Cirrus@Austlit

'This paper explores poetry as a means of augmenting cross-cultural connections; we maintain that the genre is inherently humanistic, and that connecting with poets abroad and at large can be generative, exploratory, and invested in locating traits amid our differences that ulitmately draw us closer toward renewed ethical engagements. In a world that seems increasingly distracted by noise (often produced willfully, it seems, to ideological intent), poetry remains yet a means of intervening, interfering with, and interrupting the myopias of narrowed accounts of self, and self in relation to others. We argue that poetry can continue to make uncommonly useful contributions towards a common humanity: as our numerous inter-cultural projects demonstrate, to think poetically and connectively is to work non-reductively, in resonant ways that can shift us beyond the quotidian, into the boundlessly possible.' (Publication abstract)