The next Poets and Critics Symposium will be devoted to the work of Nathaniel Mackey.
Thursday 6 and Friday 7 October. Université Paris 7 Denis Diderot, Bâtiment Olympe de Gouges
+ Poetry reading with Nathaniel Mackey and Frédéric Boyer, & Jazz Concert with Eric Chenaux and Devin Brahja Waldman Thursday 6 October, 7:30pm, Atelier Michael Woolworth, Place de la Bastille, 2, rue de la Roquette, Cour Février, 75011 Paris For detailed directions, click HERE.
So far, we’ve tried to focus on the writer’s own (creative and critical) work on the first day of the P&C symposia and on broader issues of poetics and practice-based criticism with the writer on the second day. But there’s no specific preconceived program for the 2 days of the symposium: as the previous sessions of the program have shown, it seems important to let the conversation take its own course.
Please note that the morning session of the first day is devoted to preparing the conversation with Nathaniel Mackey which will take place during the afternoon session and the second day. Nathaniel Mackey will be joining the group at 2pm on Thursday 6 October.
As usual, we intend to address all aspects of our guest’s work as poet, prose-writer, critic and editor. In the past we have tended to concentrate on more recent works, so we might focus on Blue Fasa, Nod House, Bass Cathedral and, as far as Nathaniel Mackey’s theoretical work is concerned, on Paracritical Hinge (2005) as well as Discrepant Engagement (1993). But please feel free to make suggestions as to particular books that you would like to discuss during the symposium.
Nathaniel Mackey was born in Miami, Florida, in 1947, and grew up, from age four, in California. He received a B.A. from Princeton University in 1969 and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1975. He is the author of ten chapbooks of poetry, Four for Trane (Golemics, 1978), Septet for the End of Time (Boneset, 1983), Outlantish (Chax Press, 1992), Song of the Andoumboulou: 18-20 (Moving Parts Press, 1994), Four for Glenn (Chax Press, 2002), Anuncio’s Last Love Song (Three Count Pour, 2013), Outer Pradesh (Anomalous Press, 2014), Moment’s Omen (Selva Oscura, 2015), School of Oud (Middlearth Editions, 2016) and Lay Ghost (Black Ocean, 2016); six books of poetry, Eroding Witness (University of Illinois Press, 1985), School of Udhra (City Lights Books, 1993), Whatsaid Serif (City Lights Books, 1998), Splay Anthem (New Directions, 2006), Nod House (New Directions, 2011), and Blue Fasa (New Directions, 2015); and an ongoing prose work, From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, of which four volumes have been published: Bedouin Hornbook (Callaloo Fiction Series, 1986; second edition: Sun & Moon Press, 1997), Djbot Baghostus’s Run (Sun & Moon Press, 1993), Atet A.D. (City Lights Books, 2001), and Bass Cathedral (New Directions, 2008); the first three of these have been published together as From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate: Volumes 1-3 (New Directions, 2010); the fifth, Late Arcade, is forthcoming from New Directions in 2017. He is also the author of two books of criticism, Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality, and Experimental Writing (Cambridge University Press, 1993; paper edition: University of Alabama Press, 2000) and Paracritical Hinge: Essays, Talks, Notes, Interviews (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). Strick: Song of the Andoumboulou 16-25, a compact disc recording of poems read with musical accompaniment (Royal Hartigan, percussion; Hafez Modirzadeh, reeds and flutes), was released in 1995 by Spoken Engine Company. He is editor of the literary magazine Hambone, whose twenty-first issue appeared in 2015, and coeditor, with Art Lange, of the anthology Moment’s Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose (Coffee House Press, 1993). His awards and honors include the selection of Eroding Witness for publication in the National Poetry Series, a Whiting Writer’s Award in 1993, election to the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets in 2001, the National Book Award in poetry for Splay Anthem in 2006, an Artist’s Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2007, the Roy Harvey Pearce/Archive for New Poetry Prize in 2007, the Stephen Henderson Award from the African American Literature and Culture Society in 2008, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation in 2014, and Yale’s Bollingen Prize for American Poetry in 2015. He lives in Durham, North Carolina, and teaches at Duke University, where he is the Reynolds Price Professor of English. He has previously taught at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1974-1976), the University of Southern California (1976-1979), and the University of California, Santa Cruz (1979-2010).