CFP – Postcard Poetry and Poetics / Poésie et poétique de la carte postale – 3-6 June 2026

Name: CFP – Postcard Poetry and Poetics / Poésie et poétique de la carte postale – 3-6 June 2026
Start: 2026-06-03T00:00:00+02:00
End: 2026-06-06T23:59:59+02:00

3 juin - 6 juin

PROGRAMME PROVISOIRE / PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME

Please note that the schedule below is subject to change

ICI/HERE

Postcard Poetry and Poetics / Poésie et poétique de la carte postale

3-6 juin 2026

Sorbonne Université

organized by Olivier Belin, Jonathan Ellis, Susan Rosenbaum and Juliette Utard

Scientific committee :

Olivier Belin (Sorbonne Université)
Diane Drouin (Sorbonne Université)
Jonathan Ellis (University of Sheffield)
Valentin Fauque (Sorbonne Université)
Ronald Patkus (Vassar College)
Antonia Rigaud (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle)
Susan Rosenbaum (University of Georgia, Athens)
Juliette Utard (Sorbonne Université)

DAY 1 – Wednesday 3 June 2026

Old Sorbonne, 17 rue de la Sorbonne, amphi Guizot

1:30: conference opening (picking up name tags, programs, etc)

2:00 : Welcome by organizers

2:15-3:45

Postcards as Performances / La carte postale comme performance

Valentina CITTERIO ( d’Avignon), “Postcards as Gestures: Dominique Fourcade and the Poem Before the Poem”
Elena BONINI (U. Paris 8 Vincennes St Denis), « 366 couchers de soleil sur la mer, agrémentés d’un rayon vert trouvés dans les archives de Jean-Pierre Le Goff »
Ellen LEVY (independent scholar), “PALS SLAP: Ray Johnson’s Reversals”

Coffee break

4:00-4:50: Keynote lecture by Anne Reverseau (U. Louvain), « Les poètes et la carte postale : une histoire littéraire en images échangées » / “Poets and Postcards: a Literary History of Circulating Images”

5:00-6:30 Postcards as Manifestos / La carte postale comme manifeste

Pierre VINCLAIR (Sorbonne U. / CELLF), « ‘Je ne sais pas d’autre bombe qu’une carte postale’ : Pour une nouvelle dialectique de l’avant-garde »
Abigail LANG (U. Paris Cité), “‘What’s Going On.’ Tom Raworth’s Postcard-Sized Magazine Infolio (1986-1991)”
Michael KINDELLAN ( of Sheffield), “After Words: The Postcards of the Olson-Creeley Correspondence”

6:30-8:00

Opening reception at the Faculty Club,

Old Sorbonne, 17 rue de la Sorbonne

Installation, “Faces onto Rue Saint-Jacques” / « Visages de la rue Saint-Jacques », by Clark Lunberry & Postcard-related Book Display (books by conference participants)

DAY 2 – Thursday 4 June 2026

Morning: Old Sorbonne, 17 rue de la Sorbonne, Salle des Actes

9:30-10:00: Curating Bishop’s postcards: a roundtable / Table ronde : exposer les cartes postales de Bishop (Susan Rosenbaum, Jonathan Ellis and Ronald Patkus, co-curators of the Vassar exhibit)

10:00-10:30 Private tour of the exhibit “Elizabeth Bishop’s Postcards” at the BIS (group 1) / coffee and croissants at the Club (group 2)
10:30-11:00 Private tour of the exhibit “Elizabeth Bishop’s Postcards” at the BIS (group 2) / coffee and croissants at the Club (group 1)

11:15-12:00 Sarah Ruhl’s Dear Elizabeth (excerpts): a reading with songs, performed by the Sorbonne Players and directed by Julie Vatain-Corfdir (Sorbonne U.)

