Literary Dimensions Seminar

Poetry and information seem to form two ends of an opposition: one for the creative possibilities for human expression, the other for the practical and mechanical tasks of everyday life.

But what is information? Has poetry not, since the beginning of time, also functioned as vehicle for storing, quantifying, and communicating things ranging from historical events and the law to agricultural manuals, just as "informational" texts do?

This talk asks: what happens when we treat poetry as one of the oldest sources of information practices and concepts? What changes about our idea of information if we include poetry in its definition, theory, and practice?