Hi Keston,
good to have some fiery discussion erupting. I too am happy to stoke the
provocations around Keith Tuma's post. Perhaps that's ALL i'm doing too.
Glad also to hear that i was 'at' Cambridge. I've done a few readings and
played music there, both shockingly unprofessionally and then being paid to
do something not dissimilar. But i never studied there, in so far as one
doesn't study anywhere. But i'm not on an anti-academic slant, being
someone who might be called a freelance academic myself (yes, I teach and
mark and that stuff too). But although there might be many here who teach,
I don't feel that this list is a talking shop for academics, nor do I have
a sense of who is here and what there interests are beyond poetry, even
sometimes what poetries they secretly take pleasure in but might not 'fess
up to. I don't sense a monolith here. In fact I'd have the sense that posts
hereabouts might not fall into a dissimilar crunch of sensibilities, tastes
and positions vis-a-vis ethos and polis such as that proposed by Keith's
anthological muse.
I like the jib you cut Keston, partly because it mobilises so many
counters, partly for its historical streams. I was seeking to poke a
teasing you-sound- like-an-old-fuddy-duddy finger in your ribs rather than
to shout you down with misunderstandings. Of course part of me understands
what you're saying and what you're reacting to, that's a process of
emergence. The sociology of our differences is indeed worth exploring.
Although here and now might not be most pertinent. But . .
I only took a degree recently (last year in fact in Norwich - and don't
suppose that means UEA, that means Norwich School of Art & Design - and
that was in Cultural Studies as some discussions regarding context under
that rubric interest me). I took a degree because I'd been teaching on
degrees for long enough to feel the need to understand what the trauma of
being an undergrad student was. To that effect I prefaced my degreee with
an access course at Lowestoft College. Almost all my peers thought i was
nuts, but it was extremely interesting. Pretty far from Cambridge in many
respects.
Discussions in Lowestoft College on the humanities access course were
terrific. A wild range of mature students wading through history,
sociology, psychology, politics, mathmatics, art, English. Yes, like being
back at school, except that all these people had had lives and experiences
beyond (some of them way beyond) school leaving and were now driving back
with desires to take degrees. Pointless identifying their previous or
current professions (many of us still see each other) perhaps, but a clear
and present range of interests, 'habitii', class and cultural origins, gave
rise to robust discussions that fizzed and popped on almost every topic.
Reading Marx and Freud and Eliott and Plath and Giddens and so forth in
such conditions and company is salutary in several ways.
Now, repopulate that classroom with writers and readers of contemporary
poetry. No, not so imbecilically as to attempt 'representation' but
somewhat in the direction of a scattering * of practices and tendencies,
drawn together by an energetic commitment to sit down, be mindful of their
prejudices, and then to discuss writing for whom, placed where, to what
intents, using what means and enjoined implications and we get into a room
that interests myself, as a poet and a person (curiousa distinction that).
Some of what Keith suggests begins to build that room / space / bridge
walkway / whatever your architextural metaphor might envy. [* Scat implies
musical integrity]
I'm not btw suggesting for a minute that everyone will leave that meeting
place changed. Of course there will be rifts and factions, of course there
will be highly dissatisfied customers, of course the discussion will often
not go nearly far enough for some.
Switching tack, Keston nobody has called you precious and exclusionary
except yourself. Writings on the big screen at Piccadilly Circus (I'm not
really fixated on that at all) are not going to make any money for the
writer. The writer isn't selling anything to 'buy' in that sense. Nor is it
likely that more than a few who might 'read' that writing would know who
the writing is by. If anything it's more ephemeral and circumstantial than
a few pieces placed in a small magazine. It's more ephemeral than work
placed on the net (which as john Cayley will chime in is decidedly digital
and can be reproduced and copied ad nauseam). So is that flickering writing
that thousands might glance at social obscurity? or not?
Perhaps a more interesting question concerns how appropriately the writing
and its context are made to each other and what arguments emerge between
the work and the placement of that work? Not a lot of point trying to put
one's seven line stanzas on a pager. `But working within the constraints
offered by the character limit on a pager might produce unexpectedly strong
results.
All hail Randolph's 'The Republic of Ireland' anagrams.
more later yes
love and love
cris
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