At the Wollondilly Performing Arts Centre next year you could hear tribute acts performing the music of Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Carole King, James Taylor, The Eagles, Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Pink Floyd, The Everly Brothers, or ABBA, or you could hear The Choirboys. Fortune's fickle.

Turns out, the idea of "poetic technique" was once strange and new. Here's a new article on what "technique" meant for poets and critics in the time of modernism, and in particular about how it shaped their judgement of poetry and poets. Might be of interest? doi.org/10.1111/criq...

Look at what arrived today! I couldn't be more pleased or proud. w/ kristingrogan.bsky.social

My diary seems to think Zoom is a séance, but will Hegel blur his background?

Thursday morning n-gram. Discuss:

Isn't it a bit odd to be asked to assess a project for a funding scheme to which one applied three times without success? Or is that just how funding works in a small system?

Maybe if someone came dressed as a superhero to every meeting with management, all the decisions would be good for staff and students? rdcu.be/eR9GH

There's a mini-genre of essays borrowing or adapting the title of Arnold's "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time", maybe most obviously Eliot's "The Function of Criticism", but also essays by Wilde, Frye, Spender, Bateson, Leavis, Vendler, Booth, Eagleton. Any others come to mind?

This Saturday at 7 pm, two @columbiaup.bsky.social authors, Keegan Cook Finberg and Kristin Grogan discuss their extraordinary new books, POETRY IN GENERAL and STITCH, UNSTITCH: in conversation w/ Christopher Nealon at @redemmas.org! bit.ly/3LAvRYz @keegancf.bsky.social @kristingrogan.bsky.social

Can anyone recommend good recent reflection on the history of and relation between the terms "literary criticism" and "literary study", whether as synonyms or as, say, dividing between them the acts of judgement and analysis, or however else the relation may be understood?

Where are we, when the New Left Review has become a potentially offensive primary source?

Last summer I wrote a short piece about poetry for children, and especially about how much fun rhythm can be. The essay's about fun and it's supposed to be fun to read; it's meant for anyone who loves rhythm as much as kids do. You might like it? southerlylitmag.com.au/wp-content/u...

Lovely to be at the launch of @southerlylitmag.bsky.social's new issue this evening and to hear from the journal's wonderful new editor, UNSW's very own Roanna Gonsalves. Read the new issue, "First, The Future", here: southerlylitmag.com.au/announcing-s...

Here's a new essay I wrote for the Sydney Review of Books, on poetry and computer code in a work by @mezbreeze.bsky.social. With thanks to James Jiang for giving the essay what shape it has. I hope you like it: it's supposed to be fun! sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essays/on-eq...

UNSW Literary Provocations Hub Seminar #7 "Dear AI Reader: Nonhuman Perspective and Evolutionary Thinking in the Human-Machine Relation" Chris Danta (ANU) Wednesday, 24 September 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Robert Webster 327, UNSW Main Campus No need to register, and all are welcome. Come along!

Now available! Blending Marxist and feminist theory with attentive close readings, STITCH, UNSTITCH is a revelatory materialist account of the values of poetry. buff.ly/DlnVJeY #CreativeLabor #FeministModernism #WagesForHousework #Modernism

Apropos of nothing, I love the way water beads on kale.

What are the best / most interesting / most influential manifestos for and against quantitative or computational literary studies, do you think? (Not Moretti, not Da.)

UNSW Literary Provocations Hub Seminar #6 "The Poetics and Politics of Speculative Biography: Miles Franklin Undercover" Kerrie Davies (UNSW) Wednesday, 27 August 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Robert Webster 327, UNSW Main Campus There's no need to register, and all are welcome. Come along!

Also, isn't "Having a Coke with You" just the most wonderful thing?

ON THIS WEEK! UNSW Literary Provocations Hub Seminar #5 "The New Modernist Novel: Criticism and the Task of Reading" Elizabeth Pender (Sydney) See the comments for an abstract. Wednesday, 16 July 3:00-4:30 p.m. Robert Webster 335, UNSW Sydney No need to register, and all are welcome. Come along!

Earlier this year I had an essay in English Studies on The Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers (1925), an anthology of mostly modernist writing, and the press have given me this link for 50 free ecopies of the essay. Have a look, if that sounds interesting? www.tandfonline.com/eprint/2EQP3...

UNSW LITERARY PROVOCATIONS HUB SEMINAR #5 "The New Modernist Novel: Criticism and the Task of Reading" Elizabeth Pender (Sydney) Wednesday, 16 July 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Robert Webster 335, UNSW Main Campus There's no need to register, and all are welcome. Come along!

Will says, You're home!

It's a small thing, I know, but I can't say how much it meant to see a teenager reading Swann's Way as we were getting off the train at Macarthur in the middle of the afternoon, and so engrossed that I couldn't even catch his eye to say, "Isn't it just wonderful?"

If you had to pick the half dozen best statements on the task of literary criticism from, say, 1700 to today, what would they be?

What should contemporary criticism do with the novels of Djuna Barnes, Mina Loy, and John Rodker, too often ignored by earlier critics? Read Simon During's review of Liz Pender's THE NEW MODERNIST NOVEL: CRITICISM AND THE TASK OF READING, just published in AFFIRMATIONS: tinyurl.com/bdd9hda3.

