in the Botanical Garden at UBC in Vancouver from October 8-10, 2015. In returning to the fertile place of the first symposium, we seek to burrow deeper into poetry as ontological – “as a way to be and become in the world” (Leggo, 2007) and poetry as epistemological – as ways of knowing and forms of inquiry. Drawing from echoes of past symposia themes and moved further by its dynamism, we seek to attend to poetry as ecological – the spaciality and interrelations of all things, where “nothing stands alone” (Griffin, 1992, p. 207) and poetry as imaginal – as a way to bring life, timelessness, and newness to the not-yet seen.
We call for imaginative kinds of participation through proposed performances, readings, exhibits, and presentations. As a growing community, we are particularly interested in submissions for collaborative encounters and warmly welcome poetry readings as symposium submissions. We invite reverberations of the past – readers’ theatre, visual art, theatre, panels, poetry readings, dance, and drama as well as the novelty of the new – posters, workshops, interactive sessions, exhibitions, and other imaginings. Most importantly we call upon engagement with poetics so to explore its power of connectivity, its nuanced ways of conjoining what might be seen as contradictory even unrelated so to imagine new and sustainable configurations. Just as a garden can be a site and an occasion for a labour with nature, a collaboration that can potentially transform both nature within and nature without, poetry too can potentially transform our world and us. A garden, likewise, is a symbol of connection, a place of healing, entanglement, retreat, and labour. In extending this metaphor, we offer this image:
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In the garden, something difficult to describe recurs, something that eludes reasoning: entrenched ideas and emotions begin to become unstuck, and consciousness loosens. Grievances are erased as if by a magic hand, and vague ideas assume new shape. It is as if immediate, sensual contact with the soil and plants has a soothing, softening effect on people. Their energies no longer circle around inner problems, but are drawn outward by nature’s ever-surprising and fascinating vigor.
~Ruth Ammann, The Enchantment of Gardens, 2008 |
In preparing to cultivate and sing a new ecology to live poetically, a new poetic to live ecologically, we ask that you imagine fresh couplings, groupings, and alternative sharings when preparing a proposal. Please submit proposals at www.poeticinquiry.ca by February 15, 2015. We will review and notify you by March 31, 2015. Inquiries can also be submitted here.
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An alder leaf, loosened by wind, is drifting out with the tide. As it drifts, it bumps into the slender leg of a great blue heron staring intently through the rippled surface, then drifts on. The heron raises one leg out of the water and replaces it, a single step. As I watch I, too, am drawn into the spread of silence. Slowly, a bank of cloud approaches, slipping its bulged and billowing texture over the earth, folding the heron and the alder trees and my gazing body into the depths of a vast breathing being, enfolding us all within a common flesh, a common story now bursting with rain. ~David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, 1997
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