In this talk-performance Lisa Samuels will present theory and creative work that emerge in transplace epistemologies and poetics. Her 2018 essay “The right to be transplace,” in the anthology Wretched Strangers, explores transnational and peripatetic existence as place. In this seminar for Concordia, theories that arise partly in transplacement – including “wild dialectics” and “distributed centrality” – will be held in relation to readings from recent creative work that can attach to transplace poetics, including from her new poetry & photos book The Long White Cloud of Unknowing (Chax Press 2019).

Lisa Samuels is a transnational poet who also works with sound, film, and art installations. She is the author of seventeen books of poetry, memoir, and prose—mostly poetry—including Tender Girl (2015), Symphony for Human Transport (2017), Foreign Native (2018), and The Long White Cloud of Unknowing (2019). She also publishes critical essays and edited work on creative theory and poetics. Since 2006 Lisa has lived in Aotearoa/New Zealand, where she is Professor of English & Drama at the University of Auckland.