Conference: 'The Poetry of Robert Graves', Institute of English Studies, London, Thursday/Friday 5-6 July, 2007: Programme and registration now available.
March 4, 2007
Further details of this two-day conference on the poetry of First World War poet Robert Graves, who went on to become one of the leading love poets and writers of the Twentieth Century, have been announced and published on the University of London’s Institute of English Studies website at http://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/conferences/2007/Graves/index.htm .
Title: The Poetry of Robert Graves
Dates: 5 – 6 July 2007 (Thursday – Friday)
Venue: Institute of English Studies, University of London
Time: 09:30 – 17:30 each day, plus evening events.
A concessionary registration fee of only £40 is available to members of the Robert Graves Society and usual concessions (unwaged, retired and students).
The aim of the conference is ‘to make a significant contribution towards a wider academic and critical recognition of Graves’s poetic achievement’. The opening address will be given by the celebrated scholar and critic Christopher Ricks, Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University, and Robert Graves’s successor as Professor of Poetry at Oxford.
W. H. Auden once called Christopher Ricks ‘the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding’. He has published innovative books on, among others, Milton, Keats, Tennyson, T. S. Eliot and Beckett. ‘Ricks has been described as holding in his head all of English poetry,’ wrote Nicholas Wroe in a Guardian profile, ‘and to see him lecture is to see him repeatedly reach into this apparently infinite database for the most subtle and apposite comparisons, echoes and rebuttals. It is a dazzlingly impressive gift’.
Other speakers will include Dr Michael Basinski (Curator, The Poetry Collection, State University of New York at Buffalo); Dr Robert J. Bertholf (State University of New York at Buffalo, editor of the poetry of Robert Duncan and Joel Oppenheimer); Dr Fran Brearton (Queen’s University, Belfast, Assistant Director of the Seamus Heaney Poetry Centre); Catherine Hilliard (Librarian, St John’s College, Oxford); Professor Frank Kersnowski (formerly Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, author of The Early Poetry of Robert Graves (2002)); Professor Grevel Lindop, (formerly University of Manchester, poet and general editor of De Quincey’s complete works and Graves’s The White Goddess (1997)); Dr Patrick McGuinness (St Anne’s College, Oxford, poet and co-editor of Graves and Riding’s A Survey of Modernist Poetry); Professor Paul O’Prey (Vice-Chancellor, Roehampton University, and editor of Graves’s Selected Letters and Collected Writings on Poetry); and Professor Dunstan Ward (University of London Institute in Paris, co-editor with Beryl Graves of Robert Graves’s Complete Poems, and President of the Robert Graves Society).
A highlight of the conference will be a poetry reading, at which the eminent poets Fleur Adcock, Ruth Fainlight and Jon Stallworthy will read poems by Robert Graves that have a particular appeal to them, and a selection of their own poetry. This will be followed by drinks with the poets, and then the conference dinner.
The conference programme, registration form, and details about the venue and accommodation are available at: http://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/conferences/2007/Graves/index.htm.
By clicking on ‘Accommodation’ on this web page, you will find information about hotel and bed-and-breakfast accommodation in the vicinity, including a recommendation for the London Goodenough Club, where a number of participants will be staying.
Registration Fees:
GBP 60 Standard; GBP 40 Speakers/IES Members/Concessions (unwaged, retired or students) and members of the Robert Graves Society.
Enquiries and Registration: Jon Millington, Events Officer, Institute of English Studies, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; tel +44 (0) 207 664 4859; Email jon.millington@sas.ac.uk
Registration Form (PDF): http://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/conferences/2007/Graves/GravesReg.pdf
Registration Form (Word): http://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/conferences/2007/Graves/GravesReg.doc