iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

1/2: On the weekend, I found a pile of my old undergraduate essays. The weird thing was—or was it weird?—that I remembered them so well, from specific arguments and turns of phrase to the individual comments, even the apology left by one kind lecturer for having spilled coffee on the essay.

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

At the Wollondilly Performing Arts Centre next year you could hear tribute acts performing the music of Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Carole King, James Taylor, The Eagles, Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Pink Floyd, The Everly Brothers, or ABBA, or you could hear The Choirboys. Fortune's fickle.

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

Turns out, the idea of "poetic technique" was once strange and new. Here's a new article on what "technique" meant for poets and critics in the time of modernism, and in particular about how it shaped their judgement of poetry and poets. Might be of interest? doi.org/10.1111/criq...

doi.org

On Technique and Judgement in Modernist Poetics

Click on the article title to read more.

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

Look at what arrived today! I couldn't be more pleased or proud. w/ kristingrogan.bsky.social

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

My diary seems to think Zoom is a séance, but will Hegel blur his background?

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

Thursday morning n-gram. Discuss:

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Isn't it a bit odd to be asked to assess a project for a funding scheme to which one applied three times without success? Or is that just how funding works in a small system?

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

Maybe if someone came dressed as a superhero to every meeting with management, all the decisions would be good for staff and students? rdcu.be/eR9GH

rdcu.be

Unexpected events and prosocial behavior: the Batman effect

npj Mental Health Research - Unexpected events and prosocial behavior: the Batman effect

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

There's a mini-genre of essays borrowing or adapting the title of Arnold's "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time", maybe most obviously Eliot's "The Function of Criticism", but also essays by Wilde, Frye, Spender, Bateson, Leavis, Vendler, Booth, Eagleton. Any others come to mind?

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

Can anyone recommend good recent reflection on the history of and relation between the terms "literary criticism" and "literary study", whether as synonyms or as, say, dividing between them the acts of judgement and analysis, or however else the relation may be understood?

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

Where are we, when the New Left Review has become a potentially offensive primary source?

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Last summer I wrote a short piece about poetry for children, and especially about how much fun rhythm can be. The essay's about fun and it's supposed to be fun to read; it's meant for anyone who loves rhythm as much as kids do. You might like it? southerlylitmag.com.au/wp-content/u...

southerlylitmag.com.au

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Lovely to be at the launch of @southerlylitmag.bsky.social's new issue this evening and to hear from the journal's wonderful new editor, UNSW's very own Roanna Gonsalves. Read the new issue, "First, The Future", here: southerlylitmag.com.au/announcing-s...

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

Here's a new essay I wrote for the Sydney Review of Books, on poetry and computer code in a work by @mezbreeze.bsky.social. With thanks to James Jiang for giving the essay what shape it has. I hope you like it: it's supposed to be fun! sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essays/on-eq...

sydneyreviewofbooks.com

On Equivalence | Sydney Review of Books

Ten years ago, Mez Breeze published ‘\oriGaM[e,]i[,+ U]/’ online. Sean Pryor revisits this work in the context of Breeze’s experiments mixing code and poetry. Can literary-critical tools help close th...

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

UNSW Literary Provocations Hub Seminar #7 "Dear AI Reader: Nonhuman Perspective and Evolutionary Thinking in the Human-Machine Relation" Chris Danta (ANU) Wednesday, 24 September 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Robert Webster 327, UNSW Main Campus No need to register, and all are welcome. Come along!

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Reposted by Sean Pryor

Columbia University Press @columbiaup.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

Now available! Blending Marxist and feminist theory with attentive close readings, STITCH, UNSTITCH is a revelatory materialist account of the values of poetry. buff.ly/DlnVJeY #CreativeLabor #FeministModernism #WagesForHousework #Modernism

Now available! Cover of Stitch, Unstitch: Modernist Poetry and the World of Work.
Kristin Grogan. it includes a blurb by Brian Glavey and a 20% discount with code CUP20SM at cup.columbia.edu.

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Apropos of nothing, I love the way water beads on kale.

