With permission, I'm forwarding to this list Karlien van den Beukel's take
on part of CCCP, originally posted to the Buffalo list. It has to be said
that Tracy Ryan took issue with the description of her reading; I can't
comment on this, since I myself didn't stay till the Sunday, but Karlien's
analysis often seems accurate to me in respect of the events I witnessed.


Date:    Tue, 29 Apr 1997 17:46:00 +0100
From:    Karlien van den Beukel <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: REPORT CCCP 7

The annual Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry took place for the
seventh time last weekend, in England. Although I have been a silent
subscriber of the poetics list up till now, I would like to offer this
reportage of CCCP, a rather Byzantine event, yet significant in its
international scope. Other list subscribers who attended CCCP 7, such as
Ira Lightman, Fiona Templeton, Ken Edwards, John Kinsella and cris cheek,
will, I am sure, have different responses. Here are short immediate
responses on each of the readings, papers and performances I attended, in
chronological order.

Jennifer Moxley
Since Romana Huk's conference in New Hampshire, Jennifer Moxley's poetry
has become known in Cambridge. Lucy Sheerman and I (co-founders of the
small poetry press Rempress) published Moxley's pamphlet "Enlightenment
Evidence (Part One)" in November 1996. Underneath the rhetoric of studied
modesty lies, of course, a self-regarding subjectivity, yet the subtle
discursive progression through which the terms & conditions of the social
contract are negotiated, made for a fascinating reading.

John Tranter
is an influential Australian poet whose energetic interest in manifold
poetic forms is both stimulating and enjoyable. However, his reading,
interlaced with unnecessarily reductive explanations, only in part
conveyed that inventiveness. Perhaps an anxiety that social commentary
on the Australian locale would be misrecognised by the audience, weighed
unduly. The final poem, Voodoo, on the uncanniness in banal objects, was a
tour-de-force.


Papers and discussions

Steve Evans
opened the session, with a strategically surprising paper. Rather
than offering a theoretical paper, he chose to close-read Bernadette
Mayer's poem 'The Way to Keep going in Antartica'. With the elucidation of
philosophy, he followed, beautifully, the instructions in the poem: 'Look
at very small things with your eyes & stay warm'.

Karen Mac Cormack
presented a lucid analysis of the misleading readings of the
stratification of poetry communities in the States, and off-set this with
an exposition of her own methodology. If I understood correctly,
seriousness is in collaborataive praxis, not in retrospective
polemicisation of micro-political positions.

Jean Khalfa
provided an excellent short introduction to the French poet Emmanuel
Hocquard, who was to read later that evening.

Tony Lopez, who chaired the discussion, noted the similarities between
Hocquard's and Mac Cormack's working practice, and steered the discussion
toward the notion of 'communities'. Evans expanded on his paper by
discussing Mayers in relation to the New York School. Current methods of
production, distribution and communiciation (including the internet) were
discussed. Some thought this unnecessary. Moxley found it displacing
discourse (away from "creativity"). Grace Lake responded with what could
be understood as an ironic public display of "creativity". Unfamiliarity
with each other's geo-political restrictions made an in-depth discussion
difficult. Thus, we retired to the bar and continued talking in smaller
groups.

Poetry readings, again.

Grace Lake
is a Cambridge poet anthologised in Conductors of Chaos and Out of
Everywhere. Before reading, she threw a green net (of the kind one covers
strawberries with against sparrows) which she called "her internet" over
the bust of Maynard Keynes in the corner. Her imaginative gestures, the
spendthriftness of rhyme and imagery, do indeed make for a great economy
in her poetry. In the middle section (particularly 'Swiss Kiss'), however,
her reading turned into a perfunctionary litany of wrongs: the poet is
suddenly trapped in her own history. She emerged again, with a sparkling
finalale.

Karen Mac Cormack
I thought that I would have to be critically informed to appreciate the
disciplined elegance of the ellipses, turns, shifts, in Mac Cormack's
language poetry. Not so. One sequence in particular, drove language down
to vortex, and still, through & over, she continued, finishing balanced on
one point & at a slant. The Australian poet John Forbes (not known as a
language poet cognoscentus) was heard to mutter an awed 'yes'. Admirable
stuff, indeed.


Emmanuel Hocquard
is probably well-known in the States for his translations of American
poetry, and Keith and Rosemary Waldrop's translations of his. I won't
embarrass myself by presuming to comment on a poet I have not read, as I
do not read the French so fluently, but whose reading, suffice to say, I
enjoyed, not least due to Peter Riley's witty and resourceful on-the-scene
translations.

Performance

Fiona Templeton
Her peformance of 'Recognition' was extremely well-attended. The
performance seemed a continuous struggle against narrative closure, as if
refusing the fact of death itself, and yet having to come to terms (but
what terms precisely?) with this particular death: the death of a friend
with whom she had collaborated on performances. Remarkable use of modern
recording material, video and television. She would repeat the seemingly
spontaneous gestures of his recorded moving image on the shown video,
turning his play into hers (or had it been hers all along?), responding to
what seemed his direct questions to her, choosing videos to replay, in an
almost private moment, and then turn to the song of defiance, all the
while unsettling boundaries between artifice and the real. Finally, the
television set, showing a still close-up of his head on the pillow, was
heaved on to the edge of the table, and she covered the table with a white
sheet: he seemed to be present, a very thin man with a huge head
lying in a hospital bed. And clearly he was not-present. A very moving
performance, to which my too literal description does not much justice: it
could never.

Poetry

Allen Fisher
is a major English poet, and apart from his poetry's intelligence and
social grace, Fisher himself also possess these qualities. He is an
interesting performer of his poetry, at times, as if he is thinking aloud,
even ad libbing. He read a dialectical poem which was an exchange between
"two theologians": Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking. The Olsonian scale
of his projects are, to me, daunting, not only qua exegesis, but also in
their interdisciplinary scope. I take it from what I know (those 'small
things'), and then go on.


Tracy Ryan
is a young Australian poet who, together with her partner John Kinsella,
works indefatigably for the journal Salt. She is tenacious and careful
with her material, and read clear subject-poetry on domesticity, ice,
child-care. One of her poems has been chosen to be printed as a poster for
'poetry on the Underground': thousands of commuters on the London Tube
will read it daily. Closing the conference with her strong reading, was
also an acknowledgement of our responsibilities, to return to homework to
be done.

Take care now, and mind the gap.


Karlien van den Beukel
Gonville & Caius College
Cambridge, England


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