"At one level the poem-as-notebook seeks to establish some kind of authenticity and immediacy. The poem becomes the record of its own growth, form replicating the sudden shifts of attention in a desultory speculation. But at a more complex level such emphasis on the process rather than the product of writing dissolves boundaries between literature as artifact and literature as daily record... The notebook, rather than being the source for materials used retrospectively, is the activity of and for that day. Writing and living are so closely united that incidents like shopping or doing the wash merge imperceptibly with the act of writing about them."
(Michael Davidson, 'Palimtexts', in Postmodern Genres, ed. Marjorie Perloff, 90)
Saturday, 5 January 2013
Thursday, 13 December 2012
Dalkey Archive Press Call for Submissions!
The Editors just saw this tasty bit of literary history in the making. John O'Brien, founder and editor in chief of world-renowned leftfield literary press the Dalkey Archive Press, has published his first prose-poem! Titled 'Employment', the work runs with an unusually playful and aggressive tone, deploying a well-known corporate formal structure to deconstruct rising unemployment rates in recession-hit Western economies. It is also, we believe, a covertly ingenious approach to the unremittingly boring tradition of calls for submissions.
We reproduce the piece in full here, assuming it to be published under a creative commons licence. However, you may wish to read it at source, to verify whether we have taken it out of context.
====
December 11, 2012
Dalkey Archive Press has begun the process of succession from the founder and current publisher, John O'Brien, to a publishing house that will be directed by two-three people along with support staff. With the recent decision to expand our London office and make London the base of European operations, the Press seeks to develop its staff there. Who will take on leadership positions at the Press over the next few years will be the result of this transitional process. The pool of candidates for positions will be primarily derived from unpaid interns in the first phase of this process, although one or two people may be appointed with short-term paid contracts.
The Press is looking for promising candidates with an appropriate background who: have already demonstrated a strong interest in literary publishing; are very well read in literature in general and Dalkey Archive books in particular; are highly motivated and ambitious; are determined to have a career in publishing and will sacrifice to make that career happen; are willing to start off at a low-level salary and work their way upwards; possess multi-dimensional skills that will be applied to work at the Press; look forward to undergoing a rigorous and challenging probationary period either as an intern or employee; want to work at Dalkey Archive Press doing whatever is required of them to make the Press succeed; do not have any other commitments (personal or professional) that will interfere with their work at the Press (family obligations, writing, involvement with other organizations, degrees to be finished, holidays to be taken, weddings to attend in Rio, etc.); know how to act and behave in a professional office environment with high standards of performance; and who have a commitment to excellence that can be demonstrated on a day-to-day basis. DO NOT APPLY IF ALL OF THE ABOVE DOES NOT DESCRIBE YOU.
We certainly seek people with relevant experience, but just as important or more so, we seek people who know what a job is, are able to learn quickly, are dedicated to doing excellent work, can meet all deadlines, and happily take on whatever needs to be done. Attitude and work habits, along with various skills, are just as important as experience and knowledge.
Any of the following will be grounds for immediate dismissal during the probationary period: coming in late or leaving early without prior permission; being unavailable at night or on the weekends; failing to meet any goals; giving unsolicited advice about how to run things; taking personal phone calls during work hours; gossiping; misusing company property, including surfing the internet while at work; submission of poorly written materials; creating an atmosphere of complaint or argument; failing to respond to emails in a timely way; not showing an interest in other aspects of publishing beyond editorial; making repeated mistakes; violating company policies. DO NOT APPLY if you have a work history containing any of the above.
The areas of work for which the Press seeks candidates are the following, perhaps in the order of importance, but with all initially being equal to one another, and in the order that have the most promise for long-term employment:
1. Personal Assistant to the Publisher, part of which will be to learn how to raise funds for the Press, travel with the Publisher to other countries when necessary, meet all key authors the Press publishes, learn the history of the Press and its culture, work closely with all of those the Publisher must work with, be a liaison between the Publisher and other staff, know what the Publisher needs or wants before he does; in brief, do whatever the publisher needs done so that he can concentrate on major projects that this person will also be involved in; this is best suited for a younger person who wants to learn publishing directly from a founder;
2. Development/fundraising: maintain a fundraising/grant-writing schedule/calendar; write all grants and make solicitations from individuals; develop an annual fundraising plan; travel to meet funders;
3. Office Manager: keeping of financial records and ensuring all bills are paid in a timely manner; coordination of intern staff; generating weekly cash flow statements; ensuring timely responses to all website requests; day-to-day assignments from Director as assigned; doing all and everything that will make work for others easier;
4. Production/layout/design: manage all aspects of the production schedule, ensuring pub dates are held firm; layout of all Dalkey Archive books; work with printers; create promotional materials; work closely with designers and may also do design work;
5. Editor: assist publisher with contracts and acquisitions; generate reader reports; copy-edit; proofread;
6. Publicist: arrange for reviews/publicity and plan events for Dalkey Archive books and authors;
7. Marketing Manager: liaise with the Press's distributor, WW Norton & Co.; work with the Press’s publicist to ensure publicity increases sales; develop marketing plans;
