Colloque

La série de poésie Sir George Williams 1965-1972 : la poésie anglo-québécoise rencontre la poétique nord-américaine

Jason Camlot

Membre a labase

Jason Camlot

Résumé du colloque

The Poetry Series recordings document a transitional moment in the history of English language writing in Quebec. Arguably there has not been a coherent, nationally recognized identity for anglophone Quebec writing since the early 1960s when a lyric-based poetry in the tradition of Irving Layton and Leonard Cohen was still a dominant mode and was identified as a signature mode of Canadian poetry. By the early 1970s, most Quebec anglophone poets who ventured to speculate about their relative significance on the national stage, were developing theories that underscored the special importance of their place on the cultural margins. Montreal poets of this period were thus rather late in their engagement with experimental Black Mountain and West Coast Canadian TISH poetics. One might assume that most were unaware of the diverse range of avant-garde poetics emerging in 1960s and of the poets associated with new developments in poetic theory and practice. The recordings made of The Poetry Series readings held at Sir George Williams University from 1965 to 1972 suggest otherwise. The Poetry Series archive represents a unique record of a local poets interacting with and literally performing its engagement with contemporary international poetic philosophies and practices. My paper will give an account of the scope of this series, and consider its implications as a locus of encounter between local English language poetry and experimental poetries from the rest of North America.