Internationally renowned poet and critic Rachel Blau DuPlessis is a Distinguished Visitor at the University of Auckland in 2012. During her time in Auckland Rachel will give several public talks and readings, visit UoA classes and participate in a symposium on the contemporary long poem organised by the NZ Electronic Poetry Centre (nzepc). In addition she will visit the University of Otago and Victoria University of Wellington, and attend an event in Hawke’s Bay for NZ Poet Laureate Ian Wedde
Public lecture, ‘Reflections on the Long Poem: Autobiography of a Practice.’
UoA, Old Government House Lecture Theatre (Rm 102), 6.30-7.30 pm. Reception to follow. [poster]
Friday 2 March
Public reading and discussion, Drafts 1-38.
UoA, Arts 1, Rm 201, 3-4 pm. [poster]
Monday 5 – Tuesday 6 March
Visit to Dunedin and University of Otago:
- "Reflections on the Long Poem: Autobiography of a Practice," 4 to 5:30pm, Monday 5 March, Quad 1 (a humanities open lecture hosted by the Department of English, University of Otago) - A public reading, Tuesday 6 March, 5-6:30pm, Archway 3 (hosted by the Department of English, University of Otago)
Contacts Lyn Tribble and Jacob Edmond.
Thursday 8 March
Public reading and discussion, Drafts 39-57.
UoA, Owen G Glen Building, Rm 310, 3-4 pm. [poster]
Friday 9 – Sunday 11 March
Visit to Hawke’s Bay to attend NZ Poet Laureate events at Matahiwi Marae and in Hastings, including presentation of a tokotoko (talking stick) to 2011-13 Poet Laureate Ian Wedde.
Monday 12 March
Class visit to UoA English 252 Introduction to Creative Writing, 11-12 noon. Convenor Selina Tusitala Marsh.
Tuesday 13 March
Class visit to UoA Masters of Creative Writing, 10-12 noon. Convenor Emily Perkins
Wednesday 14 March
English Department Staff Seminar, ‘Purple Passages: Patriarchal Poetry and Its Ends.’ DuPlessis presents from her just-published critical book.
UoA, Arts 1, Rm 203, 3-4 pm. Refreshments to follow.
Friday 16 March
Public reading and discussion, Drafts 58-76.
UoA, Arts 1, Rm 201, 3-4 pm. [poster]
Tuesday 20 and
Wednesday 21 March
Check out Kelly Writers House webcast with poet and critic Ron Silliman, KWH Fellow 2012 at U Pennsylvania .Rachel reading: Tues 20 March, 11.30 am (NZ time), and Ron talking with Al Filreis: Wed 21 March, 3.00 am. Both events will be webcast live:
Thursday 22 March
Visit to Wellington. Poetry reading for English Department at VUW, 4-5 pm. Contact Anna Jackson.
Friday 23 March
Public reading and discussion, Drafts 77-95.
UoA, Arts 1, Rm 201, 3-4 pm.
Monday 26 March
Class visit to UoA English 769 Representing Imagining, 11-1 pm. Convenor Lisa Samuels.
Wednesday 28 March
Class visit to UoA English 263/354 Writing Selves, 9-10 am. Convenor Ian Wedde.
Public reading with local and Australian poets at LOUNGE #24, Old Government House, 5.30-7 pm. MC Michele Leggott. [poster]
Thursday 29 – Friday 30 March
SHORT TAKES ON LONG POEMS: nzepc trans Tasman symposium focused on the contemporary long poem with DuPlessis as invited speaker and presentations by Australian and American colleagues including Pam Brown (Jacket2), Martin Harrison (UTS), Jill Jones (U Adelaide), Philip Mead (U Western Australia), Susan Schultz (U Hawai’i), Hazel Smith (U Western Sydney), John Tranter (Jacket) and Ann Vickery (Deakin U). Old Government House (Federation of University Women Suite). [symposium programme]
Rachel Blau DuPlessis NZ audio & video
DuPlessis reads and discusses her long poem Drafts, begun in 1986 and coming to completion in 2012, in a series of public readings at the University of Auckland.
Drafts 1-38, Toll (Wesleyan UP, 2001)
2 March 2012
Drafts 39-57, Pledge with Draft, unnumbered (Salt, 2004)
8 March 2012
Torques: Drafts 58-76 (Salt, 2007)
16 March 2012
Pitch: Drafts 77-95 (Salt, 2010)
23 March 2012
Surge: Drafts 96-114(in preparation)
LOUNGE #24 at the University of Auckland, 28 March 2012-02-14 [video]
DuPlessis discusses her recent critical work and the evolution of Drafts.
