I think that I wish to stand by my sense of a centre -- there is a
way in which a writer can stand at the point where she writes and
view other writing from that centre, and there is equally a way of
writing which involves choosing a marginal position;
it depends on what you are marginal to, and what sort of
centre you wish to occupy;
there are the political/economic centres from which many are
excluded, which they have no choice in how they are positioned in
relation to; and there are the academic centres which can operate in
the same way;
what I wish to hold onto is a sense that a poetry, a
writing can contribute to the formation of a community, can play a
social role and can be central within this community;
the counter to this is to say that this writing is marginal to some
centre of power, and so is marginal writing; I don't want to seem as
though I'm holding onto the term centrebecause it is a valued term,
and hoping thus to validate the writing I am calling central; but
once we begin to use a different set of criteria to judge a/the work
of writing, then what writing is central changes;
I am reluctant to use the term Language Writing as it is generating
such bad responses, but one element of that poetics which I find
interesting is a sense of the social, and of developing a centre
around which writer/readers might gather, not a fixed centre, but a
centre which operated as a point of exchange;
(I am afraid that I will be away for the next couple of weeks
and unable to respond to anything this provokes, just so you know
I'm not hiding)
Mark
Mark Leahy
[log in to unmask]
School of English
University of Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS2 9JT
United Kingdom
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