"That's what I don't understand: if you're going to behave
as if you were climbing a corporate ladder, knives, plots, hypocrisies
and all, why not, in all seriousness, just be an accountant? or whatever?
 (No disrepect to accountants, whose arcane arts are way beyond me).
Whatever you do, you can't pretend to be beyond the pressures that
afflict everyone else, and you can't not take them into account. You
are, whether you like it or not, always stepping through "the enemy's
country". But you don't have to become the enemy." - Alison

Well, I couldn't be more fascinated by this argument;

Yesterday at the Strand theatre I performed and sang a poem for several
hundred of the senior managers of BBC Worldwide at their uarterly review,
which the Director of BBC Worldwide has asked me to write - his PR guy had
sent a message to my desk at the top gear website that he would like a poem
for the review and he let me perform it there without even having seen it
(even though he normally insists on picture approval of every slide of every
managers presentation? Why do I mention this and why is it relevant that a
Production Assistant can get up and be cheered (and paid!) for saying so
many of the things that others would love to say, but can't, because they
are too close to the "top" and have too much to lose? Because I think
firstly that the laughter and energy that the performance evoked bears
testimony to the fact that the role of the Fool is alive and well.

Rhyming with the enemy perhaps? It's an idea I used to hold too, until I
had performed by show "Lipstick is a Spiritual Experience" to so many
different kinds of people (as I said once before on this list) from Managers
of Airmiles to Monks in Kensington, that I realised the old truism - the
enemy is in the eye of the beholder, the enemy is within us all, even the
most Bad and Wicked type of organisational structure is full, surprise,
surprise of Human beings on their own journey, all in different ways and to
different degrees capable of resonating with beauty and the truth that
resonates from heart to heart.

In the same way as St Francis of Assisi walked through the armed camps of
Crusaders who had come to bash the "infidel" and sat in friendly discussion
with the Moslem Sultan, unharmed and unharming, because he carried so little
pride and animosity in his heart, so we too surely should be willing to have
faith in all people around us and be as non attached as possible to the
response of our heart and head honed communications that we call poetry.

I've worked in charities, I've worked in social services, I've worked as a
teacher and I've worked in big business and in the arts as well as in
religious organisations and in all of them I wrote and performed poems and
songs for the people I met, and I never found that any corporation was the
Ultimate Ally of Truth and Beauty and neither was it the Ultimate Enemy of
all things poetic.

I see poetry as a kind of manure. A kind of baby bio that you can nourish
roots with .....I saw a Zen quote the other day that said those who speak
too much of zen stink of zen. I think that sometimes the same can be said
of poetry.

Yesterday the manager who came on after my poetry bit said "that was Sarah
de Nordwall, she works for beeb.com, she's BBC Worldwide's first poet in
residence. First I'd heard of it! Still, I'm back at my desk today
answering e-mails for Topgear and putting up Webcams on the Holiday website,
and who knows what will come of it all, but isn't that the adventure? To
see how far trying to understand where the seeds of what one finds ugly come
from and trying to have the humility to realise that they are within us too.
I haven't even begun to say half of what I wanted, and I don't know about
you, but my prose always seems to come out a bit smug and easy peasy
sounding and only poems capture the real anguish that these kind of tensions
to evoke - perhaps that's part of their value...I finish with a short poem I
wrote a few years ago:

Blood Real

Those who reflect on idealisations
In spite of themselves, commit brutalisations

But Jonah, consumed in the guts of the whale
Found guts of his own
when spewed out small and pale

And staggered
But firm
On the ground he could feel,

Found God
Though in heaven
On earth
Is
Blood Real.

Sarah de Nordwall

In conclusion the question of Career and Vocation, like the issue of
Survival and Justice are like the two poles that hold up the tightrope, and
all I can say is "Long may we dance on it and if we fall, we fall!"

But here's hoping we don't and that other people enjoy paying for a look!

