How2 Updates: Conferences, Pubicliations and More

We are eager to post announcements of all international, English-language conferences generated by both writing and academic communities -- when those events pertain to modernist studies and contemporary innovate poetries & scholarship, particularly when focused on the works of women authors. This section will be continuously UPDATED between the September and February issues. Please send Call for Papers, dates, location, website information -- with plenty of lead time -- to Up'date Coordinator Arielle Greenberg acgreenberg@syr.edu

"Wider boundaries of daring": The Modernist Impulse in Canadian Women's Poetry
October 25-28 2001
Windsor, Ontario Co-hosted by the University of Windsor and York University Di Brandt and Barbara Godard

"Neither one alive to see
In wider boundaries of daring
What the recompense might be."

(Dorothy Livesay, "We Are Alone")

Dorothy Livesay's poem (written in the 1930s) announces a bold project and expresses curiosity about its future reception. Was she working alone or striving with comrades to build an archive for future times? How was this legacy taken up or modified by other writers, artists, critics, feminists and social activists, then and later? What are the "wider boundaries of daring" envisioned and created by the work of Modernist women poets of Canada? What issues does retrieval of this past raise for literary history, for feminist theory? These are some of the questions to be addressed in a conference that will focus on the important contribution of Dorothy Livesay, P.K. Page, Miriam Waddington, Margaret Avison, Jay MacPherson, Elizabeth Smart, Phyllis Webb, and other lesser known poets of their generations such as Doris Ferne, Floris McLaren, Anne Marriott, Kay Smith, Elizabeth Brewster, to Canadian literature and society.

Modernism is a fraught issue in Canadian literature criticism. Robert Kroetsch once announced that Canadian literature passed straight from Victorianism to Postmodernism with nothing in between, thereby contributing to a marked decline in scholarly attention to the Modernist period since the 1980s. Poststructuralist and postcolonial studies in the last decades have tended to privilege narrative at the expense of poetry. Focus on the troubled relationship of feminism and postmodernism has contributed to the neglect of contemporary women writers' legacy from their Modernist predecessors. A festival of readings by several generations of women poets will address this question through performance and dialogue. We wish to celebrate the "wider boundaries of daring" Modernist women poets envisioned and created for women artists who came after and the wide-ranging artistic affiliations and inter-media connections they established.

Critically, the conference will supplement existing scholarship on Modernist poetry in Canada that has been primarily the work of poets, collecting manifestoes, identifying little magazines and other avant-garde sites of diffusion, writing biographies. A critical gap has emerged recently as the first outlines of a more general narrative of Canadian Modernism have been sketched with a decidedly masculinist cast (Gnarowski, Trehearne, Kizuk). Only the rare token woman figures in these studies as practitioner of an aesthetic to be surpassed on the way to greater artistic heights. Additionally, this narrative posits Canadian modernism as derivative of British and American experiments. Elsewhere, though, a rethinking of Modernism through the lens of gender has greatly expanded the number of texts and the formal range of rejections of tradition, as well as enlarging the connecting strands of association between modernists so as to displace the canon from a few masters. One thinks of the work of Bonnie Kime Scott who includes women writers of the of the Harlem Renaissance in The Gender of Modernism; of Whitney Chadwick in Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement and Georgiana Colvile in La Femme s'entte who show how Surrealism only appeared to objectify the feminine, proving rather to be an enabling aesthetic for many women painters and writers. Closer to home, Patricia Smart's ground-breaking study of Quebec women artists, Les femmes du Refus Global, suggests they were written out of the history of the Automatiste movement because still working today, in a variety of media, their artmaking exceeds the aesthetic of that particular moment with which critics identified the group.

In a similar revisionary spirit, we propose to analyze the contribution of women poets to the development of Modernism in Canada, in all its facets and in as wide a context as possible. One of the enduring myths of Modernism, with a powerful hold in the Canadian context, posits an opposition between formalist aestheticism and socio-political engagement. Yet these women writers pursued both projects; as teachers, editors, publishers, activists, they did much to build the literary institution in Canada, creating examples and opportunities for younger writers. We are therefore interested in contributions that examine their roles as public intellectuals and/or social activists as well as artists.

