Plotting Poetry is a conference series focussed on computational and statistical approaches for the study of poetic texts, and of poeticity more broadly.

This quantitative focus, this insistence on the formalization and operationalisation of texts, from simple pen and paper counting and compiling to complex algorithms, provides us with a number of paths to analyze, describe, interpret, attribute, classify, track and generally access the texts. The Plotting Poetry conferences bring together a friendly community of researchers, and articles rooted in the conference papers have given rise to several peer-reviewed collective volumes.

The name of the group stems from an effort to translate a (perfectly serious) pun by the French modernist poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who in 1917 wrote that poets should “_machiner_ poetry as has been done for the world”, where machiner is visibly used for mechanize even though the verb really means to plot, as one would plot a coup. As a group, we are plotting against our own limitations by trying to plot literature on graphs, devising mechanized approaches to dissect the mechanics of poetry.

This year’s conference welcomes a focus on more popular forms of poetry, to give attention to wider uses of the poetic register besides classical high culture, which has often formed the bulk of poetry studies. Phenomena of peoples’ poetry include traditional or novel folkloric poetry in its various forms, but also everyman’s occasional poetry, lyrics of folk, pop, rap, etc. songs, and the forms of poetry reaching the public nowadays, due to the wider accessibility of media channels and publication possibilities. As the popular forms of poetry are often created either on-site in live performance, or keeping in mind the rhythms and structures of music, we also invite researchers to investigate the performed poetry, and the connections between text and performance. We are also interested in how these various forms of popular poetry interfere with or differ from literary or high poetry.

This folk and pop focus is not an exclusive one, and we encourage the submission of papers that use quantitative tools and methods in investigating poetry or poeticity, regardless of their link to popular culture. Besides, as has been traditional at Plotting Poetry conferences, works on other genres – popular or not – may also be included, provided that a mechanization or quantification apparatus is being used to explore their poeticity.

Some of the topics to consider include but are not limited to:

- variation in oral poetry
- mutual influences of folklore and literary poetry
- poetry in performance
- metrical exactness and uncertainty
- representations of orality
- relations between poetry and song lyrics
- poetry in online environments
- spontaneity vs refinement in poetry
- contemporary folk poetry

For this 5th Plotting Poetry conference (following the sadly canceled 4th edition in Prague), our hope and plan is to have an on-site, physical conference, in Tartu, Estonia. However, the last two years have taught us to be flexible, and we are not excluding the possibility for some of the papers to be given remotely, incorporating some degree of hybridity to the format to accommodate the global health situation as it keeps unfolding. There is no registration fee.

Please, submit your abstracts (in English, max. 1600 characters including spaces) via this form until the 1st of May: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeuUOwSmrf0JMtOBumWlY_QYaBIqzHZhnopcNCVizLk62dRuQ/viewform

Abstracts accepted for the conference will receive an answer by the 9th May.

Due to the unusual circumstances and fluctuating health situation, both the time to the deadline for abstracts and the time before the conference are very short. Should some potential participants need a reply sooner than the deadline in order to plan their trip, we encourage them to apply early and to let us know about this need: we will endeavor to give them an answer soon after they submit their abstract.

Organizers & programme committee:
Mari Sarv
Maria-Kristiina Lotman
Susanna Mett
Anne-Sophie Bories
Pablo Ruiz Fabo
Petr Plecháč

contact: efa.conference@folklore.ee