mIEKAL - I know of a couple of phds being done on Cobbing at the moment, and he gets taught on the courses run by Tim Atkins, Jeff Hilson and Dell Olsen, at least. As Robert and Scott both came through Writers Forum, I'd say there's a fairly good chance he'll be in the British & Irish Journal at some point (hell, I've got a half-written piece on him somewhere on my hard-drive, maybe I'll fix it up . . . . ). But from what I can tell, the situation for any interesting/adventurous work within academia is not that great over here, and only taught in certain isolated pockets. Its why I think the journal is a good thing.
Sean
http://abandonedbuildings.blogspot.com/
--- On Fri, 23/10/09, mIEKAL aND <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: mIEKAL aND <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry launch at Birkbeck (Weds 21st October 2009)
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Friday, 23 October, 2009, 11:11 PM
Ian—Yr to be lauded for taking a stab at writing about visual poetry, I would love to read it sometime (or better yet make it accessible to the SPIDERTANGLE mailing list, which has several hundred vispoets listening in).
As far as I know there are no academic magazines devoted to vispo (tho Visible Language did a number of special issues) or for that matter there are only a couple folks I know that teach an occasional class in vispo. Compare that to the reception that language & post language writing has in US universities. Part of the issue as I see it is the the literary folks don't think it's poetry & the art folks don't think it's art. As far as I can tell visual poetry's best reception has been in the new media departments where it's seen as an antecedent to interactive media arts.
I mean after all, how many universities in the UK are teaching Cobbing?
~mIEKAL
On Oct 23, 2009, at 12:17 PM, ian davidson wrote:
"I completely take your point about visual poetry tho: a criminally marginalised area. absolutely.
Sean"
Sean and Miekal
Without a glimmer of self promotion there's a whole chapter on visual poetry in my recent book Ideas of Space in Contemporary Poetry. And there have been a couple of pretty high profile exhibitions in london, and one in glasgow I think?
There are some more specialist books about by Joanna Drucker which are pretty good.
But I do agree, it does get marginalised, and endless primary school teachers getting children to write poems in the shape of a christmas tree doesn't help. it's nearly that time of year again.
Do you want to say anything about your visual practice Sean? Or the visual nature of your poems?
Ian
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:53:57 +0000
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry launch at Birkbeck (Weds 21st October 2009)
To: [log in to unmask]
Hi mIEKAL // what I was trying get at was what I understood to be Jeff's claim that academic commentary on poetry would necessarily limit it. When I said it 'reflects the liveliness of the scene' I meant that academic interest comes about because there's a range of practices (outside the university) that academics are interested to write about, and so rather than academic writing being prescriptive, its hopefully a commentary on whats already happening.
I completely take your point about visual poetry tho: a criminally marginalised area. absolutely.
Sean
http://abandonedbuildings.blogspot.com/
--- On Fri, 23/10/09, mIEKAL aND <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: mIEKAL aND <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry launch at Birkbeck (Weds 21st October 2009)
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Friday, 23 October, 2009, 2:14 PM
Sean, normally I find myself agreeing with your comments but this one has me scratching my head. I'll give you an example that has perplexed my community of practitioners seemingly forever. Visual Poetry has an extremely vibrant & endless interesting field of production, with work by hundreds of artist going back 50 years, yet there has been an almost complete hands off from academia, except for the occasional one off. Perhaps yr speaking to the specific scene yr a part of & I'm missing the point.
~mIEKAL
On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 6:38 AM, Sean Bonney <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Poetry is not getting 'hedged in' by academia. Academic interest reflects the liveliness of the scene in general.
