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CALL FOR PAPERS
16th International Conference of the Estonian Association of Comparative Literature
World Poetry Today: Production, Translation, Reception
University of Tartu, Estonia, October 1 to 4, 2025
Poetry is inherently “worldly”, both polytemporal and polyspatial, as stated by Jahan Ramazani. While poems belong to their immediate historical moment and national culture, they are, at the same time, transnational as well as transhistorical through their forms, techniques, rhetorical strategies, and language. (J. Ramazani, Poetry in the Global Age, 2020) Using the term “world poetry”, we wish to invite papers which focus on the intercultural dissemination of petry and explore how the worldwide production, translation, and reception of poetry are influenced by (and, in turn, influence) the digital environment, which has led to the emergence of new mediums/forms of poetry. Today, poetry is living and circulating as never before, both in book form and in the digital as well as the physical environment – its spread into the public space is already demanding attention in poetry studies (see C. Benthien, N. Gestring, Public Poetry, 2023). Defined by Tartu’s renowned literary scholar Juri Lotman as “complexly constructed meaning” (Analysis of the Poetic Text, 1976, p. 35), poetry continues to pose new challenges for writers and translators, critics and readers.
Among the keynote speakers are Claudia Benthien (Universität Hamburg) and Francis R. Jones (Newcastle University).
The Estonian Association of Comparative Literature (EACL) was created in November 1994. EACL aims to further Estonian research on comparative literature and assemble Estonian comparativists. The main activities of EACL are biennial international conferences on different subjects of comparative literature and editing Interlitteraria, the annual international journal of comparative literature, published by EACL and the Chair of Comparative Literature of Tartu University.
