Chris will be chairing the Graduate Students' Poets' Circle and participating in a reading for The Southern Poetry Anthology at SAMLA 2013, which will be held in Atlanta, Nov. 8 - 10.
A Dialectic of Dark and Light: Poetry, Place, and Social Justice
In
her poem “South,” Natasha Trethewey describes returning to Mississippi:
“to a stand of pines, / bone-thin phalanx / flanking the roadside,
tangle / of understory—a dialectic of dark / and light.” Later in the
same poem, Trethewey refers to Mississippi as the state that “made a
crime” of her, being the daughter of a black mother and white father,
born a year before the state's anti-miscegenation laws were declared
unconstitutional. Yet, she ends with a powerful testament of
belonging—“native / in my native land, this place they’ll bury me”—thus
suggesting a relationship between a poet’s connection to place and the
formation of a poetics of social justice.
This panel discussion,
opened by readings, will feature graduate student poets working at the
confluence of place and social justice. Though many questions will
unfold, the guiding one will concern ways in which specific places
inform the socially engaged poetry of the panelists. For the purposes of this panel,
“graduate student” is defined as anyone enrolled in, soon to be enrolled
in, or recently graduated from an MA, MFA, or PhD program, in any area.
The poets in this panel, along with their presentations, are:
Christine Swint, Georgia State University "Lives of La Llorona: Seeking Solace along the Riverbank"
Andrea O'Rourke, Georgia State University "Victims Ruin It: Identity and Intimacy in Post-Conflict Environments"
Lucy Biederman, University of Louisiana at Lafeyette "A Map of a Spiral: Access, Accessibility, and Accountability in Small Press Poetry"
Kate Partridge, George Mason University "Already Occupied: Repurposing Texts to Create Space for Queer Southern Poetics"
Alicia Marie Brandewie, Vanderbilt University "Heimat [Homeland]: The WWII We Do Not Remember"
The Southern Poetry Anthology Anthology Series: A Reading
Saturday, Nov. 9, 6:00 PM
Co-Chair: Jim Clark, Barton College
Co-Chair: William Wright, Independent Writer and Scholar
Presenters:
Judson Mitcham, Mercer University
Anthony Grooms, Kennesaw State University
Janice Moore, Young Harris College
Gordon Johnston, Mercer University
Bill King, Davis and Elkins College
Christopher Martin, Kennesaw State University
This session will focus on the recently published “Georgia” volume of The Southern Poetry Anthology series. Featured will be Series Editor William Wright, Georgia State Poet Laureate Judson Mitcham, and five other esteemed Georgia poets reading from their work.
