Category: Events

Resounding Dylan Thomas: A Centenary Symposium

​ (University of Cambridge, 11 Oct 2014)​

 

 

2014 marks the centenary of Dylan Thomas’s birth. As such, it provides an ideal opportunity to reevaluate a body of work that has for too long precluded scholarly consensus. The sticking point has always been a biographical one. Thomas’s untimely death in New York in 1953 makes for a juicy story, yet it has created a kind of blind spot in critical as well as popular thought. The poet’s public image – a drunk, a womanizer, a Welshman – continues to influence the way his written craft is received, as though his wild behaviour should provide the first or only means of access to the poetry.

 

Those involved in Resounding Dylan Thomas intend to make a change. Building on the work of John Goodby’s new monograph, The Poetry of Dylan Thomas: Under the Spelling Wall (2013), this symposium will bring together a diverse group of scholars, not only to debunk the Thomas myth, but also to determine what place he has – or could have – in twenty-first century culture. The symposium will feature papers on various aspects of Thomas’s technique – his revisionary habits, his engagement with new media, his influence on recent writing – as well as a reading of his poetry.

 

Speakers: John Goodby, Leo Mellor, Rod Mengham, Jeremy Noel-Tod, Peter Robinson,

Zoë Skoulding, and Amanda Wrigley

 

Date: Saturday 11 October 2014

 

Venue: Faculty of English, 9 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP

 

For more information, and to register, please contact: Edward Allen – ejfa2@cam.ac.uk

A British Academy Landmark Conference

The First World War: Literature, Culture, Modernity

Organisers: Santanu Das & Kate McLoughlin

12-13 November 2014 at The British Academy, London

Speakers: Fran Brearton, Geert Buelens, Sarah Cole, Laura Doan, Ann-Marie Einhaus, Sandra Gilbert, Margaret Higonnet, Tim Kendall, Britta Lange, Hermione Lee, Laura Marcus, Jane Potter, Jahan Ramazani, Eugene Rogan, Max Saunders, Vincent Sherry, Hope Wolf.

On the evening of 11 November 2014, there will be an evening of music and readings at the Chapel of King’s College, London, featuring the tenor Andrew Kennedy and the poet-critic Angela Leighton.  On the evening of 12 November 2014, there will be a poetry reading featuring Sir Andrew Motion, Michael Longley and Jon Stallworthy at the British Academy.

You can register at http://www.britac.ac.uk/events/2014/The_First_World_War_Literature_Culture_Modernity.cfm.

Details of the performance on 11 November are here: http://www.britac.ac.uk/events/2014/Terrible_Beauty.cfm
Details of the poetry reading on 12 November are here: http://www.britac.ac.uk/events/2014/The_Past_Hovering.cfm

Please see below programme and registration details for the Anna Kavan Symposium and Evening Event (speaker Maggie Gee), plus details of an Anna Kavan Wikipedia edit-a-thon taking place the following day.

 

 

ANNA KAVAN SYMPOSIUM PROGRAMME

11 September 2014, Institute of English Studies, Russell Square, London

 

09.30-09.50     Registration

 

09.50-10.00     Welcome Remarks

 

10.00-11.15     Panel 1:  Feminist Approaches to Kavan

Chair: Tory Young (Anglia Ruskin)

 

”Learning to know in the night way”: Night-Time Life and Language in

Anna Kavan’s Sleep Has His House

Hannah Van Hove (Glasgow)

 

Anna Kavan and the Mirror Alone

Natalie Ferris (Oxford)

 

Anna Kavan’s Geographies of Control

Jules Bentley (New Orleans)

 

11.15-11.45     Coffee Break

 

11.45-12.30     Panel 2:  Postcolonial Kavan

Chair: Michèle Barrett (Queen Mary)

 

Anna Kavan and the New Zealand Connection

Janet Wilson (Northampton)

 

Anna Kavan’s Postcolonial Masculinities

Kate Houlden (Liverpool John Moores)

 

12.30-13.30     Lunch Break

 

13.30-14.00     Catherine Lenoble Performative Reading

 

14.00-15.15     Panel 3:  Reading Kavan

Chair: Helen Carr (Goldsmiths)

 

Mental Illness, Pathos and Dogs in Anna Kavan’s Asylum Piece

Angelos Evangelou (Kent)

 

The Horse’s Tale: Hybridity, Heterotopia and Canonic Marginality

Nikki Sheppy (Calgary)

 

The Lost Girl in Ice

Helena Fagertun (Gothenburg)

 

15.15-15.45     Coffee Break

 

15.45-16.30     Panel 4:  Kavan Contextualised

Chair: Victoria Walker (London)

 

Anna Kavan and the Angry Young Women Discourse

Freya Buechter-Greiner (Giessen)

 

Anna’s Addiction

Christopher Hallam (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)

 

16.30-17.45     Round Table Discussion and Concluding Remarks

                        Chair:  Kate Houlden (Liverpool John Moores)

 

Michèle Barrett (Queen Mary); Helen Carr (Goldsmiths); Victoria Walker (London); Tory Young (Anglia Ruskin)

 

17.45-18.00     Break

 

18.00-19.30     Evening Event & Wine Reception

                        Maggie Gee in Conversation – Anna Kavan: It’s Cold Outside 

Anna Kavan’s legacy can be seen in the admiration of her work expressed by writers of her time and those that followed her, among them Jean Rhys, Anaïs Nin, J G Ballard and Brian Aldiss. The Anna Kavan symposium will close with a public event in the evening at which writer Maggie Gee will discuss Kavan’s writing, and consider points of comparison with her own work and her experience as a contemporary author.