To this end we invite analyses of their political drama, reportage, reviews, criticism, speeches and life-writing, as well as the fiction and poetry for which they are primarily celebrated. What affiliations did they establish with their predecessors? With artists in other media? How has the next generation responded to/benefitted from their initiatives? What questions do these connections pose for periodization and historiography in the literary critical context? We also invite contributions that analyze their relationship implicit or explicit to international aesthetic and social movements, and translation of their work into different languages, including those of sound and visual image.

Please send a proposal of 200 words along with a brief CV by December 15th, 2000

Barbara Godard, 350 Stong, York University, 4700 Keele St., North York, Ontario, M3J 1P3. Fax: 416-736-5412. email: bgodard@yorku.ca Or Di Brandt email: dbrandt@uwindsor.ca

American Literature Association Panel on Lorine Niedecker
24-27 May 2001
Cambridge, MA

I have been gathering a list of Niedecker critics and researchers in an effort to organize a forum for scholarly discourse about the poet. Currently, I am proposing a Niedecker panel for this year's ALA. The American Literature Association is holding their 2001 Annual Conference in Cambridge Massachusettes. [www.americanliterature.org] The conference consists of panels representing various Author Societies and is now in its 12th year. To date there has been no ALA panel dedicated exclusively to the work of Lorine Niedecker.

I would like to propose such a panel for ALA's East Coast 2001 conference which runs from May 24-May 27. If scholarly interest is high and this panel gets accepted, then perhaps an Author Society and/or Newsletter will follow.

"Poetry & Music: An International Conference"
1-4 April 2001
University of Liege, Belgium

Designed to bring a broad range of writers, composers and scholars into conversation, the conference will feature roundtable discussions, poetry readings and performances, keynote lectures and workshops. Submissions must represent innovative thought (either in the form of extending or challenging current critical positions). Any interdisciplinary critical approach may be employed providing it deals with the theoretical and practical interrelationships between XXth century poetry and music.

Michael Delville at mdelville@ulg.ac.be
or
Michael Delville
English Dept
University of Liege
3 Place Cockerill
4000 Liege Belgium

FEMSPEC, an interdisciplinary feminist journal dedicated to critical and creative works in the realms of science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, surrealism, myth, folklore and other supernatural genres, is now accepting submissions for a future special issue of fiction, poetry, critical articles and visual art by women who feel their work is affiliated with surrealism and by women who write about international surrealism -- the movements and its women artists and writers. We welcome both creative works in all media and critical works.

Contact the guest editor:
Gloria Orenstein
11284 Montana Avenue #10
Los Angeles, CA 90049

The Centre for Contemporary Arts, De Montfort University, announces an historic gathering of the international avant-garde:

LANGUAGE/POETRY/ PERFORMANCE
Friday 8 December - Saturday 9 December 2000

VINCENT BARRAS (SWITZERLAND)
CAROLINE BERGVALL (UK)
CHARLES BERNSTEIN (USA)
BOB COBBING (UK)
HENRI CHOPIN (FRANCE)
ANDREW MACLENNAN (AUSTRALIA)
STEVE McCAFFERY (CANADA)
KAREN MAC CORMACK (CANADA)
ENZO MINARELLI (ITALY)
MAGGIE O^SULLIVAN (UK)
EMMETT WILLIAMS (USA)

LANGUAGE/ POETRY/ PERFORMANCE - a two day international conference examining how Language Poetry and the Sound Poetry, Fluxus and Multimedia Avant-Gardes have explored and continue to explore innovative poetic performance.

LANGUAGE/ POETRY/ PERFORMANCE presents exclusive UK readings and papers by Language Poets CHARLES BERNSTEIN (NY) & STEVE MCCAFFERY (Toronto) and by legendary transatlantic avant-garde innovators, Fluxus poet EMMETT WILLIAMS (Berlin) and Sound Poets BOB COBBING (London) & HENRI CHOPIN (Paris), along with younger poets, editors, radio producers, festival directors and researchers including: VINCENT BARRAS (Geneva) CAROLINE BERGVALL (Dartington), KAREN MAC CORMACK (Toronto), ANDREW MACLENNAN (Sydney), ENZO MINARELLI (Bologna), MAGGIE O^SULLIVAN (Yorks), REDELL OLSEN (London) & NAGY RASHWAN (Leicester).

