[Wgcp-whc] This Friday--session with Lisa Robertson; also, she reads the night before

[Richard Deming]

Dear Friends,

I am sending a reminder that Lisa Robertson will be joining for a discussion of her latest books, R's Boat and Nilling, this friday, March 1,  from 3-5 PM in room B04 of the Whitney Humanities Center.  Copies of these books went quickly, but I can still send a pdf copy of Nilling to anyone who is interested.  Just email me directly (richard.deming at yale.edu)

As you may recall, we were unable to to have our pre-visit discussion of Robertson's work.  Still, people have sent ideas and questions which I have gathered together and will paste below.  These questions will also be sent to Robertson.  She and I will determine a useful place or places to start based on these questions.  That will a clear, structured beginning, but as ever the session will be an open conversation rather than some formal Q and A session.  


Also I want to mention that Robertson will be reading on campus the night before: 

Thursday, February 28, 2013 at 7:00 PM in LC 317 as part of the Grad Poets Reading Series.  For more information, contact: justin.sider at yale.edu, sarah.stone at yale.edu


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Here are two useful reviews of R's Boat:
http://www.kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2011-summer/selections/on-lisa-robertsons-r%E2%80%99s-boat/
http://www.constantcritic.com/karla_kelsey/rs-boat/

Here is a link to Robertson's author page at Pennsound, which features numerous files and links to hear (and se) the author reading her work.
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Robertson.php


Here is a bio pulled  from the website Let Evening Come:

Lisa Robertson is the author of six books of poetry: XEclogue, Debbie: An Epic, The Weather, The Men, Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip, and R's Boat. Two books of essays have also been published, Occasional Works and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture, and in 2012, Nilling, from Bookthug. For many years she has worked across disciplines and often in collaboration. With the late Stacy Doris she was the Perfume Recordist, an ongoing sound performance and writing project with work in the new I'll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women. Currently she is translating the French linguists Emile Benveniste and Henri Meschonnic with Avra Spector. She recently collaborated with artist Kathy Slade on a text image installation at Malaspina Gallery in Vancouver, which next will be exhibited at 8, Rue Saint Bon in Paris, in February 2013. With Matthew Stadler she edited and annotated Revolution: A Reader, co-published by Publication Studio (Portland) and Paraguay Books (Paris). She is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, most recently a Distinguished Visiting Fellowship from Queen Mary University of London, to carry out research on the relation between Renaissance medicine and geometry at the Warburg Institute. She lives in rural France, and teaches at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam.


Looking forward to seeing everyone this Friday for what will surely prove a provocative discussion.  Remember the WGCP is open to any interested parties.  Feel free to pass word of this event to others. 

Ever and forward,

Richard Deming, Group Coordinator


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Questions: Yale Poetics Research Group Session on March 1, 2013 from 3-5 PM

Yale University Whitney Humanities Center Room B04

 

 

--Given the referent announced within the title of the collection and then of course appearing throughout the collection, how do you think of the connections between philosophy and poetry? How do they compete and how are they in conversation? Or we might ask where is the interface between a text and theory of the text?  How do you determine the line when work goes too far in one or the other direction?

--Did your ideas about the limitations and the possibilities of autobiography change from the beginning of R’s Boat and after you concluded it?

 --What for you is the difference between a mode of poetry and form? Do you see yourself as thinking through modes or forms?  In part this question has to deal with how you begin thinking about what shape a book will take.  Is it a series of questions that the book serves to answer?  Or do you write with only the act of composition as the primary guide?

 --Is there something specifically Canadian about your work?  Or, rather, how does being Canadian play a role in your sense of subjectivity as it pertains to R’s Boat. And/or how has France shaped your sense of poetry/poetics/language itself?

 --What is your conception of musicality when you are writing something such as the sentences of R’s Boat, or are you primarily guided by the ideas or semantic content? Is your work motivated by aesthetics or poetics—or is there no distinction?

 --What do you see as the poet’s responsibilities to the reader and the reader’s responsibilities to the text.  This question is a in part tied to what you see as the work of social formation undertaken within and as a poem.  Perhaps more specifically we might direct those towards the density of some of the allusions you make in R’s Boat or in Nilling.  What do you see as your ideal reader or your imagined company?  Are they meant to get every reference and allusion?



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