8. Web Manager: maintain the Press’s website and update content as needed.
By the end of--or even sooner--of the internship/trial period, both the candidate and the Publisher should know that the Press needs the person and would be making a major mistake not to maintain the person for the future.
Applications will be ongoing, and internships/positions will be filled when and if the right people are found. Candidates should assume a start date of mid-to-late January, depending upon which position is being applied for. Early applications are encouraged so that you will not be disappointed a position has already been filled.
To apply, send the following to John O’Brien, o.brien@dalkeyarchive.com : a letter explaining the basis of interest in the position, why you want to work at Dalkey Archive Press, why you're qualified, and why we would be foolish--in light of your knowledge, skills, and experience--not to want you to be an important part of the Press. Also attach a current CV including three references and their contact details. Assume that you will begin to be evaluated as soon as your application arrives. And also assume that you will be one of the unpaid interns until you are ready to take on all the responsibilities of a position. Incomplete applications will not be considered.
We will not be able to acknowledge receipt of applications or provide feedback about your application. We will contact only those people whom we wish to ask further questions of or that we intend to interview. Do not contact us about your application.
Candidates from EU countries are encouraged, but if English is not your first language, you must have a very high level of both verbal and written skills.
====
Perhaps the language does become a little monotone about halfway through. And there's a lack of prosodic control, although this does speak to the relentlessness of the capitalist drive to accumulate and its unsustainability in a world littered with the carcasses of environmental exploitation, lives ruined by burn out on the treadmills of venture investing, and the casualties of shock doctrine.
It's a good thing to know that leftfield presses, even at the height of capitalist fundamentalism and the normalisation of structural violence by the powerful, even as the resistance to these mechanisms seems at its loudest in the chanting of not just the 99%, but the 2bn people on the planet living in poverty - it's good to know this bastion of literary experimentation and structural challenge, is upholding a long and, well, long, tradition of publishing house rigour and, well, rigour.
Clearly this is a call for submissions to a new magazine or anthology being launched by Dalkey Archive Press! It is probably called 'Recession'. The first issue invites creative responses on the theme of 'Employment', taking on the formal tropes of the job application, playing with the medium of the reference letter, the constraints of the curriculum vitae and the cover letter.
The Editors of G&P wholeheartedly encourage its readers to send in ten, or even twenty submissions to this exciting new project! For ourselves, we'll see if we can reach thirty applications, although you know how time-consuming these things are and we've a full time blogzine to run, which has already put paid to our personal lives, social skills and even allowed some of our leg muscles to atrophy.
We reproduce the piece in full here, assuming it to be published under a creative commons licence. However, you may wish to read it at source, to verify whether we have taken it out of context.
====
Employment
OPEN POSITIONS:
Dalkey Archive Press has begun the process of succession from the founder and current publisher, John O'Brien, to a publishing house that will be directed by two-three people along with support staff. With the recent decision to expand our London office and make London the base of European operations, the Press seeks to develop its staff there. Who will take on leadership positions at the Press over the next few years will be the result of this transitional process. The pool of candidates for positions will be primarily derived from unpaid interns in the first phase of this process, although one or two people may be appointed with short-term paid contracts.
The Press is looking for promising candidates with an appropriate background who: have already demonstrated a strong interest in literary publishing; are very well read in literature in general and Dalkey Archive books in particular; are highly motivated and ambitious; are determined to have a career in publishing and will sacrifice to make that career happen; are willing to start off at a low-level salary and work their way upwards; possess multi-dimensional skills that will be applied to work at the Press; look forward to undergoing a rigorous and challenging probationary period either as an intern or employee; want to work at Dalkey Archive Press doing whatever is required of them to make the Press succeed; do not have any other commitments (personal or professional) that will interfere with their work at the Press (family obligations, writing, involvement with other organizations, degrees to be finished, holidays to be taken, weddings to attend in Rio, etc.); know how to act and behave in a professional office environment with high standards of performance; and who have a commitment to excellence that can be demonstrated on a day-to-day basis. DO NOT APPLY IF ALL OF THE ABOVE DOES NOT DESCRIBE YOU.