Reflections on the Long Poem: Autobiography of a Practice
Public lecture at the University of Auckland, 1 March 2012-02-14
[video]
Purple Passages: Patriarchal Poetry and Its Ends
English Department seminar at the University of Auckland, 14 March 2012
Practice, practise, praxis
Presentation at SHORT TAKES ON LONG POEMS, 30 March 2012
[Video]
As DuPlessis completes her substantial serial poem Drafts and a critical monograph on the place of the long poem in Anglophone literatures of the 20th and early 21st centuries, her visit to Auckland will give Australasian colleagues and students the opportunity to engage with a scholar who is deeply interested in the transmissions of poetry and the potential for building poetic networks across physical and cultural distances.
The interplay of physical and virtual audiences for poetry will be a major focus of the visit: video documentation of talks and readings will extend DuPlessis’ presence at the NZ Electronic Poetry Centre (nzepc) where she is already a contributor to several online anthologies and the donor of a Tapa Notebook now in UoA Special Collections.
The purpose of DuPlessis’ 2012 visit is to bring the person where her virtual and intellectual presence is well understood, and to expand that understanding by means of exposure to local dialogues. DuPlessis’ award continues a tradition of visits to the University of Auckland by distinguished North American poet critics including Charles Bernstein, Lyn Hejinian and Robert Creeley, all of whom enriched local writing by their presence and established reciprocal links with New Zealand writers. The NZ Electronic Poetry Centre is in fact modelled on Creeley and Bernstein’s Electronic Poetry Centre (EPC) at SUNY Buffalo, the first great web project to draw poetic communities together and still a hub of innovative poetry and poetics.
Selected honors and awards
2021: Distinguished Visitor Award, University of Auckland, New Zealand; 2008-09: National Humanities Center Fellowship; 2007: Residency at Bellagio, Italy, for poetry; 2002: Pew Fellowship in the Arts; 2002: Roy Harvey Pearce / Archive for New Poetry Prize for lifetime contribution to American poetry and literary scholarship; 1999: Temple University Faculty Award for Creative Achievement; 1993: Award from The Fund for Poetry for contributions to American poetry; 1992: Residency at Le Centre de Poésie et Traduction de la Fondation Royaumont, Aisères-sur-Oise, France for translation of RBD poetry; 1990: Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for Poetry; 1988 and 1986: NEH Travel to Collections Grant; 1985: Fulbright Professorship at Katholieke Universiteit, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Critical books
Purple Passages: Patriarchal Poetry and its Ends. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2012. The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2006. Republication of the 1990 book. Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2006. Genders, Races and Religious Cultures in Modern American Poetry, 1908-1934. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2001. The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice. New York: Routledge, 1990. H.D: The Career of that Struggle. London: Harvester, and Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986. Writing Beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century Women Writers. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985.
Selected poetry books
The Collage Poems of Drafts. London: Salt Publishing, 2011. Pitch: Drafts 77-95. London: Salt Publishing, 2010. Torques: Drafts 58-76. Cambridge, UK: Salt Publishing, 2007. DRAFTS. Drafts 39-57, Pledge, with Draft unnumbered: Précis. Cambridge, UK: Salt Publishing, 2004. Draft, unnumbered: Précis. Vancouver: Nomados, 2003. Drafts 1-38, Toll. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2001. Essais: Quatre Poèmes. Traduction collective, Royaumont, revue et complétée par Jean-Paul Auxeméry. Bar-le-Duc: Un Bureau sur l’Atlantique, Editions Créaphis, 1996. Wells. New York: Montemora, 1980.
EDITED BOOKS The Feminist Memoir Project: Voices from Women’s Liberation. Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Ann Snitow, eds. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2007. Reprint with preface to the new edition. The Objectivist Nexus: Essays in Cultural Poetics. Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Peter Quartermain, eds. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P. 1999. The Feminist Memoir Project: Voices from Women’s Liberation. Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Ann Snitow, eds. New York: Three Rivers Press of Crown Publishing Group, 1998; rpt. 1999. The Selected Letters of George Oppen. Rachel Blau DuPlessis, ed. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1990. Signets: Reading H.D. Susan Stanford Friedman and Rachel Blau DuPlessis, eds. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1990.
Drafts 1-38, Toll (Wesleyan UP, 2001)
Drafts 39-57, Pledge with Draft, unnumbered (Salt, 2004)
Torques: Drafts 58-76 (Salt, 2007)
Pitch: Drafts 77-95 (Salt, 2010)
Surge: Drafts 96-114(in preparation)