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

What are the best / most interesting / most influential manifestos for and against quantitative or computational literary studies, do you think? (Not Moretti, not Da.)

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

UNSW Literary Provocations Hub Seminar #6 "The Poetics and Politics of Speculative Biography: Miles Franklin Undercover" Kerrie Davies (UNSW) Wednesday, 27 August 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Robert Webster 327, UNSW Main Campus There's no need to register, and all are welcome. Come along!

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

Also, isn't "Having a Coke with You" just the most wonderful thing?

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 13/07/2025

ON THIS WEEK! UNSW Literary Provocations Hub Seminar #5 "The New Modernist Novel: Criticism and the Task of Reading" Elizabeth Pender (Sydney) See the comments for an abstract. Wednesday, 16 July 3:00-4:30 p.m. Robert Webster 335, UNSW Sydney No need to register, and all are welcome. Come along!

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

Earlier this year I had an essay in English Studies on The Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers (1925), an anthology of mostly modernist writing, and the press have given me this link for 50 free ecopies of the essay. Have a look, if that sounds interesting? www.tandfonline.com/eprint/2EQP3...

tandfonline.com

Modernism's Book of Scraps: Worldmaking and the Anthology as Medium in the Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers

This article investigates how literary works create worlds by asking about medium. Whereas Eric Hayot, Jonathan Culler, Paul K. Saint-Amour, and others emphasize diegesis and form, this article arg...

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

UNSW LITERARY PROVOCATIONS HUB SEMINAR #5 "The New Modernist Novel: Criticism and the Task of Reading" Elizabeth Pender (Sydney) Wednesday, 16 July 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Robert Webster 335, UNSW Main Campus There's no need to register, and all are welcome. Come along!

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

It's a small thing, I know, but I can't say how much it meant to see a teenager reading Swann's Way as we were getting off the train at Macarthur in the middle of the afternoon, and so engrossed that I couldn't even catch his eye to say, "Isn't it just wonderful?"

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

If you had to pick the half dozen best statements on the task of literary criticism from, say, 1700 to today, what would they be?

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

What should contemporary criticism do with the novels of Djuna Barnes, Mina Loy, and John Rodker, too often ignored by earlier critics? Read Simon During's review of Liz Pender's THE NEW MODERNIST NOVEL: CRITICISM AND THE TASK OF READING, just published in AFFIRMATIONS: tinyurl.com/bdd9hda3.

tinyurl.com

Elizabeth Pender, The New Modernist Novel: Criticism and the Task of Reading | Affirmations: of the modern

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

When Joshua Clover visited UNSW in 2019, he gave a seminar to postgraduate students on, in the broadest terms, poetry and the world-system, and on, more narrowly, Baraka and di Prima, and on, most of all, a single sentence from Revolutionary Letters #19. It was wonderful, and he'll be much missed.

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

I'm looking for examples of literary writing which perform, reflect on, or theorise literary criticism. Pope's "Essay on Criticism" is an obvious instance; Moore's "Poetry" or O'Hara's "Why I Am Not a Painter" not quite what I'm after. Does anything spring to mind?

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

SCRIVENER: Here’s a good world the while. Who is so gross That cannot see this palpable device? Yet who so bold but says he sees it not? Bad is the world, and all will come to nought When such ill dealing must be seen in thought. —Richard III, 3.6

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

UNSW LITERARY PROVOCATIONS HUB SEMINAR #4 "New Adventures in the Theory of Fiction and of Narrative: A Postgraduate Panel" Three short talks theorizing fiction and narrative, by Shaye Easton, Meike Heinrich, and Xanthe Muston. Wednesday, 7 May 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Webster 327, UNSW All welcome!

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

Will says the beach was good.

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

UNSW Literary Provocations Hub Seminar #3 Prue Gibson (UNSW), "Writing the Doctrine of Signatures: Women, Plants, and Poisons" Date: Wednesday, 16 April Time: 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Place: Robert Webster 334, UNSW Main Campus All are welcome, and there's no need to register. Come along!