We certainly seek people with relevant experience, but just as important or more so, we seek people who know what a job is, are able to learn quickly, are dedicated to doing excellent work, can meet all deadlines, and happily take on whatever needs to be done. Attitude and work habits, along with various skills, are just as important as experience and knowledge.
Any of the following will be grounds for immediate dismissal during the probationary period: coming in late or leaving early without prior permission; being unavailable at night or on the weekends; failing to meet any goals; giving unsolicited advice about how to run things; taking personal phone calls during work hours; gossiping; misusing company property, including surfing the internet while at work; submission of poorly written materials; creating an atmosphere of complaint or argument; failing to respond to emails in a timely way; not showing an interest in other aspects of publishing beyond editorial; making repeated mistakes; violating company policies. DO NOT APPLY if you have a work history containing any of the above.
The areas of work for which the Press seeks candidates are the following, perhaps in the order of importance, but with all initially being equal to one another, and in the order that have the most promise for long-term employment:
1. Personal Assistant to the Publisher, part of which will be to learn how to raise funds for the Press, travel with the Publisher to other countries when necessary, meet all key authors the Press publishes, learn the history of the Press and its culture, work closely with all of those the Publisher must work with, be a liaison between the Publisher and other staff, know what the Publisher needs or wants before he does; in brief, do whatever the publisher needs done so that he can concentrate on major projects that this person will also be involved in; this is best suited for a younger person who wants to learn publishing directly from a founder;
2. Development/fundraising: maintain a fundraising/grant-writing schedule/calendar; write all grants and make solicitations from individuals; develop an annual fundraising plan; travel to meet funders;
3. Office Manager: keeping of financial records and ensuring all bills are paid in a timely manner; coordination of intern staff; generating weekly cash flow statements; ensuring timely responses to all website requests; day-to-day assignments from Director as assigned; doing all and everything that will make work for others easier;
4. Production/layout/design: manage all aspects of the production schedule, ensuring pub dates are held firm; layout of all Dalkey Archive books; work with printers; create promotional materials; work closely with designers and may also do design work;
5. Editor: assist publisher with contracts and acquisitions; generate reader reports; copy-edit; proofread;
6. Publicist: arrange for reviews/publicity and plan events for Dalkey Archive books and authors;
7. Marketing Manager: liaise with the Press's distributor, WW Norton & Co.; work with the Press’s publicist to ensure publicity increases sales; develop marketing plans;
8. Web Manager: maintain the Press’s website and update content as needed.
By the end of--or even sooner--of the internship/trial period, both the candidate and the Publisher should know that the Press needs the person and would be making a major mistake not to maintain the person for the future.
Applications will be ongoing, and internships/positions will be filled when and if the right people are found. Candidates should assume a start date of mid-to-late January, depending upon which position is being applied for. Early applications are encouraged so that you will not be disappointed a position has already been filled.
To apply, send the following to John O’Brien, o.brien@dalkeyarchive.com : a letter explaining the basis of interest in the position, why you want to work at Dalkey Archive Press, why you're qualified, and why we would be foolish--in light of your knowledge, skills, and experience--not to want you to be an important part of the Press. Also attach a current CV including three references and their contact details. Assume that you will begin to be evaluated as soon as your application arrives. And also assume that you will be one of the unpaid interns until you are ready to take on all the responsibilities of a position. Incomplete applications will not be considered.
We will not be able to acknowledge receipt of applications or provide feedback about your application. We will contact only those people whom we wish to ask further questions of or that we intend to interview. Do not contact us about your application.
Candidates from EU countries are encouraged, but if English is not your first language, you must have a very high level of both verbal and written skills.
====
Perhaps the language does become a little monotone about halfway through. And there's a lack of prosodic control, although this does speak to the relentlessness of the capitalist drive to accumulate and its unsustainability in a world littered with the carcasses of environmental exploitation, lives ruined by burn out on the treadmills of venture investing, and the casualties of shock doctrine.
It's a good thing to know that leftfield presses, even at the height of capitalist fundamentalism and the normalisation of structural violence by the powerful, even as the resistance to these mechanisms seems at its loudest in the chanting of not just the 99%, but the 2bn people on the planet living in poverty - it's good to know this bastion of literary experimentation and structural challenge, is upholding a long and, well, long, tradition of publishing house rigour and, well, rigour.
