Hi,

thought it worth posting a brief back to back on the above.

The Cross-Cultural Poetics Conference in Minneapolis
felt like a strong friends and allies gathering
in search of a shareable agenda. That agenda remained
largely illusive.

Still, I enjoyed it, but then i liked Minneapolis very much
as a friendly and relaxed city. Lots of decent cafes,
coffee houses, book stores, extraordinary music stores,
good museum collections (Walker collection plus Beuys' 'Multiples'
show, Wiseman in Gehry's extraordinary sardine cans buffeting the
Mississippi -  reflecting river, bridge and sky, with a very funny
show of Indian Humour, and the Minneapolis Institue of Art with
much else besides a decent whack of Minor White photographs),
cheap, enticing Ethiopian and Vietnamese foods.

Lucky to be there just before the weather turned.

Maria Damon, Mark Novak and Leslie Denney (among others)
put a strong, sometimes too decision-racked schedule together.
Delegates were enabled to elect for all papers, less poets /
or more poets, less papers. A split that bears healing.
Still, it was a place to meet and exchange even though
important issues were neutralised for the duration.

Prize for most referenced works goes jointly to:

Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha's 'Dictee' (I'd add Walter Lew's equally
extraordinary response)
and Nathaniel Mackay (whose CD of 'Strick:Song of the Andoumboulou 16-25'
you should buy now)

Along with David Kellogg's report on Poetics (and an otherwise
curious silence on that list) I valued the presence and
contributions of:

-   Fred Wah, Jeff Derkson and Roy Miki's papers under Canadian
'multiculturalism' (from which many salutary lessons
can be brought into the UK context, particularly with
regards imminent developments in official policy here) and their 'readings'
from which a bevy of book recommendations:

Fred's 'Diamond Grill' and 'Alley Alley Home Free'
Jeff's 'Dwell' (it's 1993 but you may well not have see it yet here)
Roy's 3 recent issues of West Coast Line magazine, of which
I'd boldly recommend 'Transporting the Emporium' (Hong Kong Art
& Writing Through The Ends of Time). An indespensible collection.

-   readings by Julie Patton, Susan Wheeler and Jen Hofer:

Susan's 'Bag 'O' Diamonds' is from University of Georgia and worth
tracking down.

-  Kamau Brathwaite's talk / reading was worth the trip alone.
His current layout work employing full range of computer typographies
is a great pleasure  -  and a great weaseling body of work
to bridge bigotted divides between tendencies. Check out Hambone (no.10)
to see what i mean. From, 134 Hunolt Stree, Santa Cruz, California 95060

-  presentation by Erik Belgum and Brain West of VOYS (CD mag).
first issue is Ray Federman (i'm slow to catch up with Federman, but am now
thick into the excellent 'Take It Or Leave It' which has a revised edition
out from the Fiction Collective) reading 'Voice In The Closet'
a must buy full reading of signal text and upcoming issues are very strong.
'Exploring the dimensions of speech . . . of sign in sound.'
High production values. Sub Rates (2 CDs / year) $32 from uk.
Suscribe to Voys, PO Box 580547. Minneapolis. MN 55458. USA

-  papers by Alan Golding 'Po-Biz, Cult.Stud., and Avant-Gardes?'
(including a prolonged meditation on 'X' in post-war US writing) + Loretta
Collins 'Trouble It: Rebel/Revel Soundspace in the Caribbean Diaspora' +
Yunte Huang 'Charlie Chang vs Ezra Pound: Modern Conceptions of the Chinese
Language' all helped to assuage pangs left by reprehensible muffins and a
chronic milk shortage for the stewed coffee port. Yunte's translating
Pound's 'Cantos' into Chinese and when he comes to a Chinese character he
puts in an Egyptian hieroglyph.

-  finally a book that came my way out of a meal with the author (whose
everythig else i'd missed  -  that's often the irritating way with
conferences)
that i've not seen mentioned before but which i'd recommend is:

Hilton Obenzinger's 'New York on Fire', a delightfully assembled chronicle of
fires that have ravaged New York ever since. Somehow reminded me of Paul
Metcalf who was another ghost presence at XCP

-  to whit the new journal XCP (cross cultural poetics) edited by Mark
Nowak with work by Amiri Barak, Maria Damon, Lise McCloud, Solomon Deressa,
Walter Lew, Ofelia Zepreda, Elizabeth Burns, Edwin Torres and others.
Contact Mark via manowak@stkate,edu to subscribe. It's worth subscribing to
now. And considering contributing to.

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Over the top home Halloween installations (ghosts crossing and re-crossing
the porch, blooming luminous from cupboards like cuckoos, chair-size
pumpkins), the Snoopy theme park that forms the centrepiece of the Mall of
America, cross street raised glass walkways, inner city reservations (with
some of the highest infant mortality levels in the world).

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After all that I arrived in Buffalo just in time to preface a reading from
Caroline Bergvall with the first outing for 'Double Sky Hope's Locker' (out
now from SVP). Caroline read a strong set featuring 'In Situ', 'Don't Push
It', from the work she's been calling 'Greek Myth Since Freud' and a pithy
sequence on bilingualism she's been writing 'on the road'.

Next day we took our hangovers to hear Steve McCaffery's bravura lecture on
'Text, Lay-out and Memory' during which he took Derrida's logo-centrism to
task, set out to reclaim so-called illuminated manuscripts from art
historians by dint of proving that the 'illustrations' instead formed part
of a working grammatalogy  -  were writing 'in other words'  -  that
letters were highly motivated and that Mary Carruthers takes what Frances
Yates opened on memory to fresh heights.

London, Ontario has its own Oxford Steet and River Thames. Also some fine
signage in a sans-serif font 'Live Lobsters  -  Now Hiring', that sort of
thing. Five of the now infamous Buffalo School of Homophonic Translation
read in the Forest City Gallery  -  organised by Peter Jaeger, Tom Orange
and Kevin Hehir.
There was a full house, including members of the aging but very much still
active Nihilist Spasm Band. Taylor Brady, Scott Pound, Bill Howe, Eleni
Stecopoulos and Mike Kelleher are all worth looking out for. A younger
grouping and 'on the move'. We gave radio interviews and the event will be
marked by a selection from all in the journal Rampike.

Finally McCaffery and myself (realising it was almost 20 years to the day
since the 11th Sound Poetry Festival in Toronto) opened a joint show of
visual work in the Cornershop gallery, Buffalo (a guerilla show put on by
Bill Howe  -  who with Scott Pound edits the also excellent Essex Magazine
of visual poetics, 2 issues available to date - and who paid homage to
boxes of alphabits cereal, read a longish poem and performed a piece we'd
put together that week on his letterpress). Steve's work was effectively a
thirty year retrospective showing the diversity and sustained attack of his
visual / spatial poetics practices. He performed the whole of Carnival
panel 2, for the first time. A tear de fierce, major. I read some 'f o g
s', did some punch & judy Beefheart on the megaphone and a solo version of
'you see the sights but you don't see the struggle it's a struggle to see
it's kept out of sight' with rusty metal thumb clickers. Wine floored.
There was bird chitter. Carnivalesque revelry broke out until late,
followed by a champagne, dry martini and bloody mary brunch. Touring could
certainly put paid to me!

then  -  as you know by now, hurrying for the London double 'things' went
'orribly 'wrong'.

love and love
cris
















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