This issue of Axon brings together a number of papers presented at the 2013 symposium, ‘The Real Through Line,’* as well as additional works, including new poetry, solicited in response to the symposium’s foci. The symposium aimed to investigate the rapport between the genres of poetry and nonfiction, and also to propose possibilities for both practice and theorisation of a poetics which, to draw on philosopher Jacques Rancière’s concept, becomes a literary space for the distribution of the non-poetic, of ‘the prose of the world’, of that which one may refer to, however generally, as the real.
Questions posed by the conference organisers included: what can the poetic line offer to nonfiction writing beyond the capabilities of the prose sentence? How can poetry extend the nonfiction genre? What nonfiction narratives necessitate or are enriched by the poetic form? Can poetry challenge representations of reality or the real itself? What are the implications of a poet’s foray into historical, biographical, autobiographical, ecological, political, scientific and mathematical terrains?
Note: For the full introduction to this issue, please go to Introduction
Consultant editors for this issue: Jessica L Wilkinson and Ali Alizadeh