Clearly this is a call for submissions to a new magazine or anthology being launched by Dalkey Archive Press! It is probably called 'Recession'. The first issue invites creative responses on the theme of 'Employment', taking on the formal tropes of the job application, playing with the medium of the reference letter, the constraints of the curriculum vitae and the cover letter.
The Editors of G&P wholeheartedly encourage its readers to send in ten, or even twenty submissions to this exciting new project! For ourselves, we'll see if we can reach thirty applications, although you know how time-consuming these things are and we've a full time blogzine to run, which has already put paid to our personal lives, social skills and even allowed some of our leg muscles to atrophy.
Wednesday, 21 November 2012
Palette and Page: form and OuLiPo
George Ttoouli ruminating like a ruminant on issues of poetic form...
I had an interesting argument with someone recently (Jonathan Skinner in fact, and I don't know whyI need to be reticent about his name, he's a man of vast intelligence), that led me to thinking whether form is different to constraint, or that shape is different to constraints. This in response to a discussion of Oulipian procedural constraints as different to traditional ideas of poetic form. I see these elements as contigently dependent, or overlapping, in the manner of a Venn diagram, to the point that those brief elements you might argue lie outside of the nearly-equalised sets of the two terms, in the manner of two spotlights not quite perfectly overlaid, could easily be accommodated into equalisation through a little bit of thinking.
I had an interesting argument with someone recently (Jonathan Skinner in fact, and I don't know whyI need to be reticent about his name, he's a man of vast intelligence), that led me to thinking whether form is different to constraint, or that shape is different to constraints. This in response to a discussion of Oulipian procedural constraints as different to traditional ideas of poetic form. I see these elements as contigently dependent, or overlapping, in the manner of a Venn diagram, to the point that those brief elements you might argue lie outside of the nearly-equalised sets of the two terms, in the manner of two spotlights not quite perfectly overlaid, could easily be accommodated into equalisation through a little bit of thinking.
So, while the procedural constraints of Georges Perec's La Disparation might not appear to be a 'shaping' factor, or formal rule, it does restrict the words he may use in the way that, say, asserting the length of a poem called a 'sonnet' can. If a sonnet is a rule that starts by cutting out of the morass of blank page a small edifice, the size of a room of one hundred and forty syllables, or seventy stresses, or ten by fourteen, and cetera, a lipogrammatic rule begins by placing its restrictions on the palette with which the poet can build, resulting in a poem of any size or shape, formally speaking.
The argument might then be a distinction between the 'form' of a poem as being that which takes shape on the page; and the 'constraints' of language whereby the means for making those shapes are curtailed. However, to complicate this, words come with little rule packages for how they can be deployed on the page: they are verbs, they are nouns, they are articles definite and indefinite. "Slowly accommodation the the and" makes bugger all communicative sense, non? However, it is still acceptable in a certain poem (is 'earned by context') if we choose to bend the rules, or break them. That's a given, and part of the point: form earns content, gives content context.
If we constrain the language palette, therefore, creepy little feelers spread out into our capacity to shape language on the page: with the lipogrammatic removal of the letter 'e', we lose the definite article; and syntax gallops in wyrd unfixity, an unabling form aggrandisingly visual in all outbursts. Syntax is the order of language in relation to communication units. Is syntax a constraint, or a form, or the hazy space whereby these two mentally distinct concepts conjugate? (I defy you to find a definition of syntax that doesn't include either the word 'form', or 'rule', or both, and which isn't rubbish.)
If we think of form as a translation of a set of rules into a repeatable abstraction (not as difficult as it sounds*) and that constraints can only be communicated in the same way, or even only refer to the individual rules when the word is taken at face value, then one can start to ask, 'What are the constraints of a sonnet?' If one tries to do the same with procedural poetics - 'What are the constraints of the lipogram?'- a distinction does emerge, of sorts. Constraints begin to fall into the category of rules alone, rather than the wider form; hence constraints are a subset of form. And lipograms begin to manifest more specifically as a type of form, rather than a constraint.
This still leaves a blank in the map where the idea of 'procedurality' lies. Joseph Conte, in Unending Design, suggests certain poetic forms gravitate towards categories of procedural and serial, infinite and finite, predetermined and free. Procedurality is therefore a loose grouping of approaches to form, or forms themselves, as demonstrated by specific poems, where the constraints are set in advance (referring to palette, not shape on the page) of writing. Oulipian forms, such as the beautiful-inlaw and outlaw, demonstrates this as a crossover problem also. Harry Mathews' 'Husserl's Curse' is also a sestina; is this the blending of two distinct practices of rule-making, the one being the palette, the other the page space? Or is it that the two can now go hand in hand, since traditional form has been under sustained testing, attack and experimentation for long enough that we no longer need to see a full distinction?
