Abstract: This report details the proceedings and outcomes of the Second International Pop-Up Seminar on Robert Graves, titled  ‘“The Three-Face”: The Love Poetry of Robert Graves’, co-organised by Michael Joseph and Adriana Marinelli. Held on the Zoom platform on 14 November, the seminar brought together international scholars and poets to re-evaluate Graves’s love poetry as the ontological core of his identity. Building upon Graves’s assertion that he wrote only love poems, the event explored the complex, tripartite nature of Gravesian devotion, spanning classical and mythological reappropriations, anthological developments, close metrical analysis, and historical contexts. Featuring papers on foundational poems such as ‘Sick Love’ and ‘Counting the Beats,’ alongside artistic interludes and an interactive reading group on ‘Theseus and Ariadne’, the seminar confirmed the mission of the Pop-Up series: to renew Graves scholarship through an open, free, and forward-looking international forum.

Keywords: love poetry, ‘The Three-Face’, Robert Graves Society, love poetry, metre, web-based conferences

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The underlying vision behind the International Pop-Up Seminars on Robert Graves stems from a clear goal: to sustain and renew research on Robert Graves through an inclusive, dynamic format that is completely free of financial barriers. In an academic context often constrained by high participation fees or rigid institutional structures, the Pop-Up Seminars serve as an open, democratic forum where established Graves scholars engage directly with early-career researchers, doctoral candidates, and newcomers encountering Graves’s work for the first time. Above all, the ambition of this project lies in renewing the critical approach to Graves, to move past outdated or purely biographical readings to reinterpret his oeuvre through the lens of contemporary theory, methodology, and cultural sensibilities.

The selection of themes across this series follows a deliberate plan. While the inaugural seminar focused broadly on poetry as the primary medium that defines Graves and firmly anchors him within the twentieth-century British literary canon, this second seminar, held on 14 November, delved into the primary engine of his poetic vision[1]. It was inspired by Graves’s fundamental thesis: all poetry is defined by ‘the relationship between man and woman’.[2] This dynamic perfectly mirrors the symbiosis between the poet and his Muse. As Graves famously declared in Deià (a statement highlighted also by scholar Richard Hoffpauir), he wrote only love poems[3]. Far from being merely one theme among many, love stands as the absolute core of Gravesian poetics.

Graves’s conception of love is inherently complex, reflecting the tripartite nature of the Goddess herself. This complexity is clearly evidenced in his poem ‘The Three-Face’ (Man Does, Woman Is). The poem reaches its climax when the last of the three revealed faces (the ‘face of love’) is the only one to grant the poet an ‘endless moment’ of truth. The deliberate choice of the title ‘The Three-Face’ for the seminar aimed to strategically sharpen the critical focus on this ultimate experience. By privileging the singular superlunary revelation of the third face, the seminar emphasised the transcendent essence of love, intentionally contrasting this eternal moment with the full, complex range represented by the Muse’s first two manifestations.

Underpinning this framework was a dialogue between two central concepts: memory and invention. Graves’s exploration of love operates within a constant dialectical tension between the necessity of creation and the burden of memory. According to Graves, love is an act of invention, that is a deliberate, active creation of a perfect, though often fleeting, poetic covenant with the Muse. Conversely, past love represents the necessary, dark counterpart or burden of memory. The success of any current poetic invention is thus measured by Graves’s power to critically negotiate and enter into meaningful dialogue with the established literary tradition.

The seminar explored these theoretical foundations across its multiple dimensions. The event’s structure intentionally balanced academic rigour with artistic fluidity, mixing papers with poetic interludes delivered by Joseph T. Thomas, Jr, Lucia Graves, Dunstan Ward, Jay Ansil, and Julia Simonne.

Following the introductory remarks by Michael Joseph and Adriana Marinelli, the sequence of scholarly contributions moved seamlessly through mythology, canon, metrical formalism, and art history.

Paul O’Prey (University of Roehampton) delivered a close reading of Graves’s celebrated 1931 poem, ‘Sick Love.’ O’Prey showed how the poem reflects on human passion, its fragility and its mortality, set against the timeless demands of love. He analysed Graves’s imagery in detail and showed how Graves confronts the paradox of mortal desire. 

Helen Goethals (Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès) contextualised Graves’s love poetry within wider twentieth-century European literary frameworks and anthologies. This theme was further deepened comparing Graves’s own selection (Poems About Love, 1969) with Jon Stallworthy’s canonical volume (The Penguin Book of Love Poetry, 1973). The seminar highlighted how Graves’s lyrics shift between ‘celebration’ and ‘aberration’ in traditional categories, while fundamentally operating as secret historical markers preserved against the passage of time.

Adriana Marinelli (Parthenope University of Naples) gave a paper called ‘Love’s Unspeakable Condition: Orpheus, Eurydice, and the Foundational Myth of Robert Graves’s Poetic Vow’.  She examined the mythological structure behind Gravesian commitment. She showed how the Orphic myth forms the base of the poetic vow. This myth expresses love’s unspeakable nature, through poetic invention and mythic memory.

Michael Joseph (Rutgers University) presented a reading titled ‘“Counting the Beats” it is the Beat that Counts’, exploring Graves’s palimpsestic technique. Drawing an analogy with mirror paintings, Joseph demonstrated how Graves layers poems and metrical figures over older ones to amplify interpretive possibilities. Focusing specifically on ‘Counting the Beats’ (1951), he highlighted Graves’s use of a specific metrical unit: the amphimacer (a three-syllable foot of stressed-unstressed-stressed, as in ‘you and I’ or ‘now and here’). It serves as a metonym for the lovers’ capacity to transcend temporal limits, proving that love and poetry possess a robust ontological weight that allows lovers to exist posthumously in the liminal span of verse.

Emphasising the shared spirit of the format, the seminar concluded with an interactive reading group centred on the poem ‘Theseus and Ariadne’. Led by poets and scholars Sean O’Brien, Rachel Hadas, and Gregory Leadbetter, the open discussion transformed the virtual room into a collaborative workshop, perfectly embodying the ultimate purpose of the Pop-Up Seminars: turning Robert Graves scholarship into an open, accessible, and forward-looking endeavour capable of inspiring future generations of readers and scholars. Rather than delivering formal papers, the three discussants led the international audience through a verse-by-verse engagement with the poem, examining its voice, mythological framework, and formal execution. This open-floor approach allowed participants to contribute their own observations, bridging scholarly analysis with creative practice before transitioning into the general discussion and concluding remarks.

The success and warm reception of this second seminar was emphasised by the active, enthusiastic participation of an international audience. At their heart, these virtual gatherings represent a sustained commitment to both preserving and innovating Graves scholarship. On the one hand, they preserve his legacy by anchoring critical inquiry in rigorous textual, metrical, and historical analysis. On the other hand, they offer fresh insights into his work by opening it up to contemporary theoretical perspectives, interdisciplinary dialogue, and comparative readings. Dismantling financial and geographical barriers has proven that opening the access to academic debate enriches the critical debate by fostering a truly global, vibrant community of inquiry.

As this second seminar demonstrated, Robert Graves’s poetics remain dynamic, multifaceted, and deeply relevant to contemporary literary studies. Not only does the enthusiastic response from the international community validate the necessity of this project but also ensures that the Pop-Up Seminars will continue to serve as a vital, forward-looking platform for the future of Graves scholarship.

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