-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thursday, December 14, 2000 03:04
Subject: Re: Language/Poetry/Performance Conference


>Before the topic disappears I would like to give some support to David
>Bircumshaw. Nobody else has expressed any sympathy with his view but as he
is
>a resident of Leicester who is into innovative poetry I think his 'anger'
>deserves consideration. .... I understand the Sheffield
>Contingent's objections to your objections but they were inside,
experiencing
>the space, while you, as a local witness sharing a strong interest, were
>outside looking at a facade. What your detractors said was true but,
despite
>that, what you said remains an issue.


What do you mean 'experiencing the space'  we experience space wherever
we are.  I'm doing it now.  How can you not experience it?  We live in the
bloody stuff.  I also presumed David was in his flat not stood outside
looking
at the building we were in.  Nothing was stopping his entry expect maybe
personal finance. Space in this context is not an issue.   We were in a
building.
David was in a building.  We're all in bloody buildings except the homeless.

> There are contradictions in the air -
>gaps between what is said and socio-political reality. David has perceived
>that gap in this instance, as I have experienced it in other instances.

Well goody for you and David.  Us inside of course were all so busy going
up our own arses we couldn't possibly have perceived anything but our
own arses.  They were surprisingly spatial with a dash of contradiction.

 In
>this instance the gap is between real and unreal places, made all the more
>pressing for David because the promoted high chat about architectural
poetry
>space is taking place in circumstances in which its distance from reality,
>its gap, > its post-modern placelessness if you like < is manifest to that
>single observer.

Why is 'high chat' (whatever that means -  I didn't think we'd gone there to
discuss the weather and the price of baked beans)  distanced from reality?
This is an anti-intellectual statement that is so depressingly English it
makes
me feel like emigrating.   But being an 'insider' on that fateful day has
made
me incapable of buying a ticket  in the real world. Pass me the asprins -
I've
got a virtual headache.

The conference floats like a virtual bubble in a very real
>and immediate space - the problem is caused by its apparent negative
>juxtaposition, for that observer, with the very thing it is supposed to be
>addressing. David's privileged position enables him to observe the 'lie' -
as
>a ghost might, in isolation and helplessness.

What 'lie'?   What bloody 'lie'.  If David B was angry I can tell you I'm
now bloody
furious.  'Lie'   You think I'd travel half way across the country and sit
through
a 'lie' or be party to a 'lie' ?  This is all too absurd to contemplate.
There was  a
conference.  There's probably a conference going on in Sheffield about
architecturer as I speak - probably by architects. Does that make it a 'lie'
or 'unreal' because I'm not there or because the people attending don't live
in Sheffield?   This is the preposterous logic you are applying to the
poetry
conference.   I just cannot believe  this hostility poured onto a few poets
who
arranged to meet up for a couple of days BY OTHER POETS.  Why such
self-loathing ?


>
>I would have loved to have attended the conference - it sounds as though it
>was RIGHT UP MY STREET.

No Tim you mean right up your arse.

Best wishes,
G.