quick reviews: the dark would preview
Taking place way back on 6 February, the preview event for The Dark Would seems a long way away. The anthology is not yet here, but not far off.
The Dark Would is a large, significant anthology of text art from a number of poets and visual artists, edited by Philip Davenport. There is a thick print edition, and an even larger (1000 pages, we've been told) Kindle edition.
The preview comprised a selection of images on a video loop before and after the main event, a copy of the dummy print edition (though some editing of images remained to be done), two performances, and a kind of mini-symposium.
Steven Fowler has a good review of the event, and video at his blog. Read it, he'll probably make more sense than me. Steven's video of Tim Atkins' reading at the event (the video from the event not in the blogpost) is here. Again, Steven's YouTube channel is worth subscribing too if you're at all interested in contemporary experimental poetry.
The event opened with some initial remarks from Philip Davenport, who appeared considerably lightened to be reaching the end of such a huge undertaking. He spoke about how there are currently both poets and visual artists using text as material, and how the book was engaging in a dialogue with those parties.
I'm sure he could have spoken all night about issues raised by the book - and hopefully when the physical and virtual volumes make their appearance he'll have the opportunity to expand on some of those.
From my perspective I'd say that there are also a number of poets who engage in visual work, from asemic writing through to photo collages and various points in between and beyond. As Philip noted in passing computers and the internet have become great enablers, in both the creation of work, and the dissemination of that work. Communities and individuals previously relatively isolated can now exchange work and influence in seconds.
One of my concerns was how The Dark Would might differentiate itself from The Last Vispo, superficially a very similar recent undertaking. But where The Last Vispo has a narrow focus on visual poets within a particular time-frame, offering certain broad themes and critical overviews, The Dark Would is a (slightly more current) snapshot of text art. That includes poets who would not usually be identified as visual or concrete poets, and visual artists.
There is certainly room for both books, not to mention the collection Abstract Comics, some of whose practitioners are visual/concrete poets, and the various recent text anthologies looking at aspects of contemporary experimental poetry.
Then Tim Atkins read a poem called They which he dedicated to Anselm Hollo. This was a long piece that rewards revisiting. At first it seems like a simple accumulative and repetitive piece. A mass of words thrown out. And certainly there is that to it. But there seem to be echoes of other work there, and a lot more to it than just permutations and the odd funny line.
I would like to be more illuminating, but my critical writing about poetry has always been less effective than that on music, film, or visual art. Especially in the last five years as I have moved further away from text poetry.
Tim was followed by the mini-symposium in which Philip spoke with Becky Cremin, Carol Watts, and Liz Collini. Each talked initially about their antecedents and route into their current practice.
They then went on to talk about their respective practices, though in Carol Watts' case she spent more time discussing issues raised in her essay on Richard Long. Both the essay, and some of Long's work are part of the anthology.
The fact of this panel discussion, the presence of the essays, and Carol Watt's exploration of her essay on Long were all heartening in retrospect. I think it's important, if current experimental practices are to resist letting others define them (or even belittle them as happened with with so much concrete poetry), that practitioners and participants as readers/audience set their own critical agendas.
This is especially important in developing new vocabularies and ways of depicting work, of helping readers find a way in, when so much of what is produced is new and unfamiliar. This is a particular risk where there are already established critical vocabularies that are very well developed for writing about the kind of poetry that would have been easily recognised as such 150 years ago but ill-suited to the challenges of more contemporary practices.
But anyway, play the video, listen to the discussion, it's fascinating.
To end the evening Becky Cremin and Ryan Ormonde performed part of a text they created collaboratively. As far as I know there's no video of the performance. The performance used the space of the poetry library to translate aspects of the original circumstances of creating the poem from opposite sides of the Thames. The text used repeated phrases and words.
For me one of the most striking aspects of the performance was its durational nature. The fact that it went on past the point where less confident artists might have stopped. There was a purpose to this, the language gradually broke apart to single words. Almost more a reflexive reiteration of an event than the event itself.
I wish I remembered the performance more clearly, and had more to say about it. I have an awful lot of respect for the work the two of them do, and think they are among the artists in the contemporary experimental poetry scene who should get a lot more attention - both from audiences and critics - than they do.
