Working Groups

Modern Poetry and Poetics

Overview <
Events
Faculty
Poetry Brochure

Overview

At the University of Notre Dame, the English Department has developed a specialty in Modern Poetry and Poetics that is second to none. 

Students in our graduate program work with some of the most distinguished and innovative practitioners in the field to develop dissertation projects of striking originality.  With a faculty whose strengths in modern American and British poetry are complemented by strengths in philosophy and theory, including narrative theory and practice, our students receive a rigorous scholarly and critical preparation for the study of modern poetry and all of the issues surrounding it. 

Within the English Department, students pursuing Modern Poetry and Poetics can take advantage of two other stellar programs such as the Concentration in Philosophy and Literature and the Creative Writing Program.  All three areas regularly bring to campus cutting-edge critics and writers, who participate closely in the life of the department while they are in residence. 

The library holdings in modern poetry and contemporary fiction are excellent and include an outstanding collection of ephemeral publications of American and British poetry from the past forty years.

Events

Lectures and Readings

The faculty invite a select group of poets and critics to Notre Dame to lecture and read.  Graduate students interact closely with these guests, both in and out of the classroom.

In recent years, visitors include Charles Altieri, David Antin, Caroline Bergvall, Charles Bernstein, R. M. Berry, Robert Creeley, Michael Davidson, Ed Dorn, Rikki Ducornet, Terry Eagleton, Clayton Eshleman, Stanley Fish, Allen Ginsberg, Lyn Hejinian, Susan Howe, Frank Lentricchia, Steve McCaffery, John Montague, Michael Palmer, Marjorie Perloff, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Arnold Rampersad, Herman Rapaport, and John Taggart.

Conferences
  • Crisis and Detour: 25 Years of Today (Jintian) (2006)
  • The Long Reach of African-American Poetics (2005)
  • Textsounds: A Mini-Conference (2004)
  • &Now: A Festival of Writing as a Contemporary/Conceptual Art (2004)
  • Latino Poets Conference (2002)
  • Rethinking the Avant-Garde (2000) 
  • Literature between Philosophy and Cultural Studies (the American Comparative Literature Association annual meeting (1996)
  • Intersections of the Lyrical and the Philosophical (1994)