Nathan Brown | Photo by David Ward
What is the goal of your research?
Nathan Brown: I’m interested in how poetic forms are related to ways of conceptualizing and constructing forms in other disciplines.
The goal of my research is to situate “poetics,” usually understood as the theory of poetry, as a broader investigation of these interdisciplinary relationships. So, I study the influence of science and architecture on poetry, concepts of structure and form in philosophy and the impact of digital media upon poetry and other arts.
The question guiding my research is: how can the study of poetics inform us about the more general concepts and models of form that shape our world?
What do you hope will be the impact on society and your field of study?
NB: By approaching poetics as an instrument of interdisciplinary study, I hope to make the study of specifically literary problems relevant also to our understanding of how notions of form traverse different fields and therefore influence what seem to be discrepant practices of inquiry and material construction.
For example, ideas about “organic form” have had an important influence upon poetry, the visual arts, architecture and materials science. If it is addressed at an interdisciplinary level, the study of poetics can help us grasp some of the ideological and conceptual stakes of such common ground. I hope to sharpen our understanding of how the sciences and the arts are linked by formal problems that matter deeply to our conceptual and constructive practices.
Now that you've won a Canada Research Chair, what next steps do you hope to take?
NB: Renovations are about to begin on the research centre I initiated at Concordia, the Centre for Expanded Poetics.
When these are completed in August 2016, students and faculty will have access to a range of equipment to facilitate interdisciplinary study and research creation: touch tables and screens for working on digital texts, 3D printing for modelling formal parametres as physical objects, the backbone of a small press for printing artists’ books, video and photography equipment for working at the intersection of image and text, and sophisticated scanning technology for archival purposes.
I am also preparing a grant proposal for a project on measurement in science, poetry and philosophy.
Will students be involved with the project?
NB: I’m currently working with 10 student researchers who have received funding through the CRC this year. A number of these have contributed creative and critical work to a special feature on “Expanded Poetics” that I recently edited for a poetry journal, The Volta.
Others are working on archiving and cataloguing the poetry collection at the Centre for Expanded Poetics, organizing collaborations with the students working on digital textiles and running a contemporary poetry reading group.
Find out more about Concordia’s Centre for Expanded Poetics.
