2nd INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON POETIC INQUIRY

Charlottetown, PEI

OCTOBER 15-18, 2009

The 2nd International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry, with the theme, Poetry as a Way of Knowing, will be held in picturesque and historic Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, October 15-18, 2009. Co-hosted by the Centre for Education Research, University of Prince Edward Island, and the Centre for Arts-informed Research, OISE, University of Toronto, the Symposium will focus on bridging links between a community of international literary poets and a community of interdisciplinary artists, poet/scholars. This event will create space(s) for conversations that rupture, expand, disrupt, and explore the role of poetry in research, consider the art of poetry as a literary genre and inquiry practice, while examining their interrelationships or points of convergence. In the broadest terms, these conversations will explore poetry as a way of knowing.

The Symposium will open creative and dynamic poetic venues as loci for presentation, performance, and discussion of lyrical poetry, sound poetry, visual poetry, experimental poetry, animated poetry, found poetry, video poetry, Spoken Word, performance art poetry and other genre-blurring forms as “sites” of inquiry and knowing. Symposium themes will explore a range of poetic possibilities through examination of theories, processes, methods, and representational forms as well as theoretical and epistemological underpinnings, issues, and inherent challenges associated with literary poetry and poetic inquiry practice.

Poetry as a Way of Knowing will provide a meeting place for participants from diverse contexts and multidisciplinary fields to explore guiding questions such as:

• How can we come to understand the relationship between poetry and inquiry?
• How do disciplines of research and poetry intersect, connect, and inform one another?
• What is the place of poetry in educational research contexts, in the community at large?
• How do poetry and research come together to advance knowledge?
• How and what do researchers and audience come to know through poetry and poetic inquiry practice?
• What does it mean to live and engage with the world poetically?
• How does poetry act as a mode of perception, meaning-making, and way of knowing?
• What spaces can poetry create for dialogue about critical awareness, social justice, and re-visioning of social, cultural and political worlds?

More information about the Symposium can be found at: http://ocs.vre.upei.ca