matt vs poetry part 4235

This was originally intended to be a review of the last Other Room reading. Unfortunately it kept getting delayed to the point where I don't have a clear memory of the evening. Revisiting the text written immediately after the night, up to and including the paragraph beginning 'In fact the body...' also showed that it was at least as much about my practice as the actual night.

So, starting with the next paragraph here are my original thoughts and some additional notes.

There were two moments during The Other Room that perhaps indicate why I write so little these days.

First. I was staring out of the window as Karen Mac Cormack read a poem that juxtaposed at least two or three strands - each interrupting the other, one apparently using found text. This isn't a particularly novel idea - even without having read any innovative poetry I did the same thing less well fifteen years ago. In that instance drawing from films, music and novels for guidance.

The only reason this personal example is relevant is that it's what I was thinking about as I watched the clouds and listened to the poem. Specifically I was trying to figure out why when I attempt something similar it's usually so poor, whereas other writers succeed. I have no answer, other than they're better writers.

Obviously this meant that I wasn't really paying that much attention and kept losing track of the poem. A similar thing often happens when I'm reading poetry from the page. It reduces to a rhythm and the occasional word that interests me, sometimes to the extent of making me go back a few lines and read more carefully.

Second. Steve McCaffery read a poem which describes what it does, then subjects one of Shakespeare's sonnets to reordering. I think similar to the Burrows-Wheeler transform - but I didn't take notes and my mathematical/scientific knowledge is too poor to do a useful search.

The result of this reordering was strings of letters and punctuation. Reading letter by letter - essentially repeating a single letter over and over again - had a curious effect. Aided by the mic and amplifier - and by the resonant alcove in the window where performers usually stand - the sounds became abstract. Not just stripped of conventional meaning but no longer like the human voice. Neither speech nor song.

This was incredibly exciting. In a physical, visceral way that Karen Mac Cormack's work - good as it is - just couldn't get close to. For me at least.

Spoken words however well re-contextualised and juxtaposed simply interest me less than the aural impact of repetition, resonance and amplification.

In fact the body as an instrument of rhythm, as a sound making object, as something which itself can make beautiful shapes or be used to create beautiful shapes from other material, fascinates me. This is not a rejection of mind. Mind allows me to appreciate the body and what it can do. Mind allows us to create and to appreciate art.

But my preference for one over the other is telling - both in terms of the art that really catches my attention and in the work I produce.

To be honest I find it both more attractive and easier to enjoy and create work that engages me in a physical way or has interesting effects on my senses.

Text hasn't completely gone away. A few months ago I completed my stamp poem ) TH GOOD /OLD W~AY, from Saturday I'll start tamlyn - my durational performative piece incorporating text for Manchester Art Crawl, and I recently completed my first text poem created and approached as such in over a year.

Writing the text poem was essentially an unrewarding experience even though initial comments suggest it might be broadly successful. The process is too conscious and static, at too many removes from lived experience to be natural or comfortable to me.

That doesn't mean goodbye to text. I still blog quite a lot - although generally not poetry - and I will use text in visual and sound pieces. But I am beginning to realise exactly how far I've moved away from text in the last three and a half years, and especially in the last 18 months. It seems unlikely now that I'll ever return to being primarily a writer.