Poem and Octopus: Masterclass with Kit Fan

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

The poetics of participation: kinetic art in the streets of Paris (1966-1969)

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

Creative Writing in Arabic: A New Way to Learn and Express

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

Scenes from the Shoormal: Drift Objects in Some Contemporary Scottish Poems

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

Poetry and “Ecoanthropology”

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

Poetry and the other arts

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