Contemporary Poetics, Communities, and Publics
Inaugural European Association of American Studies Poetry Network Symposium
University of Göttingen | May 16-17, 2025How does poetry circulate within or through contemporary everyday spaces, and how do networks of poets, publishers, and readers inform its evolving role in public discourse? This inaugural EAAS Poetry Network symposium aims to examine poetry not as an individual expression but as a collaborative practice deeply embedded in collective experience. By exploring how poetry engages public spaces, we also hope to address questions of accessibility, inclusivity, and to redress the boundaries of poetic form.
This symposium invites the full range of poetry in a contemporary sense, which includes its publics and expands a definition of the lyric “I”. We contend our task as scholars to involve reimagining and enabling relations between poets and their readers. This requires approaching poetry as a sphere of collaboration and dialogue, while understanding sociability and networks as historically central to even the most personal and subjective poetic voices. Our work thus aims to look outwards, towards the civic and communal, where a definition of poetry is constantly being renewed as it exists in a generative relationship with its readers and the places they occupy and create.
SYMPOSIUM PROGRAM