>The "practical example" in the current debate on
>"public poetry readings" is the organisational work of Nicholas Johnson.
>An open assessment of the means through which he has achieved what you,
>and others, regard as considerable success is a valid part of the
>debating process. That you should construe discussion centred around the
>"example" as personal and trivial attacks on Johnson by "over-delicate
>sensibilities" (I suppose you mean me to be one of them) does not
>recognise that the underlying issue is identifying the exemplariness in
>Johnson's work.
This is a nice reading and I agree I may have been over-hasty in my
construals. I confess I did take the various remarks about NJ to be attacks
of a kind. If they had been made about me or you, I think I would have
(mis)read them as such.
>its exemplariness is
>inextricable from the individual
>questions of personal accountability,
>are evidently not recognised as valid in a discussion.
>Mea culpa.
The (public) "accountability" of poetic production, distribution and
marketing is one issue. There are plenty of "arts professionals' working on
it, I understand. As many of "them" as of "us" probably. Perhaps we can
leave it to "them"?
"Personal accountability" is another. Actually, I'm all for it. Karlien has
set out an exemplary case on NJ's behalf. (And going back over her earlier
post, it is hard to fault with her reckonings in the debit column.)
Initially I got worked up/shaken by the absence of the person being held to
account -- a touchy issue in this space of potentially shifting identities.
This space is open, yes. Nick is welcome. But he is not here. It's not like
print. If it had been print, I don't think some of the things that have
been said/written would have been. Unlike print, it seems to me to demand
at least the *possibility* of immediate come back by an individual when an
issue is addressed precisely as a matter of *personal* as opposed to public
accountability. (I'm not saying it should be otherwise.)
I seem to have trouble with the idea that poetry/poetic production is
"public" in this sense that allows or encourages accountability. That is
not how readings, or even installations or performances feel to me. I think
I prefer the "quasi-public" which *pretends* to the public or the personal
as the work requires, with the various and shifting exigencies and
responsibilities being no less onerous/binding/productive/pleasurable for
all that.
Emphatically, btw, I was/am not getting at *any*one*.
John
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