NEW LIGHTS ON THE POEM :  LOOKING BACK, LOOKING FORWARD

Fifth biennial INSL conference

Université du Québec à Montréal, June 3-5, 2025 

Languages : French, English

Established with the aim of fostering international exchanges and sharing critical perspectives, conceptual frameworks and recent theories of lyric, the International Network for the Study of Lyric celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2025. Following meetings aimed at situating the lyric, invigorating conceptual and theoretical approaches, and bridging forms, corpora and disciplines (Situating Lyric, Boston, 2017; The Between-ness of Lyric, Lausanne 2019), INSL has explored poetry as an experience, as well as the implications of such an experience (Poetry. Experience. Attention, Oslo, 2023). This fifth conference proposes to deepen an inquiry initiated in 2021 ("Between criticism and creative writing", Open Windows on Lyric, Leuven, 2021) by positioning itself at the crossroads of theories and practices.

The poem is current in that it establishes a novel relationship each time, challenging our relationship to time, the world, language, and meaning. By New Lights, we mean the various ways in which the poem inscribes itself in history and interrogates it in the present. The avenues necessary to develop a theory of lyric capable of understanding its various manifestations, especially outside the book, certainly call for innovation. What conceptual tools and forms need to be reinvested or revisited to grasp its incessant reactualizations? What role can these tools play, not only in renewing practices but also in how we share poetry between forms and languages, or transmit its knowledge, particularly in our teaching? Given its heuristic nature, what does the poem, both yesterday and today, tell us about contemporary times? What kind of "distribution of the sensible," to use Jacques Rancière's words, does it propose?

The International Network for the Study of Lyric and the Université du Québec à Montréal are happy to welcome researchers, teachers, students, poets, critics, translators and publishers to this fifth conference.

Organizing Committee:
Denise Brassard, Université du Québec à Montréal
Marc André Brouillette, Université du Québec à Montréal
Nathalie Watteyne, Université Sherbrooke

Coordinators: 
Rachel Henrie-Gouin, Eve Lemieux-Cloutier, Charlotte Moffet, Annie Tanguay

Scientific Committee:
Jan Baetens, Leuven University
Denise Brassard, Université du Québec à Montréal
Marc André Brouillette, Université du Québec à Montréal
Gustavo Guerrero, Cergy Paris Université
Laure Michel, Université Lumière - Lyon 2
Nathalie Watteyne, Université Sherbrooke 

Partners: 
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)
Faculty of arts, Université du Québec à Montréal
Department of Literary Studies, Université du Québec à Montréal
Laboratoire Passages Arts et Littératures (XX-XXI), Université Lumière-Lyon 2
Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la littérature et la culture au Québec (CRILCQ)
Centre Anne-Hébert, Université Sherbrooke
SMU Project Poëtica
Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois (UNEQ)
Festival de la poésie de Montréal
Festival Metropolis bleu/Blue Metropolis
La Poésie partout