Maggie Gee has written twelve acclaimed novels, including The Ice People, My Cleaner, My Driverand The White Family, a collection of short stories, The Blue, and a memoir of her life as a writer,My Animal Life. She was the first female Chair of Council of the Royal Society of Literature, 2004-2008, and is now a Vice-President. Her new novel, Virginia Woolf in Manhattan, has just been published. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University

 

Conference fees: £30 standard rate/ £20 IES members & friends, students, unwaged/ £7 evening event only

For further information and to register see: http://annakavansymposium.wordpress.com/ orhttp://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/ies-conferences/AnnaKavan

@AnnaKavan

 

WHO ARE YOU?  ANNA KAVAN EDIT-A-THON

09.30-13.00, 12 September 2014, Wikimedia UK, 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT

To coincide with the Anna Kavan Symposium, writer Catherine Lenoble will be facilitating a collaborative-writing workshop to edit the Wikipedia pages associated with Anna Kavan.  For further details and registration (to join in person or remotely), please see https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Anna_Kavan_Edit-a-thon

 

Event: Scotland and Russia: Performance Since 1900

 

Time: Friday, 17 October 2014

Place: University of Edinburgh, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Reid Concert Hall

 

‘Scotland and Russia: Performance Since 1900’ is the inaugural event of the ‘Scotland and Russia: Cultural Encounters in the Twentieth Century’ project dedicated to exploring the history of cultural exchange between the two countries over the last hundred years.

Scotland and Russia have a long tradition of mutual engagement and influence, going back to the Middle Ages and still thriving today; and nowhere is the strength of these links more apparent than in the worlds of theatre and music. The daylong event at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities will feature talks by leading performance scholars and practitioners, including directors and musicians, and will conclude with a recital of folk and classical music at the Reid Concert Hall. The recital, ‘Glasgow Concerts in the 1930s: Performing Russian Music in Scotland’, is free and open to the public. The programme will include selections from Medtner, Mussorgsky, Shostakovich and Erik Chisholm’s Celtic Folksongs.

 

Please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/scotland-and-russia-performance-since-1900-tickets-12498169361

 

PDF PROGRAMME HERE: Scotland-Russia Performance Programme

 

Resounding Dylan Thomas: A Centenary Symposium

​ (University of Cambridge, 11 Oct 2014)​

 

2014 marks the centenary of Dylan Thomas’s birth. As such, it provides an ideal opportunity to reevaluate a body of work that has for too long precluded scholarly consensus. The sticking point has always been a biographical one. Thomas’s untimely death in New York in 1953 makes for a juicy story, yet it has created a kind of blind spot in critical as well as popular thought. The poet’s public image – a drunk, a womanizer, a Welshman – continues to influence the way his written craft is received, as though his wild behaviour should provide the first or only means of access to the poetry.

 

Those involved in Resounding Dylan Thomas intend to make a change. Building on the work of John Goodby’s new monograph, The Poetry of Dylan Thomas: Under the Spelling Wall (2013), this symposium will bring together a diverse group of scholars, not only to debunk the Thomas myth, but also to determine what place he has – or could have – in twenty-first century culture. The symposium will feature papers on various aspects of Thomas’s technique – his revisionary habits, his engagement with new media, his influence on recent writing – as well as a reading of his poetry.

 

Speakers:

John Goodby, Leo Mellor, Rod Mengham, Jeremy Noel-Tod, Peter Robinson, Zoë Skoulding, and Amanda Wrigley

Date: Saturday 11 October 2014

 

Venue: Faculty of English, 9 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP

 

For more information, and to register, please contact: Edward Allen – ejfa2@cam.ac.uk

Maggie Gee has written twelve acclaimed novels, including The Ice People, My Cleaner, My Driver and The White Family, a collection of short stories, The Blue, and a memoir of her life as a writer, My Animal Life. She was the first female Chair of Council of the Royal Society of Literature, 2004-2008, and is now a Vice-President. Her new novel, Virginia Woolf in Manhattan, has just been published. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University

A British Academy Landmark Conference

The First World War: Literature, Culture, Modernity

Organisers: Santanu Das & Kate McLoughlin

12-13 November 2014 at The British Academy, London

Speakers: Fran Brearton, Geert Buelens, Sarah Cole, Laura Doan, Ann-Marie Einhaus, Sandra Gilbert, Margaret Higonnet, Tim Kendall, Britta Lange, Hermione Lee, Laura Marcus, Jane Potter, Jahan Ramazani, Eugene Rogan, Max Saunders, Vincent Sherry, Hope Wolf.

On the evening of 11 November 2014, there will be an evening of music and readings at the Chapel of King’s College, London, featuring the tenor Andrew Kennedy and the poet-critic Angela Leighton.  On the evening of 12 November 2014, there will be a poetry reading featuring Sir Andrew Motion, Michael Longley and Jon Stallworthy at the British Academy.

You can register at http://www.britac.ac.uk/events/2014/The_First_World_War_Literature_Culture_Modernity.cfm.

Details of the performance on 11 November are here: http://www.britac.ac.uk/events/2014/Terrible_Beauty.cfm
Details of the poetry reading on 12 November are here: http://www.britac.ac.uk/events/2014/The_Past_Hovering.cfm

A flyer is attached.  Do come and do spread the word!