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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