“My life insists on continuities”, writes Thom Gunn in The Occasions of Poetry (1982), “between America and England, between free verse and metre, between vision and everyday consciousness.”
Gunn is, by his own admission, an “Anglo-American poet”, yet he is strangely neglected on both sides of the Atlantic, seemingly too American for the English and too English for the Americans. Bringing together poets and scholars from across Europe and the US, this one-day symposium will address the critical neglect of one of the twentieth century’s most important poets.
Thom Gunn:
A Symposium
Department of English
Room D-1, Hearst Field Annex
2 December 2016
10.00am | Welcome and Introductory Remarks |
10.15am | Stefania Michelucci (University of Genoa, Italy) |
10.45am | Remembering Thom Gunn: the Man, the Poet, the Critic, the Teacher |
11.45am | Coffee Break |
12.00pm | Andrew McMillan (Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom) |
12.40pm | Eleanor Mary Boudreau (Florida State University) Emily Sutton (UC Berkeley) |
1.30pm | Lunch offered by the English Department |
3.00pm | Guided visit to The Thom Gunn Archive, Bancroft Library Michael Nott (University College Cork, Ireland) |
4.30pm | Coffee Break – Room D-37, Hearst Field Annex |
5.15pm | Evening Event: Poetry Reading by Randall Mann and Andrew McMillan |
The event is organised by Professor Stefania Michelucci (stefania.michelucci@berkeley.edu), and Dr Michael Nott(nott.@berkeley.edu). It is sponsored by the English Department, UC Berkeley, and supported by the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley; the US-UK Fulbright Commission; the University of Genoa, Italy; the Irish Research Council; and University College Cork, Ireland.