Richard Owens participates in Princeton symposium on ballad writing
Richard Owens, an adjunct instructor in the Department of English, participated with English poet Tom Pickard and critic Meredith Martin in 鈥淥utlaw Music,鈥 a one-day symposium exploring the poetic and political implications of ballad writing in the 21st century. The symposium was held on November 6, 2013, at Princeton University.
In addition to an afternoon round table discussion addressing contemporary balladry, the event featured readings from Pickard and Owens.
A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Pickard read from Ballad of Jamie Allan (Flood Editions 2007), a ballad narrative recounting the life of eighteenth-century Northumbrian piper, balladeer and horse thief Jamie Allan.
Owens read from his bluntly titled collection Ballads (Habenicht Press 2012), a volume containing more than 100 short ballads, many of which earlier appeared in a number of publications throughout the U.S., Canada and the U.K., including Cambridge Literary Review, Poetry Wales, Shearsman, the 2012 edition of the annual anthology Best British Poetry (Salt Publishing 2012), and online through the Poetry Foundation.