Hi Tim,

this will doubtless cross with another post. I could give endless
anecdotes. It was a feeble jab, in isolation agreed.

As i hope I'm raising in a longer post, yes there are problems. I don't
believe that anything is locked up in the academy. As i have just asked,
what are the defining boundaries of 'the academy'? I don't think it's so
easy to do more than take pot shots at. Examples as scanty of poets who
have had no relation to any form of academy and those examples are too
often fodder to images of and investment in romantic authorial ideologies.

I'm raising the issues of resourcing and peer discourses. That's not always
about money. Things Not Worth Keeping made a piece of work as part of the
Acts of Language events at Doc 11 in Berlin last September. We weren't paid
to do it, we got no expenses. We did have our accomodation covered for the
week but otherwise it was off our own back. Why? Because it was a generous
context in which to make work and because the group of people both setting
the context up and also making work there was worth being part of. We all
subsidise our practices.

One either chooses to partially offset such subsidies through another loop
of funding (that might simply mean diverting some of one's earnings
whatever the source or . . . you know the games) or . . . you know the
games.

I don't agree that conferences have become the naturalised home of
innovative poetics. I do like the turn of phrase, but what writers are
doing to try to enliven future potential for contemporary writing practices
informed by poetics (my chosen distinction, although you could have picked
up on John's 'literal art') is only reported on at conferences and mostly
second hand and inadequately at that.

'Homes' for such writing practices are often fleeting, even in some cases
fugitive. They are where the performativities of such writings are located.
Sure, some of this is leaking out from academic or arguably academic
pursuits (Susan Howe in an archive, Allen Fisher in a library, Peter Riley
in a bookshop . .). Some of it being generated in the wake of briefs given
on academic courses. Some of it is coming from people who have been on
other kinds of courses such as Arvon blah bless 'em. Some of it is leaking
from communities / audiences around specific reading or workshop series
(including those held under academic auspices). Some of it is leaking as a
result of exchanges on e-lists and those readerships for e-zines and well
as printed papers. Some of it is resolutely interdisiplinary and might get
scant mention, with rare exception, within litrary orbits. But it is there
and it is not in conferences.

You do have something of a point in respect of the facilitating of
something such as the rehearsed reading of Carla Harryman's piece a couple
of weeks ago in Oxford. This event was advertised and open for anybody to
attend and yet i wasn't awae of anybody outside those attending the
Brooke's Colloquium who attended what was the first presentation of Carla's
work in such formats in the UK  -  astonishing. If i'd been in London or
Bristol of Birmingham or . . . i'd have made the trp for that alone.
Without the slippage of funding made possible by the construction of the
colloquium at Brooke's this could not have been afforded. Likewise SUNY
Buffalo will be significantly supporting the E-Poetry events (and taking
kudos points that generate more funding into that bargain).

complicated  -  not simple at all. Cafe, e-list, conference hall, reading
series, room above pub, magazine in the post, chance encounters on a train,
phone call . . .? Networks. These are all 'homes' for innovative poetics.

Conferences have however become places for face-t-face international
exchange. Not exclusively but significantly. But there's never been that
much of that in this set of countries, outside the festival (CCCP  -
academic?), Kings Talks (academic?).

no  -  circulation and flow that's what we should be working to maximise
and the academic is part and party to that i move

love and love
cris