WHEN: 1.00PM - 10.00 PM Friday 8 DEC. and 9.30 -4.00PM, Saturday 9 DEC. 2000. WHERE: Lecture Theatre 2.13, The Clephan Building, De Montfort University, Corner of Oxford Street and Bonners Lane, Leicester. Registration required.

For more information on registration, accommodations and sponsors: CONFERENCE WEBSITE: http://www.cta.dmu.ac.uk/CCA/

NEMLA (Northeast Modern Languages Association)
2001 Convention
March 30-31, 2001
Hartford, CT

The following are approved panel sessions for the upcoming NEMLA convention. Two-page abstracts for proposed papers should be sentdirectly to the session chair by September 15, 2000 along with a cover letter and any audio-visual requests. If your paper is accepted, you will be required to join the NEMLA.

Denise Levertov
Papers on any aspect of Denise Levertov's poetry,translations, prose and their political or intellectual contexts. Chair: Denise Elaine Lynch; Department of English; Central Connecticut State University; Stanley Street; New Britain, CT 06050; Phone: 860-832-2780; Email: lynchde@ccsu.edu; Home address: 80 Barksdale Road; West Hartford, CT 06117

The Politics of Poetic Form
Discussions of the political implications,uses, and interpretations of poetic form in American poetry. More interested in papers addressing prosodic and other formal features than in papers that are addressing genre. Chair: Michael Manson; English Department; Anna Maria College; 50 Sunset Lane; Paxton, MA 01612; Phone: 508-849-3481; Fax: 508-849-3362; Email: mmanson@annamaria.edu

Scene, School, Poet: Contemporary Links
This panel identifies and discusses potential links between the aesthetics of traditional and avante garde poetic schools and individual critics and poets.Chair: Heather White; Department of English; University of Rochester; 500 Wilson Boulevard; Rochester, NY 14627; Phone: 716-275-2160; Email: hcasswhite@hotmail.com; Home address: 40 Rowley Street; Apt. #9; Rochester, NY 14607

The Small Press and Twentieth-Century American Literature
How the small press shapes authors conceptions of publishing and audiences; the role of the small press in literary culture. E-mail proposals preferred.Chair: Jim OLoughlin; English Department; Penn State University at Erie-Behrend College; Station Road; Erie, PA 16563; Phone: 814-898-6073; Fax: 814-898-6032; Email: jbo2@psu.edu; Home address: 556 West 8th Street; Erie, PA 16502

Twentieth-Century Surrealist Women Writers
Papers are welcome that examine the written works of surrealist women artists hailing from a variety of countries and decades.Chair: Kristin E. Zimmerman; French Department; The Pennsylvania State University; 325 South Burrows Bldg; University Park, PA 16802; Email: kez104@psu.edu; Home address: 510 Toftrees Avenue; Apt #231; State College, PA 16803; Home email: Mzimmerman@aol.com

DEADLINE: 30 November 2000 (Alberta Prize), 31 December 2000 (Modern Poets Series)

The Alberta Prize, sponsored by Fence Books in conjunction with the Alberta duPont Bonsal Foundation, awards $5,000 and publication to a female poet writing in English for a first or second full-length book of poetry. The Fence Modern Poets Series, sponsored by Fence Books and Saturnalia Books, offers $1,000 and publication for a book by a poet writing in English at any stage in his or her career. For complete guidelines and entry form for both contests: http://www.fencemag.com or send an SASE to: Alberta Prize and/or Fence Modern Poets Series, 14 Fifth Avenue, #1A, New York, NY 10011

BELLADONNA* Reading Series presents Kristin Prevallet (The Parasite Poems, Perturbation My Sister), Laura Wright (Hide: What's Difficult, Where Hunger is a Place), 7 p.m., Friday December 1, at Bluestockings Women's Bookstore, 172 Allen Street between Rivington and Stanton on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Contact: (212) 777-6028 for more information.

Moria
The e-zine Moria welcomes submissions for a soon to be added section on poetic theory. Theory submissions should deal with current issues in contemporary poetics, especially with issues relating to the language school and its inheritors. The essays do not need to follow any traditional notions of composition for academic essays. Submissions must be sent via e-mail to alegr@ibm.net or to wallegr@lsu.edu.

