Golden Penda Unhedged: Lyric, Care, and the Ecology of Dementia

The S.W Brooks Visiting Lectureship

The Samuel Wood Brooks Visiting Lectureship was established in 1962 by a bequest to The University of Queensland of Arnold Edwin Brooks, Architect, of Brisbane, who died in 1958, to be known in memory of his father Samuel Wood Brooks.

The object of the Lectureship is to promote visits to the University of Queensland by scholars in English Literature and Economics in order that staff and senior students of the University may benefit from their special knowledge and experience.

2022 Lecture Details

Golden Penda Unhedged: Lyric, Care, and the Ecology of Dementia

How can lyric make us reconceptualise the language and cultural systems through which we approach and understand dementia? How might it challenge dominant metaphors that cast dementia as a site of spectrality, fear, and burden? Extending the bioethical approach of Michael Chapman, Jennifer Philip and Paul Komesaroff, this lecture considers how poetry challenges dementia as an external disease and can provide insights into it as a complex ecology involving institutions, individuals, language and meaning. Focusing on Queensland-based examples, it explores how poets have been attentive to the contexts and challenges of language in navigating a dementia ecology, including among First Nations and culturally and linguistically diverse communities. 

The lecture will be followed by a cocktail reception in the foyer of UQ's Global Change Institute.

Presenter 

Ann Vickery is Professor of Writing and Literature at Deakin University. She is the author of Stressing the Modern: Cultural Politics in Australian Women’s Poetry (Salt, 2007) and Leaving Lines of Gender: A Feminist Genealogy of Language Writing (Wesleyan University Press, 2000). She is co-author of The Intimate Archive: Journeys through Private Papers (National Library of Australia, 2009) and co-editor of Poetry and the Trace (Puncher and Wattmann, 2013). She is the author of three poetry collections, with Bees Do Bother: An Antagonist’s Care Pack (Vagabond, 2021) being the most recent. She is currently editing The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry and co-editing The Cambridge History of Australian Poetry.

Event Details

Event Date: Wednesday 17 August 2022

Event Time: 5.45pm for a 6pm start 

Event Location: Steele Building - Lecture Theatre (Room 206), followed by a cocktail reception in the Global Change Institute foyer. 

Note: Entry will be via the Global Change Institute Building (#20), The University of Queensland, St Lucia Campus, Brisbane, 4072

RSVP: Friday 12 August 2022

Register

Campus Accessibility

The UQ St Lucia campus is accessible via various forms of personal and public transport. In line with our efforts to promote environmental sustainability, here are a few eco-friendly ways to travel to the event:

• Several buses run to and from UQ. These include the 29, 66, 192, 169, 412, 411, 429, 432 and more.
• Cycle to campus. UQ has several facilities to support and promote cycling to and across campus.
• UQ has on-site rideable transport, including e-scooters and e-bikes.

​Health and safety information

Stay at home if unwell or have a cough, fever, sore throat, fatigue or shortness of breath

If you become unwell during the event please let an event organiser know.

Maintaining physical distancing requirements is the individuals responsibility

Please do not attend the event if:

• You have been in close contact with a person who is positive for COVID-19
• You are positive for COVID-19

The School is proud to be running a UQ Unwrapped Sustainable Event.