Seminars

4 April 2025, 10-12noon Hebdomadar’s room An octopus has a decentralised brain distributed throughout their body; each arm is an independent mind. A poem too has more than one brain and each line has own mind. For a poem to withstand the erosion of reading, it needs to find multiple intelligence in its singular body. Informed … Read more

Poetics of Landscapes seminar series Tuesday 25 March 2025, 1-2pm, UCO30 Dr Natalia Sassu Suarez Ferri By the end of the 1960s, Paris had become a vibrant hub for Latin American artists seeking visibility, access to cultural networks, and often refuge from political oppression. Within this dynamic environment, artists pursued innovative methods to engage public … Read more

19 March and 2 April 2025, 2:00–3:30pm, BUC 305 Creative writing in Arabic is often seen as the domain of native speakers. While the strict grammar rules can feel restrictive, writing creatively in this language is not only possible for non-native speakers: it’s also a powerful way to deepen language learning from a fresh, often overlooked … Read more

24 February 2025, 1-2pm, UCO 31 Dr Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, University College Cork Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh is a poet from Ireland who writes exclusively in the Irish language. A bilingual collection, The Coast Road, was published by the Gallery Press in 2016 with English translations by thirteen poets. Her own translations from the French of … Read more

19 November 2024, 1-2pm, Arts Seminar Room 9 Dr Robin MacKenzie, School of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews Scenes from the Shoormal: Drift Objects in Some Contemporary Scottish Poems Icelandic archaeologist Þóra Pétursdóttir claims in her 2018 essay ‘Drift’ that ‘the Anthropocene – the “Age of Man” – is in essence an age of … Read more

4 November 2024, 1-2pm, Arts Seminar Room 5 Professor Mary Orr (University of St Andrews) Where is The Gambia? Why does it matter? How has it been accounted for in histories of geography and science? And how through the double pen of Sarah Bowdich in 1824 can it inform current research in environmental and ‘blue’ … Read more

Thursday 26 September, 5.15-7.30pm, Hebdomadar’s room Research seminar with Philippe Beck Inspired by an article published in December 2019 relating how polar bears were dangerously approaching the village of Ryrkaïpii, on the edge of the Arctic banks of the Choucotka River at the north-eastern tip of Russia, the one hundred poems that form Ryrkaïpii (Flammarion, 2023) invite … Read more

Wednesday 25 September, 2-4pm, Buchanan 216 a Masterclass with Philippe Beck (open to UGs, PGs and researchers) ‘Poetry is here or there. Not everywhere./ It depends on a sortie.’ (Opéradiques, Flammarion, 2014) In this masterclass we addressed the relationship between poetry and the other arts. The following questions were discussed: How does poetry approach the … Read more

1-2pm, 2 April 2024, Buchanan 216 Dr Elodie Laügt The ‘chantier’ has multiple literal and figurative senses: as a site of activity and production in relation to which modern and contemporary French poets have positioned themselves and their practices; as a place whose material, processes and stories are transformed and elevated into poetry; as a … Read more

1-2pm, 25 March 2024, Arts Seminar Room 5 Dr Fabio Caiani In his major work, Plague Lands (1995), the late Iraqi poet Fawzi Karim (Baghdad, 1945 -London, 2019) revisits the Baghdad of his childhood and youth. In an attempt to transcend the troubled time of Iraqi modern history, he merges his own autobiographical time with the time … Read more