Philip Gross is Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University in South Wales, UK. His collection The Water Table (Bloodaxe) won the TS Eliot Prize 2009. I Spy Pinhole Eye (Cinnamon) was English-language winner of Wales Book of The Year 2010. Off Road To Everywhere (Salt 2010) is a Children’s Poetry Bookshelf choice. A new collection, Deep Field, dealing with his father’s loss of language to aphasia, is due from Bloodaxe in November of this year.

Jen Webb is Professor of Creative Practice at the University of Canberra, and researches the relationship between art and society. Her current research includes two major projects—the first investigates the relationship between art and critical social moments; the other explores the relationship between creative practice and knowledge, focusing particularly on the role of poetry in generating thought and the possibility of ‘knowing’. Her recent book-length publications include Understanding representation (Sage, 2009), the short story collection Ways of getting by  (2006: Ginniderra Press), and the forthcoming Understanding Foucault: a critical introduction (2011: Allen & Unwin; coauthored with Tony Schirato and Geoff Danaher).

 

Poetry and Knowledge: A Conversation

London, 17 June 2011

The five questions that guided us were framed as addressing the broad issues of presentation, location, composition, disposition and end product. While the conversation shifted and drifted in sometimes unexpected directions, the overall focus was about what it means to be a poet who works in a university: in what ways might the making of poetry involve, or constitute, a research act; what are the ethical issues associated with such work; what elements are involved in the making of poetry; what investment might a poet have in the outcomes of his or her work; and what is the relationship between poetry and knowledge.