Issue 8 available now with new work by poets including: Heather Ramsdell, Juliana Spahr, Liz Waldner and many others. Special British and Irish feature. Guest editor: Fiona Templeton.

C h a i n

Since 1993, Chain has been publishing a yearly issue of work.

Each issue features the work of around seventy people and is about 250
pages long.

Chain started with publishing mainly poetry. Now we publish photographs, essays, operas, performance transcripts, plays, sculptures, paintings, and other forms. Chain also emphasizes work by new or emerging artists and collaborative and mixed genre work.

Each issue focuses on a topic. Past topics have included gender and editing, documentary, mixed media and hybrid genres, processes and procedures, and different languages. The topic allows Chain's editors to switch the editorial question that they ask of each piece of work submitted--from "Is this a great piece of art?" to "Does this piece of art tell us something about the topic that we didn't otherwise know?". This makes Chain a little rougher around the edges, a little less aesthetically predictable.

Em Press
Editor/Printer: Dale Going
Poetry Pamphlet Series, 16 page books
letterpress printed on Italian and French mould-made papers
in signed limited editions of 100-150.

Currrently available:
Unseen Stream, Jaime Robles, ISBN 1-889589-01-2
Even the Smallest Act, Denise Liddell Lawson, ISBN 1-889589-02-0
Bowl, Carol Snow ISBN 1-889589-03-9

Due this Spring:
&O, Dale Going ISBN 1-889589-04-7
Human Forest, Denise Newman ISBN 1-889589-05-5

Series subscribers receive each book at $10 per copy. Individual titles are
available without subscription at $15. Subscription requests and single book requests:

Em Press
541 Ethel Avenue
Mill Valley, CA 94941
415-381-1243
DaleGoing@aol.com

Ether Dome Press
Editors: Elizabeth Robinson and Colleen Lookingbill
Inquiries: c/o E. Robinson, 10.moris@lw.com
"A forum for new poetic voices." Goal: two chapbooks a year by women who have never published either a chapbook or a full-length collection. First book out, later this year: Brydie McPherson.

Kelsey St. Press: 25 years publishing women's innovative poetry

Kelsey St. Press publishes poetry by contemporary women writers that challenges traditional notions about form, content, and expression, and that offers readers insight into our diverse culture. In the mid-1980's Kelsey St. initiated a unique series of collaborations between visual artists and poets. Believing that poets and visual artists should talk to each other, the Press coordinates collaborations and then documents the results.Kelsey St. Press supports the work of innovative writers whose work has been disregarded by large, for-profit publishers. Just as New Directions championed early 20th century innovators Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, Kelsey St. Press has published late 20th century innovators Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Kathleen Fraser, Barbara Guest, Myung Mi Kim and Erica Hunt. A partial list of contemporary artist-collaborations include the work of Kiki Smith, Alison Saar, Richard Tuttle and Anne Dunn.

Kelsey Street Press
50 Northgate Avenue
Berkeley, CA. 94708
Visit the Kelsey St. Press website: http://www.sirius.com/~kelseyst/
E-mail: kelseyst@sirius.com.
Information about our subscriber program is available upon request.

O Books
5729 Clover Dr.
Oakland, CA. 94618

for a catalog, go to: www.obooks.com
Editor, Leslie Scalapino
[See "In Print", for individual titles]

Outlet Magazine & Double Lucy Books

PO Box 9013

Berkeley CA 94709 USA

http://users.lanminds.com/dblelucy

Outlet Magazine

Outlet publishes poetry, fiction and criticism, loosely centered around a common theme. Themes have so far included fairy tales, ornament, and weather/maps. Please visit our website to view excerpts from current & previous issues, which include work by Franklin Bruno, Norma Cole, Malcolm de Chazal, Brenda Iijima, Lily James, Tan Lin, Pamela Lu, Yedda Morrison, Laura Moriarty, Michelle Murphy, Stephen Ratcliffe, Camille Roy, Linda Russo, Jocelyn Saidenberg, and many others.

