Events

16-18 SEPT. 2022

5TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CREATIVE WRITING

FULL PROGRAM

PRESENTATION: “Performance Poetry – Fragments of Mnemes Unborn”

WORKSHOP: “Performance poetry & the embodiment of poetic speech”

by Georgia Velivasaki (Poet-Artist / University Instructor of Performance Poetry)

PRESENTATION – SAT. 17/9/2022 (11:45-12:00) SALA MAGNA

From the era of Empedokles and Homer, poetry was rhapsodic, recited with live performative character. However, through the centuries –and due to the transition to more literate societies– poetry gradually became alienated from its original oral facet and extroverted social function, rendering the pleasure of reading a private affair.

Nowadays, a new shift towards the spoken word, liveness and performativity has been observed in all aspects of social and cultural activity. In this context, poetry moves from its “classical” printed form to rediscover its social, unifying and collective dimension.

Performance poetry is a contemporary kind of inter-disciplinary poetry art with deep roots and an unlimited timeframe. It has been acknowledged and classified among the literary genres by the National Endowment for the Arts in America at the beginning of the 21st century.

Performance poetry brings together two different concepts and practices: poetry – as the art of speech, and performance – as an actional and simultaneously, performative phenomenon. It requires a performer (the poet in person) and the presence of an audience. It occurs in a pre-selected place and time: “here-and-now”, which condenses the unthinkable, the concurrent presence and absence of existence.

Within the framework of the 5th Conference of Creative Writing, we are going to give a live presentation of the inter-artistic,  performative, participatory poem-art “Fragments of ‘Mnemes Unborn’” created by the poetic team Geo-V & Perfo Poet Art.  It is a poetic composition that goes «beyond the page», where speech is unfolded and resignified through the art of performance, music and sound landscapes, video projection, voice and body. Namely, we are referring to the “embodiment” of poetic speech which is presented as a three-dimensional experiential poetic event that strives for a reflective, multilevel and multisensory experience.

Language: Greek (PowerPoint in English)

WORKSHOP – SAT. 17/9/2022 (16:30-17:30), SALA DELLE CAPRIATE

In the field of Performance Poetry speech leaves the two-dimensional world of the page in order to be transcribed and presented by the poet as a live three-dimensional physical audiovisual poetic event in front of an audience. The poet-performer designs the opus choosing the materials, the techniques and the style of the poetic composition, according to his/her aesthetic and structural framework, taking into consideration the technological tools at his/her disposal as well as the “here-and-now” (space and time) condition. Having said that, the following questions arise: What is the material or the artistic practices with which he/she will interweave the poetic speech? How will he/she invite and involve the audience in a dynamic reflective experience? What would his/her own positioning as a presence be in front of the audience?

In this workshop, as a starting point we will take fragments from the inter-artistic poem-art Mnemes Unborn, created by the poetic team “Geo-V Poet Art” and we will outline the basic elements and the techniques of performance poetry. We will, especially, focus on the way the poet-performer embodies his/her poetic speech through his/her body and voice, without dramatizing or acting out something, like an acrobat who leads and simultaneously participates in his/her own acrobatics. Subsequently, we will playfully experiment and create our own live, experiential, participative, performative poem-art.

Language: Greek (PowerPoint in English)