The Centre for Modern Poetry has a long history of hosting regular poetry gigs, international conferences and participating in local festivals. We contribute to a weekly arts programme, Free Range, including regular poetry slots, and hold regular events in other forums, including Canterbury’s longstanding Sounds New music festival, and the Kent-Royal Holloway poetics seminar series. Recent visiting speakers and performers have included: Peter Gizzi, Marilyn Hacker, Michael Heller, John Kinsella, Tony Lopez, Redell Olsen, Richard Price, Matthew Welton, Sean Bonney, Stephen Collis, Keston Sutherland, Denise Riley, Carol Watts.
In 2010 we hosted Charles Olson 2010, an international conference to mark Olson’s centenary. In 2011 we helped found In 2012 the Centre contributed to the 3rd Biennial Conference of the European Avant-Garde and Modernism Conference which was hosted at the University of Kent – we were delighted to welcome 300 speakers from over 30 countries. In 2013 we organised a rich and successful symposium on the San Francisco Poets, and in 2014 the Centre hosted, at the ICA, a retrospective of the late Amiri Baraka’s work, with contributions from Paul Kilroy, Linton Kwesi Johnson and others. In 2016 we will be co-hosting a conference on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Frank O’Hara’s death.
The Modern Poetry Reading Group, meanwhile, meets once a month to discuss a single poet or publication. In previous years we have considered Charles Olson, Susan Howe, Roy Fisher and Ed Dorn.
Email b.hickman@kent.ac.uk for more details.
Upcoming events
- 7 December, 20:00
Litmus Magazine Launch - 8 December, 20:00
Nisha Ramayya and Prue Chamberlain - 19 January, 16:00
Oceanic Poetics: All at sea with Charles Olson. Mandy Bloomfield (Plymouth University) - 26 January, 16:00
‘Beyond Consciousness: New poetry after the Avant-Garde’ – Ben Hickman (University of Kent) - 2 February, 16:00
CANCELLED: ‘On Implication’ – Kathy Kirk & Kat Peddie (University of Kent) - 9 February, 20:00
LGBT Writers’ Festival: Poetry Reading - 16 February, 16:00
Contemporary Poetry Reading Group - 2 March, 16:00
CANCELLED: Sascha Bru (University of Leuven) - 9 March, 16:00
‘Love: Necessity: Anti-Fash’ – Juha Virtanen - 16 March, 16:00
‘Acts of Silence: Cage, Buddhism & Contemporary Improvisation’ – Oliver Perrott-Webb (University of Kent) - 23 March, 16:00
“As unpleasantly definitive as statuary”: Statues and queer third spaces in Frank O’Hara and Eileen Myles – Jordan Savage (University of Essex) - 13 April, 16:00
Contemporary Poetry Reading Group
Recent events
- 19 February, 20:00
Queer Voices Poetry Reading - 19 February, 20:00
Queer Voices Poetry Reading - 3 March, 20:30
Camilla Nelson’s Poem Factory - 14 March, 20:00
Triple Book Launch: Kat Peddie, Nell Perry, Simon Smith - 18 March, 20:00
Rhys Trimble, Safiya Allaf, Emelie Dufresne - 19 March, 14:45
Poetry in the Woods: Workshop and Al Fresco reading - 24 July, 11:00
The Day Before O’Hara Died: Frank O’Hara and Friends - 19 October, 19:00
Book launch: Juha Virtanen’s -LAND (Oystercatcher Press, 2016) - 20 October, 20:00
Launch of Juha Virtanen’s book – Zone - 24 November, 20:00
Will Rowe & Stephen Mooney