Map of Durham University

A new map of the city has been published online, allowing you to 'toggle' the university buildings. Please click here to view it.

Tom Pickard Tony Lopez Amy Evans: Poetry Reading 4 July

Please join us for an evening of poetry at St Chad's College, Durham. The event will feature  readings from Tom Pickard, Tony Lopez and Amy Evans. A wine reception will follow.

From 6.30pm in The Williams Library. Free admission and all welcome.

Contact John Clegg j.r.clegg@durham.ac.uk for further details.

A bit of Briggflatts

(Video: Copyright Peter Bell 1982)

Programme

You can now access the programme of events - including the schedule for panels - on our blog under the tab 'Programme of Events' or by clicking here. Please get in contact with annabel.haynes@durham.ac.uk if you have any queries.

Conference Poster

We are getting very close to the big day(s) and we are looking forward to all of the exciting readings, papers, speeches and (now) screenings. If you you know anyone you think might be interested in coming along to the event, please pass along our promotional poster (made with thanks to the Basil Bunting archive for the photograph). You can download a version of it here, or email Annabel.haynes@durham.ac.uk for the version with original formatting.

Registration extended!

Registration has been extended and the form can be found here. Please return your forms and direct any questions to Annabel Haynes (annabel.haynes@durham.ac.uk). See the 'Programme' tab on the blog for details about the conference schedule.

Registration now open!

Registration is now open for 'With Sleights Learned from Others', Durham University, UK 4-5 July 2012, and the registration form plus further information about prices, accommodation and our optional excursion to Brigflatts on 6 July is available here. You can also easily access the registration form - and further details about registration, as we add it, by clicking on the tab entitled 'registration', below the heading of this blog page. Please return your registration forms to A. Haynes, following the instructions on the form, and be sure to send a copy to the University finance department (details on the form) if paying by cheque. Please get in touch if you'd like any further information. We hope to see you in July!

Confirmed: Tony Lopez

Further good news! We are very pleased indeed to inform you that Tony Lopez will also be joining us to read his poetry.

Tony Lopez is Professor Emeritus in Poetry at Plymouth University. His work on Bunting can be found in his book Meaning Performance: Essays on Poetry (Salt) and also appears  in the Durham University Journal, Basil Bunting Special Issue as a piece exploring Bunting's relationship with place: 'Under Saxon the Stone: National Identity in the Poetry of Basil Bunting'.

His recent poetic publications include False Memory (Shearsman, 2012), Only More So (UNO Press, 2011) and Darwin (Acts of Language, 2009).

Confirmed: Tom Pickard

Good news! We are excited to announce that Tom Pickard will join us to give a poetry reading.

Poet Tom Pickard was crucial to Bunting's revival in the 1960s. He helped set up the Morden Tower poetry centre in Newcastle where many well known poets, including Bunting, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Cobbing and Gregory Corso, as well as Pickard himself,  have read their work.

Details about further poetry readings that will take place at the conference will be posted soon. Readings will be open to all. A fee for non conference-delegates may be payable.

Don Share Confirmed Keynote Speaker

We are delighted to announce Don Share, Senior Editor of Poetry magazine, is now a confirmed keynote speaker. In light of his new edited volume, Bunting's Persia, he will be talking about how Bunting's interest in Persian verse informed his relationships with other poets, and with poetry.

Our Facebook Event Page

You can now join our Facebook Event Page for further updates and information about the conference. 

Bunting Conference 2012 Call for Papers

CALL FOR PAPERS

With sleights learned from others: Basil Bunting and Friends

A conference at Durham 4-5 July 2012


in association with the Durham Centre for Poetry and Poetics, incorporating the Basil Bunting Poetry Centre

With sleights learned from others and an ear open to melodic analogies I have set down words as a musician pricks his score, not to be read in silence, but to trace in the air a pattern of sound that may sometimes, I hope, be pleasing.

Basil Bunting, preface to Collected Poems

This conference aims to emphasise the position of British modernist poet Basil Bunting in literary tradition, reconnecting him with the work that shaped him and the work he shaped. We invite papers that explore how movements in music, philosophy, religion, science, visual art, nature, politics, and fiction, as well as poetry, influenced Bunting, or were influenced by him in turn. We welcome proposals that consider the writers and thinkers associated with Bunting, whether directly or indirectly, as well as papers that focus on the poet himself. In addition to academic panels, there will be two poetry readings, as well as an optional third-day excursion to the nearby Brigflatts Quaker meeting house at Sedbergh.

Bunting is often viewed as a solitary poet, but even the phrase ‘struggler in the desert’ was pinned on him by Pound and paired him with Zukofsky; there are also his later associations with figures such as Jonathan Williams and Tom Pickard. Studying these acquaintances and friendships casts light on Bunting’s poetry, as well as the broader modernist tradition to which he belongs. The conference will demonstrate the enduring importance of this intermittently neglected poet, by examining his contacts, correspondents, influences and influence.

Please send proposals of around 300 words for papers to Annabel Haynes (details below) by 19 March 2012. Papers should last 20 minutes.

Accommodation can be provided by the university, and more details will be available upon registration. We also welcome those who wish to attend without presenting. If you would like to be added to the mailing list, or require any further information, please contact the organisers.

‘Friends’ could include:

Dante  Alighieri, W. H. Auden, J. S. Bach, Richard Caddel, Catullus, Kamo no Chōmei, Bob         Cobbing, Robert Creeley, Saint Cuthbert, Peter Dale, Donald Davie, Karl Drerup, T. S. Eliot, Ferdowsi, Ford Madox Ford, George Fox, Allen Ginsberg, Bill Griffiths, Hāfez, Ian Hamilton-Finlay, Horace, Omar Khayyam, Tony Lopez, Mina Loy, Lucretius, Hugh MacDiarmid, Barry MacSweeney, Manuchehri, Karl Marx, Thomas Meyer, Stuart Montgomery, William Morris, Eric Mottram, Lorine Niedecker, Charles Olson, George Oppen, Tom Pickard, Ezra Pound, Dorothy Pound, Rudaki, Saadi, Domenico Scarlatti, Colin Simms, Joseph Skipsey, Gael Turnbull, Francois Villon, Walt Whitman, Jonathan Williams, William Carlos Williams, Ludwig Wittgenstein, William Wordsworth, Louis Zukofsky.

With kind regards,

Annabel Haynes, Jack Baker, John Clegg and Matthew Griffiths

Conference organisers

Contact Details:

Jack Baker                   jack.baker@durham.ac.uk

John Clegg                   j.r.clegg@durham.ac.uk

Matthew Griffiths      m.j.r.griffiths@durham.ac.uk

Annabel Haynes         annabel.haynes@durham.ac.uk