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Our
2008 Conference will take place at the Bishop Otter Campus of the
University of Chichester, College Lane, Chichester, West Sussex, from
1600 on Friday 29th August to 1500 to Sunday 31st August (Conference Booking Form).
The University was formerly a Church of England Teacher Training
College, and we will hold our lectures in the congenial Victorian
ambience of the old college. The campus has comfortable modern
accommodation with single bedrooms with en suite bathrooms.
The
campus is 15 minutes walk to the north of the city centre. Chichester
is an elegant cathedral city situated between the English Channel and
the South Downs. The cathedral with its imposing spire dates back
from Norman times, and is surrounded by elegant streets of fine
Georgian houses. The Pallant House Gallery,
is a
unique combination of a Queen Anne townhouse and a contemporary
building holding one of the best collections of 20th century British
art in the world, with works by Edward Burra, Lucien Freud, Eric Gill,
Andy Goldsworthy, Howard Hodgkin, Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson, and many
others.
John
Cowper Powys bought a house in the downland village of Burpham in
1902, and his son Littleton Alfred was born there. Many attenders at
our 2006 conference in Chichester will remember our walk across the
downs, along paths that John Cowper will have known, with expansive
views over the Sussex Weald and to the sea, with readings from Powys’s
works in situ. For the less energetic, we hope to organize a
coastal walk through Felpham, where William Blake’s cottage still
stands.
The
conference speakers include our president, Glen Cavaliero, who
will talk on “That Goblin Race – the Powys Family Mystique”.
The title of his talk comes from a phrase describing the Powyses in
Sylvia Townsend Warner’s diary, and he will look at the enduring
fascination that the different members of the family, individually and
together, continue to exert on readers. Bill Keith’s talk,
“John Cowper Powys and ‘Other Dimensions”: The Evidence of His
Fiction” will tackle the “beyond-this-world”
possibilities in John Cowper’s work which have been little discussed,
perhaps out of embarrassment, since Wilson Knight’s highly
controversial interpretations. Professor Keith says that his talk
nevertheless will be “primarily literary,
not
New-Age-mystical”
Arjen Mulder,
in “Becoming John Cowper Powys” will discuss John Cowper
Powys’s early novels from Wood and Stone to Ducdame, and
David Goodway will discuss John Cowper Powys’s relation to
anarchist thought. |
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Provisional Programme:
Friday 29 August
1600 Arrival – Reception – Dinner
2000
Glen Cavaliero:
“That Goblin
Race – the Powys Family Mystique”
Saturday 30 August
0900 Arjen Mulder:
“Becoming John Cowper Powys”
1100 David Goodway:
“John Cowper Powys. Emma Goldman, and Anarchism”
Lunch
Afternoon: guided walks
round Burpham or coastal Sussex
Dinner
2000 “The Bride Who
Pays the Organist…” a reading devised by Oliver Wilkinson based
on the diaries and letters of the Powys and Wilkinson families from 1912.
Sunday 31 August
Breakfast
0900 Bill Keith:
“John Cowper Powys and ‘Other Dimensions’: The Evidence of His Fiction”
1100 AGM
followed by a discussion led by Timothy Hyman on the usefulness of
biographies of writers for literary appreciation and the auction of a
watercolour painting by Will Powys
Lunch
1500 departure
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