12:00 Buffet lunch at the Faculty Club, Old Sorbonne (for speakers and organizers)

Afternoon: Old Sorbonne, 17 rue de la Sorbonne, amphi Guizot

13:30-15:00

Postcards and the Lure of the Miniature / Les cartes postales et l’attrait de la miniature

Matthew BEVIS (Oxford U.), “Elizabeth Bishop in a Tight Spot”
Nina GRANGER (Sorbonne U.), “‘That Little Something’: Charles Simic’s Postcards and Miniature Writing”
Jack QUIN (Dublin City U.), “Modernist Christmas Cards? Faber’s Ariel Poems (1927–1931) and the contest of word and image”

15:15-16:15

Last Words : Postcards and Posterity / Les mots de la fin : cartes postales et postérité

Elisabeth JOYCE (Pennsylvania Western U.), “‘An incredibly dense thicket of relations’: Ted Berrigan’s A Certain Slant of Sunlight”
Patrick ARMSTRONG (Ecole Polytechnique), “Samuel Beckett’s Postcard Poetics”

16:30-18:00

Postcards as Literary Archive / Les cartes postales comme archive littéraire

Tara STUBBS (Oxford U.), “Postcards, poets, and the archive: the Barrie Cooke collection at Pembroke College, Cambridge”
Karine MACAREZ (U. Pennsylvania), « De la carte postale à la contrerime : Miniaturisation de la pensée poétique chez Paul-Jean Toulet »
David RECKFORD (Cergy Paris U.), “Sunlight – TAP and Ted Berrigan’s Postcard Poems”

DAY 3 – Friday 5 June 2026

Maison de la recherche, 28 rue Serpente, amphi Molinié

9:30-11:00

Postcard Activism, Postcard Archivism / Les cartes postales ou le militantisme par l’archive

Wilfred SKINNER (Cambridge U.), “Poitou to New York: Georges Perec’s Postcard-Vestiges”
Basuli DEB (School of Advanced Study, U. of London), “The Poetics of Migration: An Asian American Postcard Poetry Archive”
Benny NEMER (KASK & Conservatorium), “Several Favourable Bodies: Hervé Guibert’s Postcards as Agents of Queer Kinship”

Coffee break, 2^nd floor

11:15-12:45

Postcard as Process / La carte postale comme processus

Jo GILL (U. of Glasgow), “‘We forget where we actually are’: Carl Sandburg’s Stereographs”
Peter LUCAS (NYU and The New School) and Cecilia RUBINO(The New School), “Lost in the Woods”
Clark LUNBERRY (U. North Florida), “Seeing Through Windows and Doorways: Eugène Atget’s Métiers de Paris Postcards”

Lunch buffet, 2^nd floor

2:00-4:00

“I’ll Postcard You!”: A Postcard Poetry Writing Workshop (participants must register – 15 max – and be present on Saturday morning) – with poet Thibault Marthouret @ Sorbonne Library (BIS), salle de formation, 17 rue de la Sorbonne, 75005 Paris.

5:00-6:30

Screening Vivian Ostrovsky’s Elizabeth Bishop: From Brazil with Love (2025), followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker @ Christine Cinéma Club, 4 rue Christine, 75006 Paris.

Tickets : https://www.billetweb.fr/elizabeth-bishop-from-brazil-with-love-de-vivian-ostrovsky

7:00 Conference dinner (for speakers and organizers) – Venue tbd

DAY 4 – Saturday 6 June 2026

Maison de la recherche, 28 rue Serpente, amphi Molinié

9:30-11:00

Modernist Poetry on the Move / La poésie moderniste en mouvement

Angus CLEGHORN (Seneca Polytechnic, Toronto), “Postcard Imaginations: Stevens and Bishop in Florida”
T. WELSCH (U. of York), “In the room the postcards come and go: Prufrock’s fine furnishings”
Michael HINDS (Dublin City U.), Dublin City University, “‘There is here a real ruin’: Poundian Postcardism on the Troubadour Path”

Coffee break, 2^nd floor

11:15-12:15

Postcards in and out of Books / Le devenir-livre des cartes postales

Mihai DUMA (UPEC & Sorbonne Université), “Pathways of Saying: The Postcard as Poetic Scenography in the Work of Gherasim Luca”
Anne GOURIO (U. Caen-Normandie), « Cartes augmentées, papiers collés : les montages du quotidien dans la correspondance de Michel Butor et Georges Perros »

12:15-12:45

Postcard-Poems from the Workshop: A Finale, by Thibault Marthouret with all workshop participants

& Closing words by organizers

13:00 Lunch meeting for members of the Elizabeth Bishop Advisory Board

The conference & events are

sponsored by:

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de la Sorbonne (BIS)

CELLF (UMR n° 8599), Sorbonne Université

Consortium SPHINX, Sorbonne Université

FIR de la Faculté des Lettres de Sorbonne Université

Poetry Beyond (VALE, UR n° 4085), Sorbonne Université