Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 08:24:26 -0700 (PDT)
From: John Kinsella <[log in to unmask]>
To: UB Poetics discussion group <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: CCCP7, children & the domestic!
>From Tracy Ryan, who's semi-attached (or semi-detached) to
this list by virtue of "domesticity":
Just a plea for attention to the "bigger things" as well as
the small; while I appreciate Karlien's amiable comments, I
should point out that as final reader at the Cambridge
Conference of Contemporary Poetry I read sixteen poems, two
of which mentioned children (& not child care???) and none
of which were "domestic", except insofar as one of them
mentioned "writing at the kitchen table"--a poem which was
a meditation on the way space behaves when the human body/
psyche is in isolation (a person whose house has suddenly
become vacant continues to write in the one habitual spot).
I am baffled by the description of my work as "clear subject
poetry" on domesticity & child care. Perhaps this was some
kind of slippage?--since I dedicated one poem to John Kinsella
mentioning that he wasn't there because he was at home minding
our child. Ironic that even when your "domestic" situation
is supportive in a feminist sense, you get patriarchal [?]
cliches in the public arena--& from another woman?
There's a danger in assuming that because one can immediately
apprehend some of the content of a poem it is "clear subject
poetry" unaware of its own process or of the often opaque
habits of language. And when it isn't opaque for me, it's
wrapping itself around & into visual art, landscape, clay,
leeches, bees, French translations, trompe l'oeil table-tops,
solstices, and internal organs. These were the "subjects"
of what I read. Were we at the same reading???
A final note: the Australian poet John Forbes may not
qualify for that awesome title of "language poet cognoscentus"
but he's very discriminating in his use of "Yes!" and we
Australians are more used to him satirising than being
satirised [however affectionately]. Perhaps as he sat and
listened to the clear and the unclear he was thinking, as in
his "Love Poem" ("about"! the Gulf War?)
...I watch the west
do what the west does best
& know, obscurely, as I go to bed
all this is being staged for me.
---------------------------------
Well, a first posting may as well be a long one.
Tracy Ryan.
---------------------------------
Well, Ken, I felt more or less obliged to append
my objections! Nobody likes being misrepresented,
though I know that's not your intention. The above
was what I posted to the UB Poetics List in response
to her descriptions. I was not the only person to
be dissatisfied with them, either. I could have taken
issue with Karlien's summary of Tranter too (the third
Australian to be subjected to this). John [Kinsella]
notes: There seems to be something of Australia-as-Other
in the tone of Karlien's posting. It's interesting to
note that the only three British writers on the CCCP
programme were actually funded by SALT magazine, an
Australian journal. What does this say about centre-
periphery relations?
Tracy & John.
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