Reading Group – January 2019


On 30th January, Lila Matsumoto (University of Nottingham) lead a discussion of Anne Boyer’s essay ‘How to Go From Poetry to Art/ How to Go from Art to Poetry’ and Jane Bennett’s essay ‘The Force of Things’ from Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Lila will opened up a conversation about the role of material objects in poetics, and what poetry may gain from engaging with what Jane Bennett calls the ‘vital materialities’ of our world. Does a deep engagement with objects lie only in the domain of artists; what kind of fruitful osmosis may take place between poetry and visual art in approaches to objects?

Lila Matsumoto is Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at University of Nottingham. Her poetry book Urn & Drum is published by Shearsman. Lila is co-organiser of ‘Modernist Art Writing/Writing Modernist Art’, an interdisciplinary conference which will be held at University of Nottingham, 24-25 June 2019. https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/conference/fac-arts/clas/modernist-art-writing/index.aspx