Katharine Craik and Simon Palfrey, editors of Beyond Criticism Editions, will talk about experiments in critical thinking. Published by the independent Boiler House Press, the series sets out to explore the new forms that literary criticism might take in the 21st century.

BC Editions encourage any kind of formal adventure: analytical, aphoristic, archival, autobiographical, citational, confessional, descriptive, dialogical, dramatic, fantastical, fictive, graphic, historical, imaginative, ironical, metaphysical, miscellaneous, mythical, palimpsestic, parasitical, philosophical, poetical, polemical, political, probational, riddling, theological, theoretical, ventriloquial. Our only criterion is that it discovers.

The session will be in two parts. First Katharine and Simon will introduce two of their own critical-creative projects. Katharine Craik’s play Marina, developed with support from the Royal Shakespeare Company, re-inhabits Shakespeare’s Pericles, identifying Marina’s chastity as a rich channel for exploring Shakespeare’s radical potential in our own globalised world. Simon Palfrey’s AHRC-funded Demons Land interweaves Spenser’s Faerie Queene with Indigenous Australian storytelling to produce a multimedia epic of contested land and country.

The second half will be an open conversation with hosts and audience about the difficulties and opportunities of experimental criticism, including its presence (or otherwise) in education and publishing.