unconventional poetics
I was going to start with an interesting question that came up during the last session of this semester and year, but then realised that the whole premise of the question would come out of the blue unless you'd been really assiduously following up every link posted recently and reading the posts pretty closely. So I will give you the question, but there'll also have to be a lot of context to follow.
We were discussing generally as a group the upcoming third and fourth semesters. In the third semester starting in October we will be looking at performance and voice. How people perform, where they perform, what kind of work is performed, to what kind of audiences, and how (if at all) we see ourselves fitting into the world of performance. In the fourth semester, on context, we have to find a placement (or placements) where we see how creative writing fits into the wider world. For instance: writer-in-residence, writing as therapy, internships at publishers, running poetry magazines or performance events, etc.
Our tutor asked me, 'Given the kind of writing you're interested in, have you thought about what kind of context you might be looking at?' It was an interesting question, and my response was that while I'd been thinking about it I wasn't really sure. The trouble was that a lot of the people I'd been reading are academics and seem to work primarily within that academic context, rather than doing readings in pubs for instance. With some of the writers the work really wasn't amenable to performance, and was better suited to exposition at seminars and symposiums. I thought that I might well find myself looking at an art context.
Around the beginning of the semster I started to read a lot more poetry than I had been recently. Among the books I tracked down was one you'll be familiar with if you're a close reader of santiago's dead wasp, Fig by Caroline Bergvall. Although it is more interesting and experimental than the majority of poetry books I have, I was initially resistant to some of the strategies used, and couldn't really see much point in some of them. But I found that I was writing more in my logbook about the issues raised by this collection than anything else I'd come across. There were two immediate results from this: Caroline Bergvall became the point of comparison with my own work in the commentary for the semester, and I started to research what other writers are doing at present in fields like concrete and visual poetry, sound poetry, constrained writing and other areas, of which more later. I found myself reading (or listening to, or looking at, or just reading discussions of) work by a number of practitioners who were new to me: Bob Cobbing, Dick Higgins, Henri Chopin, Kenneth Goldsmith, Christian Bök, Derek Beaulieu and others. Some of the names drawn into this wider conception of literary art were already familiar, like Carolee Schneeman and John Cage. Others, like Marjorie Perloff, have featured more as critics than practitioners in my reading so far.
Some of this reading is in the links in this post, but more can be found in the recent post poetry link frenzy and in a collection santiago managed to pick up from an online seller for £23 with post and packing - Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry in two volumes, each over 800 pages.
Some very broad definitions of the poetics mentioned above, and encountered in the last few months:
Concrete Poetry can also be described as pattern or shape poetry. Although the history goes back centuries in many languages, it's more associated with twentieth century poetics. Essentially the typographic shape of the poem is as important - or more important than the more conventional linguistic effects. It may be that words are wholly detached from any recognisable semantic context.
Visual Poetry is often used interchangeably with concrete poetry, but there seems to be a strong body of opinion that they are distinct. Visual poetry seems to be much closer to visual art practices, and the text may be a minor part of the work. It may often be altogether obscure.
Sound Poetry crudely you could say sound poetry is the audio analogue of visual poetry.
Constrained Writing overlaps with a number of these poetics. Essentially constrained writing is where limitations are placed on the author, which frequently have the effect of dictating how the work is generated, and may completely remove any personal choice or expression from the author. This practice can be found in Oulipo work, and in Kenneth Goldsmith's uncreative writing.
Conceptual Writing seems to be writing which favours formal restraints, and a rejection of self-expression. There is certainly an overlap with constrained writing. Personally I'd recommend you follow the link and read the essay.
Mail Art is a form of art using the postal system. Letters, cards, and objects are exchanged, bypassing other methods of dissemination, although much work can be viewed online. Again this is an area that's very new to me, so follow the earlier link, and this one, to get a handle on it for yourself.
Apologies for any duplicates of previous links.
So it was a fair question. I've become interested in aspects of poetry that I was not really aware of previously. The main contexts for this kind of work appear to be visual and performance art, and the academic world, neither of which I have any background in. Therefore when we look at voice, and when we come to place ourselves in the wider world, I am going to find it a greater challenge. You will of course be kept up to date with every tedious detail.
