Pesbo

Warm

Thu, 15 May 2008 16:16:27 GMT

The One Simple Impression Prompt is warm.

sun patch flop
for dual-sided heating
cat climbs aboard butt

Gestural Observations and Gender

Mon, 12 May 2008 16:53:06 GMT

When would I know enough to say I am informed enough to say?

There are cases where I'd like to strip back individual histories, hierarchies based on mentorship of respect, length of time in field, purpose on the oratory thrust, and say hold on a minute, what just happened there in that speech act?

Can I get a replay there?

The words "I disagree with person Y" came from 2 different presenters.

In one case the words were spoken with a smile, chin up, shoulders moving back and downwards.

In one case the the words were spoken the presenter shrugged on the word disagree and put chin and eyes downwards, as if in apology.

Want to guess the genders of each person?

Is that unfair?

--

It's hard not to think in terms of team. I flared at that (presented second here and occurred in linear time second). She negated what she just said, the disagreement of body language is heard stronger than words.

One is not one's gender. It may be a "personality" thing, not related to gender and yet, how bang-on-characteristic is that behavior of a female?

I would have to do some hard number counting instances to correct or prove to my mind that I am not just confirming my bias.

Likewise with hand gesture. What happened there? Did it fall along gender lines?

--

I was not watching for gender but explicit content, but then that is how such things perpetuate, never being "the real subject", things not "being about" gender. The subconscious judgements are there at the back giving some weight.

--

Even if a male and female utter the same words, with the same body language, is the imposed perception of intent and weight the same? Can a male and female utter the same? Or pitch is enough of a shift to change idea of meaning? Or intonation? Written syntax can sidestep the gender of the author to a greater degree.

--

What existed in my perception? What distracted as a pattern?

For the gesture "open" a male opened his hands and they stayed at rest, the gesture formed and firm. A female flapped open, wrists loose and fingers waggling in a sort of stutter of emphasis.

Both effectively conveyed open.

What else did each convey? Only the gender of the speaker? Not that, but some emotional quality that was derived from the rhythms of speech of the larger utterance?

Are they variants that are gender neutral? Products of practiced performance versus nervousness? Some people when fatigued get more streamlined, more tight in body, others more frayed and ambiguous. Is this observed thing more a product of my fatigue than something about gender as practiced?

--

When doing the 3-4 poems a day in April I noticed more feminist themes coming out, more bitter angles. I have 3 explanations of sources for that.
1) that I had nothing to say so relied on easy junk society stuffs one with of generalizations of victim oppressions of female
2) as I scrape away the superficial, the core anger of being excluded and systemically minimized as female is what remains as most potent
3) when I push myself I get cranky and take a dark view of what is innocuous, forming angry patterns that cause adrenaline surge to create a quick energy to feel better by harvesting own hormonal cascades

This may relate to perception skew or perception accuracy.

--

Rather late in the game I noticed male and female presenters being introduced, with line of credits, but for males, the final word being and now, here he is: or here is Dr. so-and-so. The bios were consensually agreed on. By all means, say what you have achieved.

And yet, what to make of a couple females, unconsciously or consciously being introduced not just by that final gendered pronoun (of segue and further priming that our grammar does) nor by title of achievement, but by first name. Huh.

Wish I'd run the numbers over the nearly 40 introductions to get hard numbers on how that all broke down. Was it a very skewed pattern or did it just stick out in that case because I'm hypersensitive?

First name, it's friendly, it's approachable. It's what one is comfortable with. It in one case was because, I'd guess the presenter and host were colleagues and that is how they thought of one another, as first-name basis, equals. But, in formal introduction of papers, as the final words, even if all the earlier run down lists books and titles, the final word, what weight does that set up?

--

As I said, it's hard to not think in terms of team. Remembering the terms of male privilege as set out by B. Deutsch

4. If I fail in my job or career, I can feel sure this won’t be seen as a black mark against my entire sex’s capabilities.

It is sexist of me, and reinforces the sense of gender weight to even see another female's performance as impinging on what others will expect of me, yet, yet, yet.

People are not exclusively gendered, nor exclusively perceived at gendered but it modulates perception and display. We can't bow to it as the only factor. It may or may not be a swing vote in any case.

What I saw could coincide with or be causal to gender.

I wasn't watching for gender, just noticed it by the continual opposition to the one major female theorist and the general respect given to the various major male theorists. It's an idea thing, not related to the gender of the person behind the idea yet, yet, at least the female's ideas and name were being nearly as common as verbs in sentences. (yet, yet.)

--

I was primarily looking to grasp concepts and meanings and examples of the literal subjects.

There was essentially no interruptions to count. That is often a quick, handy measure of power dynamics, of who is permitted to interrupt who. Still, I wish I could have another accountant mind that was watching and running accurate tallies of
- What are the ratios of female: male speech?
- Does it fit into reckoning of presentation the amount of skin shown by each by gender?
- What is the body language attentiveness when male versus female speaks?
- What is the success of female in getting message thru, even acoustically, compared to male?

When one speaks with confidence as a female, there is still the baggage of being haughty. But so much moderates and modulates that general statement. In an academic environment, the norms of gender or released more. One is expected to speak the register that is not male or female but a stylistic or information before individuality. One is a genderless conduit.

--

Many male speakers used a larger box for communication, gesturing wider and higher and more in front than females who made smaller, abdominal flutters. The younger the female, the smaller the gestures. But, the younger the male, the smaller the gestures as well. Is it a matter of length of career? Or coloring of body language from communicative world outside academia?

The older the speaker, the more batonic the gesture to conduct meaning. The older the speaker, the more likely the person was to pause on grammatical syntax to parse breaks instead of on emphatic such as "such", "so" "exactly". Women and men seemed equally likely to use gesture that acted out the meaning, whether counting out sequences, showing travel from place to place or time to time or act out concepts like "inside" of fingers going into a cupped palm, or "showing" with a fingertips together flowering into open palm.

