For those of you who may be feeling gobsmacked by the sudden
flurry of biotext-related, Brit-Po-referenced posts, here's my
Brit-Po post from a couple of hours ago, which will be somewhat
explanatory. What inspired this post, however, may still be
unclear to Poetryetceteras who are not also Brit-Pos.

To whit: A couple of days ago, Douglas Clark and Erminia posted
their Poetryetc biotexts to the Brit-Po list (for some reason or
another), then Douglas followed up by posting (also on Brit-Po) an
invitation to Alison (whose biotext, along with that by Chris Hayden,
Douglas said he'd thought "a lot of"), and Alison obligingly did so
today. What happened next and took this project in a new, strange
direction was that a Brit-Po listee who's not a Poetryetcetera
posted a biotext of his own to Brit-Po, prefacing it with "I like
this game. Can I play too?" At that point, I went back-channel to
JK and said in effect "lookit this"!

And the rest is covered below (I think)....

____________________________________________

>Well, this is a fine kettle of crossposted fish, I must say!
>
>John Kinsella and I have been following the fate of the Poetryetc
>"biotext" project (launched by me with his endorsement just 10 days
>ago) as it went feral and began wilding here on the Brit-Po list
>during the last 48 hours. Now that a "contribution" has been posted
>here by a Brit-Po but non-Poetryetc listee (right, David?), followed
>by Elizabeth James's comments on this strange collaborative turn the
>project's taken, it seemed the moment to acknowledge (and encourage)
>it--whatever "it" may be.
>
>The biotext project is meant to parallel the geotext one on which JK
>wrote the piece in _Poetry Review_ mentioned by Elizabeth. Herewith
>the project parameters indicated in the call for contributions that
>I posted on Poetryetc (9/14):
>
>The aim is to break down and/or reinvent our biotic territories,
>boundaries, systems, and/or species by creating one or more inter-
>active, collective life-forms--a discursive Being-in-poetry, say,
>whereby each particpant contributes a prosthesis of some sort, with
>JK's editorial role then becoming one of synthesis.
>
>Or not--because any such bio-poetic being is as likely to resist or
>refuse synthesis as to lend itself to a communal life-form....
>
>Your prosthesis may be mixed, altered, amputated, or elaborated by
>JK, and as thesis, antithesis, or phantom limb, among many other
>potential reshapings in the process of amassing, constructing, or
>designing the accrued biotext, or list/life-form. Write your bio-
>traces, -tinglings, or -torments as a single continuous, unpunctuated
>screed (with no caps. or line breaks), then post your biotextual
>stream or spore to the list....
>
>
>With JK's agreement, I'm inviting you to contribute to this project
>by posting your own biotexts here--under the "Operation SwamPo"
>heading--and in the full knowledge that it will be "appropriated,"
>or, as JK put it in an e-mail to me: "tell e'm that if they play,
>i'm gunna screw their texts right up when i mix 'em.... welcome to
>the swamp, i say! let the appropriation begin."
>
>In response to Elizabeth's concern that this "notion of collaboration"
>entails "milking" people for material, I'd like to add that no one on
>either list is required to submit a text, nor does JK's subsequent
>mulching of this biotextual material affect the originals posted here
>or there that might be distributed or displayed as such by its author
>elsewhere. Those who would be bothered by having their texts remixed
>(or reverbed) and then published without their names being tagged to
>their own words in any one segment (although I believe the book will
>list all the contributors) simply shouldn't "play," period.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Candice



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