When Joshua Clover visited UNSW in 2019, he gave a seminar to postgraduate students on, in the broadest terms, poetry and the world-system, and on, more narrowly, Baraka and di Prima, and on, most of all, a single sentence from Revolutionary Letters #19. It was wonderful, and he'll be much missed.

I'm looking for examples of literary writing which perform, reflect on, or theorise literary criticism. Pope's "Essay on Criticism" is an obvious instance; Moore's "Poetry" or O'Hara's "Why I Am Not a Painter" not quite what I'm after. Does anything spring to mind?

SCRIVENER: Here’s a good world the while. Who is so gross That cannot see this palpable device? Yet who so bold but says he sees it not? Bad is the world, and all will come to nought When such ill dealing must be seen in thought. —Richard III, 3.6

UNSW LITERARY PROVOCATIONS HUB SEMINAR #4 "New Adventures in the Theory of Fiction and of Narrative: A Postgraduate Panel" Three short talks theorizing fiction and narrative, by Shaye Easton, Meike Heinrich, and Xanthe Muston. Wednesday, 7 May 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Webster 327, UNSW All welcome!

Will says the beach was good.

UNSW Literary Provocations Hub Seminar #3 Prue Gibson (UNSW), "Writing the Doctrine of Signatures: Women, Plants, and Poisons" Date: Wednesday, 16 April Time: 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Place: Robert Webster 334, UNSW Main Campus All are welcome, and there's no need to register. Come along!

Thinking today about Dunbar's "Sympathy" (1899) and Hardy's "The Darkling Thrush" (1900) together:

This Thursday at midday (AEST) I'll be giving a short talk about computer code, the idea of poetry, and a piece from 2015 by Mez Breeze, "\oriGaM[e,]i[,+ U]/": cordite.org.au/poetry/umami... The talk will be streamed on Teams, and everyone is welcome. Teams link below:

He sees deep and is glad, who accedes to mortality and in his imprisonment rises upon himself as the sea in a chasm, struggling to be free and unable to be, in its surrendering finds its continuing. Marianne Moore, "What Are Years?"

Evie Shockley and Kamran Javadizadeh on Ed Roberson's "Open / Back Up (breadth of field)": just wonderful: open.spotify.com/episode/4hix...

UNSW LITERARY PROVOCATIONS HUB SEMINAR #3 Prue Gibson (UNSW), "Writing the Doctrine of Signatures: Women, Plants, and Poisons" 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, 16 April Robert Webster 334, UNSW Main Campus All are welcome, and there's no need to register. Come along!

On poetry: www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6pB...

ON THIS WEDNESDAY: UNSW Literary Provocations Hub Seminar #2 James Donald (UNSW), '"More Human Than Human" Is Our Motto: Robots, Cyborgs and Hybrid Humans' Wednesday, 12 March, 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Robert Webster 334, UNSW Main Campus No need to register. Come along!

UNSW LITERARY PROVOCATIONS HUB SEMINAR #2 James Donald (UNSW), '"More Human Than Human" Is Our Motto: Robots, Cyborgs and Hybrid Humans' 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, 12 March Robert Webster 334, UNSW Main Campus All are welcome, and there's no need to register. Come along!

On this Wednesday: UNSW LITERARY PROVOCATIONS HUB SEMINAR Astrid Lorange (UNSW Art & Design), "Towards a Literary Theory of the Headache: On Jason Compson’s Headaches in The Sound and the Fury" 3:00 pm, Wednesday, 19 February Robert Webster 334, UNSW Main Campus No need to register. Come along!

Here's a new article, on literary worldmaking as a question not of diegesis or form but medium. The case study is Robert McAlmon's weird but wonderful 1925 anthology, the Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers. Free PDF copies available here: www.tandfonline.com/eprint/2EQP3...

"It seems to be in so much doubt What all of this is all about And what is what we are without And if there is an is at all Beyond whatever it is we call The where we are as usual[.]" Charles Madge, 1933

Richard Conway and James Archer, Preface to PROGRAMMING FOR POETS: A GENTLE INTRODUCTION USING BASIC (1979):

UNSW LITERARY PROVOCATIONS HUB SEMINAR Astrid Lorange (UNSW Art & Design), "Towards a Literary Theory of the Headache: On Jason Compson’s Headaches in The Sound and the Fury" 3:00 pm, Wednesday, 19 February Robert Webster 334, UNSW Main Campus No need to register. Come along!

I know David Crystal's work on pronunciation in Shakespeare's time, but can anyone recommend a guide to pronunciation ca. 1500-1530? Say, for a Skelton or a Wyatt?

If the new year means working out what to put on your reading list for a course on poetry (or a course that includes poetry), why not suggest your students read an essay or two from the Cambridge Companion to the Poem? www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...

Will says blue-grey beach at dusk is good.

In the spirit of festive sharing: What's the longest you've worked on an article before it was accepted? As of yesterday, mine is now ten years, trying eight different journals. What a weird gig scholarship is!