Locating George Herbert: Family, Place, Traditions
The George Herbert Society's next conference will be held at the Gregynog Conference Centre, Newtown, Powys, Wales on October 13-16, 2011.
Plenary Speakers
Gillian Clarke, National Poet of Wales
John Drury, Canon and Fellow of All Souls, Oxford
Achsah Guibbory, Ann Whitney Olin Professor of English, Barnard College of Columbia University, New York
Christopher Hodgkins, Professor of English, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Conference Details
The George Herbert Society announces its next international, interdisciplinary conference, which will seek to locate Herbert's origins and earliest influences: in the gifted and competitive Herbert family, in the Welsh border country around his Montgomery birthplace, and in his literary, spiritual, and aesthetic traditions, including those of Celtic culture. We also will locate Herbert's legacy among other Welsh poets, including Henry Vaughan, Thomas Traherne, Dylan Thomas, and R. S. Thomas.
We will meet at the University of Wales's up-to-date yet historic and tranquil Gregynog Conference Centre, nestled among the rolling hills and fields of Powys in mid-Wales. Our conference activities will include plenary speakers and poetry readings, a rich range of paper panels and discussion sessions, a choral concert and an optional worship service. We also will visit the Herbert family monuments in St. Nicholas Church, Montgomery, the Herbert family castles of Montgomery and Powis, the workings of the Gregynog Press, and we will enjoy a supper in the historic Montgomery Town Hall. And there will be plenty of time for quiet walks, convivial teas and drinks, and shared meals in the Gregynog dining room.
Speakers at the conference include literary scholars, historians, theologians, poets and musicians who seek to present and discuss Herbert from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, and especially in relation to issues of family, spirituality, literary tradition, place and Celtic cultural traditions. There will be panels on a variety of topics including: Herbert's poetic debt to architecture and landscapes; questions of border politics and cultural intersection in late medieval and Tudor-Stuart Wales; Herbert's relation to Welsh language and poetic forms, and to Celtic spirituality; Herbert's near family connections, especially to his father Richard Herbert, his mother Magdalen Newport Herbert, and to his brothers Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury and Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels; Herbert's connections to his cousins and later kinsmen the Earls of Pembroke, Montgomery, and Powis; his debt to and influence on Welsh poets, and his 'location' in the wider literary, theological and cultural contexts of his time.
Registration
See 
Information for Registration. Registration forms can be downloaded from the conference webpage.
Further Information
For further information, please contact Helen Wilcox (helen.wilcox@bangor.ac.uk), Christopher Hodgkins (herbconf@uncg.edu) or Linda Jones (l.c.jones@bangor.ac.uk).