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Geraldine wrote: Answers on a postcard please.
The shopping list story proves the old adage: poets are not born but drunk.
cheers
PS: when does the residency in Sainsbury's start?

-----Original Message-----
From: Geraldine Monk <[log in to unmask]>
To: british poets <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: british poets <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 24 February 2000 13:23
Subject: lyric


>    David Bromige writes: 'the mass accumulation of a different application
>that open up or in your (Stephen Pain's)mind or that of Alan Halsey
slackens
>(the definition of 'lyric'')).   I think Stephen and Alan have argued the
>point excellently and I side with them. So the 'mass accumulation' is
>issuing forth from a couple of mailbasers (Alison and Billy) which I
suppose
>would give them a victory if they were after being the Labour Mayor of
>London.
>            The only almost definite we've got from this so far is that a
>lyric poem is short.  Well I call that a 'short poem' this is not 'purist'
>it is self explanatory and serves its purpose without being didactic and
>surely that is the greatest irony of all, by seeking to define so much as
>'lyric' the term at best becomes redundant but at worst becomes
>prescriptive.  It snatches away the writer's right not to be closed in and
>shut down by inappropriate terminology.  We have spent so much time trying
>to rid ourselves of junk labels (i.e. labels which tie our creative
>adventuring by insisting that it is something that it isn't) why are some
of
>us clamouring to reinstate them?
>        As for music well yes anything can be put to music.  I've mixed my
>work with  musicians for years but that doesn't make my poems 'lyrics' or
>suddenly transform me into a lyric poet. Apart from a couple of maybes i.e.
>'short' poems it just ain't and I will willing eat hay with a scabby donkey
>if anyone can convince me otherwise.
>        As a coda think on this oh ye compulsive labellers.  At a party,
>which of course means well-oiled in someone's kitchen, I picked up a
>shopping list on the table and proceeded to read/sing it and gave one of
the
>best performances of my life.
>Would you elevate that shopping list to a. a performance poem.
>                                                                   b. a
>lyric poem
>                                                                   c.  a
>sound poem
>                                                                   d.  a
>performance text
>                                                                   e.  a
>shopping list
>Answers on a postcard.
>Geraldine
>





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