The federating approach for this conference sponsored by LSA (Littératures et Sociétés Anglophones) will be for presenters to examine at large or in detail one or more books of selected poems (presumably the word "selected" figures in the title, but exceptions will be considered) and deal with some of the questions raised below.

Who decides what poems are the important ones for a book of Selected Poems? When the book is edited during the author's lifetime, one may usually assume that the author was involved. So it was for T.S. Eliot (Selected Poems, 1948) and is for Geoffrey Hill (Selected Poems, 2006). Yet, one might say that Pound had a hand in Eliot's Selected, since he edited The Waste Land and Eliot maintained the changes. Would that be why Eliot chose the content for Pound's first volume of Selected Poems in 1928? What motivates the author to choose one poem over another? This question leads to another, that of the influence of the readers on the author, as far as choice is concerned, for example in The Selected Poems of Langston Hughes (1959).
How does the selection allow both familiar readers to approach a poetic corpus with new insights and new readers to become initiates of the work? How do the new reader and the familiar reader of a poet negotiate the poems that are left out of the selection? How does a specific selection reveal or obfuscate an author's overall writing style or thematic choices?
What are the methods of structuring the selection? Many authors, such as Denise Levertov in Selected Poems (1986) or Philip Levine in New Selected Poems (1991), or Lucille Clifton in Blessing the Boats, New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 (2000) list poems under their respective volumes in chronological order. For example, the table of contents from Levine begins From "On the Edge (1963), From Not This Pig (1968), From Red Dust (1971)," but some poets prefer to avoid chronological order and group the poems thematically. What advantages or disadvantages does such structuring offer? Are selected volumes the ideal pedagogical tool? Robert Lowell's Selected Poems (1976) was lauded by Marjorie Perloff as "the best possible entry into the imaginative universe of Robert Lowell" (in a Washington Post review). More recently, what makes Charles Bernsteins's choice of Louis Zukofsky in Selected Poems (2006) the perfect introduction to a poet many have found difficult?
To what extent does a volume of selected poems guarantee a poet a place in the canon of received contemporary poetry? When is the best time for a poet to make a selection of his or her work? Gwendolyn Broooks's Selected Poems appeared in 1963, well after the Pulitzer Prize she received in 1950, and long before she stopped writing poetry. Adrienne Rich's Poems: Selected and New 1950-1974 was published in 1975 when she was forty-six. Jeffrey Wainwright's Selected Poems (1985) firmly established his poetic reputation. Jon Silkin's Selected Poems were issued in 1980, when he was fifty. C.H. Sisson's Selected Poems were published in 1995, when he was eighty-one years old and had been writing poetry for some fifty years.
How does the living poet deal with the expansion of creativity, as she or he outlives a first selection? Tony Harrison's Selected Poems (1984) was expanded as soon as 1987 to include "V." But T.S. Eliot allowed his 1948 selection, which grouped poems from Prufrock and Other Observations to The Waste Land through "Ash Wednesday," "Ariel Poems," and "Choruses from The Rock," to be re-issued without adding his later work. What are the differences for the reader between volumes of collected and selected poems? The question might be examined using the case of Stevie Smith, whose Selected Poems (Penguin 1978), chosen by James MacGibbon, were already available in The Collected Poems of Stevie Smith (1975).
The above suggestions for inquiry are to be completed by the presenters with their own preoccupations concerning the selection process. It is hoped that this theme will generate interest between readers of different branches of contemporary poetry in English who do not always have the occasion to exchange viewpoints.

Jennifer Kilgore, Université de Caen (jennifer.kilgore@unicaen.fr) and & Hélène Aji (Helene.aji@univ-lemans.fr), Université du Maine