Mardi 3 octobre 2023, 18h, Salle 126 Site Saint-Charles 1. Conférence animée par Karim Daanoune (MCF, EMMA)

The work of documentary/investigative poetry parallels the work of truth commissions—not only by gathering testimonies that haven’t been aired widely, but also by examining, working with, and critiquing the political, legal, economic, and cultural systems that engineer oppression and injustice. A truth commission is a transitional justice mechanism for societies attempting to confront the past, reestablish the rule of law and responsible governance, and move into the future. Lacking an official truth process, artists and activists create a counterarchive, undoing erasure, and making visible and audible histories that the official narratives suppress or exclude. If archives began as a way of maintaining hegemony’s memory through written records, the counterarchive is more flexible, more fluid, more vivacious, less bound to documents—a laughing memory, a funeral dance, a mapped songline, worn prayer beads passed down. This talk will explore the origins and implications of this idea through some of my recent work in investigative poetry—from Sand Opera, Shrapnel Maps, and Fugitive/Refuge.

Philip Metres is the author of many books among which the poetry collections To See the Earth (Cleveland State, 2008), Sand Opera (Alice James, 2015), Pictures at an Exhibition (University of Akron, 2016) and Shrapnel Maps (Copper Canyon, 2020). He also published a collection of essays on poetry entitled The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance (University of Michigan, 2018) and a scholarly monograph Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront, Since 1941 ( University of Iowa Press, 2007). Philip also translated from the Russian Sergey Gandlevsky’s poetry in a bilingual edition A Kindred Orphanhood: Selected Poems of Sergey Gandlevsky (Zephyr Press, 2003). He also co-translated with Tatiana Tulchinsky two volumes, one on the poetry of Arseny Tarkovsky (1907-1989), I Burned at Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky (Cleveland State University, 2015) and another on poetic texts by Lev Rubinstein, Compleat Catalogue of Comedic Novelties: Poetic Texts of Lev Rubinstein (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2014). His latest translation Ochre & Rust: New Selected Poems of Sergey Gandlevsky has just been released by Green Linden Press. His forthcoming poetry collection Fugitive Refuge will be published in April 2024 by Copper Canyon. His work was awarded many prizes among which the Adrienne Rich Award and three disctinctions by the Arab American Book Awards.

Philip Metres teaches literature and creative writing at John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio. He is the founder and director of the “Peace, Justice, and Human Rights (PJHR)” at John Carroll University. He lives in Cleveland.

Plus de renseignements sur : https://poetry-talks.weebly.com/

---

---