--

There were elements which were utterly gender neutral. The females who spoke, I got the impression of being able to hold their own on panels, being asked equal number of questions, being as engaged. In the audience females were as likely to speak as males. Were as likely to moderate questions. Were as likely to silence a room to start, although so far as presence, males were more likely to get a silent room by just standing behind a podium and females had to speak there to get silence. But I have no counts. Perhaps that's my impressionistic bias, and a matter of individuals. (who exist in gender).

--

Am I to quibble? Am I responding to present?

--

My own speech and postural habits are informed by what I feel I should do as a female. And doing the opposite on the continuum.

I spent time training myself to unlearn how to sit, walk, meet eyes. By religion and family and class I am to lower myself, take up minimal space. Quiet voice was praised because it is becoming to a female and the other roles of class and hierarchies. Voice coincides with gender and to a degree is related to gender as well. I could have taken that in any number of directions of obedience or resistances. My goal was to not be under the gun, but under the radar.

The rules and needs shift. Body habit shifts fairly slowly. It is a retraining of posture. I have traditionally braided my arms and legs to stand or sit. People with closed postures are hard people to communicate with. It is a good way to know when I feel insecure. My posture is my body talking to itself. Sometimes it snaps at itself as I suddenly groan and unfold all the crossed parts of body again. I have tried to minimize my space and insisted on sprawling. Both are the same dynamics. My box of speaking tends to be small. I have tried to widen this to mute the apology that smallness is.

--

I am not terribly conscious most of the time of how I present.

I can sometimes forget I am female, a delightful thing since so much of my baggage about females is not a Jane-in-the-Box bearing truffles and diplomas.

--

I have largely given up apologies littered thru my speech, and the default preamble of assuming I am bothering someone by speaking. It imposes a burden this habit.

--

Still my body language has self-consciousness and self-cancelling and statements that denigrate my own statements even as I speak. It makes my meanings cluttered and subtext is don't listen to me. Then I wonder why I am not heard.

--
Many women preamble with qualifying statements such as I don't know if this is important but...and weasel words that undercut their simple statements. Or women add more emotional loading, overstatements and spin to be more heard, but in effect gives a little boy blue effect so the subtext of threat is heard and the message of please listen to this thing which matters to me, is lost.

Instrumental speech then, is that inherently male? And richer thick text is more female or gender stereotypes and misjudgements inform the paragraph before.

--

When I have seen photos I'm often surprised by my default hunch.

I feel defensive and reactive when I set out to walk alone. Not during the walk itself, but the conceptualizing of it. In part because family, friends, strangers have warned me for years against going out after dark. Or offered to walk me. Why? What informs that? Something personal about me as mousy and unaware, that I took as particular offer given to any woman?

--

As a touchstone I remember in winter in Ottawa where walking an icy path by Craig Henry Drive, I scrambled out of the way of children and a dog. Likewise falling, tearing pants. Do I set myself so low that not only strangers who are adult but even dogs and children are higher than myself? I chastised myself in that moment and since.

If that memory doesn't serve enough, there is a counterpart walking in Joshua Tree National Park in California and stumbling off path to make way for people coming, falling and splitting the knee of jeans, assuming that the other needed me to move, that all the accommodation needed to be on my side.

--

When driving, driving tight with tight fists and shoulders makes for less motor control and less control of car. Oversteering causes accidents as well. To try to fit everything to a gender dynamic flattens data and write-off conceptual traffic that could could get us somewhere.

Personal Poetics and Perceptual Filters

Mon, 12 May 2008 15:09:14 GMT

People consume what feeds needs. There's a theory of natural food that I can't attest to the truth of, or contest, but flies like this: your body will say eat until you get the nutrition. High carb, high sugar food rebounds you into more desire for more food because these tend to be low-nutrient food. If you eat high nutrition food, you body senses that and turns off or down the appetite and hunger. You don't need volume necessarily. You need roughage but that's another issue.

To bring to poetry, people seem to cleave poetry apart from communication. As if one could make good poetry without making good communication. Good communication is not the same as good oratory, clear, persuasive, leading, verbal, articulate. Communication is broader, and poetry is broader than these simple rules of on the table narrative with social aims.

Communication is as much as words to share physical postures, breathing rates, focus of attention, is to dump so much data that there is no way to pick thru one narrative thread. This overload can also be good communication. The brain stores all. Unconsciously we pick up on the emotional intent, the thick data.

Good communication narrowly defined as unambiguous purpose and connotations, Plain English, simple amount of data, is well intentioned but not complete.

To bring from food and communication to poetry, the crux of irritation (the crotch of irk from OE?) is this dividing into camps of what constitutes good poetry and good communication.

Good is always self-referential. i.e. good as defined according to the opinions and needs of the speaker. I know. It needn't be unpacked. Anything spoken is an opinion of the speaker. Yet.

The background binary absolutes lurk in there. Unqualified "bad" makes me antsy. Even tho I can train myself to say, there's something which absolutely missed the mark of my heart, so that I sputter of its vacuousness, or whatever. Or good rant how its bullseyed me. Still I want to bring myself back to the purpose of the poetry's creation. It is not a speech act in isolation to be tied to a measuring tape. It did something internal for the poet and is completed, if not with me, then maps to someone else's incomplete map to evoke completion.

I suppose I'm an infernal relativist, still fleeing by knee jerks my own history of fundamentalism and youthful absolutism.

Where I'm aiming to go with this is finding the underlying. What internal and external drives bring a poet to feel fulfilled by a poem? What itch is scratched for the reader who appreciates it? That would have to be answered by imagination and/or by projecting motivations.

My bias is that poetry is done a) psychologically to counterbalance inner and outer forces b) sociolinguistically c) to close an information gap.

