Contemporaries

University of Cambridge Contemporary Research Group

Page 11 of 13

Contemporaries Critical Slam

small critical slam

12th JUNE  5-6.30pm

English Faculty, 9 West Road, G06-G07

Granta’s recently released issue 123 (The Best of Young British Novelists 2013) makes implicit but nonetheless bold claims about the nature of contemporary writing in Britain. Through its selection of the ‘best’, it suggests what we should value, who we should watch, and what aesthetic and thematic trends ought to be singled out as the most interesting issuing from the country’s current writers.

But do we agree? Is Granta’s ‘best’ really Britain’s? Do the authors selected tell us anything novel about the state? Does the selection represent ‘Britain’ in any meaningful way?

Join us for wine, snacks and a ‘balloon debate‘ on Granta issue 123.

Over the course of the evening, we will discuss the works collected in the issue, tackle the categories ‘Best’, ‘British’, and perhaps even ‘Young’, and discuss the shape and nature of contemporary writing in Britain today.

Join the not-so-polite debate.

Copies of Granta 123 are available to borrow or buy at a reduced rate from the desk at the English Faculty Library.

To register for the event email your name and affiliation to:

contemporaries at english.cam.ac.uk.

 

 For more discussion see our ‘Conversations‘ page

 

Shifting Territories: Modern and Contemporary Poetics of Place

A conference to be held at the Institute of English Studies, Senate House, the University of London on 22nd and 23rd March.

Poets and Keynotes:

  • David Morley (Enchantment, The Invisible Kings) – Poetry reading with images
  • Eóin Flannery (Oxford Brookes University) –  ‘Listen to the Leaves: The Ecologies of Contemporary Irish Poetry’
  • Jo Shapcott (Of Mutability, Tender Taxes, My Life Asleep) – Poetry reading
  • Steven Matthews (University of Reading) will run a training workshop on modern and contemporary poetry research.

Immediately following the final panel sessions of Day 1 of the conference, British Academy Literature Week, in association with the Institute of English Studies and the Royal Society of Literature, presents:
Alice Oswald (A Sleepwalk on the Severn, Woods etc., Dart) – Poetry reading: 6.00pm
Hugh Haughton (University of York) – ‘Poetry and Rivers’: 7.00pm

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