University of Strathclyde and Kelvingrove Museum & Art Gallery
18th & 19th June 2013
Keynote Speakers
Cole Swensen – award winning American poet and translator noted for her response to the visual art traditions of America and France.
David Kennedy – British poet and critic whose most recent book The Ekphrastic Encounter in Contemporary British Poetry and Elsewhere surveys contemporary poetry that responds to the visual arts from a range of theoretical perspectives.
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This AHRC sponsored conference responds to a renewed interest among both theorists and practitioners, an interest signaled by a rise in ‘picture poems’, numerous collaborations between poets and artists and a recent crop of critical books on poetry and the visual arts by, among others, Stephen Cheeke, David Kennedy and Liliane Louvel.
The relationship between literature and the visual arts has a long and complex history which includes poets responses to iconic works of art such as Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ and notable collaborations between artists and poets such as those between Auden and Henry Moore and, more recently, Philip Gross and Simon Denison. Beyond poetry, the tales of Saki and Vernon Lee and the fiction of A. S. Byatt feature descriptions of fictional works of art.
Writing into Art is aimed particularly at poets and writers in general interested in ekphrasis and at visual artists whose work involves the use of text. While the emphasis will be on practice-led responses to the visual arts, academics with an interest in experimental theoretical models are also welcome.
The conference programme combines critical and creative practice. The afternoon of the second day of the conference will be devoted to two practice-based workshops that will elicit responses to the collections at Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, one led by Cole Swensen, the other by a leading British artist.
Writing into Art 