First c) If everyone gets "it", "it" is not said. I suppose if one feels something is utterly critical and pivotal and exciting and those immediately around find it blase, one could use poetry to outlet the scale of fervor in a more satisfying way. Basically, if some angle is perceived not to get enough attention, poetry could be used to draw attention to this facet of life.

b) If something is perceived to be commonly understood, one doesn't tend to try to also reinforce the idea in poetry unless one is not speaking except to reinforce tribe, as phatic speech, as in-group reinforcement.

If one can freely say something (how and what one wants, to the level of elaboration and exploration one wants) in daily normal conversations, there would be no need to formalize into written verse, unless one wants to reiterate for wider dissemination. Then poetry is oratory, a different kind of speech act, a different kind of sharing. It is for broadcast not in order to think or provoke critical thought nor to record personal or general or natural history.

With this last aspect, a) we return to the idea of feeding on what nourishes, sating and comforting what itches. People write to comfort or excite themselves. To say this, overgeneralizes the practice of the world what I do but also is an observation. Those who are too emotional for their own comfort, write to wrestle control. Those who are tense, try to cultivate their own flow. Poets tend to be "into" self-development, self-discovery, not stasis.

You have to watch to know which direction a person is going. Self-agitating further, self-calming further or moving from agitated to calm or bored to agitated. Which requires observation and judgement and leaps from the opposite direction of faith into observing without deciding.

When overwhelmed with emotion and life, write to calm. When most anxious, write of trees, in simple closed forms, like haiku. The constraint adds balance of controllable finite measurable. It does not come from a mind that is calm and bored. A mind which is calm and bored and overly ordered seeks to balance itself in poetry that is random, chaotic, emotionally pushing.

Poetry is in effect a coping mechanism. Those are dangerous things to meddle with. Or perhaps holy.

If someone says to me, god healed my child, I do not reply, you poor deluded sap, there is no god and your child is not normal still. That would be cruel and ineffective, or worse, effective as kicking someone's cane away, crushing to that soul, and because to cause pain injures the person who causes, self-inflicting a wound at the same time.

We each have our own canes and our own infirmities and the parent of the child may as validly turn to me with as much pity and say to me you are the lost one who complicates life with torment preparing for hell torment when instead you could give up restlessness and meaningless thrash and trust in God.

Mutual pity gains for neither. Mutual disrespect and the idea that each has mutually exclusive worlds does not gain either. A sense of not passive compassion but to get into that which underlies the other and truly see the other is not the end of communication but the beginning.

From that idea of opposing world views, I take away the idea that to criticize another person's angle of poetry as too staid, or too chaotic is to criticize, not only the style, and choices of the poet, but to avert one's eyes from the other side of the drama mask, that which one can imply.

To say a kind a poetry is bad, is to not see the person and purpose for the poetry. Yes, we want to strive to make art and each is at a different stage in dexterity. But before the level or art or artistry there is communication. If I get or don't get the poetry, that is one thing but more important than receptivity, or having the hooks I need to catch what yarns were looped, is to be receptive to the person behind the words. What is the intent. What systems formed and informed the person that these words would convey what needed to be conveyed? What is behind and between the lines?

If there is a uniform mandate for peace, that does not speak of peace. That speaks of self-talk attempting to create peace. Silence speaks of noise as any binary makes its opposite exist.

Kelli related how Mary Oliver said

First question "How did you come into writing poetry? "  The answer was that her life wasn't perfect and "I needed another world than what I was living in...the world of nature, the world of poetry...

It reminds me of Normal Rockwell's statements on himself.

If there was sadness in this created world of mine, it was a pleasant sadness. If there were problems, they were humorous problems. The people in my pictures aren’t mentally ill or deformed [Rockwell’s wife Mary was suffering from clinical depression, and his mom alcoholic and a "slattern" Halpern relates]. The situations they get into are commonplace, everyday situations, not the agonizing crises and tangles of life.

Rockwell is dismissed as saccharine or commercial and he recognized that he was doing a profitable performance to the machine of manufactured innocence that people wanted to consume. Why did they? Because they had too much innocence? Or too little? All is always a response. Mapping what responds to who gives a fuller understanding.

Rockwell's sanitized views were also a coping mechanism, a disavowal that is psychological protection.

To take that spin is to stand where it is raw. It is a disappointment really, just as everyone believes their family may have problems but out there, there is a family with no issues and one is deprived of that platonic ideal. To find more examples of "them too" is a sad thing and yet grounds one into a sense of community that allows one to not feel oneself so precious and separate but come to an adult place where others, even those you respect and those you think less than youself, if you get enough data, average out to be your equal. It is the diappointment of everyone putting on pants, one leg at a time. It breaks the illusion of tribe. It challenges one to have to care for more people when already one cares for too many. It forces the position of not trying to paternalism one another. It flattens the flatteries and hierarchies and dramas. But since we love our drama, the sand castles and kingdoms of territories begin again.

It is easier to think of places one should not or cannot go than to embrace complete freedom. One wants to be led to right or wrong and to be in the right, which by nature of binary forces the construction of someone in the wrong. It is a by-product of the structure of our monkey brain.

To play in the sandbox and move from sandbox to beach and back allows the reinforcement of the humbling idea that absolutes exist, relatively. Loyalties exist. Logics exist. And are local and informed by pattern and chaos. Underneath the teem, there are teams and there are real visceral reactions and there is fluff. Either may be taken seriously or lightly and to interpret either way is to be accurate because all things are in all things. This is humbling and sometimes to be humbled is counterproductive and breaks momentum to poor effect. Sometimes to be aware is to understand and sometimes one awareness blocks another essential thing.

Disavowal allows a distance of coping with one another. To be with one another at the point of source of need is intimate, unsustainably intense. The dance back to obscure in beauty or in cleverness, in polish, in folksy, is to give each other and ourselves a break from the real issues that underlie and underline the words.

