A world of local voices

More about the book

This volume features papers and poems from the international conference "A World of Local Voices: Poetry in English Today" and the "Day of International Poetry," both held at Saarland University in October 1999. Organized by the Department of North American Literature and Culture, the conference aimed to examine the shift from modernist overarching concepts and a "poetry of ideas" towards a more grounded "poetry of place," expressed through various forms of English. The "Day of International Poetry" sought to implement the discussions from the conference by inviting poets from Canada, India, Jamaica, and the USA to share their unique voices in an international reading. The collection includes critical essays that explore the interplay of aesthetic, cultural, and political forces in contemporary poetry, focusing on works written in different varieties of English, including translations. The essays engage with current debates on postcolonialism and intercultural literary relations, proposing new paradigms of critical understanding through analyses of individual poetic expressions. Additionally, selected poets and translators contribute their own poetic texts along with commentaries, enriching the discourse on contemporary poetry.