We were discussing generally as a group the upcoming third and fourth semesters. In the third semester starting in October we will be looking at performance and voice. How people perform, where they perform, what kind of work is performed, to what kind of audiences, and how (if at all) we see ourselves fitting into the world of performance. In the fourth semester, on context, we have to find a placement (or placements) where we see how creative writing fits into the wider world. For instance: writer-in-residence, writing as therapy, internships at publishers, running poetry magazines or performance events, etc.
Our tutor asked me, 'Given the kind of writing you're interested in, have you thought about what kind of context you might be looking at?' It was an interesting question, and my response was that while I'd been thinking about it I wasn't really sure. The trouble was that a lot of the people I'd been reading are academics and seem to work primarily within that academic context, rather than doing readings in pubs for instance. With some of the writers the work really wasn't amenable to performance, and was better suited to exposition at seminars and symposiums. I thought that I might well find myself looking at an art context.
Around the beginning of the semster I started to read a lot more poetry than I had been recently. Among the books I tracked down was one you'll be familiar with if you're a close reader of santiago's dead wasp, Fig by Caroline Bergvall. Although it is more interesting and experimental than the majority of poetry books I have, I was initially resistant to some of the strategies used, and couldn't really see much point in some of them. But I found that I was writing more in my logbook about the issues raised by this collection than anything else I'd come across. There were two immediate results from this: Caroline Bergvall became the point of comparison with my own work in the commentary for the semester, and I started to research what other writers are doing at present in fields like concrete and visual poetry, sound poetry, constrained writing and other areas, of which more later. I found myself reading (or listening to, or looking at, or just reading discussions of) work by a number of practitioners who were new to me: Bob Cobbing, Dick Higgins, Henri Chopin, Kenneth Goldsmith, Christian Bök, Derek Beaulieu and others. Some of the names drawn into this wider conception of literary art were already familiar, like Carolee Schneeman and John Cage. Others, like Marjorie Perloff, have featured more as critics than practitioners in my reading so far.
Some of this reading is in the links in this post, but more can be found in the recent post poetry link frenzy and in a collection santiago managed to pick up from an online seller for £23 with post and packing - Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry in two volumes, each over 800 pages.
Some very broad definitions of the poetics mentioned above, and encountered in the last few months:
Concrete Poetry can also be described as pattern or shape poetry. Although the history goes back centuries in many languages, it's more associated with twentieth century poetics. Essentially the typographic shape of the poem is as important - or more important than the more conventional linguistic effects. It may be that words are wholly detached from any recognisable semantic context.
Visual Poetry is often used interchangeably with concrete poetry, but there seems to be a strong body of opinion that they are distinct. Visual poetry seems to be much closer to visual art practices, and the text may be a minor part of the work. It may often be altogether obscure.
Sound Poetry crudely you could say sound poetry is the audio analogue of visual poetry.
Constrained Writing overlaps with a number of these poetics. Essentially constrained writing is where limitations are placed on the author, which frequently have the effect of dictating how the work is generated, and may completely remove any personal choice or expression from the author. This practice can be found in Oulipo work, and in Kenneth Goldsmith's uncreative writing.
Conceptual Writing seems to be writing which favours formal restraints, and a rejection of self-expression. There is certainly an overlap with constrained writing. Personally I'd recommend you follow the link and read the essay.
Mail Art is a form of art using the postal system. Letters, cards, and objects are exchanged, bypassing other methods of dissemination, although much work can be viewed online. Again this is an area that's very new to me, so follow the earlier link, and this one, to get a handle on it for yourself.
Apologies for any duplicates of previous links.
So it was a fair question. I've become interested in aspects of poetry that I was not really aware of previously. The main contexts for this kind of work appear to be visual and performance art, and the academic world, neither of which I have any background in. Therefore when we look at voice, and when we come to place ourselves in the wider world, I am going to find it a greater challenge. You will of course be kept up to date with every tedious detail.
Comments