Poetic Practice Reading Group
6.15 – 7.30 pm
International Building, Egham
Room IN045
Monday 1st February 2010
Sophie Robinson
‘writing nonlocation location’ : creating queer space in poetic
pratice.
I’m going to begin by talking about Bruce Boone’s essay ‘Gay Language
as Political Praxis: The Poetry of Frank O’Hara’. I want to examine
Boone’s reading of O’Hara – particularly concepts of ‘competing
language-cultural codes’, marginalised communities, proximity and
low/derided culture – and discuss the function of ‘gay language’ in
poetic practice.
I want to use these concepts as a starting point for thinking about
contemporary uses of ‘queer language’ by looking at a recent issue of
EOAGH dedicated to the subject. I will be looking closely at kari
edwards’ editorial statement, and the poetry of Abigail Child and Amy
King included in the issue.
I then want to present some of my own recent work, and discuss my
practice in relation to the ideas raised. I particularly want to focus
on forms of queer space (proximity, disorientation, liminality,
occupation, subculture) which both influence and are produced by queer
texts, and will be contextualising this by referring to extracts from
Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology.
The Bruce Boone essay is here:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/466406
And the EOAGH Queering Language issue is here:
http://chax.org/eoagh/issue3/issuethree.html
Extracts from Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology are here:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=sQY1RWdUW0AC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Biography: Sophie Robinson has an MA in Poetic Practice from Royal
Holloway. She is currently completing a practice-based PhD on queer
time and space in experimental poetic practice. Her poetry has
appeared in the anthologies The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (Reality
Street, 2008) and Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century
(Bloodaxe, 2009). Her first book, a, was published by Les Figues press
in 2009, and she has a chapbook forthcoming from Oystercatcher in
Spring 2010. She currently lives and works in London.
All Welcome