To loop back to that book on Norman Rockwell by Richard Halpern,

"Repression therefore involves, for better or worse, a genuine renunciation. In disavowal, however, consciousness both retains and banishes something. It thereby allows itself to enjoy that forbidden thing on the sly while denying that it enjoys or knows it."

We don't need to fill in the drama when we make a poem of peace because the context of these times is what is being responded to. It is already in the context of daily pains and tumult. It is a counterpoint not an isolated point which denies its own background. Likewise, by extension, a poem that directly engages with "Political" does not deny there is a place by the weeping willow, even if it does not mention it. It does not deny the bird flight by neglecting or insisting on not referencing it. We naturally draw in what is not there. Or I do.

If one takes a pencil and draws the negative spaces of around a chair, a chair appears, not in detail, but in form. If one takes a text that never references women, their absence says something of the role and value. To one person that absent weight may be taken for granted as too blissful non-issue, to make note of, and another may fill in the gap with denigration and dismissal.

Rockwell’s era seems like a more innocent time than ours, however, this has a good deal to do with the innocence industry, which disseminated its products on a massive scale and spawned a subsulture that reacted against the prevailing, or felt itself to be rebelling by asserting the normalacy of subversion of its own existence.

What is the industry of manufactured themes, preselecting now? Of danger, of change, of flux, of differences, of news, in itself a overstatement of one aspect of reality as much as the prevailing good old days. Would not to speak of peace and nature pastoral be the shape of subersion now? It is a reaction against he contemporary with an attempt to grasp the timeless when being timely is heavily played. A standard is that we must be clever. We must not reiterate anything that came before. We must not be derivative, but instead exist in after a gap, like the Jetsons of poetry, rigorously new as the Flintstones, keeping the functions by new mechanisms to do the same things.

To follow a trend is to game, or game against. That can only last as amusement so long. One must respond not to what is external, in society or, in poetics, but to inner needs.

What is it that one wishes to balance? There is no gain or remuneration except what pleasure one gives oneself. The rewards are psychological.

If one is whittling away at pastoral or gesturing in cutting edge in any number of pointed knives directions, one ultimately serves oneself. What is it that one wants to say. If people who are around to receive the style of saying and support that, it would be heard in the time of speaking. If people are closed, by mismatch of psychological needs, or lack of parallel reading to understand a stylistic, then the poetry is self-talk exclusively. Which is also fine. Progress towards refinement may be harder since any refinement is towards one of the multiple models of what refined looks like, the perfect balanced amount of unpacking meaning into the consensual length of explicitness and control and length and density.

Without a community of consent or debate, one still has the fixed set of communications of what is recorded, but the not the social set of thick data of layers of years of debate of how that communication was understood. Still, one can not help but attempt to react, respond, cause action and pondering. It is the human condition.

James Whitcomb Riley Recordings from 1912

Wed, 07 May 2008 20:56:54 GMT

The poet reflects "truant fancies wander" to an old sweetheart while he's sitting in the yard listening to the sounds of his wife and kids.

"I feel no twinge of conscience
To deny me any theme
When Care has cast her anchor
In the harbour of a dream –
In fact, to speak in earnest,
I believe it adds a charm
To spice the good a trifle
With a little dust of harm –
For I find an extra flavor in
Memory's mellow wine,...

An excerpt of an unpublished poem "An Old Sweetheart of Mine" by James Whitcomb Riley recorded by Victor Talking Machine Company 1912 and put online by the Indianapolis Public Library.

"the thoughts that come in the shadows never come in the shine" writes Riley In the Dark.

How marvelous to hear his voice and accent and intonation live. I read his poems for years growing up, first buying a collected at an estate sale. Many summer days were spent reading his poems aloud.

And now hearing it again it's like an entry point to my father. He uses reductions like "just" to "jes'", and "he gat askeered" for "he got scared" that Riley sometimes wrote in is close to dad's. Clumbed for climbed, drug for dragged and these "non-standard" grammars that we are mandated to make by consensus invisible and erased after being marked as "uneducated" and invalid. The "sloppy speech" that subscribes to principles of local convergence, talking like one another for communication, rather than to this fiction of there being a "proper" English and a hierarchy of lesser Englishes spoken by lesser people. To record how people actually speak is considered a pony trick, or obstacle to words being able to be transferred father in time and space but the very practice of avoiding the recording of what is thought would only be meaningful in this time and place and people is to confine them to that presumption. To steer back...

The cadence of Riley is familiar. The dialect, has things like "see the shadder in it", "deer crick, that's grand enough for me" with en embedded humbleness to God-fearing, never uppity; culturally close to dad. I could hear dad saying too "soak yer hide in sunshine" or "sharpen up a feller's appetite" in talking weather as farmers are apt to do at length, with no weather that isn't a calamity.

It's rife with old expressions and turns of phrase like fetter, and worry so, and in trader joe "folks has gone so fur's to say I'm fixed, in a worldly way" (i.e. people I've spoken with have explicitly remarked to me that I've got more money than most people do). It segues me to memories of dad's speech that I can't often call consciously to mind, that language which is opaque to hubby and unfashionable for its lack of curses or seeking to impress by polish, such as it "it was a thrill by gad" to discover this old gem online.

Vogon Poetry Generator

Mon, 05 May 2008 15:10:04 GMT

Vogon Poetry Generator results in,

See, see the wordy sky
Marvel at its big army fatigue depths.
Tell me, Scott do you
Wonder why the turkey ignores you?
Why its foobly stare
makes you feel sweaty.
I can tell you, it is
Worried by your tresede facial growth
That looks like
A condiment.
What's more, it knows
Your hobnob potting shed
Smells of frog.
Everything under the big wordy sky
Asks why, why do you even bother?
You only charm moulds.

This is via Matthew Salomon who will be performing in Maryland at Artomatic next week. And lest I mislead you about his typical offering (hint not Vogon), regular poems, classic or typographical play, 12 easy steps towards a stronger better clerihew and he also posted this mini-movie of a Shakespeare sonnet spun into a new context:

from sounDeva.

