
Traces emerging from an abandoned academic infrastructure.
POETRY dept. is a residual humanities research unit located in the disused north wing of an unnamed university. The clocks were not reset after the last administrative restructure.
It’s unclear when the department ceased active instruction. Records indicate a gradual lapse in enrolment, followed by the cancellation of scheduled seminars, and disappearance of faculty. Though Lecture Hall B continues to be reserved every Thursday, students and staff are unaccounted for.
The department persists in a condition of limited and indeterminate operation. Long after any scheduled meetings or seminars, fragments of minutes, memos, reading materials and syllabi continue to surface exponentially. Notices are still issued. The archive expands without supervision.
The department now functions as a repository for materials that do not resolve into disciplinary certainty: failed or abandoned projects, found material, correspondence of uncertain origin, archival remains, obsolete research proposals, forgotten curricula, marginalia, erasures, redactions.
Visitors are advised that office hours are uncertain. The department does, however, continue to receive submissions.
Works that treat language as a damaged system rather than a transparent one. Failed pedagogies. Forms that disappear. Materials affected by prolonged silence and distress. Fragmentary research. What remains when culture no longer values poesis.
