Queer Poetry and Poetics [NeMLA 2023]

“Instead, queer means, splendiferously, you.

& you means someone who knows that common flavors for ice cream sandwiches in Singapore include red bean, yam, & honeydew.” – Chen Chen, Summer

This panel seeks papers that explore the intersections of poetry/poetics and queer theory, with no one area, nation, or era privileged. It should surprise no one that there is a long history between queerness and poetics, but what does that history look like? If one were to focus just on the history of American poetry, a version of this history manifests as a genealogy and tradition of homosexual poetry through Robert K. Martin, but that story was told in 1998 and it details a specific narrative bound by nation and identity. What are the assumptions that appear in our heads when someone argues for the existence of a queer poetics? Even more fundamentally, what does it mean for a poem to be queer? Those are the central questions that animate this session and we invite papers that attempt to answer such questions and begin these critical conversations that underpin our understanding of queer poetics.

As starting points, we seek papers that could potentially address (but are not limited to):

· Historical approaches to poetry and queerness and their respective intersections

· Queering poetic genres and forms

· Attending to the various histories of literary criticism

· Exploring a methodology of queer reading with poetry

· How do we see and read queerness in poetry?

Any and all approaches to queer poetry and poetics are absolutely welcomed. Please submit abstracts ranging from 250-300 words to the NeMLA website by September 30, 2022. If there are any questions, direct them to Jan Maramot Rodil via jmaramot@uci.edu

Please submit abstracts to the link below:

https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/19859