Ok ok. Hi, well since the prompt has passed 'backchannel'
with it's inauspicious undertones and the response been
so expansive, for which i thank Lawrence as this thing
deserves to be fully ventilated hereforth  -  of course
my left foot is already shot off and lying bleeding on
the doormat in the corridor, so if anyone reading this
knows of an honest prosthetic surgeon i'd be most grateful.
This in lieu of the fact that Sianed Jones and cris cheek
will be performing a version of their forthcoming CD / book
project for imminent publication by Reality Street, 'Songs
From Navigation' at SubVoicive on TUesday 28th October.
Hope to see you all there.

But my intention, and what i offered Lawrence, was in a way
an invitation to publicly open such issues  -  i'm glad
he's up for that (we know each other well enough to get
really driven on this).Perhaps it's just that SubVoicive
is an example i know well. What follows is not targeted
at him.

It is, as anybody who heard me do something similar at
the first SubVoicive Colloquium back in Thatcher's last
railing, with those ways through which the effective
paratext of poetry readings impacts on poetry audiences.

Lawrence's report on Spencer and Wystan's reading prodded
me into this gear again. Part of which is certainly glib,
in that it's almost cliche. I'm gonna 'limit' this post to
poetry readings in the UK. Can i admit that i don't have
much to offer by way of solutions  -  but can ask hopefully
positively provocative questions. If, sometimes, their barbs
poke too close to invested bones then let the resultant wrath
flow.

I mentioned a date of 1979. That's about the time when my own
'honeymoon' whirl in poetry 'circles' had broadened sufficiently
for reflection to set in. After an extraordinary 4 years of meeting
many of those poets who work i still value (both here and in the
USA and Canada and mainland Europe) and after the last stand at
the Poetry Society - read about it elsewhere  -  i was feeling
very much that it was indeed the poetry that was worth following, the
poets would come with that. And yet and yet, and this is so
occasionally too general  -  the poetry audiences, the poets,
the programmers, the venues, the ethos  -  was still somehow
locked in the smoking room. Not at the gentleman's club any
more. But in an abject haze, the gaze into which was predominantly
male, almost without exception white and a little awkward with
exuberance from anywhere in the region of the neck down, or
anything spatialised. Of course there are exceptions. Go with
the broad swathe a while longer before keys began to judder.
What i've said isn't anything new. It's a crticism that can
be shrugged away. There are poets in the Uk (i'm thinking in
particular of Bob Cobbing) who have
emphasised repeatedly that 'poetry is a physical thing', the
dance and the rhythm and the song and the pattern of writing.

Incidentally the improv music scene was similar  -  film, video
so-called performance art and movement-based work less so.

I do believe what i'm saying about ethos  -  yes. Needs must
of course of course. Readings can take place with contributions
around someone's house and a carry out. It's not just the poems,
it's how they are laid out on the page, the size of page, the
typeface, the topping and tailing, the binding, the cover, the price
blah blah blah. Apply the same to readings. It's not any one element
(the room, the chairs, the decorations, the location, the contextual
overtones, the public front) it's the combination that conveys.

To give another example: X6 Dance Space was on the 6th floor
of an old tea warehouse in Butler's Wharf by Tower Bridge. So, it
was pretty difficult to get to. It was hard to find once you got
there. The toilet was a bucket outside the entrance at the top
of the stairs. Somewhat precariously positioned if you were
walking up. And yet, i first performed there in 1979, nobody
who ever went there would say it was not a remarkable venue and
perhaps this is even more cogent  -  a venue that encouraged
remarkabel work to be made!

The issue of resources is important. It takes either good fortune
or fucking grief through debilitating effort. I wouldn't wish
such grief on anyone  -  but. I went grey (and bald) during 'Voice Over'
and know from years of programming the dread of a thin audience (pun
intended).Although i also readily agree that those can be extraordinary
occasions, partly because of their obvious intimacies.

Ok, so noone else feels the way i do on this? It's the best we can
muster? It's what we know? It's the way we like it? That's fine.

Defensiveness doesn't really help. It lessens the appetite for
honest critique. Every now and again i get told a story, about
a young poet or curious reader (i know they often are one in same
or go hand in hand, but sometimes there are both rooting around)
who goes to a reading (this is not svp specific btw) and feels
locked out. By the events, by the 'communities', by the place,
by the by. Fine, not everyone likes strong coffee.

Surely Lawrence it is a utopian agenda to suggest (not that you are,
personally) that a point can be reached at which issues of gender
are not crucial in respect of poets and audiences  -  languages.
Correction distopia.

Perhaps its an overemotive and clumsy way of putting it, i agree.
But a touch more real politik from all of us might help.
And Lawrence this is not directed towards
you. This is for us all to consider.

Witness Clive Bush's sidestep, in his introduction to 'Out of Dissent'
as part of an explanation as to why he was presenting over 1000 pages
on work by 5 poets, who happen to be men:

'In spite of the demands of a market fully geared up to "politcal
correctness", it needs to be said again and again, while emphasising that
women and disadvantaged racial groups need all the means at their disposal
to continue their revolutions for fully participatory economic, social and
political roles, they emphatically do not, by stance and a priori
representation of their difficulties ensure good writing.'

Unbelievable!

We also have misogny in our midst. Witness Jeff Nuttall's appallingly
reactionary pontifications at the Mottram Conference, taking Kathy Acker to
task for being incapable of 'genital love' before ripping into young
British Artists who are obviously not holding their brushes at the correct
angle.

Since you've teased me out i'll say it louder  -  we need to be more
attentive and more proactive in our editorial and curatorial placements and
interventions. In which respect what Drake and Kalien and Lucy and Caroline
and Maggie and others are, and have been doing, through East-West, Spelt,
Rem-Press and 'Out of Everywhere' is so important.

Not that any of this is going to 'solve' a lapse in 'community'
concentration  -  a thin night, a down turnout.

bridges to build, links to be made
many more people who are actually, in my limited experience,
pretty interested in the writing  -  if they
get to hear it / see it

you get the drift hear  -  other contexts, other audiences than
those we already know

another saturday morning gone  -  more to say but enough now

love and love
cris









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