Best wishes

Sarah

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask] [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 18 May 1999 04:48
> To: British poets
> Subject: Re: plus meliorator
>
> >I suppose I
> >want a neutral sense of careerist: the attitude of someone who works hard
> >and aspires to further their career, and who conceives of this commitment
> >as central to their intentions.
>
> How is this neutral?
>
> The sense of careering, as in a car out of control down a cliff, seems
> more applicable to poetry.
>
> The idea of a "career" in poetry puzzles me. How, really, is it
> possible? It's not like being an public servant, with the hierachy all
> spread neatly before you, a series of possible promotions in a logical
> progression towards executive nirvana. Not that this really happens any
> more in these days of decadent corporatism, as no doubt Chris would point
> out... Indeed, ambition and career can be sharply opposing things, and
> one might choose a course, in the service of one's ambitions for poetry,
> as Doug clearly has, that can make absolutely no sense if all a central
> aim is a "career". I really don't understand - perhaps it's a failure of
> imagination - how a career can be a reason for writing poems.
>
> In order to survive and write poetry, you have to compromise, to sup with
> the devil with as long a spoon as possible. You have to buy time: you
> have to deal with systems which are structured by assumptions that
> writing poetry is a complete waste of resources and that poetry itself is
> valueless (despite, often, rhetoric otherwise). These things always
> come back to the pragmatics of money: if you have children, as I do, then
> the dilemma can become pressing - why should they suffer because their
> parents are writers and refuse to do some things that could buy them new
> shoes? How do you justify what you are doing? It's a real question,
> and the (lying) romantic truism that artists should forgo the trivia,
> drudgery, insights and commitments of domestic lives - part of the sexism
> to which Doug is alluding - is simply an evasion of that question. All
> that is a bit close to home at the moment for me.
>
> It brings a lot of pressure to bear on the poetry itself - it had better
> be worth it. I suppose at this point is when questions of "career" enter
> very precisely. You can choose to fulfil all the expected duties for the
> expected reasons, and maybe you might make some money. You can choose to
> employ a bit of rat cunning, with the assumption that the die are loaded
> against you, and attempt to subvert what possibilities are present, which
> I guess is my approach. But whatever you might gain, however you
> approach it, is such small beer and so meaningless! What has it to do
> with poetry? Why not continue with the ideal of a "true poetic life",
> whatever that may mean, pursued and preserved through the mess and
> compromise of the business of life? If not, wouldn't it be more honest
> just to stop? That's what I don't understand: if you're going to behave
> as if you were climbing a corporate ladder, knives, plots, hypocrisies
> and all, why not, in all seriousness, just be an accountant? or whatever?
> (No disrepect to accountants, whose arcane arts are way beyond me).
> Whatever you do, you can't pretend to be beyond the pressures that
> afflict everyone else, and you can't not take them into account. You
> are, whether you like it or not, always stepping through "the enemy's
> country". But you don't have to become the enemy.
>
> Maybe women are more used to such stepping.
>
> >It's all men
> >talking to men in a way that seems to include women but in practice
> >evidently
> >doesn't; and the problem is that the men literally can't see why not.
>
> I appreciate Doug's comments, and especially his consciousness of the
> difficulties of making them, and the reasons for Alice Notley's
> withdrawal! Sometimes I find the list's dilemmas with "the woman
> question" quite comic: the issue of gender turns up like a kind of uneasy
> tic. I don't doubt the good faith of much of the questioning: but the
> questions that are asked often seem to suggest that women are only
> visible to many of the men on the list when they are talking about women
> and gender. I can't think of a better method of erasure. I have read
> messages from Mairead, Anne, Ivy, Pam, Tracy and others - are people
> saying they don't post? What happens when women do post? There are good
> reasons for women feeling shy and hesitant or uninterested or plain
> stubbornly negative about engaging in certain conversations. You're
> damned if you do and damned if you don't.
>
> Personally, I've been well conditioned by my father to expect nothing,
> since he has never listened to anything I've said. You can speak louder
> and louder or say nothing at all. Either is a trap. Even worse, I know
> it's a trap. Consciousness of one's situation is no solution.
>
> Chris suggested that women go off and take their own spaces. We do,
> routinely. It's a method of survival.
>
> Best
>
> Alison
>
> Home Page: http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/bronte/338
> Masthead online: http://www.geocities.com/soho/studios/5662
>
> Alison Croggon
> PO Box 186
> Newport VIC 3015
> Australia


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