Co-Directors Geoff Gilbert and William Dow
The American University of Paris hosts a documentary poetry conference from 15-17 June 2023 on its campus in Paris, France. This conference is supported by the Center for Writers and Translators and the Center for Critical Democracy Studies.
Here are some questions the conference hopes to address. How do contemporary poets in the US and France position themselves in relation to popular political protest and activism? What use are they making of experimental documentary traditions (whose practices can be placed along a continuum from “subjective” auto-ethnographies to “objective” documentary tendencies)? How does writing outside France and the US relate to these two centers for poetry and poetics? What challenges does this offer to conceptions of the relation between poetry as an art form and other social and political utterances and actions? The conference will also look at the history of documentary poetry traditions in France and the United States, locating this history in an international, transnational, and pluri-disciplinary context.
All events will take place on AUP's campus in the Combes Student Life Center and the Quai d'Orsay Learning Commons. Entrance to both venues is via 6, rue du Colonel Combes, 75007 Paris.
All panels will take place in C-103 and C-104 (Combes first floor) and all plenary talks will take place in Q-801 (Quai eighth floor).
Lobby of the Combes Student Life Center (6, rue du Colonel Combes, 75007 Paris).
Official AUP Welcome by Provost William Fisher and professors Geoff Gilbert and William Dow
Mark Nowak, “Slo-mo Doc-Po: Writing the Insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.”
Provisional list of poets:
Diverse Beginnings: Documentary Forms and Poetics
Chair: Mark Nowak
Abigail Lang, « notre tradition “objectiviste” », or How the Document Can Extend Poetry. (Gleize, Quintane, Leibovici).
At area cafes and restaurants.
Radical Politics, the News from Documentary Poetry, Poetics of Resistance
Chair: Aurélien Bellucci
Documentary Ethics and Appropriations
Chair: Ryan Clark
Contemporary Forms of Documentary Poetry: Race, Polyvocality, and Documentary Mediation
Chair: Marie Lienard-Yeterian
Franck Leibovici, "des œuvres-outils."
At area cafés and restaurants.
Documentary Poetry: Public Spaces, Activism, and Intersectional Identities
Chair: Geoff Gilbert
Framing, Performance, and Documentary Referencing
Chair: Abigail Lang
Address: 33 Rue Malar, Paris, France
Address: 20 Av. de Tourville, 75007 Paris
Phone: 01 47 05 99 92
Plenary speakers: Abigail Lang, Franck Leibovici, and Mark Nowak
Conference Fee: (includes coffee breaks and opening and closing receptions): 40 euros.
Dinner Fee: 60 euros.