Birkbeck College, 18th May 2013, 10am-8pm.

General Invitation

This is a follow-up event to the Poetry and Revolution conference. The aim is to take discussion further and link it specifically to militant political action.

The format will be different: A one-day event with an on-going plenary session and a total of around 30 people attending. It will be organised as 2 round tables, each with six speakers presenting initial 5-10 minute stances, followed by discussion, with a view to reaching conclusions and decisions that relate to action, not simply to debate. We will aim to produce a document.

Questions/themes to be addressed
1. What is the situation in the UK now?
2. Poetry, violence, the law. How can our work meet the violence of capital? What is the specific violence of the situation? Can poetry have its own specific violence?
3. How does our relation to our work and the work of others become changed in militant action?
4. At what points in the class struggle can poetry intervene at this moment?
5. In what militant actions and situations can we intervene? In what ways? What is poetic thought in relation to struggle?
6. What types of agitprop should we be engaging in? See Benjamin’s ‘One Way Street’. Leafleting, propaganda? Directed to whom?
7. Would it be useful to organise ourselves? In what way? e.g. form a faction; produce agitprop material; create a website; produce collective statements for website, perhaps weekly.

Speakers
Justin Katko, Jennifer Cooke, Keston Sutherland, Sean Bonney, Stephen Watts, Harry Gilonis, Danny Hayward, Sam Walton, Zoe Sutherland, Will Rowe, Jow Lindsay, David Grundy