'That's not Poetry; it's Sociology!' - riff, experience & hybrid form in contemporary poetry

'That's not Poetry; it's Sociology!' - riff, experience & hybrid form in contemporary poetry This presentation considers how contemporary, not-obviously-poetry texts, read as poetry: is Bhanu Kapil's The Virtual Interrogation of Strangers survey, travelogue or prose-poetry? The responses to Kapil’s questions (eg,’What are the consequences of silence?’) result in a curated text of poetic exchanges; disparate voices which may be read as a creative interrogation of self, of ourselves. But is it poetry? Similarly, Claudia Rankine’s Citizen uses layering of incident from life, to ask, in exacting language and even tone, what it means to be both citizen and invisible, ‘translating’ incident. Can a book which uses prose, images, and an essay on Serena Williams, be a poem?