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

Thinking today about Dunbar's "Sympathy" (1899) and Hardy's "The Darkling Thrush" (1900) together:

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

This Thursday at midday (AEST) I'll be giving a short talk about computer code, the idea of poetry, and a piece from 2015 by Mez Breeze, "\oriGaM[e,]i[,+ U]/": cordite.org.au/poetry/umami... The talk will be streamed on Teams, and everyone is welcome. Teams link below:

cordite.org.au

\oriGaM[e,]i[,+ U]/

Step 1: Start with a 6_itch x 6_itch identity with desire side down. Fold yearnings in half on the fan[boi+gal_ecs]tasy axis. Sleep_crease well and unfold. Step 2: Fold both sides to meet in the [(…

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

He sees deep and is glad, who accedes to mortality and in his imprisonment rises upon himself as the sea in a chasm, struggling to be free and unable to be, in its surrendering finds its continuing. Marianne Moore, "What Are Years?"

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Evie Shockley and Kamran Javadizadeh on Ed Roberson's "Open / Back Up (breadth of field)": just wonderful: open.spotify.com/episode/4hix...

open.spotify.com

Evie Shockley on Ed Roberson ("Open / Back Up (breadth of field)")

Close Readings · Episode

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

UNSW LITERARY PROVOCATIONS HUB SEMINAR #3 Prue Gibson (UNSW), "Writing the Doctrine of Signatures: Women, Plants, and Poisons" 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, 16 April Robert Webster 334, UNSW Main Campus All are welcome, and there's no need to register. Come along!

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

ON THIS WEDNESDAY: UNSW Literary Provocations Hub Seminar #2 James Donald (UNSW), '"More Human Than Human" Is Our Motto: Robots, Cyborgs and Hybrid Humans' Wednesday, 12 March, 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Robert Webster 334, UNSW Main Campus No need to register. Come along!

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

UNSW LITERARY PROVOCATIONS HUB SEMINAR #2 James Donald (UNSW), '"More Human Than Human" Is Our Motto: Robots, Cyborgs and Hybrid Humans' 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, 12 March Robert Webster 334, UNSW Main Campus All are welcome, and there's no need to register. Come along!

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

On this Wednesday: UNSW LITERARY PROVOCATIONS HUB SEMINAR Astrid Lorange (UNSW Art & Design), "Towards a Literary Theory of the Headache: On Jason Compson’s Headaches in The Sound and the Fury" 3:00 pm, Wednesday, 19 February Robert Webster 334, UNSW Main Campus No need to register. Come along!

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Here's a new article, on literary worldmaking as a question not of diegesis or form but medium. The case study is Robert McAlmon's weird but wonderful 1925 anthology, the Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers. Free PDF copies available here: www.tandfonline.com/eprint/2EQP3...

tandfonline.com

Modernism's Book of Scraps: Worldmaking and the Anthology as Medium in the Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

"It seems to be in so much doubt What all of this is all about And what is what we are without And if there is an is at all Beyond whatever it is we call The where we are as usual[.]" Charles Madge, 1933

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Richard Conway and James Archer, Preface to PROGRAMMING FOR POETS: A GENTLE INTRODUCTION USING BASIC (1979):

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

UNSW LITERARY PROVOCATIONS HUB SEMINAR Astrid Lorange (UNSW Art & Design), "Towards a Literary Theory of the Headache: On Jason Compson’s Headaches in The Sound and the Fury" 3:00 pm, Wednesday, 19 February Robert Webster 334, UNSW Main Campus No need to register. Come along!

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

I know David Crystal's work on pronunciation in Shakespeare's time, but can anyone recommend a guide to pronunciation ca. 1500-1530? Say, for a Skelton or a Wyatt?

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Sean Pryor @seanbpryor.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

If the new year means working out what to put on your reading list for a course on poetry (or a course that includes poetry), why not suggest your students read an essay or two from the Cambridge Companion to the Poem? www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...

cambridge.org

The Cambridge Companion to the Poem

Cambridge Core - English Literature: General Interest - The Cambridge Companion to the Poem

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