Digital Re-Enchantment: Place, Writing & Technology

Digital Re-enchantment: Place, Writing & Technology

Date: Saturday 11th June 2016

Time: 10.30am – 5.00pm

Location: Nightingale Centre, Great Hucklow SK17 8RH

Tickets: £20 (Catering and some transport included) - available at: digital-reenchantment.eventbrite.com

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In Landmarks (2015) the celebrated landscape writer, Robert Macfarlane, expresses his anxiety for the way that technology “has bequeathed to us an inadequate and unsatisfying relationship with the natural world, and with ourselves too”. In what ways, though, might digital technologies enhance and enrich our relationships with the places in which we live and the spaces through which we move? How have landscape writers drawn upon digital technologies in their own exploratory creative practices? This informal symposium will bring together a diverse range of speakers – including writers, literary critics, a leading publisher, and a creative entrepreneur – to explore the imaginative possibilities and problems presented by different digital technologies. The symposium will begin with an introduction to the British Library’s ‘Poetic Places’ app; the following panels will then focus on the experimental use of Twitter as a literary space and explore the creative ways digital technologies have been used to reimagine the Peak District. The symposium will be followed by a special evening of poetic performance - organised in partnership with the Sheffield-based Longbarrow Press - at the Old Hall, Buxton (see the following page for more details). Together, these events will explore whether digital technologies can, for writers and readers, facilitate a re-enchantment with the world.

 

Speakers and contributors include:

• Clare Archibald (Writer) @archieislander

• David Borthwick (University of Glasgow) @BorthwickDave

• Sarah Cole (TIME/IMAGE & Creative Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the British Library) @iRNY @time_image @poetic_places

• David Cooper (Manchester Metropolitan University) @DrDavidCooper

• Brian Lewis (Longbarrow Press) @LongBarrowPress

• Emma Bolland (Writer and Artist) @emmaZbolland

 

This event will also include a poetry reading in the evening. Tickets for this are free and can be booked here: digital-reenchantment-poetry-reading.eventbrite.com

 

This event will include a live Twitter-based creative writing project via #enchantthepeaks

Everyone (whether attending or not) is invited to take part.

 

Convened by Dr David Cooper, Department of English, Manchester Metropolitan University

David is a Senior Lecturer in English whose teaching and research focuses on the literature of space, place and landscape. He has published widely on contemporary poetry, digital literary mapping and the cultural landscapes of the Lake District. He is also a founding co-editor of the open access journal Literary Geographies. 

 

Illustration: Nature and Technology by Naomi Morris (watercolour and pen 21x29.7cm) http://www.naomimorris.com/

 

Manchester Metropolitan University is committed to disability equality. If you have any access requirements, please let us know via 0161 247 6710 or email us at h.darby@mmu.ac.uk before you arrive to help us to make sure that your visit to the event is as enjoyable as possible.