I sound a little more definite in parts of this than I intended, so hope this won't put off any responses.
Tuesday, 18 September 2012
Blinking to miss it: Isolated Examples of Imaginative Transformation in the writings of Luke Kennard
George Ttoouli has just finished reading Luke Kennard's novella, Holophin...
This is one of those notes to self that feels fresh enough in my thinking that I want to share it here, in case someone else has input. (I'm increasingly using G&P to air ideas I've not got straight in my head, for which, trad-mag readers, I apologise. Go find a weekend supplement, they're more reliable.)Firstly, Luke Kennard's novella, Holophin. I'm going to try and restrain myself from gushing praise, as Luke is a friend and has had enough PR from me. Read someone else on it: Annexe and also the trailer (rumour has it, Tom Chivers literally hung out of a plane at 25,000 feet to get that footage). It is, of course, wonderful reading, imaginatively fresh, technically surprising... etc. etc. I'm not entirely sure what the crazy chapter between 14 and 15 actually means, but it looks pretty.
Two isolated incidents I want to refer to:
1. In Holophin:
"the ... School's tutors have been re-hired as Learning Resource Managers. The Research Institute is no longer free - a luxury we cannot afford in such straitened times"
(I've elided some of this and not referenced precisely because some of this might constitute a spoiler otherwise.)
2. In Planet Shaped Horse (Nine Arches Press):
"The gate has no lock, but is operated by credit card, // charging you £1,500 each time you swipe to open it" (from 'Snob').
[The latter quotation was embellished by Luke in performance to something like, "£1,500 the first time, then £3,000, rising to £9,000 when you swipe to open it" so more obviously a reference to UK university tuition fees.]
Something I remember Luke saying in response to writing from personal experience: whatever happened to making stuff up?
Here's a writer who's also a university lecturer dishing out poetry about a man recovering from mental health problems waiting in a halfway house, and a[n] SF novella about a world supported by little dolphin stickers, with no little resemblance to Ghost in the Shell crossed with a war between Apple and Microsoft computing and a minor dash of Terminator thrown in for good measure. Plus fairytale, and maybe even The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I'll stop there, the influences and connections are so manifold as to become meaningless after a while - it is an original synthesis of familiar tropes in a way that utterly delights. (Oh, more gushing...) But it reads fresh, the characters are made up, as far as I can tell, the world distinct from the genre comparisons, despite the odd homage. (This pitches into an awkward discussion about how easy it might be to demonstrate originality, when it's taken to mean organisation of language, rather than structural, or contextual organisation, but let's save that for another day.)
Anyway, two references to the privatisation of education, but transformed into the context of the two books' worlds (which I've elided in the first quote, but read it yourself and decide). I got these references and responded to the satire because it's an issue close to my heart, of course. Does it stand up, or is it a cheap shot at the real world, at contemporary society, which takes you out of the SF?
SF operates in a tension between utopia and reality. The reality we are living, what we understand of the world, its physics and society today, is the reader's point of reference for engaging with the [impossible / extrapolated / speculated / dys- / u-topian] world of an SF story. (SF doesn't have exclusive rights to this, of course, as Planet Shaped Horse demonstrates: an alternative reality world where everything is surreal but plausible through a distorted subjectivity.) Holophin falls into the category of speculative fiction in the main part - a dystopian world loosely based on technological projections and the replacement of nation states by corporations. You could argue there are elements of pure fantasy SF in there, in the context of the implausible energy and material resources that would have to drive Holophin's society (which only gets one minor reference), but let's leave that alone.
Well-executed satire is satisfying, right? Only it does leave you with that bitter taste of reality washing back in after a cool clear dram of escapism. That's called morality, or if I were feeling ungenerous, moralising, but done here in a delightfully Hogarthian way, a non-puritannical 'let's make entertaining stories and be good people at the same time!' kind of thing.
Is it satisfying enough? Here, the transformation of satire on privatisation of university education is entertaining, sure, but that's just one of the three elements of great writing: "magic, story, lesson" as Nabokov put it (PDF link); or in reverse order, 'educate, entertain, enchant' as Peter Blegvad rephrased it. Along with satire, the education of social critique, we want story, the context of the world, but what about enchantment? That feeling of flow that keeps us out of reality and in the story's new world, forgetting all the research I should have been doing this morning, not going to the library to work, because I was reading this book.
