"There Must Be Some Mistake": Three Perspectives on the Value of Failure

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Friday, November 24th, 2023
10:00 AM to 11:30 AM

In the past decade, some thinkers have attempted to reclaim “failure”—fashioning it as a new virtue embraceable by students, artists, teachers, and entrepreneurs. For some, destigmatizing failure, relinquishing it of its tendency to instill and incite fear, represents an inflated idea achievable only by the privileged. For others, recasting the value of “failure” requires ameliorating the language, unhinging it from its cultural baggage. This presentation offers three perspectives on the value of failure: the personal, pedagogical, and poetic. While success breeds confidence, failure enables humility. In this way, failure represents a condition for an ethics of living in the world, for thinking about poetic practice, and for approaching the art of teaching.

Mike Roberson is a Professor in the English Department at VIU. He mainly teaches first- and second-year writing and literature courses. His major area of interest is the politics and ethics of contemporary North American experimental poetry. Most recently, he has published an essay on the Kootenay School of Writing in Avant Canada: Poets, Prophets, Revolutionaries (Wilfried Laurier University Press, 2019).