The Dark Would is a large, significant anthology of text art from a number of poets and visual artists, edited by Philip Davenport. There is a thick print edition, and an even larger (1000 pages, we've been told) Kindle edition.
The preview comprised a selection of images on a video loop before and after the main event, a copy of the dummy print edition (though some editing of images remained to be done), two performances, and a kind of mini-symposium.
Steven Fowler has a good review of the event, and video at his blog. Read it, he'll probably make more sense than me. Steven's video of Tim Atkins' reading at the event (the video from the event not in the blogpost) is here. Again, Steven's YouTube channel is worth subscribing too if you're at all interested in contemporary experimental poetry.
The event opened with some initial remarks from Philip Davenport, who appeared considerably lightened to be reaching the end of such a huge undertaking. He spoke about how there are currently both poets and visual artists using text as material, and how the book was engaging in a dialogue with those parties.
I'm sure he could have spoken all night about issues raised by the book - and hopefully when the physical and virtual volumes make their appearance he'll have the opportunity to expand on some of those.
From my perspective I'd say that there are also a number of poets who engage in visual work, from asemic writing through to photo collages and various points in between and beyond. As Philip noted in passing computers and the internet have become great enablers, in both the creation of work, and the dissemination of that work. Communities and individuals previously relatively isolated can now exchange work and influence in seconds.
One of my concerns was how The Dark Would might differentiate itself from The Last Vispo, superficially a very similar recent undertaking. But where The Last Vispo has a narrow focus on visual poets within a particular time-frame, offering certain broad themes and critical overviews, The Dark Would is a (slightly more current) snapshot of text art. That includes poets who would not usually be identified as visual or concrete poets, and visual artists.
There is certainly room for both books, not to mention the collection Abstract Comics, some of whose practitioners are visual/concrete poets, and the various recent text anthologies looking at aspects of contemporary experimental poetry.
Then Tim Atkins read a poem called They which he dedicated to Anselm Hollo. This was a long piece that rewards revisiting. At first it seems like a simple accumulative and repetitive piece. A mass of words thrown out. And certainly there is that to it. But there seem to be echoes of other work there, and a lot more to it than just permutations and the odd funny line.
I would like to be more illuminating, but my critical writing about poetry has always been less effective than that on music, film, or visual art. Especially in the last five years as I have moved further away from text poetry.
Tim was followed by the mini-symposium in which Philip spoke with Becky Cremin, Carol Watts, and Liz Collini. Each talked initially about their antecedents and route into their current practice.
They then went on to talk about their respective practices, though in Carol Watts' case she spent more time discussing issues raised in her essay on Richard Long. Both the essay, and some of Long's work are part of the anthology.
The fact of this panel discussion, the presence of the essays, and Carol Watt's exploration of her essay on Long were all heartening in retrospect. I think it's important, if current experimental practices are to resist letting others define them (or even belittle them as happened with with so much concrete poetry), that practitioners and participants as readers/audience set their own critical agendas.
This is especially important in developing new vocabularies and ways of depicting work, of helping readers find a way in, when so much of what is produced is new and unfamiliar. This is a particular risk where there are already established critical vocabularies that are very well developed for writing about the kind of poetry that would have been easily recognised as such 150 years ago but ill-suited to the challenges of more contemporary practices.
But anyway, play the video, listen to the discussion, it's fascinating.
To end the evening Becky Cremin and Ryan Ormonde performed part of a text they created collaboratively. As far as I know there's no video of the performance. The performance used the space of the poetry library to translate aspects of the original circumstances of creating the poem from opposite sides of the Thames. The text used repeated phrases and words.
For me one of the most striking aspects of the performance was its durational nature. The fact that it went on past the point where less confident artists might have stopped. There was a purpose to this, the language gradually broke apart to single words. Almost more a reflexive reiteration of an event than the event itself.
I wish I remembered the performance more clearly, and had more to say about it. I have an awful lot of respect for the work the two of them do, and think they are among the artists in the contemporary experimental poetry scene who should get a lot more attention - both from audiences and critics - than they do.
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