And to point out also this from his archives: Zbigniew Herbert's poem: “Mr. Cogito Meditates on Suffering”. (That led to my browsing The Collected Poems: 1956-1998)

A lot of the poems Salomon points out with a parallel text in original language with links to poets and translating poets. It's always a pleasure to access the feel of the poems like that even if I don't read the language.

He also has occasional theory posts, such as on enjambment which he describes as a sonic effect, not only page. It's semantic not disruptive visual syntax when done well.

64 free ebooks

Thu, 01 May 2008 12:49:25 GMT

64 free ebooks of poetry for download today only (until May 2, midnight) at Rick Lupert's Poetry Super Highway. Click on "The Great E-book Free-For-All" from the main menu.

Notice the wide assortment.

What caught my eye? Terry McCarty's The Use Your Delusion Sampler where a caped crusader, poet in black stands and denounces the wrong-headedness of slam and proclaims the only true faith as triolet and is escourted back to his high horse, it given a slap on the rump as he rides back out of town.

I paraphrase but a poem with healthy sense of lampoonery is lovely. An excerpt from his Poet Inc.

Poetry Inc.
Each day, I consult the corporate handbook
and churn out intricate, metaphor-laden and
purposely inaccessible poems loved by an Important few.

Lunches are spent with colleagues
denouncing “journal entry” poetry
and hailing rhyme-and-meter “new traditionalism”.

In the break room, we are treated to tape loops
of Robert Frost intoning “free verse is like playing
tennis without a net” hundreds of times.

Easy to read these. Paul Koenig has a completely other feel and pleasure in Poems for Pixels. It is hard to excerpt but a different kind of play, dipping into surreal of "Today is unavoidably Tuesday. / all robots are secret Monkeys / Flecks of gold say her eyes." It feels like screen shots of a flash animation poem, additions accumulating.

Jonathan Shaw's sheets are densely laid out and compressed packets of real life, for example, a woman pressing a man's hand at 3 stages of life to different results and effects.

Charles P Ries' in I'd rather be Mexican is more of a travelogue of prose poems.

Ladies of Slam

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:03:06 GMT

The competition closed last month but Poetry Slam Inc has the videos of 2 of the 7 of the slam poems of Women of the World Poetry Slam, 7 finalists, Suzi Q (she sings towards the end), Gypsee Yo, Tiffani Smith, Chauncey Beaty, Soul Poet, Crytal Senter Brown and andrea gibson, also of I Do.

Robert Kroetsch Award

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 12:46:41 GMT

The winner of this year's Robert Kroetsch Award is Geoffery Hlibchuk's Varations on Holderlin.

Connolly's Revolver

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:25:21 GMT

I mentioned Kevin Connolly's Revolver here briefly weeks ago. Like Marcus I was anticipating hearing him in person.

Connolly's newest book Revolver is set up so that each poem has to be a challenge to be different from any other in the book. In form, voice, tone and style, each poem is. It's quite remarkable. It's got a sweet and sharp balance. Serious and funny, seriously funny and moving without the sense of trying to push and shove the reader down a chute.

They are 45 "contraptions made of words" which "morph you into heartfelt syntax". He set out to challenge and entertain himself. He said in a writers fest panel that he enjoys the writing process but after publication, things are awkward.

He feels like the Johnnie Jackass of Canadian literature for trying so many things in one work but it works from the get-go, or in other words, it works from the title piece and doesn't stop working yet doesn't feel laboured. It fills the brain but it's a good fill.

The title piece that opens with surrealism of A tiny acrobat walks a rope of milk/whitewash in microform, history pelted,. Other poems are as distinct like a Powder Keg where

Let's decide now, it's all euphemism:
"I hang my hammer by the claw
in your dewy branches...." Which
could mean anything, granted,

but you'll have to agree
it's pretty suggestive.
Like that the grass that grows
under your feet and over mine.

To pick any sample of poem is to mislead of what to expect on any other page, which I personally love.

One poem reads like those ubiquitous puzzle book logic paragraphs to figure out whose name did what where. On p. 72 Really Need Ted Lilly to Throw the Hook, it's all dense sports jargon which on a literal level, I haven't a clue about but it's a sort of read me the phone book and I'll listen to the way you can trip sounds along.

On page 30 and the next few there's Litany where someone is cross examined for a cull of birds which plays against cliché of histrionic poems and badgering witnesses. Each question and matter of fact reply intensifying the other.

Did the moon weep and fret at their growing peril?

Yes.

Did you weep?

No, not initially.

But when it came, did your weeping fill a thousand barrels?

Yes, and ten times as many.

When your tears came, did they fill a thousand thimbles?

No, not so much as that.

Did the beach ache with your misplaced sympathy?

No.

Can you think of a more apt metaphor for your distress?

Perhaps, but not at the moment.

In questions Kevin Connolly, having written a couple collections of poetry, was asked to describe why he chose to make a table of contents in Revolver which doesn't list the poems. He explained that a table of contents seems a vestige of the 19th century. What good does it serve in a book of 45 poems? It's 70 pages at the most. He took an idea of Bill Knott. Knott's book Autonecrophilia – people clapped at that title, yeah, isn't that best poetry book title ever? said Connolly before going on – used a list of B Monster movies instead of the table of contents.

Connolly was inspired to do something similar. Each title is associated with the song on the page number and are tracks he was listening to when writing the book.

The book makes for interesting reading that leaps associatively and logically but with no sense of frenetic, and no sense of unconsidered, the next placement of verbal foot sure.

Poetry's in the Body, Body

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:25:27 GMT

Saturday's Writing Life #3 was Sean Wilson hosting Mary Swan, Elyse Friedman (Long Short Story) and Diane Schoemperlen. Friedman's stories were entertaining to my brain. The offbeat twists on expectations were light and there's underlying compassion for her characters that was warming.

