Poetry and the Language of Oppression

Poetry and the Language of Oppression is an incursion into the creative process that engages with the experience of oppression and the reclamation of freedom in the context of the Cold War. What is freedom in language and how does the poet who has endured political oppression write himself or herself free? What is literary testimony and how does it reflect one’s artistic values? How do we govern ourselves with language? Oppression, repression, expression, as well as their tools (incarceration, surveillance, exile, gestures in language) have been with us in various forms throughout history; the present discussion represents a particular aspect of these conditions of our humanity as they play out in our time, providing another instance of the communion, and sometimes confrontation, with the language that makes us human.