I think that came out of the urgency of Hatsuka's story: her relationship to her parents, the tension with Max, the super rich room mate. Then another kind of 'dropping out' of the story arose with a thread centring on depression - something else this shares with Planet Shaped Horse - a treatment that reminded me of Eggers' film version of Where the Wild Things Are, emotionally affecting enought to make me stop and think for a moment, also dropping me out of the flow of reading.
This is all beginning to get a bit incoherent. I have been trying to say something about how Luke has managed to transform elements of his personal experience - for example, university work, no doubt some emotional life as well, to help breathe life into the characters - into something highly entertaining, morally positive, and, within the whole, a sustained degree of enchantment also. Some moments that are so hilarious they put all the cheap chuckles of a 'comic writer' like Bill Bryson into the recycling bin and throw a petrol bomb in after them - equally, moments that drop you out of the story, because you can hear yourself laughing.
Maybe we need these moments - it's not a flaw to say you left the flow of reading, the page-turning. But you're acknowledging those moments when the story made you think, or feel; moments when you remembered you were human. The idea of being fully in the flow of a story would be meaningless without little reminders of the world you have to return to; it might even be a negative thing; you might start believing that you could escape the real world, your problems, rather than only leaving for a while to gain some perspective. (Maybe that's the problem with apathetic social idealism: it isn't facing up to the problems, it's trying to escape. Oh, another can of worms - I'm leaving them in to feed the trolls.)
OK, enough. If someone knows what I was trying to say, please fax it to Luke's departmental office at the University of Birmingham. They're barely funded by taxpayers money these days, so consider it an act of resistance against the Nautilus future I'm trying to prevent (read the book to get the reference). I'll close with a list of names I came up with at one am to describe the colour of Holophin's cover - more suggestions welcome:
Lurid 9
Wallflower Comedown
Grape Grope (sadly, this one exists)
Broken Fuschia
Summer Pervert
Ripe Stains
Culpability Pink
Bubblegum Vulva (blimey, so is this one)
Gollyberry
Keninnards
===
Holophin was printed in a limited edition hardback run of 300 copies. Less than 100 remain - I know this because I have copy 203 (assuming Tom is as OCD as me and only sends them out in the correct numerical order; also he tweeted about having sold more than two-thirds). It will be out as an e-book in a few months, but trust me, the hardback is beautiful. So is the text, of course. It deserves to sell millions. I haven't read so much joy since Heartsnatcher.
Wednesday, 12 September 2012
News - Links - Miscellania
A few resources, following time away and a bit of conferencing (I would write about that, but I have 20,000+ words of uncondensable notes, some of which is slanderous, other parts gurningly idolatrous), which I was hoping Simon would fill here, but he's been up to other things (see end), or possibly not.
- James Womack is running a series of fascinating etymological posts on his blog, Trunt. I was particularly taken by 'blade' after a discussion about the value of originality to ecopoetics last week.
- The aforementioned project Sophie Mayer has been cooking up is live: I Don't Call Myself a Poet. A fascinating database of fixed interviews between students poets at varying stages in their careers. I'm in there (and didn't, unfortunately, send Sophie corrections for the two errors in there), of course, but ignore my casual ranting. There are an astonishing 68 interviews so far and plans to grow this, not just through Sophie's teaching, but an invitation to tutors elsewhere to inspire their students to do the same. (Which reminds me, I should get in touch about that, classes starting in a few weeks.)
- A somewhat anodyne article on Ballard over at the BBC Website, but justified because there can never be too many articles about Jim.
- Forthcoming Radio 3 programme about John Cage, which includes a segment by the wonderful Marjorie Perloff.
- Saul Williams is returning to the UK in late November. I'd really like to get to this, but it's a teaching night, so I'll have to work something out with my students first of all.
- Luke Kennard has not abandoned poetry, but has taken a brief detour into prose: Holophin.
- Peter Riley's grumpy and insightful critiques continue in great spirit over at the Fortnightly Review. Given my participation in Poetry Parnassus as a buddy, and the fact I went to the Poetry Pyjama Party and had a great time (it was completely empty for the first 20min, then people I knew wandered in and we all lay about on the cushions eating sweets and reading poems to each other) AND the fact I spent all of August working on a 6500 word chapter on Riley's Alstonefield for a collection of essays, I feel this link wins me enough good karma to kick a deer to death (to paraphrase Mike Niblett...).
