Knowing Poetically : Notes on a Speculative Poetry Event

This article argues for the classification of a new type of poetry event, the "speculative poetry event", taking the event "Poems from Port Cities", run at the 2022 ó Bhéal Winter Warmer Festival, as an example of such an actively curated, socially and intellectually embedded event. Drawing on an essay by Joan Retallack on experimental poetry and recent readings of the speculative philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, I argue that poetry and philosophy complement each other because of the affinity between the experimental and the speculative. The article then proposes an analytical approach through a close reading of the actual event, drawing on the conceptual language of New Materialism.