Liberty, License and Poetic Illegibility
International Colloquium of French Poetry
held 30 January — 2 February, 2008
Point Loma Nazarene University San Diego, CA, USA
Who really reads poets from the 20th and 21st centuries?
When contemporary francophone poetic text is labeled “modern” or “poetic”, it is regularly accused of illegibility, both by the large public and the educated public, due to the giant aesthetic, rhetoric, linguistic and freely philosophic steps taken by the authors to confine them within the label of “modern” or “avant-garde” literary innovations.
Does being a poet and/or a modern artist (in the most innovative meaning of these two words), doom one to become illegible in a literary sense?
This landmark 4-day international colloquium studied these thorny issues and provided opportunity to hear from and interact with world-renowned French poets. Keynote speakers were: Michel Deguy, Christian Prigent, Jean-Marie Gleize, and Nathalie Quintane.
LINKS TO POETS’ SITES:
Michel Deguy
http://france.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=2043
Jean-Marie Gleize
http://pretexte.club.fr/revue/bibliographie/auteurs/jean-marie-gleize.htm
Christian Prigent
http://www.pol-editeur.fr/catalogue/ficheauteur.asp?num=160
Nathalie Quintane
http://www.sitaudis.com/Auteurs/nathalie-quintane.php
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