[Sample copies: $5/ea. Subscriptions: $10/yr (2 issues). Checks to E. Treadwell]

Outlet (4/5) Weathermap -- due out Fall '99 -- will include new poetry and prose by Norma Cole, Gwyn McVay, Christopher Reiner, Kathy Lou Schultz, Liz Waldner & many others, plus an interview with Kathleen Fraser and a history of women publishers at the Poetry Project, NYC.

CALL FOR WORK�OUTLET

Outlet (6) Stars

Astronomy, astrology, celebrity, catastrophe, destiny, romance, navigation, wishes, fortune-telling, constellations. The passage of time. Hemispheres, seasons. Prophecy, heaven. Leonardo da Vinci/di Caprio. Submission postmark period: January 1-February 15, 2000.

Replies by: April 15, 2000. The issue will appear during Summer, 2000.

please send correspondence to:
        350 East Second Ave., #58
        Vancouver, BC V5T4R8
        CANADA

Rooms

Rooms is a quarterly publication-by-contribution created to provide a forum
and a consistent means of communication among women writers and artists interested in formal and visual experimentation. The journal has no editor; the work published in each edition depends on what individual Roomates wish to contribute. Poetry, essays, fiction, non-fiction and visual work will be included.

Guidelines

For New Contributors:
Send a sample of your work, a letter introducing yourself, and SASE to the
address below.

For Ongoing Contributors:
Send fifty photocopies of your piece and $10 (in a cash, stamps, or a check
made out to Dale Going) for binding and mailing to:

Rooms c/o Sari Broner, PO Box 12955
Berkeley, CA 94712

The deadlines for 2000 will be the 15 of March, September and December.

Second Story Books publishes works which navigate a relationship between narrative and lyric, interrogating implications of verbal consciousness as event and invoking fugitive conditions of place, time and subjectivity.

Tinfish
A Journal of experimental poetry with an emphasis on work from the Pacific
region

Editor: Susan M. Schultz
47-391 Hui Iwa, #3
Kaneohe, HI 96744

www.wings.buffalo.edu/epc/ezines/tinfish

Look for on-line issues featuring work by poets including: Lyn Hejinian,
Eileen Myles, Susan Geviritz, Mary Burger, Carolyn Lei-lanilau, Ron
Silliman, Elizabeth Treadwell, Bill Luoma, Yi Sha, Juliana Spahr and many
more!

featuring work by: Diane Ward, Carla Harryman & Lyn Hejinian, Norma Cole, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Linda Russo, Kristin Prevallet, Kevin Killian, Elizabeth Robinson and many others.

narrativity -- a critical journal of innovative narrative. Co-editors: Mary Burger, Robert Gluck, Camille Roy and Gail Scott.

www.sfsu.edu/~newlit/narrativity

non
Editor, Laura Moriarty

non, an electronic journal, emphasizes short essays, commentary, reviews, letters, journal extracts etc. and includes poetry and prose.

The next issue of non will be on the work of Leslie Scalapino. Future
issues of non are planned on song and on critical autobiography.

The headache non is the current issue. It includes writing in relation
to the usual writer and philosopher migraines, as well as work about or
generated by any on-going physical anguish.

Submissions and queries about submission are welcome.

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~moriarty/index.html

An Invitation To Join A New Listserv About Women's Poetry:

The WOM-PO (Discussion of Women's Poetry) List is devoted to the
discussion of women poets of all periods, languages, aesthetics, and
ethnicities, and to their poetic and critical works.

LIST ADDRESSES:
The list address (for messages intended for distribution) is:
WOMPO@listserv.muohio.edu
The server address (for commands) is: listserv@listserv.muohio.edu

TO SUBSCRIBE:
Send a message to the server adress, listserv@listserv.muohio.edu, with a
blank subject heading and the message.

TO FIND OUT WHO ELSE IS SUBCRIBED:
send the command "review wom-po" to the server address.

ARCHIVES:
If you want to see what's been going on, WOM-PO messages are archived at: http://listserv.muohio.edu:82/~listserv/archives/wom-po.html

There is a tradition of new subscribers saying a little bit about themselves and their interests. Please consider yourself invited to introduce yourself to the list whenever you feel comfortable doing so.

go to this issue's table of contents