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This seminar looks at the role of contemporary poetry in responding to and reflecting on the effects of globalization. Our seminar follows Jeff Derksen’s suggestion that contemporary poetry reflects a transnational turn in literary studies and that there is ”a growing body of poetry in North America that is critically and intensively engaged with the politics and the restructuring brought by neoliberalism” (58). Building on this observation, this seminar examines how contemporary poets have responded to the challenges of globalization, and how poetic language and form reflect on and often resist the forces of neoliberal globalization. We will for instance explore how different poets have grappled with issues such as migration, displacement, economic inequality, etc. We will also examine how poetry can serve as a site of resistance to dominant discourses and power structures, and how it can create alternative modes of expression and meaning-making in a globalized world. After a thorough introduction to the trajectory of poetry in North America, we will read two recent volumes of poetry – Rita Wong’s forage (2007) and Kaie Kellough’s Magnetic Equator (2019). This seminar closes with a term paper. |
