Cris wrote:
>common ground between them remains
- an exploration of the performances of poetry both on and off the
page - often between them or occasions of the one becoming the othe
- an exploration of the book and 'bookness'
- a proclivity for interdisciplinarity of reference and influence
- a tendency towards collaborative practice
- the uses and abuses of lo-tec in many aspects of the performances
of poetry<
sorry, cris, but this reads to me like pure 'management-speak'. An exploration of the book? Like opening one, do you mean? The
history of the book in Western culture is fairly easy to trace, it derives from assemblages of the Bible, later than the
establishment of the canon, that first appear I think about the eighth century ( I haven't the reference works to hand). Earlier
'Bibles', even after the canon was decided, were circulated as separate bits. BUT in classical culture the notion of the LIBER
existed, there's kind of up and down rhythm to these things, Catullus survived in one mediaeval copy of Catullus His Booke, as it
were. Books are very nice and you can take them to bed and they don't get headaches but they take up a lot of space. Problem. Hence
LIBRARIES. Public, common spaces. 'Bookness', well that can mean anything: the nature of the binding, the typefaces, the quiring
etc? If you are thinking about the evils of Books as sacred points well even though I get what you mean I know all too well how the
abandonment of The Book in workplaces has lead to disenfranchisement and erosion of workers' rights.
>- a proclivity for interdisciplinarity of reference and influence<
Sorry, cris, that is so fudgespeak it could have been written by a personnel officer. Do you mean listening to music, noises on the
street, the argument upstairs, looking at pictures, the washing-up from yesterday, the bus you just missed, and being influenced by
what you read when you were five, that argument last night, alongside that other night the stars came out in Turkey, as things to
which one should 'proclive'? Well, don't we all do that anyhow?
Like, naturally?
>- a tendency towards collaborative practice<
I like tendencies towards collaborative practices too but unfortunately Vicky's got a headache.
>- the uses and abuses of lo-tec in many aspects of the performances
of poetry<
By 'lo-tec' do you mean, erm, someone reading something?
I am ribbing you, to an extent, but if comes down to it, poetry as a performance art is most widespread inside our heads, such
repute that poetry does have in our society mainly stems from what is read, public recitals do not exist in the way they did in the
past, plus of course the enormous cultural fact of the Shakespeare plays, poetry does still get into common parlance, Larkin's 'They
fuck you up, your mom and dad' has entered into common speech. It's ok to emphasise the joys of the performance but really its that
still, small voice is what matters. I've never been to a reading of Celan's poetry, for example, and can't imagine I'd even want to,
but I adore the poems.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Spectare's Web, A Chide's Alphabet
& Painting Without Numbers
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
----- Original Message -----
From: "cris cheek" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 3:03 AM
Subject: Re: Coherent traditions (was Re: Performance Poetry)
Hiya, tuppence into this pot.
Which Avant-Garde's produced really coherent bodies of work? The
Italian Futurists? the Russian Futurists perhaps? The Surrealists? The
Lettristes or Ultra-Lettristes? The Objectivists? The Language Poets?
I'd say not so or at least one would be struggling to say that
Mayakovsky and Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov produced a coherent body of
work or Oppen and Zukofsky and Bunting and Niedecker and Reznikoff or
Berstein, Watten Hejinian, Andrews, Perelman, Silliman, Benson,
Harryman . . . Yes, there are often some partially identifiable common
grounds but there is a web of practices weaving this way and that way
through over under and round about those common grounds surely?
One grouping which *might be worth playing into is the so-called London
lot of the 1970s-1990s who were in and out of each others pockets and
readings and publishing houses throughout a significant portion of that
time. Yes I know it continues but that's where there was a meeting
ground between: Brian Catling, Allen Fisher, Bob Cobbing, Pierre Joris,
Maggie O'Sullivan, Robert Hampson, Carlyle Reedy, Ken Edwards, Robert
Sheppard, Virginia Firnberg, Patricia Farrell, Gilbert Adair, Lawrence
Upton, Iain Sinclair, Paige Mitchell, Aaron Williamson, Tertia
Longmire, Hazel Smith, Caroline Bergvall, Ulli Freer, Bill Griffiths,
Eric Mottram, Redell Olsen, PC Fencott, Adrian Clarke . . .
common ground between them remains
- an exploration of the performances of poetry both on and off the
page - often between them or occasions of the one becoming the othe
- an exploration of the book and 'bookness'
- a proclivity for interdisciplinarity of reference and influence
- a tendency towards collaborative practice
- the uses and abuses of lo-tec in many aspects of the performances
of poetry
That meshwork still looks pretty oppositional and forward-moving to me?
I reckon they'd probably all blanche at being considered as 'London
Poets' let alone an 'avant-garde' but
love and love
cris
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