This one-day event, supported by Exiled Writers Ink and to be held at the University of Notre Dame in London, would like to invite proposals and conversations on the poetic of hospitality
Call for Proposals
Exiled Writers Ink
On Thursday, 9 August 2012
At Notre Dame University, London
Hospitality Poetica
Is it possible for a global gathering such as the London Olympics 2012 to provide
an arena through which national and international hospitality can be approached
and mirrored on an aesthetic level? The Olympics may offer an opportunity to
rethink what does it mean hospitality today, not only as a question of politics,
economics and law, but also on a human level, as a form of involvement and
participation that poetry, literature and art could be able to re-imagine. For this
reason, we would like to invite artists, students, and anyone who might be
interested to a day symposium where literature could become a space able to host
a multiplicity of thoughts and ways of being hospitable. Jacques Derrida indicated
the paradox of a true, unconditional hospitality that would correspond to the
“impossible”, and hence to the transgression of conditioning laws and politics of
hospitality. Yet poetic expression could present perceptive modes able to
renegotiate the limits of hospitality and to rediscover its social and historical
reality. Indeed, a discourse on hospitality could begin with a receptive gesture: the
act of listening to other stories, other voices, and meeting people as a way of
finding common structures of feeling and experience.
This one-day event, supported by Exiled Writers Ink and to be held at the
University of Notre Dame in London, would like to invite readings and
conversations on the poetic of hospitality. We would like to emphasise the dialogic
purpose of this event, which does not seek to affirm or defend positions but rather
to encourage different ways of talking about hospitality through reflection and
creative writing. This symposium will offer the opportunity to share a
conversation on hospitality that could have an impact on public discourses and
reassess the value of poetry and literature in the construction of hospitable
societies.
We welcome proposals for poetry and prose readings (10-15 min.) or joint papers
or conversations (20-30 min.), which might be related to the idea of a poetic of
hospitality. We gladly accept writings based on sayings or interpretations of
proverbs that celebrate hospitality (5-10 min.). Also, we will be happy to consider
forms of performance art, audio-visual installation and any other means of artistic
expression. This free event is open to all.
The deadline to register and send proposals is 27th July 2012.
For submissions and other queries please contact the organisers: