Panel proposal

1. Title

Hybrid Poetry and/as Pedagogy.

2. Background

Poetry, labelled by Wallace Stevens as “the supreme fiction” (1961), as the highest form of creative production, also evidences the mastery of a target language, and by extension the instruction of a target language or literary aesthetic. Poetry, reified and increasingly instrumentalised today, is also used in various industries as a way of promoting empathy with a client or patient (as in the case of medical workers and practitioners) (Mazza and Hayton, 2013). Hybrid poetry, subsequently, as Cole Swensen delineates (Swensen and St. John, ) blends the protean and expressive elements of language from the existing to the explorative, thereby expanding – discarding even – the boundaries of traditional and experimental styles of poetry; and can be found in the works of established and emerging poets from Gertrude Stein, Robert Hass and Shirley Lim-Geok to Caroline Bergvall, Gajanan Mishra and Mona Attamimi. From foundational forms such as found poetry as conceived by Walter Benjamin (1999) in the early 20th century, unique in that it collects existing lines (or pearls) from material production (verse, prose, film) in order to create new meaning, and William H. Burroughs’ (1978) popular extension of hybrid poetry in his famous cut-ups; to more recent forms such as what Joel E. Jacobson dubs as “elliptical” poetry that tells “almost-stories,” the hybrid movement is, essentially (as Don Share once blogged), a new mainstream, a binary opposition, a third way (2008). Hybrid poetry places divergent forms and genres into conversation, positioning them within the current of contemporary poetry that now finds itself used in teaching and learning through, for example, the multitude of lesson plans published online for primary and secondary schools (NCTE, 2013; and William Victor, S.L., 2010). Little scholarly research, however, has so far been conducted concerning the contemporary usage of hybrid poetry vis-à-vis Teaching & Learning (Love, 2012), especially in a university or an Asian context.

3. Purpose

Hybrid poetry evidences the fruitful marriage of existing language, scholarship, and pedagogy. This panel proposes to inaugurate a community of creative writers, researchers, and teachers under the ample latitudes of our deliberately broad title “Hybrid Poetry and/as Pedagogy” at The Sixth Asian Conference on Arts and Humanities 2015, resulting in the publication of

I. A book of research chapters
Scholars who submit their papers for panel consideration (whether they are invited to the panel or not) may have the opportunity to publish extended versions of their papers in book form. The tentative title for the book is eponymous with our panel title: Hybrid Poetry and/as Pedagogy.

II. A book of poetry
Both selected authors for the panel and those who are not, and who submit original hybrid poems, they may – by indicating in their submissions – have their poems considered for a related poetry book proposed by the panel developers.

III. A co-authored research article
As per Conference guidelines, invited presenters to the panel will also be invited to co-author a paper with the panel moderators for publication consideration under the ACAH 2015 auspices.

4. What we request

We solicit 15-minute papers that consider, combine or supplement any of the following suggestive (rather than prescriptive) topics:

· Hybrid poetry produced in / for the university classroom
· Hybrid poetry and T&L for the Humanities
· Hybrid poetry and T&L in Asia
· Hybrid poetry and context (Mediated Discourse Analysis, Fish’s
interpretive communities, Foucault’s knowledge/power; Bhabha’s
dissemination and/or third space; Spivak’s subalternity; Fenkl’s literary
interstices)
· Prose poetry
· Found poetry
· Cleave poetry
· Digital / virtual poetry
· The avant-garde
· Cento (resistance/reification in Antiquity)
· Cut-ups (Burroughs/the Beats)
· Experimental modes such as illogicality or fragmentation that follow the
strict formal rules of a sonnet or a villanelle
· The composition of neologisms based in ancient traditions
· How (not) to teach a hybrid poem
· Why (not) teach hybrid poetry

5. Submission instructions

By 1 November 2014 (in one document), please submit the following:
o 300-word abstracts and representative bibliographies
o Author institution and contact email address
o Up to 5 keywords

By 1 December 2014, please submit the following (only for those who are invited to the panel):
o A draft paper
o A copy of the found poem (crafted by the attendee or otherwise)

Moreover, given the broad-based T & L logic of the panel, it would be helpful to complete individual syllabi that integrate hybrid poetry and pedagogy to be disseminated at the conference. Send submissions to either dean.a.f.gui@polyu.edu.hk or jspolley@hkbu.edu.hk. Preference will be given to those who write their own hybrid poems for their research.

6. What we hope the panel participants will leave with

A sense of being a part of a unique research community; the opportunity to be published in a unique and innovative research publication; and the opportunity to critically examine the usefulness of incorporating hybrid poetry into the Humanities classroom.

7. What we hope the audience will leave with

An opportunity to discuss with other scholars the practical uses of hybrid poetry in the classroom; and an understanding of how poetry can be used, in general, in teaching and learning.

8. Organisation of discussion

A panel of 5 (excluding the two moderators – Mr. Dean A. F. Gui and Dr. Jason S. Polley) will have 10 minutes to present their respective papers; and a 40 minute Q&A session. Total 90 minutes. Further conference and panel information may be found here: http://iafor.org/iafor/acah2015-call-for-papers/

References

Benjamin, W. (1999). The Arcades Project. Rolf Tiedermann (Ed.). Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Trans.). Harvard, MA:
Harvard University Press. (Original work published in 1982)
Burroughs, W. S., and Gysin, B. (1978). The Third Mind. New York, NY: The Viking Press.
Jacobson, J.E. (2009). Hybrid poetry. A poetic matter. Retrieved 20 March 2014 from
http://apoeticmatter.com/tag/hybrid-poetry/
Love, C. T. (2012). Dialing into a circle of trust: A “medium” tech experiment and poetic evaluation. Teaching and learning from
the inside out: Revitalizing ourselves and our institutions. Margaret Golden (Ed.). New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 130, San Francisco, CA: Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Mazza, N. F., and Hayton, C. J. (2013). Poetry therapy: An investigation of a multidimensional clinical model. The Arts in
Psychotherapy. 40 (1): 53-60.
NCTE. (2013). Found Poems/Parallel Poems. ReadWriteThink.org. Retrieved 15 Nov 2013 from
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/found-poems-parallel-poems-33.html?tab=3#tabs
Share, D. (2008). The hybrid-way or the highway. Harriet: a poetry blog. The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 29 Sept 2014 from
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2008/10/the-hybrid-way-or-the-highway/?woo
Stevens, W. (1961). Notes toward a Supreme Fiction. Joseph N. Riddel (Ed.). Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature. 2 (2):
Studies of Recent Poetry (Spring - Summer), 20-42.
Swensen, C., and St. John, D. (eds.) (2009). American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry. W. W. Norton & Co.
William Victor, S.L. (2010). How to write found poetry. Creative writing now. Retrieved 15 Nov 2013 from
http://www.creative-writing-now.com/found-poetry.html


Further reading

Dubois, S., and François, P. (2013). Career paths and hierarchies in the pure pole of the literary field: The case of contemporary
poetry. Poetics. 41 (5): 501-523.
Facing history and ourselves. Found Poems. (2013). Facing history and ourselves. Retrieved 15 Nov 2013 from
http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/strategies/found-poems
Myhill, D., and Wilson, A. (2013). Playing it safe: Teachers’ views of creativity in poetry writing. Thinking Skills and Creativity. 10:
101-111.