This post was contributed by James Machin, a PhD candidate in Birkbeck’s Department of English and Humanities.
The 7 and 8 November saw a strange and unsettling confluence of scholars and enthusiasts of weird fiction in Bloomsbury. Is the weird a mode? A genre? Is it horror? Science fiction? The fantastic? The uncanny? A hybrid of all of these things? Everything was up for discussion. M. John Harrison — who has been described as ‘a writer of faultless fluency’ by Robert Macfarlane, ‘a Zen master of prose’ by Neil Gaiman, ‘a blazing original’ by Clive Barker, and, memorably, ‘an existential anarchist,’ by Michael Moorcock — headlined an exciting line up of contemporary writers reading their own work at the Horse Hospital on the Thursday evening. The night also saw the weird psychogeography of the local area ably investigated by Robert Kingham of minimumlabyrinth.org and a fascinating Q&A session expertly chaired by renowned genre critic John Clute, during which the weird was interrogated from the creative viewpoint.
After reconvening the next morning at Senate House, it was the turn of the scholars to continue the discussion of all things weird through the medium of three keynotes and twenty seven papers across nine panels. American editor and critic S. T. Joshi, who has perhaps forgotten more about H. P. Lovecraft than most of us will ever know, discussed the evolution of the weird tale through the work of Lovecraft and another ‘revolutionary’ of the form, Edgar Allan Poe. Mark Pilkington of Strange Attractor Press then led us into the rabbit hole of the imagination of fin-de-siècle weird artist Sydney Sime, giving every indication that Mark’s forthcoming book on Sime will be a fascinating read.
The first panels of the day saw discussions on weird occultations, genre weirding, and also the birth of a new literary adjective — ‘Harrisonian’ — which considering Harrison’s increasing reputation as the UK’s premier exponent of the form, we hope will stick. You heard it here first! After lunch, there were panels on the pre-modernist weird, weird landscapes and other weird media: topics included the monstrous and the human in William Hope Hodgson, the imaginative space provided by the Antarctic in weird fiction, and weird manifestations in online roleplaying games.
Birkbeck’s own Professor Roger Luckhurst began his keynote by informing the audience that, in contrast to his wide-ranging presentation at last year’s China Miéville conference, his paper for the Weird Conference would explore a single aspect of the weird suggested to him by a close reading of Rudyard Kipling’s 1890 story ‘At the End of the Passage’. Thus, we were treated to a fascinating, haunting and unsettling disquisition on the place of the corridor in the cinema and literature of fear, which made debouching into the warren-like maze of Senate House for afternoon coffee a little disquieting. The final panels of the afternoon saw discussions of the weird crossover with musical subgenres in heavy metal culture, the posthuman weird, and also a bold and perhaps mischievous attempt to reposition Arthur Machen as a Modernist before Modernism. In the final keynote of the day, U.S. scholar and author Victoria Nelson shifted focus away from the Anglophone world to guide us through the weird Russia of Vladimir Sorokin’s Ice trilogy.
The task of unravelling (or indeed ravelling) the disparate and tangled weird threads of the day fell to the plenary panel of John Clute, S. T. Joshi, and Victorian Nelson, deftly and insightfully chaired by Guardian columnist, critic, and author Damien Walter. Although the numerous devils in the details were amiably disputed, a consensus seemed to be reached that the Weird represented something, and that that something was gathering speed and demanded ongoing interrogation.
Special thanks to: Jon Millington and the Institute of English Studies at Senate House, Roger Luckhurst, the Modern Humanities Research Association, Birkbeck School of Arts, and Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Literature.
‘The conference has re-enthused my interest in academia and research.’ Dr Justin Woodman, Goldsmiths, University of London
‘One of the best readings I’ve ever attended, either as a performer or an audience member. Full of energy.’ M. John Harrison
‘A superb achievement! This was, hands down, the most riveting and intellectually exciting night of readings that I’ve had the pleasure to attend!’ Helen Marshall (British Fantasy Award winner 2013, ‘Best Newcomer’)
