Interesting to read this interview, and I look forward to reading Dan's
poems. His comments set me thinking about the relationship of poetry to
drama. I have often wanted to write a verse play - perhaps one for radio,
which seems to work well in this context. Does anyone have any thoughts
about what verse forms are appropriate? If you write free verse, is it
likely to become indistinguishable from prose? Is blank verse still a viable
option? Can rhyme be made to work? Or would a mixture of forms be
dramatically effective? I haven't got beyond turning these questions over in
my mind yet, and I'd be interested in your opinions.

Best wishes

Matthew
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 22 March 2001 17:04
Subject: Poetryetc Interview: DAN SPIELMAN


>DAN SPIELMAN, interviewed by Alison Croggon.
>
>Born in 1978, Dan has been performing in theatre, film and tv for five
>years. He is a founding member of the Melbourne based Keene/Taylor
>Theatre Project, a collaboration between two award winning theatre
>artists, playwright Daniel Keene and director Ariette Taylor, and has
>appeared in HOMELAND, UNTITLED MONOLOGUE, CUSTODY, BENEATH HEAVEN, THE
>NINTH MOON, DOG and MYSTERIES. The KTTP has produced 12 seasons of new
>work and 4 public readings since September 1997. He is currently working
>directly with Daniel Keene on a project POSSESSED. He has
>worked for the Sydney Theatre Company, in Martin McDonagh's THE CRIPPLE
>OF INISHMAAN, and as part of their Blueprints Program in Martin Crimp's
>ATTEMPTS ON HER LIFE. His tv credits include WILDSIDE, RAW FM and
>FARSCAPE. His short story EPILOGUE was published in the literary arts
>magazine MASTHEAD. WHERE is the first poem Dan has had published. He is
>currently working on translations of the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud.
>
>AC: How did you come to write WHERE?
>
>DS: It's more like WHERE came to me while I was writing (very gradually)
>
>AC: I remember that part of its genesis was listening to Horspiel,
>literally "ear playS", by the German radio artist and composer Klaus
>Buhlert. What was it about Horspiel which attracted you?
>
>DS: WHERE was asserting itself in ways that I found difficult to
>understand and work on, visual directions were hard to incorporate
>effectively, and its shape changed incessantly. I have been drawn to
>radio plays for ages, most memorably the work of Klaus Buhlert ,
>including VANISHING POINTS, a piece by Daniel Keene and also a wonderful
>piece called EVERYTHING'S COMING OUT OF THE DARK, in the main a
>composition of parts of Beckett's novels. The way he composed the music
>was what got me: he took the 'formula' described in the stone-sucking
>sequence in MOLLOY, wrapped stones in scales written on paper, (13 of
>them) and asked his musicians to follow that formula, picking up the
>stones and improvising on the scales - Another thing I loved listening
>to was Derek Jacobi reading the Iliad translated by Robert Fagles.
>Needless to say, hearing it felt 'right'. Somehow the 'imagined silence'
>of reading poetry and of hearing it 'matched' when I thought about what
>WHERE might become.
>
>AC: Do you think you've written a Horspiel or a poem? What's the
>difference?
>
>DS: I think I've written a poem, but I hope to record a heap of fools
>saying and doing it.
>
>AC: You are currently saying that you aim to translate the entire poetic
>corpus of Arthur Rimbaud. Why are you attracted to Rimbaud?
>
>DS: Yes. I keep finding new reasons the more I work with his poems, at
>first it was that I felt myself longing to express his poems as often as
>I could. All of it so I can express his learning.
>
>AC: What are you learning from that?
>
>DS: How to translate his poems.
>
>AC: What do you hope to learn?
>
>DS: How to do the rest of them.
>
>AC: Has your involvement in performance influenced your work in poetry?
>Or vice versa?
>
>DS: Yes. Yes.
>
>AC: What do you think poetry might learn from theatre?
>
>DS: Its story.
>
>AC: What do you mean by "story"?
>
>DS: I mean its human and ongoing and unstoppable place.
>
>AC: And what might theatre from poetry?
>
>DS: Its language.
>
>AC: What are the links?
>
>DS: I don't know how to say that.
>
>AC: What are the differences? One inhabits literal space, one is a space
>inside the head, but are there similarities in the act of reading of a
>poem and the act of attending a play?
>
>DS: There can be similarities between the two but I can only read poems
>occasionally and I only occasionally see a play.
>
>AC: The acts of writing a poem and performing a play?
>
>DS: Kenneth Rowell was a stage designer and painter and in his
>retrospective exhibition catalogue called 'Double Act' he spoke about
>feeling in control of one medium and having to work at the other. This
>didn't deter him from pursuing both. My first instinct is to say no, the
>imaginary place I find myself in when a poem works, and the state I must
>find in order to play (again) on stage are very different. On the other
>hand, I am certain I must do both?
>
>AC: What does language do in the theatre?
>
>DS: It feels at times like it stands between the audience and the
>performer, taunting both.
>
>AC: Is orality important in poetry?
>
>DS: I think the voices of poets I have read, if allowed through the
>poems, provide a resistance and a buoyancy to the intense focus of the
>object. I mean the part of my imagination that hears, loves the voiced,
>and is lazy if ignored or bypassed. I believe a lot of what I feel, I
>hear for proof.
>
>AC: Is the actor an I?
>
>DS: For me a performance is. For me the actor is pretend.
>
>AC: What's the difference, then, between "acting" and "performing"?
>
>DS: Acting is the art, performing is the game. The performance is the
>art at work. The actor is still pretend.
>
>AC: What happens to the self in a performance?
>
>DS: Something drastic when the lights go up, and something ritualistic to
>get to when they go down.
>
>AC: Is this applicable to a self in a lyric poem?
>
>DS: Sometimes the voice of a poem betrays an event that lead to a place
>that was explored before the poem's attack, I can't shake the feeling,
>though, that the fight was in some way won. I am often moved by poetry.
>(Every day). I go to the theatre in anticipation of the fight being lost.
>And occasionally I am profoundly moved.
>
>AC: Who is the you an I addresses?
>
>DS: People.
>
>AC: In theatre physical presence is inescapable: is perhaps a poem a
>mnemonic shadow of physical presence?
>
>DS: The physical event of theatre is suggestive immediately, some people
>can't or won't find these suggestions inside, that happens later. The
>"later" of a poem is a different thing, it's more literally "again" and
>the two forms are in tradition, and witnesses see, touch, hear and
>imagine themselves in relation...
>
>AC: What is that fracture that happens when language is written and read?
>
>DS: It's someone else.
>
>AC: How does that feed back into an idea of physical presence on stage?
>
>DS: It should be someone.
>
>AC: Do you think that most theatre has forgotten poetry? Is this why it's
>"deadly"?
>
>DS: Yes. Yes.
>