I found myself rather distracted by non-verbal in the panel.

They were all explicitly in agreement and conscensus seeking and agreeableness was at extraordinary levels. How aligned body language was in the combination of these 4! The mirroring body language would go round and round. One would lift a hand to tuck hair and 2 would immediately echo. One would go from palms together to clasped hands and the Simon says would zoom around. The hands of each were as if on a track sliding lap to knees with one remote.

I missed a lot of what was said verbally.

They responded as one person to questions from the audience with synchronized head bobs that started and ended together. Even their gestures were largely using the same box of space of mid-chest, hands open, facing upwards with very little finger movement, except when Mary Swan made gestures backwards and to left behind her.

Tidbit: The high concept: a spine you can hang the meat of the story on, the 8 words that explains your story.

The next Writers Life panel will be May 1st, 7:30 p.m. at the National Library and Archives featuring Steven Galloway, Anthony De Sa and André Alexis.

Congrats

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:12:29 GMT

Lynne Alsford and L.M. Rochefort were among those shortlisted for the CAA, poetry category. On May 13, the top place finalist will be announced.

April Paper Showers Bring May Pages, Flowers

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:53:39 GMT

Not including the library books, I have a weighty tower of new titles that I got in April. Looking at all the ducks like that that, I'm thinking this couple dozen could take a while.

Geist [which I couldn't find in Chapters and asked 3 clerks to get blank looks and assurances that they are sure they don't carry that magazine. Then I found it myself under some non-literature section.], The Puritan Magazine, Unquiet Desperation (vol 1, issue 20, vol 2, issue 1 from when Warren Dean Fulton was reading in town.), Rampike [which Amanda reminded me was out there, delicious poems in this issue], The Malahat Review, Me Sexy (Douglas & McIntyre, 2008) by Drew Haydon Taylor, Hay West: A Story of Canadians Helping Canadians (Red Deer Press, 2004), The Poem I Turn To: Actors and Directors Present Poetry that inspires them (source books, 2008), The Dream of Snowy Owls (Longspoon press, 1983) by Monty Reid, Bird Tracks on Hard Snow (ECW, 1994) by Nelson Ball, Shoot & Weep (Nomados 2008) by Rachel Zolf, Mortification: Writers' Stories of Their Public Shame by robin robertson, The Dream World (M&S, 2008) by Alison Pick, Floors of Enduring Beauty by Steve Venright (Mansfield Press, 2007), These Lawns (Red Deer Press, 1990) by Monty Reid, Les Scribbliste (Produce Press) by gustave morin, From the Monestery, (gesture press, 2006) by Nicholas Power, Spiral Agitator (Coach House, 2000) by Steve Venright, The Story of the Cannibal Woman by Maryse Condé (Washingston Square Press, 2005), Carnegie Pocket Companion, 1923, Engineers, Architects and Builders Tables, Steel, and the ones I already mentioned that also arrived in April: Out of Light (Kitchen Press, 2008), by Joseph Massey, Mornings Like This: Found Poems (Harper Collins, 1995) by Annie Dillard, and Subject (University of California Press 2005) by Laura Mullen.

I think that's them all but they may have started to drift around the house.

Oh, appetite, get ready...

And I still want to reparse all the rest of my notes from the festival. And keep up the 3 poems a day. And start to edit the (somewhat meaningless number since it includes in pageage various copies of drafts of poems too) 60 pages of 75 new poems drafted in April so far. Dear me. Looks like May is well-spoken for already.

Don Domanski on Role of Poet as Scribe of Sacred Geometries

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:55:15 GMT

Yin Yang as Sacred Geometry
Originally uploaded by Shirley Two Feathers

Some people found the talks of Don Domanski enlightening. As with any writers festival talk, you never know what will happen next. Perhaps one writer will tell another "You don't like animals?! I love animals. You're going to Hell." Or it all might go along rather more sociably.

Domanski spoke with Rob Winger on April 15 about the poet's role in society and then in a second discussion on panel with Stephen Brockwell, Alison Pick and Anne Simpson later that evening. (I'm amalgamating the two here.)

In short, on the question of the role of poet, Domanski felt the role was to point away from individual lives and minutiae of any given time, place, society into the big picture which is nature, the universe, to attend to biology.

By biology he made clear he didn't mean the biology of our own genitals but to our small place in the universe as humans. We must attend to the natural world in order to extend our own consciousness beyond ourselves and grow in spirit thru poetry which reaches for universal truth.

He said, if one extends ones arms to the sides (as he made Rob Winger do), the whole of human history on the grand timeline would be erased if one took a single stroke of an emory board to one finger.

His presentation style was as grand as his polished cane and jewelry. At one point he totally lost his place in the lecture he was giving. His aside of "where the hell am I now?" was a marked register change, the first laugh he got, breaking out of his incantation-style of lecture.

Quite an interesting thing, his polish and his cracks. He said his dad had always wanted him to follow him into science but he became a poet, to his dad's disappointment; there's an advantage in disappointments.

He talked a lot about sitting on stones and watching birds, a far more rewarding activity he said than the nonsense we can fill our lives with, watching Oprah, shopping for purses or being concerned about the state of our stomachs or genitals. He seemed, and I don't think I was alone in picking up on this underlying belief of his, contemptuous of anything but the long view of the universe.

There were some chuckles as he made quips, such as, in the context of separating personal experience, self, the contemporary politics and notions, to get to divine connection of nature thru mindfulness, he was asked about the place of ego and self in poems about distance from self. "Do I still have an ego?" (dramatic pause, checks his own pulse) "yep, still got it."

He said poetry has to be more than pollyanna. Poetry needn't make us feel good, needn't be the "the ecstasy of dogs running". When we study anything we reach into the separation and loneliness that is part of existence. He didn't invoke ying yang per se but suggested the dual nature of nature. We are trying to balance ego, (which can become dogma, cherished self and our own being centered in our tangible lives) with the plentitude of the universe and its time, space, form and mystery.