- And finally, in case you thought, like me, that Simon was merely being lazy for most of August, then we were wrong. 'How’s My Driving?' HOW'S MY DRIVING?!? If anyone has time on their hands and is willing to catalogue the random titles Simon spat out of his combobulated mouth in biogs and interviews in the run up to 2010's Difficult Second Album and post them here, I would be very grateful. In fact, on Simon's behalf, please send in titles for his next collection based on his mugshot photograph. An opening suggestion: Attack of the Man Hand. (Incidentally, I just noticed the article went live in July, so who knows what Simon's really been up to in August?)
- James Womack is running a series of fascinating etymological posts on his blog, Trunt. I was particularly taken by 'blade' after a discussion about the value of originality to ecopoetics last week.
- The aforementioned project Sophie Mayer has been cooking up is live: I Don't Call Myself a Poet. A fascinating database of fixed interviews between students poets at varying stages in their careers. I'm in there (and didn't, unfortunately, send Sophie corrections for the two errors in there), of course, but ignore my casual ranting. There are an astonishing 68 interviews so far and plans to grow this, not just through Sophie's teaching, but an invitation to tutors elsewhere to inspire their students to do the same. (Which reminds me, I should get in touch about that, classes starting in a few weeks.)
- A somewhat anodyne article on Ballard over at the BBC Website, but justified because there can never be too many articles about Jim.
- Forthcoming Radio 3 programme about John Cage, which includes a segment by the wonderful Marjorie Perloff.
- Saul Williams is returning to the UK in late November. I'd really like to get to this, but it's a teaching night, so I'll have to work something out with my students first of all.
- Luke Kennard has not abandoned poetry, but has taken a brief detour into prose: Holophin.
- Peter Riley's grumpy and insightful critiques continue in great spirit over at the Fortnightly Review. Given my participation in Poetry Parnassus as a buddy, and the fact I went to the Poetry Pyjama Party and had a great time (it was completely empty for the first 20min, then people I knew wandered in and we all lay about on the cushions eating sweets and reading poems to each other) AND the fact I spent all of August working on a 6500 word chapter on Riley's Alstonefield for a collection of essays, I feel this link wins me enough good karma to kick a deer to death (to paraphrase Mike Niblett...).
- And finally, in case you thought, like me, that Simon was merely being lazy for most of August, then we were wrong. 'How’s My Driving?' HOW'S MY DRIVING?!? If anyone has time on their hands and is willing to catalogue the random titles Simon spat out of his combobulated mouth in biogs and interviews in the run up to 2010's Difficult Second Album and post them here, I would be very grateful. In fact, on Simon's behalf, please send in titles for his next collection based on his mugshot photograph. An opening suggestion: Attack of the Man Hand. (Incidentally, I just noticed the article went live in July, so who knows what Simon's really been up to in August?)
Friday, 17 August 2012
'lyric urgency' vs. 'stratified histories of place' (Skoulding)
George Ttoouli on Keats vs. Critchley / mystery vs. expression
A new web project by Sophie Mayer kicks off in September, which you'll have to wait for. More details when it launches, but I was skimming through the draft interviews and was struck by a number of poets who claimed to have started writing because of reading Keats – myself included. This got me thinking about inspiration and background. For many it's the poets we encounter in school, often the familiar, white, male curriculum names like Keats and Wordsworth, which decide if we'll chime or not with the wider world of poetry. And of that familiar library, Keats stands out when you're young and impressionable.
Something Zoe Skoulding says in her editorial to the latest Poetry Wales: “Perhaps there are certain kinds of poems that are more easily written in youth, if lyric urgency is considered the ultimate value of the poem. However, age offers something else... a nuanced identification with the stratified histories of place.” Keats has that lyric urgency in abundance, a young poet who speaks to young poetry readers. He chimes, he captures youthful activity, even while his technical skill remains immature at times (though highly advanced for his age, but noticeable more in poems peripheral to his canonised odes and narratives) and his leaping at emotion is often uncomplicated by experience, still fixated on the passions and disillusionments of coming of age.
This led me briefly into wondering about the problems inherent in poets who aren't culturally rooted in British Romanticism, but are curricularised by a British Council-driven literary mould. My recent tastes stem from immersion in more experimental writing, kickstarted by university library shelves, which were stocked by the staunch, brilliant, alternatively-bespectacled perspective of Peter Larkin. (Names like Geoffrey Hill, John James, JH Prynne; Frances Horovitz, Marianne Moore and Lyn Hejinian, which I read randomly, with no sense of connections, movements, history. The gaps in my grasp of aesthetic grouping, in literary inheritance, are still vast.)
