[This past
weekend, the Northeast MLA held
its annual spring
conference in Toronto. I was there in my official capacity as the
organization’s Vice President, as well as a presenter and audience member, and
wanted to follow up on a handful of the many interesting things that took
place. Leading up to a weekend post on how you can help me plan next year’s
conference in Hartford!]
On one thing
that stood out to me about each of the conference’s three opening performances.
1)
The 2015 conference opened with a creative
reading and performance by Tobago-born, Toronto-based poet, author, and scholar
M. NourbeSe Philip. Philip both read
excerpts from a personal essay in progress and performed (along with her
daughter-in-law) pieces from her book-length poem
Zong! (2008). The hour-long performance was never anything but riveting—but
I was especially struck by the moment when, amidst chants of the names of
murdered African slaves from Zong!,
Philip interjected, “Trayvon, Mike, Erik.” I can’t imagine a more visceral or
affecting link of past to present.
2)
Following directly on Philip’s performance was a
talk and reading by Madeleine
Stratford, a poet,
translator,
and professor of translation. Stratford gave a multi-layered presentations on
poetry, translation, language, and what those complementary creative forms and acts
can help us understand and engage with. I learned a lot and was provoked to
think a lot further by many of her points and ideas, but was especially moved
by her final hope for the conference to follow: that it be a celebration of
language. Stratford’s perspective, like this conference, remind us that
language is far from just a discipline or niche—it’s what defines and connects
us all.
3)
And there was the keynote, on the conference’s
second night. I wrote back in this
January preview post about President Daniela Antonucci’s plans for a truly
ground-breaking keynote, an interdisciplinary performance that would combine
scholarship, music and song, images and the visual arts, and dance. Well thanks
to both Daniela’s vision and the inspiring talents of Christopher
Innes, Brigitte Bogar, and a pianist
and young dancer whose names I don’t know, the performance went off perfectly. Indeed,
this keynote has fundamentally changed the game for my own conference next
year, and all NeMLA conferences to follow—and I couldn’t be more excited to see
how I can follow up these great performances.
Next recap
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Were you at
NeMLA 2015? I’d love to hear your follow ups as well—or your thoughts on this
post even if you weren’t there!
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