Contemporary British Poetry and the Long 1980s: From Deregulation to Self-Regulation

While Margaret Thatcher proclaimed that "there [was] no alternative" (TINA) to economic liberalism and economic deregulation, poetry in Britain seems to have produced alternatives only, an increasing range of aesthetic alternatives.

Are we today still living in the wake of this 1980s aesthetic turn? Where have new poetics emerged since then? What significant formal innovations—in terms of diction, prosody or rhythm—have been produced by this “deregulation” of British poetry? Has the questioning of all forms of poetic authority and centrality led to a self-regulation of the various parts of the poetic scene? Has this in turn led to more innovation, and poetic freedom, or, on the contrary, has it created more pressure for poets to keep to their own corners of the poetry market?

This two-day conference will be an attempt at addressing some of those questions.

Organizing committee

• Elise Brault-Dreux, lecturer at the Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France (UPHF)
• Bastien Goursaud, professor at the Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC)
• Claire Hélie, lecturer at the Université de Lille
• Juliette Utard, lecturer at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Sorbonne University 

Guest speakers

• Laure-Hélène Anthony-Gerroldt (Université de Bourgogne)
• Sarah Bouttier (École Polytechnique)
• Alix Cazalet-Boudigues (Université Lyon 3)
• Adriano Elia (University of Rome)
• Iain Halliday (University of Catania)
• Michael Hinds (Dublin City U.)
• Julie Irigaray (University of Huddersfield)
• Monica Manolachi (University of Bucharest)
• Andrew McMillan (Manchester Metropolitan University), poet
• Deryn Rees-Jones (University of Liverpool), lecturer
• Lacy Rumsey (ENS Lyon)
• Fiona Sampson (U niversity of Roehampton), lecturer
• John Sannaee (Université Paris 8)
• Mike Sweeting (Durham University)
• Eva Zettelmann (University of Vienna)

Partnerships

This conference is organized by the research unit "Voix anglophones, littérature et esthétique"  (VALE), with funding from the "Fonds d’Intervention pour la recherche" of Sorbonne University, the Institut des mondes anglophone, germanique et roman (IMAGER) of the Université Paris-Est Créteil, the Laboratoire de recherche sociétés & humanités (LARSH) of the Université Polytechnique des Hauts de France, and the Centre d'études en civilisations, langues et lettres étrangères  (CECILLE) of the Université de Lille.