It is striking how many leading European poets of the twentieth century turned to sculpture as an art form which they saw as analogous to poetry. Rilke on Rodin, Pound on Gaudier-Brzeska, and Francis Ponge, Jacques Dupin and Yves Bonnefoy on Giacometti are just five examples of poets who sought to measure their poetics against a sculptural aesthetic. Yet what is the common interest of modern poetry and sculpture in processes of poeisis, of “making”? Pound called sculpture “peculiarly a thing of the twentieth century” – but what is the precise force of the analogy between poetry and sculpture in this period? This conference seeks to explore the relationship between modern poetry and sculpture from a European perspective. Can differences in emphasis and approach be discerned which one could ascribe to differing cultural traditions across Europe – or is there rather a striking homogeneity between the many poetic approaches to sculpture? Does the response to sculpture by poets represent an enhancement of, or an escapist digression from, their own poetics? In response to such questions, the conference will adopt a doubly comparative approach, exploring both the general relationship between poetry and sculpture in the twentieth century and its specific manifestations in different times and locations. The day will be chaired by Prof. Peter Read and Dr Ben Hutchinson of the University of Kent and include the following speakers and topics :

Prof. Mark Antliff (Duke University)
Anarchist Vortex/Sculptural Nominalism: Gaudier-Brzeska and Pound

Prof. Roger Cardinal (University of Kent)
Jacques Dupin and ‘an alternative voicing of space’: a poet’s response to Giacometti and Chillida

Dr. Charlie Louth (The Queen’s College, Oxford)
Rilke, Rodin and the Syntax of Surface

Alastair Noble (Sculptor/ Lafayette College, Pennsylvania)
Mallarmé’s Shadow

Prof. Eric Robertson (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Arp’s Concretions

Dr. Sarah Turner (University of York)
The poetics of permanence: poetry, carving and letter-cutting in the 20th century

James Wishart (King’s College, University of London)
Olivier Larronde’s encounter with Giacometti: the historicity of poetic forms

The fee for this conference will be £20/£10 concessions and will include lunch and a wine reception during which the new HMI/Ashgate publication Giacometti: Critical Essays (Edited by Peter Read and Julia Kelly) will be launched. To register for this conference please contact Kirstie Gregory, kirstie@henry-moore.ac.uk , 0113 246 7467.