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BRITISH-IRISH-POETS  1997

BRITISH-IRISH-POETS 1997

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Subject:

aaron williamson

From:

Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Tue, 1 Jul 1997 20:11:53 -0400

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (62 lines)

An introduction to the reading by Aaron Williamson on 1st July 
______________________________

Somewhere and recently I overheard a conversation in the bookshop on the
South Bank. One said to the other "Yes, Aaron Williamson, you know, the
deaf poet." My first thought was that it is rather sad that their first
attempt at a point of reference should be Aaron's deafness, a personal
attribute, rather than the challenging nature of the work he makes or his,
in my experience, amiable personality - those attributes with which he
participates in our community.

It is not a new approach to poetic classification nor is it particularly
unkind; it's just a way that we operate as a species when our brains aren't
working. One has heard John Heath-Stubbs referred to as "the blind poet".

My second thought was that it is quite surprising that the stranger spoken
to did not immediately exclaim "Deaf poet!?" with a string of cartoon
exclamation and interrogation marks. The rest of this short dull
conversation demonstrated that only one of them had heard of Aaron, but the
other's brain remained in idle despite what she had been told.

Even those who do not greatly value the public reading of poetry retain a
conceptual sense of the sounds of the poem, in its assonance and rhythm for
example, and the dialogue of each poem's pattern of sounds with the formal
and colloquial spoken languages.

Aaron's poetry forces upon us, if we are sentient, the need to consider the
assumptions that we are encouraged to make about the nature of poetry and
the nature of the practice of poetry. It challenges too some implicit
assumptions about human community where the aural has its hegemony as a
means of primary communication: much public communication assumes that we
can hear and in conversation we frequently speak to each other without face
to face contact. Communication with the deaf relies upon the visual and so
emphasises it; and thus it foregrounds the visual elements in hearing
communication.

Aaron's work challenges many assumptions about what poetry is and how it
works, in the same way that the majority of poets performing at Sub Voicive
Poetry challenge those assumptions. But he takes the challenge further than
many take it - the text on the page is only the beginning. The poet's part
in the making of these poems is only completed in performance, where his
utterance and his gesture are central, with a multiplicity of meanings to
be derived from the word and syntax play and unexpected juxtapositions. The
audience must sometimes strive to follow the utterance, a reversal of the
day to day experience of those without hearing.

Thus, Aaron's performance concretely manifests the questioning of how far
we really understand each other, what it is for one person to speak to
another, how much is actually passed over from I to Thou, and how much is
just passed over and how much is filled in by the brain of the receiver as
it does with data from all the senses.

Aaron's performance also emphases the importance of hearing the poet
perform their own poetry by standing on its head, and boxing the ears of,
the ethos of ac-tors giving definitive performances.

Lawrence Upton / Sub Voicive Poetry



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