CCCR-FAD Seminar: Suddenness and the Composition of Poetic Thought
Date\Time: Monday 15 August 2022, 1-2pm Location: Building 6, Room 6c14, University of Canberra (google map: https://goo.gl/maps/nCwaAASE18hsR9Qs6)Zoom:https://zoom.us/j/97129882430?pwd=VWFLWm5ZaXpMa0ZMS1VGMUFrY1VmQT09Meeting ID: 971 2988 2430Passcode: 864037 Details: Paul Magee discusses his new book Suddenness and the Composition of Poetic Thought (Rowman and Littlefield: London and New York, 2022). The book interrogates the much-cherished concept of ‘poetic thinking,’ by focusing in on what interview and draft materials reveal of how poets actually do think, when in the act of writing. Findings from cognitive science and linguistics are brought in to corroborate poets’ descriptions of their practice. It transpires that poets’ experiences of composition cast light upon a key aspect of the human interface with language more generally: the fact that that we lack the cognitive capacity to know the exact wording of what we are about to say, in advance of the second or two in which we come to utter it. Magee contends that this everyday suddenness imports a constitutive uncertainty to all forms of speaking, however much we try to ignore it. It is central to our experiences of writing as well, contouring the distinct shapes assumed by both our poetic verse and our prose.
