foxes & rabbits all,
apologies for the indecorous header, but I've just gorged on a massive portion
of list stew, and feel a Mr Creosote moment coming on.
This thing about mainstream / experimental...
I've wanted to say - in fact, have said - 'experimental' about my work (my
theatre work particularly) at some points: but meaning something quite
particular by it. A lot of work that calls itself experimental starts out with
a kind of output in mind - and as a consequence we all (probably) have a
mental picture of 'an experimental film' or 'experimental theatre' (to talk,
on purpose, away from poetry for a moment), which is naturally composed of
cliche and risible failure.
Even *I* have no ambition to make work that could be characterised in that
way. (Yet.)
But it still can, simply, be all right, useful I mean, to have an interest in
a way of working that privileges experiment. Which is to say that it starts in
a state of intuition or more figured hypothecation; and my task is then to
devise a process for examining that hunch, & work out what materials I will
need therefore. I have no control over the raw results. What I may do then is
choose to exhibit those results, unprocessed; or work with them until they
yield something that I might find more attractive or pertinent (according to a
set of parameters that I may or may not have agreed with myself at the
departure stage); or use them as a platform for drawing a conclusion. This
would suggest, for example, that for work to be considered experimental, it
should have a hard time being reconciled with the idea of a particular
audience unless my initial hypothesis includes a relation to that audience.
I would rather call this work 'experimental' because that's how it behaves.
The tact of it is in allowing the results to occur, uncensored and
unevaluated, prior to making the final decision about what the exhibited work
should look like, or whether the work should be exhibited at all.
That's just my take, of course, and by no means all of my work (in any medium)
is executed in that way.
But what I'm getting at is that the term 'experimental' really might mean
something, notwithstanding its promiscuity. I don't think I feel the same way
about 'avant garde', and would be interested to know if anyone actually finds
it useful in relation to their own sense of their practice, regardless of
whether we can say it about Wyndham Lewis or Tiny Tim.
As for 'mainstream', again it's not a quality of work, is it?, but rather a
descriptor of process and conditions. More than anything it's the company that
you keep. I like Simon Armitage's work very much on the page and I think you
can tell in the movement between collections that he's getting better. I see
there an acuity and attentiveness that I admire, he's worth going back to,
having a relationship with, reading aloud. But the Maxwell Iceland stuff, the
appearances on Radio One, the tie-ins with National Poetry Day (which his
not-totally-stupid _Emergency Kit_ anthology with Jo Shapcott belonged to, I
think) - all of that stuff, *regardless of whether or not it's 'good for
poetry', and importantly noting that it's not *itself* the poetry - is about
putting onself within a matrix of power relations and a community of interests
that hugely complicates the idea of poetry as a craft and a specialised
investigation.
Here's part of an open letter from U. Utah Phillips, the great socialist
songwriter and raconteur; I hold his work dearer than almost anything we've
ever discussed in these cyberwalls:
>>>Comrades! We've created together a whole small world of song, story,
travel, love and food, face to face, in every corner of the land, mutually
supportive and happening at a sub-industrial level, below the level of media
notice. Hooray for us! Who needs the "entertainment" industry? Who needs mass
media? Small is beautiful! To hell with the mainstream. It's polluted. What
purifies the mainstream? The little tributaries up in the wilderness where the
pure water flows. Better to be lost in the tributaries known to a few than
mired in the mainstream, consumed with self-love and the absurdity of greed.
I know you'll all lambast me for being a simple-minded and sentimental old
tart but I put great credence in this stuff. Trouble is, the IWW hasn't (yet)
been able to address itself to the shift towards nomadic power systems, and
perhaps one of the things that frustrates me about 'new media poetry' is that
it hasn't yet found a way to help out: which it might be very well placed to
do.
Phillips, at any rate, is totally clear-eyed in his rejection of mainstream
artists' blithe acquiescences, and yet oddly he has yet to embrace
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.
There are multiple mainstreams and multiple gardes to be avant.
Often wonder about the BritPo relationship with the folk tradition in music
and performance. (i.e. is there such a relationship *at all*?) One for a
separate thread, I think, not necessarily kicked off by me, though I gladly
would.
Final remark: the desire for Inuit-style stacked modifications of category
labels, to a level of fine callibration that can satisfy all cavillers, has
already been met. Unfortunately, we tend to think of people's names as nouns
rather than adjectives.
Am working on Chris Emery's "my glands ache for Hovis ads" with stolen Enigma
machine. I'll get back to you.
:cx
--------------------------------------------------
Chris Goode
Director, _signal to noise_
24 Newport Road London E10 6PJ
+44 [0]20 8556 4492
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"God respects us when we work, but loves us when we dance."
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