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Maudsley Lecture | The poetic dynamics of the enactment of trauma in the work of Charles Simic: Non-linear temporality and conceptual enactment.

 Registration is closed for this event

 

 
The poetic dynamics of the enactment of trauma in the work of Charles Simic: Non-linear temporality and conceptual enactment.
 
11 July
Susanne Lansman 
7.00pm - 8.30pm
10 Windsor Walk SE5 8BB or online via Zoom
 
Chaired by: Anne Patterson & Emma Hotopf  
 
Charles Simic’s work expresses a continual reconstitution of the relationship between loss, a fluid sense of identity, and a fragile orientation to reality arising from traumatic experience. In this lecture I suggest that Simic’s work illustrates how traumatic experience transmits as an enactment, how it might be reconstituted within the poetry itself, and in the reader, as it passes from one mind to another. Simic’s considerable contribution to poetry, which includes over forty collections of poetry and ten prose collections, shows an engagement with a very human, unconstructed attitude to trauma, which allows the possibility of change without disconnection from, or clinging to, traumatic events. I will consider how narrative enactment is tested against perceptual narrative by Simic’s poetic control over time. He brings the past in contact with the present and the present in contact with the past; creates a struggle with dissonance between current voice and past voice, evokes pity in the reader by avoiding pity and self being wedded in an exhibition of rigid narrative. Simic creates loops in time and merges time to suggest a resurgence of traumatic experience accompanied by the re-incorporation of loss in new ways. This leads to reconstitution and connection of loss to generative ideas within the mind of the reader. 
 
Susanne Lansman is a trained adult psychoanalyst working in private practice in London and a consultant for the Clinic of Psychoanalysis. She is also a practice based PhD candidate at Royal Holloway researching how trauma is enacted in poetry, and in particular the work of American Poet Charles Simic. Her poetry has appeared in The Rialto, The Interpreter’s House, Poetry Salzburg Review and Vaine Magazine; and was long-listed for the Juritz Prize in 2019 and for the 2018/2019 Rialto Pamphlet Competition. She co-organised the Poetry and Psychoanalysis Conference held at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in 2017 and 2018, and is currently working on a full collection of poetry exploring the experience and digestion of trans-generational trauma.
 
 
Concession tickets are available, for students, BPAS candidates and NHS trainees. Please email outreach@iopa.org.uk if you are unsure if you qualify for a concession ticket.

REFUND POLICY: Tickets are fully refundable until 14 days before the lecture, after which time no refunds will be issued.

Views and opinions expressed by speakers are their own and do not represent the views or opinions of the Institute, event organisers or other speakers. We expect delegates to respect the confidentiality of clinical material discussed in our events. The content must not be recorded, conveyed or disseminated in any format and participants must not share access to the event with non-registered participants.

 

When
July 11th, 2022 7:00 PM through  8:30 PM
Location
Online via Zoom
London
United Kingdom
Contact
Email:
Event Fee(s)
Standard Online via Zoom £ 25.00
Concession Online via Zoom £ 15.00
Standard In Person £ 25.00
Concession In Person £ 15.00
If selected, only members with the status New, Current or Grace and those that have a website account will be able to register for this event.
Standard Online via Zoom £ 25.00
Concession Online via Zoom £ 15.00
Standard In Person £ 25.00
Concession In Person £ 15.00