By writing with this part of the brain that he said is uniquely human, that can create comparisons and metaphors, we can bridge the dark chasm between meanings, open up, through comparisons and metaphor and make a light. Citing Emerson's ideas he said, as each word was once a unique understanding of the world, a poem, through poems, we can try to create new understandings.

We, in writing, he said, try to unclog of preconceptions, precepts of what a poem is, away from censor of reason and culture. As an aside he assured that this is not easy. It is exceedingly difficult. What's more it is a seditious act to observe, open mind and hearts in these political times. It is subversive to reach for mindfulness, the sacred umbilical poem. It is a difficult process to enter a room and observe it, rather than begin to make opinions on the room and read implications from it.

In his view, poetry is about practicing mindfulness, is an exercise of meditation, impartial observation, not to draw attention to yourself, but point beyond yourself. He related how in Buddhism they remind: do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself. It is easy to fall to fingerism. Poetry should be, not politics, sides, stylistics and prizes, but something broader for change, and elevating.

He talked at length about nature and universal and learning to let poems come in the form they will take, and get out of their way, something new poets don't understand. Young poets decide what they will talk about, a mountain, say, and if I river comes, they don't follow it.

Winger asked him, can you find mindfulness and wonder outside of nature, say in Oprah or pop tarts? (which Domanski had earlier disparaged as being flaky and not worthy of a life's attention). Domanski answered "My wonder would be in filling Oprah with pop tarts...(pause)... but I'm getting therapy for that."

Much better pictures of him from the fest here.

Messagio Galore V

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:10:08 GMT

The century of sound poetry (with one from circa 560-600) presented at the OIW festival was spatial, interaction, and some of it improv. Which is not to say unpracticed. For jwcurry to curate and for the troupe to synchronize their timing and reading of each other that well takes a load of practice and intensity.

It is people playing off each other and off of reactions to text, or in some cases visual remnants of what once was text, or off of visual or concrete poetry. (As an aside, most of Alexander's Dark band, Nicholas Powers, Rob Read, jwcurry all have books and chapbooks at the Writers Fest book tables, including Book Thug's O Spam Poams and hand made chappies of various designs and flavors.)

Even with camera in hand I had a sinking feeling that visual is the wrong medium, at least for me, for this. I couldn't have the skill to capture the pure impish joy and flow of Maria Erskine even if lighting and camera could capture that, or what abstracted text they were interpreting, although JohnW could.

The group was 1-4 people, or 6 depending on the piece. (6 when the Auxiliary of John Lavery and Carmel Purkis joined in.) Each person worked like a letter, that in isolation had a different meaning than with the troupe.

One was sombre semantic fragment, one was linguistic, base beat of a word or a number acting as a metronome, one non-linguistic sound jazzing into it. Each person performed part of the sound that converged and passed back and forth; it was as if each were a different tv channel and one watches all at the same time.

The asymmetry is part of the meaning in a way a recording doesn't pick up. It's dinner theatre in the sense of action happening of people walking around, coming into the scene.

I was overly hasty with the camera, deciding that the pictures I took wouldn't do, and erased a few. If I erase words, I can reconstruct easier than images. But as is, I'll have to use words to reconstruct what my ears and eyes caught. Hard to say which would represent sound poetry better. One vantage point doesn't capture and yet one image that is a multiple that I didn't erase seems appropriate in being not exactly literal. When the word is fragmented into constituent phonemes, why not also the image?

It is a mysterious thing, sound as having simultaneously no explicit literal narrative meaning and at the same time causing visceral reactions, senses of play or dismay. In the piece, She was a Visitor (by Robert Ashley, 1967) the choral voices rising together and apart and converging emulated a sort of mourning wail that crested and subsided and the emotional tone and negotiation changing. It is like listening to music in a foreign language and catching some universality.

Other pieces were similar in effect, where if you spoke German or French, you could catch more of the meaning but it wasn't necessary to have the language in common. It is play of sound, volume, tone, where the sound in made in the mouth, how far the sound projects. In some pieces there was a meditation on a word, meditating on each portion of it the way one savors each bite of a really good meal. In some there was monk-like chant interspersed with clapper-like shouts.

Some pieces were by Claude Gauvreau, some Frank Zappa, some Steve McCaffrey, some Kurt Schwitters and bpNichol. One was by Jaap Blonk, who everyone local knows by rote is a sound poetry superstar coming to Ottawa, June 6 to Saint Brigid's Centre for the Arts and Humanities.

Nearly 4 hours of performance makes for a distinct disjuncture from normal head space.

You know the sensation when staring at a black dot then moving your eyes to a white wall and seeing the after image? Or seeing a list of words made of real words and rhymes of non-words? You read it long enough and nothing looks spelled right or like English anymore...A similar sort of effect of hearing non-semantic vocalizing then regular English gets jostled unrecognizable.

Doing Things Promptly

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:39:55 GMT

Yesterday was mildly ~~insane~~ productive with 19 poems, most of which were ~~utter shite~~ underachievements but still could be pillaged for words or phrases.

Because I ~~am insane~~ like a challenge, and since there are multiple lists of prompts for poetry month, I'm going to do them all, aiming for at least 3 poems per day.

Amy King pointed to Daisy Frieds prompts and I'm doing the Brewer prompts and the Book of Kells prompts, which I already mentioned here, plus whatever poems naturally erupt out of normal course. That tend to be 1 every day or two and the 40 word year daily words which I think of as blog posts not prose poems and will extend out on either side of poetry month.

So am I writing? You betcha. Hopefully I can empty this brain. So far, nearly halfway thru, it's been interesting.

