Are We There Yet? Remapping Literary Imagination
This three day conference was held at the National Library of Wales, bringing together academics, creative writers and students to discuss the following questions:
Where are we from? Where are we going? How does literature explore the depiction of physical and mental journeys? How do minority experiences and new perspectives function within the evolving landscape of literature? This terrain is constantly shifting as our world continues to transition from localised cultures into a global society. How do we define the boundaries of genre when the borders themselves are in a state of flux? What is the impact of these changes on the production of literature and literary theory?
Papers of 15-20 minutes were invited from early career researchers, postgraduate students and third-year undergraduates working in literary studies, creative writing, literary theory, and associated disciplines. Topics might include, but are not restricted to:
- Breaking down boundaries in poetry and prose
- Literary journeys, travel writing
- Minority experience in society
- Alienation, assimilation
- When genres collide
- Marginalised cultures and writing
Plenary speakers included the National Poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke, Wales Book of the Year 2011 author, Ned Thomas, and the head of Aberystwyth University’s English and Creative Writing department, Professor Damian Walford Davies.
To all would be delegates Professor Richard Marggraf Turley of the English and Creative Writing Department has said: "The PG Conference is a wonderful opportunity to gain and share valuable experience in presenting work to your peers. It is also an enjoyable way of raising your profile within your discipline, and a chance to make new contacts. It is not to be missed”.
Speakers at the Conference
We were both delighted and honoured to welcome two well-known speakers to this year's conference.
Gillian Clarke, National Poet of Wales
National Poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke will be giving a reading of her poetry and answering questions about her work and her public role.
Gillian was named National Poet of Wales in 2008 and is the President of Ty Newydd, the Welsh Writers Centre, which she co-founded in 1990. In 2010 she was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and in 2011 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Literature from the University of Glamorgan. Her poetry is studied by GCSE and A Level students throughout Britain and has been translated into ten languages. Gillian’s recent work includes: A Recipe for Water, and a collection of prose, At the Source. At the conference she will be reading poems from her new collection, Ice, which is to be published in October 2012.
Ned Thomas, Wales Book of the Year Author 2011
In 2011, Ned Thomas's Welsh language memoir Bydoedd, which records his varied career as a writer, journalist, academic and publisher was named Wales’s Book of the Year. He gave a talk entitled "Traveller from an antique land" which looked at the Welsh people (and other minorities) both as perceived by others and as perceivers of other places.
Ned has worked for Times Newspapers, edited the British Government’s quarterly in Russian, Angliya, founded and edited the journal Planet-the Welsh Internationalist, directed the University of Wales Press, and taught literature at the University of Salamanca, Moscow State University and the University of Aberystwyth, Wales. In addition, he is the author of studies of George Orwell and Derek Walcott in English, and of Waldo Williams in Welsh. His The Welsh Extremist: a Culture in Crisis was influential in the Welsh-language campaigns of the nineteen-seventies and eighties and he himself played an active part in the campaign for a Welsh TV channel.
He is currently Honorary President of the Mercator Centre in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television, University of Wales Aberystwyth. The Centre runs projects on media in minority languages, on the promotion of Welsh Literature Abroad, and the Literature Across Frontiers programme which promotes translation and exchange across cultures in Europe and beyond
Details: For any enquiries, please contact Ollie Bevington or Ashley Hill.