Louisville

I have just returned from The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900. That’s a mouthful. I very much regret missing Ed Roberson’s reading. Attending the panel on his poetry has put his books on my shopping list and has added Evie Shockley to the list of scholars I want to keep an eye out for. I also very much enjoyed the panel for which I read, and look forward to speaking again with David Need and my fellow presenter Jill Kroeger Kincaid of the U. of Southern Indiana. I was able to spend a few minutes with Barrett Watten, but I was too shy to ask him some of the questions I had about his work. I did, however, enjoy his brief presentation at the panel on teaching difficult poetry, but I was much more excited about some of the things Phillip Metres had to say about his teaching. I was particularly taken with his assignment asking students to consider ways to bring poetry into the world. He told me about papercraft projects and a few projects that might be considered “actions” or installations, though my memory is fuzzy here.

Overall, this continues to be my favorite conference in my field. Its small size makes a much better atmosphere. My one complaint is that the schedulers put so many things that interest me specifically at the same time. I don’t know how they find out what I want to see, but somehow they must, because it happened the last time I was there too.