John,
And what are seen and described as the visual, sculptural or design
aspects of so much non-mainstream poetry, remain important elements in
what we would not necessarily separate off as 'visual poetry'.
Deficiencies of sonic and visual dimensions in so much mainstream
poetry are one of the principle reasons for it coming across to a lot
of us as 'dull'.
Tim
On 25 Oct 2009, at 17:13, John Hall wrote:
> And the visual and material qualities of writing were from the
> outset part
> of the conception of 'performance writing' as it has been developed,
> taught
> and researched at Dartington, as implied by cris. This is
> (deliberately) not
> the same as identifying a specific genre of poetry as 'visual poetry',
> though. And isn't there a line of visual writing that aims at a
> meditational
> quiet (I was about to say 'silence') and another that celebrates its
> association with performances that are at least sonic (and possibly
> very
> loud) if not also gestural? An issue for the academies may be that the
> reading methods that came to define 'English Literature' were not well
> equipped for dealing with anything other than texts for which the
> white page
> is an ideal or metaphysical space.
>
> John
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