A Trans-disciplinary Conference the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics in collaboration with the University of the Highlands and Islands Seil, Easdale, Kilmartin and Luing, Argyll
22-24 June 2017
Call for Engagement: https://www.facebook.com/events/1254649587891661/
Creative workshops, presentations, papers and performances
‘Geopoetics is concerned, fundamentally, with a relationship to the earth and the
opening of a world’.
The Scottish Centre for Geopoetics and the University of the Highlands and Islands
will host Expressing the Earth in Argyll 2017 to bring together creative artists,
musicians, poets and film makers along with academics, researchers, students and
teachers to explore, create and debate the earth and the environment in this
spectacular area of Scotland.
‘Atlantic space, the west coast of Europe, is characterised in the first instance by
fragmentation … a multitude, a proliferation of islands and peninsulas separated
by difficult waters. It is a territory of dispersion and precariousness – but each
fragment is exact in itself, there is no confusion in this plurality. In a word, unity
is not something given, to be taken for granted, it has to be composed.’ (Kenneth
White, 2004)
Expressing the Earth will look to the multitude and proliferation of the islands
and peninsulas and address the ways in which people are influenced and brought
together by these features from the Neolithic and Bronze Age, early Celtic Christian
heritage and seafaring history to more recent industrial exploitation of the
Slate Islands.
Themes and activities, rooted in Geopoetics, include literature, history, visual
arts, film making, archaeology, geology, geography and theology – with active engagement and creative outcomes as central to the conference as academic papers
and presentations.
The conference will take place at the Seil Island Hall in Argyll with field activities
also in Kilmartin Glen, Easdale Island and the Isle of Luing. Poetry readings, musical
performances and social gatherings will play a key part in the conference programme
and it is intended that publications and exhibitions will follow.
The full programme is detailed here: http://www.geopoetics.org.uk/
Scottish Centre for Island Studies 