Tim,
I'm pretty sure I'm not equipped for that philosophical debate myself. It
was a way of signalling an unease with the proliferation of descriptors
before the word poetry, particularly 'performance'. The assertion isn't as
excluding or purist, though, as it might at first seem.
Nor, obviously, is there any point in policing the borders. Where I'd
waver would be with the performance, say, of Jaap Blonk. He's so good at
what he does that if he wants to call it poetry I wouldn't presume to
quarrel. And if poetry is "work on the word", he's certainly doing it - at
the level of phonemes in his 'Popacatapetl'. So I've already begun shifting
my stance.
Best,
Jamie
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Allen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 9:39 AM
Subject: Re: Arts Council report on Contemporary Poetry
> Jamie,
>
> The only thing I would disagree with below is what you say about it
> (performance poetry) being poetry or not. As you say, this is treating
> poetry as a universal. I would never stand by that myself, but I see huge
> philosophical debates between essentialism and nominalism on this
> potential horizon, so I'll skip back home again.
>
> Cheers
>
> Tim A.
> On 30 May 2011, at 12:57, Jamie McKendrick wrote:
>
>> Tim,
>> This is an interesting map of the various strands that constitute
>> performance poetry. I just don't know enough about it to comment.
>> But the term itself has always struck me as a weird redundancy - it's
>> either poetry or it ain't. Ok I realize that this idea of poetry is
>> posing as a universal, but I'd stand by it! Early on the scene, a figure
>> like John Cooper Clarke was writing poems, and his superb perrformances
>> just added to the pleasure. Perhaps he'd be one you'd think of as taking
>> his cue from the sixties, or maybe 70s northern punk? Same goes, as in
>> writing poems, for Linton Kwesi Johnson, though it's a different
>> tradition.
>> This is way back, but I can recognize in the present scene some of the
>> features you mention.
>> On the question of accents, I remember a German - who'd lived here a
>> long time - observing that the English liked their poets to have
>> regional accents and their novelists to have RP accents. The first to be
>> gritty and authentic (which assuaged a middle-class discomfort with
>> poetry) and the second because it seemed fine to sound 'neutral' or
>> omniscient in the novel. Or something like that. The remark has stayed
>> with me.
>> Best,
>> Jamie
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