Avant-garde poet CAConrad returns to Bates

The Language Arts Live series at Bates College presents CAConrad, known for a pioneering approach to writing called “(soma)tic poetics,” with a lecture and a reading on consecutive evenings in October.

Conrad gives the talk Radical Insistence Through Queering the Language by 5 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 1, in Room 104 of Hathorn Hall, 3 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

Conrad reads from his work at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 2, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

Both events are open to the public at no cost. A literary reading series featuring writers of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction, Language Arts Live is sponsored by the English department at Bates. For more information, please call 207-786-6326.

A pioneering poet who has thrived through the crises of AIDS, hate crimes and navigating a queer community riding the military industrial complex, Conrad offers a talk about the poetry that transformed a poet’s life into helping others in his Oct. 1 talk.

Widely published in poetry and arts journals and anthologies, he is the author of seven books including Ecodeviance: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness (Wave Books, 2014), A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon (Wave, 2012) and The Book of Frank (Wave, 2010).

His “(soma) tic poetics” is a creative practice that, he says, “investigates that seemingly infinite space between body and spirit” by exploring the writing of poetry under highly ritualized constraints, both physical and mental.

Conrad tours the nation as part of his “PACE The Nation Project,” engaging with other poets and presenting poetry publicly in search of ways, he explains, “to repair our war-obsessed nation.” A 2014 Lannan Fellow, 2013 MacDowell Fellow and a 2011 Pew Fellow, Conrad also conducts workshops on (soma)tic poetry and ecopoetics.

Conrad appeared at Bates in 2009, early in the Language Arts Live series. He lives in Philadelphia. Learn more: CAConrad.blogspot.com.