Deadline: June 30, 2025
Contact: Tim Hunt, Professor of English, Emeritus, Illinois State Univeristy
Email: tahunt@ilstu.edu

PAMLA Conference (Nov. 20-23 in San Francisco)
(Panel / In-Person) American / Poetry and Form

For Robinson Jeffers the ruggedly beautiful Big Sur region of the California coast with its remote ranches offered, he noted in the Foreword to his Selected Poetry, a view of “life purged of ephemeral accretions” yet also “conscious” of the “modern world” and “capable of expressing its spirit.” For Jeffers, Nature was both being in its ultimate form and a vantage point for critiquing “civilization,” and the poetry he developed from this perspective has helped shape American poetry of the West and has become a significant source for environmental poetry. The significance of Jeffers envisioning of the West and his relevance for contemporary poetry is acknowledged but is relatively unexamined. This panel invites proposals that engage any aspect of Jeffers’ poetics of Nature and/or construction of the West, as well as papers that explore the work of writers who extend, modify, or contest Jeffers’ work.

https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/CFP

Posted on May 25, 2025