A sidenote emerges from this. The curriculum didn't teach me about poetry that is self-conscious about its processes, its intentions, that states within it an aesthetic manifesto. Take Olson's declaration of 'SPACE' in Call Me Ishmael, or (another recent joy to read) Emily Critchley's broadside on his masculine opening of the field (in the Spring 2012 issue of Poetry Wales), 'Some Curious Thing II': “& the extent to which SPACE is constructed in gendered terms is an interesting question / it is always an interesting question to write back the projection of body or SPACE or / urban creatures, who look suddenly cute snuffling round in the trash”. Critchley's subject is, in part, social organisation and social thought, but primarily you get a sense of the theory of space, of poetics, of a particular brand of feminism. The poem doesn't just enact space in its extravagantly long lines, its almost-prose, but discusses that formal tradition of projectivism and gender in theoretical terms. In other words, it 'nuances' itself with a sense of historical positioning, to return to Skoulding's phrase again, with an exposition of source. It joins the river and doesn't pretend it was born a fully formed Sealife Centre. (I've also started watching dolphin documentary The Cove, which is astonishing, upsetting, and points to the political problems in hiding one's roots/sources.)
Keats goes for the jugular of the emotion, not exposing, perhaps not aware of, the concepts feeding his poem. The narrative and imagery carry the meaning; the source of these things is glossed, not the point of the poetry. But the prosody works within formal, conservative lines to convey very subtle enforcements of content; and the content is patriarchal, lusty, laden with the kind of stock fantasies that frankly, a male poet writing today ought to question. (I know, a gross oversimplification, but up to a point very few British canonised poets methodically counter the pentametric conservative social values that make me think of women in corsets and white men killing natives on a tennis lawn).
By contrast, Critchley and Olson, in these particular pieces I've mentioned, work from a structural challenge to the norms of poetic tradition, using the essay form, prosaic lines, a splattergun of page space (yes, that's a technical term), while also incorporating a discussion of their respective counter-approaches as an additive to traditional ideas of a poem's subject. The world is not seen or represented directly, in either series; instead, the camera's focus is on the interaction between ideas about the world and the point where the physical world meets those ideas. (And while Olson still hasn't shuck off that patriarchal stuff, he at least invites a degree of interrogation of his SPACES and now this discussion sounds like it's heading towards latex gloves and stripsearches...)
And I said to myself, mid-ponder, No, self-reflexivity seems a little too irritating, too much a metastatic contagion, with an emphasis on the 'static'. Yes the focus has moved one place along to promote understanding about human perspective, but there's the danger of total detachment from the world. Or something like that. I think I need to unpick that a little, because it doesn't mean either Olson's or Critchley's poetry leaves me cold – far from it. But that when it's mishandled, this technique of exposing one's own processes, one's thinking, one's skeleton, is at risk of losing its reference in the actual world.
Then, in the spirit of this kind of poetry, I started asking where this particular argument comes from. It's from reading Keats, isn't it? It's from being moulded by the kind of poetry that isn't interested in its own processes, in exposing its mechanical operations – what's the phrase from architecture? structural expression? – but instead progresses by a kind of mystery, or worse, mysticism, in how the language comes by its emotive and intellectual qualities. The one or the other should be decided by the purpose of the poem.
At this point I'm purely speculating, but isn't the 'mysterious' approach, as against the 'expressed' one of transparency vs. snobbery? Is there a conflicting political demonstration in which of these directions you choose to take your own poetry? Even 'leftist' poetry can have within it an authoritarian control, a sense of wanting to cover its traces - a condescension towards the reader. And sometimes right-leaning poetry works towards justifying its content with questions and an exposition of process, while also carrying a kind of elitist closure. Keats seems decidedly mysterious when compared to Wordsworth's deeper interrogations of process and the self's relation to environment, for example.
Again, a simplification, as I think this is one of the discussions that Simon and I consistently return to, although the conversation tends to sit on the tails of particular poets who do or don't fulfil our preferences, without travelling much distance into the wider picture. Perhaps that would be stating the obvious too much? But this also seems to be a criticism we've had of one poet we've encountered recently, [name deleted, we may get to this in full], who has the strength of a massive marketing machine behind them, but little discussion of where their poetics comes from. But for now I'll stop where I am and see if anyone has ideas for ways to take this further - reading, ideas, examples, etc.
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