English & Comparative Literary Studies - Events Calendar
UNCOMMON SOLIDARITIES: WRITING, LANDSCAPE, RESISTANCE - SEMINAR
Professors Stephen Collis and Patrick Barron will briefly present creative and critical work around landscapes of the Anthropocene—threatened, enclosed, abandoned, occupied, reclaimed, irrevocably humanized more-than-human commons—and lead a discussion about the new kinds of solidarity and resources called forth in and through environmental writing in a time of accelerated climate change and intensified pressure on the planetary commons. Professors Collis and Barron have provided the following texts for participants to read in advance of the seminar, though this reading is not required for participation.
EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
ABOUT THE VISITORS
Stephen Collis鈥檚 many books of poetry include The Commons (Talon Books 2008; 2014), On the Material (Talon Books 2010—awarded the BC Book Prize for Poetry), DECOMP (with Jordan Scott—Coach House 2013), and Once in Blockadia (Talon Books 2016—nominated for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature). He has also written two books of literary criticism, on poets Susan Howe and Phyllis Webb, a book of essays on the Occupy Movement, and a novel. Almost Islands is a forthcoming memoir, and a long poem, Sketch of a Poem I Will Not Have Written, is in progress. He lives near Vancouver, on unceded Coast Salish Territory, and teaches poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University.
Patrick Barron is Associate Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, where he co-directs the Undergraduate Creative Writing Program and teaches courses in environmental literature, translation studies, and poetry. He has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Program, the Academy of American Poets, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His books include Terrain Vague: Interstices at the Edge of the Pale (Routledge); Haiku for a Season, Haiku per una stagione, by Andrea Zanzotto (Chicago); The Selected Poetry and Prose of Andrea Zanzotto (Chicago); and Italian Environmental Literature: An Anthology (Italica). A critical edition of Gianni Celati's Towards the River's Mouth (Lexington) is forthcoming in 2019.