Symposium: Frank O’Hara and Friends

The Day Before O’Hara Died

This one-day colloquium brings together poets, academics and members of the public to celebrate the life, work and artistic connections of Frank O’Hara, the New York poet, art critic, filmmaker and MoMA curator who died 50 years ago on July 25th, 1966.

The event is organised by the North American Poetics Network of CHASE (Consortium for the Humanities and Arts South-East England).  

Speakers and readers include Geoff Ward, Daniel Kane, Redell Olsen, Andrea Brady, Prue Chamberlain, Sophie Robinson, Caitlin Docherty, Jeff Hilson, Peter Gizzi and Anne Waldman.

On the same day, a free display of rare and limited edition Frank O’Hara items from the Poetry Library’s collection will be viewable in the ICA Studio, alongside short fims by poets inspired by O’Hara’s work and a number of live readings after the Symposium.

More rare and limited edition O'Hara items can be seen in The Poetry Library at Southbank Centre.

Programme

11.30am:  Introductions

11.40am: Keynote 1: Geoff Ward, “you will not die not knowing this is true this year”: Frank O’Hara’s timing

12.15pm: Panel 1: Friends

12.15-12.30: Nikolai Duffy, Poetry before Instagram or, I want you to know I was thinking of you today: Some thoughts on Frank O’Hara and personal poetry

12:30-12.45: Jack Parlett, Solitude and all that

12.45-13.00: Jess Cotton, “Even your lines have / a broken nose:” James Schuyler, Frank O’Hara and the poetics of friendship

13.00-13.15: Questions / Discussion

Lunch break

14.00: Keynote 2: Daniel Kane, Frank O’Hara in radical contemporary British poetry

14.45: Panel 2: Artforms

14.45-15.00: Sam Ladkin, Paragone of the New York School

15.00-15.15: Matthew Holman, Frank O’Hara and Jan Cremer

15.15-15.30: Eleanor Careless, “risk the big gesture”: Frank O’Hara on Helen Frankenthaler

15.30-15.45: Questions / Discussion

Coffee break

16.00: Panel 3: Styles

16.00-16.15:  Peter Middleton, Dances and jackets: how O’Hara’s poems picture readership

16.15-16.30: Gareth Farmer, Master of the poly-tonic cool

16.30-16.45: Ed Luker, Uneasy reading: O’Hara and modernist masculinity

16.45-17.00: Questions / Discussion

17.00-17.45: Keynote 3: Redell Olsen, Frank O’Hara’s Poetics of Art Writing: “On Looking” to the “Crowning of the Poet”’