[DIS]EMBODIED POETICS: WRITING, THINKING, BEING

I'll be presenting as part of a panel on the poetics of trash alongside the wondrous Allison Cobb, CA Conrad, and Eleni Sikelianos at the inaugural [Dis]embodied Poetics conference to be held at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, October 10-12, 2014. Writing: The poetics of trash. Sunday, 10/12/14, 1 pm, Sycamore 8150 We live in what scientists term the Anthropocene, when human contamination touches every corner of the planet, and people are born with hundreds of industrial chemicals in their bloodstreams. Under these material and social conditions, trash art takes on a new kind of register today. Our panel occurs at a moment in which what Lawrence Buell once named toxic discourse is ever more prevalent: our panel illuminates innovative aesthetic approaches to navigating an increasingly poisoned world.

Four poets elaborate writing practices for engaging with the rejected—discarded objects, degraded environments, devalued human bodies. Panelists use somatic ritual, meditation, performance, and multimedia to address the proliferation of trash and questions of visibility and value; cultures of reuse and recycling; experiences of toxicity and contamination; and encounters with abjection, excess, and disgust. We conduct archaeologies of refuse and create operas to give a voice to the discarded.

[DIS]EMBODIED POETICS is a 3-day biennial conference that explores intersections between innovative forms of creative and critical writing that are experientially rooted in contemplative practice. We are interested in experiment, activism, performance, the archive, somatic practices, dharma arts, cross-genre, borderlands, the liminal, cross-disciplinary gestures, third-mind collaborations, bricolage, conceptual poetics, the five wisdoms of Maitri, mindful awareness, consciousness, Butoh, biorhythms, neo-benshi, and more. Once a moniker of our itinerant historical roots as a school, "disembodied" now also reflects the protean in the experiment—how we investigate and torque static limits in form and content and bring forward new questions that both invigorate and challenge the current dialogue in writing today. This includes incorporating "embodied" poetics: the somatic, the performative, the cellular—open-textured/porous movement between living organisms, such as bodies, languages, texts. For four decades, our rich combination of experimentation, poetics, and contemplative awareness has generated innovation within our community and concentrically beyond.

The inaugural launch of [DIS]EMBODIED POETICS occurs in conjunction with Naropa University’s and Jack Kerouac School’s 40th anniversary year.

WRITING to experiment, to investigate, to transform, to translate, to document, to delve, to open, to cultivate, to traverse, to linger, to desire, to excavate, to archive, to innovate, to articulate, to script, to mark, to trace, to letter, to carve, to make.

THINKING to enter, to question, to communicate, to juxtapose, to transgress, to deterritorialize, to determine, to locate, to diverge, to see, to synthesize, to imagine, to dialogue, to theorize, to complicate, to problematize, to resist, to turn, to explore, to poeticize, to frame.

BEING to exist, to contemplate, to become, to transform, to meditate, to breathe, to experience, to expand, to dilate, to converge, to activate, to realize, to wander, to return, to mark, to observe, to empty, to stir, to embody.

This conference is free and open to the public. Registration required. Register at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/disembodied-poetics-conference-writingthinkingbeing-tickets-11558831777

For more information about the [Dis]Embodied Poetics Conference, please visit http://bit.ly/JKSdpc.

Meanwhile, here's the schedule:

[DIS]EMBODIED POETICS CONFERENCE

Sycamore 8140 (Friday)

1:00pm - Precipice: the edge as a practice for scaling place. Jade Lascelles, Kristen Park, Matt Wedlock
3:30pm - Withness: thought-start in creative-critical practice. Lisa Samuels, Duriel E. Harris, Megan Kaminski, Marthe Reed

Lincoln 4130 (Friday)

1:00pm - Collaborative Being: Gender, Race, and Sexuality. Amaranth Borsuk, Andy Fitch, Aimee Herman, Ailish Hopper
3:30pm - Writing and Performing [Dis]embodied States of Being: The Poetics of Disability, Movement, Grief, and Sensuality. Shelia Black, Amber DiPietra, Margit Galanter, Lisa Gill, Violet Juno, Denise Leto

Student Center (Friday)

1:00pm - Illness, Language, and Perception. Richard Froude, Sarah Boyer, Eleni Stecopoulos
3:30pm - "To sail in the dark: history and hybridity in the wake of Zong!. Rosa Alcala, Susan Briante, TaraShea Nesbit, Sarah Vap & Ruth Ellen Kocher

Performing Arts Center (Friday)

7:30pm - Keynote Lecture with Lisa Jarnot

Sycamore 8140 (Saturday)

9:00am - Writing and Being Collaborative Transformation. Laura Wetherington, Hannah Ensor, Jill Darling
1:00pm - Disembodied Forensics: Societal Anatomy and Cross Culturalization. Derek Fenner, Shin Yu Pai, Christopher Luna, Austin James

Sycamore 8120 (Saturday)

9:00am - Bending the Source: Research, Poiesis, and Document Fluidity. Kristin Cerda, Athea Merredyth, Merete Mueller, Andrea Spofford
1:00pm - The Mother Embodied: Poetic and Hybrid. Sarah Fox, Danielle Pafunda, Susan M. Schultz, Joseph Harrington, Dennis Etzel Jr.

Sycamore 8150 (Saturday)

9:00am - Echo Locution : Aural / Environment / Body / Poetics. David James Miller, E. Tracy Grinnell, James Belflower, Maryam Parhizkar
1:00pm - Reading/Writing and/as (Critical) (Animal) Inhabitance. Linda Russo, C.S. Giscombe, Brenda Iijima, Laura Woltag

Pavilion (Saturday)

3:00pm - Opening reception . Food and book fair featuring: Boulder Book Store, JKS faculty and staff books, panelists' books, and Bombay Gin Literary Magazine.

Sycamore 8140 (Sunday)

10:00am - Bearing Witness from Negotiated Spaces: Towards a Poetics of Occupation. Jessica Rogers, Stefania Irene Marthakis, Jason Cerrato
1:00pm - Ecoskeletons of Language, Sound, and Impossibility: [Dis] Embodied Lineages. Julie Joosten, Matthew Pincus, Connor Fisher

Sycamore 8120 (Sunday)

10:00am - Sewing is Writing is Body is Sewing. Rachel May, Jennifer Tamayo, Jill Magi, Jen Hofer, Elena Berriolo, Jan Johnson
1:00pm - Touching Writing, Haptic Thinking: Embodiment, performance, and touch-screen literature. Amaranth Borsuk, Kate Durbin, Samantha Gorman, Ian Hatcher, Stephanie Strickland

Sycamore 8150 (Sunday)

10:00am - Radical Improvisation: Meditations on Dirt. Samuel Ace, CAConrad, j/j hastian
1:00pm - Writing: the Poetics of Trash. Allison Cobb, CAConrad, Jen Scappettone, Eleni Sikelianos

Performing Arts Center (Sunday)

4:00pm - Kerouac School Reading. JKS 40th Anniversary Reading featuring Lisa Jarnot, Junior Burke, Reed Bye, Jâ€™Lyn Chapman, Jack Collom, Michelle Naka Pierce, Andrea Rexilius, and the work of Anselm Hollo