The best yet, I thought ... uniformly high quality of presentations. Some
impressions:

Ric Caddel, describing his intermittent series of poems he calls Rigmaroles
("incoherent, having no fixed sequence of ideas, rambling") - eg "Block
Quilt" "built out of breakages of something that didn't work" "what's on
the page is a matrix for articulation". Some inconclusive (?) floor
discussion on how material is selected and arranged.

Alaric Sumner, reading a writing of a reading of Carlyle Reedy's practice,
while Reedy's hands are shown on a video screen tippexing out texts.
"Nothing ever becomes still enough for us to hold". The process of
stripping and building texts, since the 60s - published texts don't do
justice - speculation on establishing her in a living museum for readers to
observe.

Frances Presley/Elizabeth James, performance of highly successful poem
collaboration (part). Why particularly feminine? Lack of documentation of
previous instances of collaborative writing noted.

Karlien van den Beukel, things to do with exclamation marks (called
"shriek" in maths) - "look phallic but act hysteric, a disturbing
combination". Their use in poems by G Hill, A Ginsberg et al.

Trevor Joyce, bringing news from Ireland, in particular Maurice Scully
("don't like poems that have designs on me") and Randolph Healy ("modelling
is important to me, truth is not" "rowing the tide of chaos with half an
oar"), and explicating his "bicameral" book from Wild Honey, Syzygy
(recommended). Links with John Cayley, Retallack/Cage, "leave the line
edges ragged and let them grate to get beautiful discords".

Harriet Tarlo, writing outside - literally, she only writes out of doors
she says. Wry comment on T Hughes, wondering "how to instantly see
everything [in a landscape] without a gun in your hand". "Come in, all that
is outside, under a heading that reads 'incomplete'." (Maggie O'Sullivan?)

Scott Thurston, following on from Adrian Clarke's taped, self-heckled talk
at the last Colloquium, noting distinction of method and technique in
Watten and Andrews, negative and positive power: Andrews, "always at the
same distance from the substance of the poem", risks disempowering the
reader with an "even wall of noise" - and presenting a visual score of Ira
Lightman poem as an alternative technique.

Cris Cheek, preceded by (shortest ever?) performance by Domestic Ambient
Noise Boys (Cobbing & Upton), a read text on the DAN phenomenon, "Cobbing:
art is finding and transforming" "does the blank page not have duration, is
silence without codes?" "blur into complex knots" "thresholds of social
polyglossia" "verticalised stripes of dark matter" "a skin of noise"

Tony Lopez, palimpsest of anecdote behind anecdote, Joseph Beuys, Ezra
Pound, the paradoxes involved in getting funding for a poetry project
already completed, Virgil and ethnic cleansing. "idea of a context is
difficult, we're working within fractal forms".

Sorry I missed the rearranged Trevor Joyce reading.

Apologies for any misquotation.


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