The latest, possible non-dreck?

small town generalist

we don't have enough bodies
for people to be narrow.
he loves all skirts, no fickle
stick-to-generation, size,
class, religion, coloring
and matched sense of
humor. that's for the luxury
of choosy metropolises.
he's mentally undressing
every woman (defined at
over 6, and under...
dead). when he talks
what of him that isn't
hands is all eyeballs.
he winks. his innuendo
may be a stretch. his
references may be obscure
but he's rarely subtle.
and no one sings "saved
a wretch like me" louder
than he on Sunday.

And I'm editing of course, the current and the last 10 month long train project. And reading like ~~a maniac~~ life is running out of time. Which is it continually.

woo

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:20:33 GMT

Currently reading Kevin Connolly's Revolver (Anansi, 2008) and Nelson Ball's Bird Tracks on Hard Snow (ECW, 1994). Apparently getting high enough frequency of waves of tingles can actually cool one down. I think they are happening enough for my arm skin fan the air without the bones moving. Who knew that was possible?

Currently In the Midst of Reading on paper

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 15:39:21 GMT

Transformations by John Reibetanz (Goose Lane, 2006) (First impression: ***)

Out of Light by Joseph Massey (Kitchen Press, 2008) (First impression: *****)

Mornings Like This: Found Poems by Annie Dillard (Harper Collins, 1995) (First impression: ***)

Architecture for the Poor by Hassan Fathy (various publishers and new editions with different titles, this one, University of Chicago Press, 1973) (First impression: ****)

Comstock Review, annual contest winners issue. (First impression: *****)

Harvest: a book of signifiers rob mclennan (Talon, 2001) (First impression: ****)

Subject by Laura Mullen (University of California Press, 2005) (First impression: ****)

Selected Poems by Stéphane Mallarmé, Bilingual edition, translated by CF MacIntyre (University of California Press, 1957) (First impression: *)

The Glass Air, PK Page (Oxford, 1991) (First impression: ***)

Signs of the Former Tenant by Bronwen Wallace (Oberon, 1983) (First impression: **)

btw Brewer's Poetic Asides has a new poetry prompt every day for April.

no gherkin around, only

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:58:02 GMT

pickle pickle pickle pickle
pickle pickle pickle pickle pickle pickle pickle
pickle pickle picklepickle pickle picklepickle pickle pickle
pickle picklepickle pickle picklepickle pickle pickle pickle pickle
pickle pickle picklepickle pickle picklepicklepicklepicklepickle pickle
picklepicklepicklepicklepicklepicklepicklepicklepicklepicklepickle
pickle pickle picklepickle pickle picklepickle pickle pickle
pickle pickle pickle pickle pickle pickle
pickle pickle pickle pickle

What is more absurd than pickles? [laughter prompt]

Spring

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:35:55 GMT

A response to the One Single Impression prompt of spring, which is still a good month away here.

The ice pellets pick away at the glass again, the small sun of a cat on my lap, moaning should I shift, then when I accept her there, she trots off. Finally the sidewalks are shiny from the rain earlier this morning, not from ice, but the temperature is yo-yoing around freezing.

more snow coming,
post equinox sun –
spray of orange peel

From Word to Sound: Panel

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:05:01 GMT

The second panel discussion of the Doing it in Public event on Feb 29, 2008, was moderated by Michael Morse talking to Christian Bök, derek beaulieu, Adeena Karasick, Alexis O'Hara and angela rawlings.

There was audio recording of the sessions but the files are still not online at Trent. This is from my notes and not direct quotes. Some things I missed writing and there are gaps in flow.

This second panel on From Word to Sound was considerably more lively than the first on From Text to Performance with more debate and audience wanting to jump in to disagree with, well, with Bok's statements, mostly.

Unlike the consensus-seeking casual conversational tone of the last panel. Bok started in with oratory tools, prepared remarks and gambits for making people react, saying, in part, there is something episcopalian about poetry readings. We sit thru the services silently then go away hating poetry.

Bok explicitly rebutted and chastised the underlying self-deprecating apology that others put forward in the first panel of how they got into performance poetry. In other words, he reparsed, if you can't sing, and if you can't dance and if you can't do stand up, well, (head hung) at least you can be a poet.

Is it the lowest choice as a career? The expertise of being a poet is demeaned as a discipline when the audience is too tolerant or if we tolerate and reward as poets low quality.

There's something wrong with the term performance poetry. Do we have performance music? "It begs the question, do we have that that is poetry that is not performance?" No poem has inspired a riot or set a car on fire and he has a problem with that. If music concerts can provoke, why not poetry.

Alexis O'Hara retorted that he's going to the wrong poetry events. At Burning Man there are things set on fire to poetry. There were riots and visceral outbursts like he is talking about. People react and engage and love the poetry she's seeing.

Alexis O'Hara said her entry to poetry was thru punk rock, a populist audience which is not polite. You have to fight to be relevant, to be heard.

You have to take risks and "embrace the transformative power of failure". When an audience is uncomfortable, they are in their bodies. Pleasure is a salve. Discomfort situates us in ourselves. In risk there are chemicals that load that situation.

Risk is an illusion for her now. She knows too well how to get out of the risk she creates. She has to push to new places. She remarked how military has figured out the exact resonant frequency that will make people auto-defecate without even being able to register hearing a sound. She assured us she wouldn't do that to us in her performance that night. (The laughter seemed a mix of unease and relief.)

Complacency and perfect is easier. For a while she rejected virtuosity as symbolic of masculine.

She said that in performing poetry there can be some freestyling. In a performance she hung out in the washroom before the show and overheard a conversation and dropped the whole chunk into her performance. The entire audience were those two girls who knew that was for them and it meant nothing to anyone else there. That part is a direct private discourse with those two people. It's a connection.

Adeena Karasick: In sound poetry and experimental poetry, one is "throwing a wrench into normal discourse and see what happens". (Which seemed to be more or less the undercurrent gist of debate.)

In context I lost, Karasick turned this phrase: Everyone has the right to speak, but not the right to speak to me.

a.rawlings brought the subject back to the question of Word and Sound talking about automatists and her first exposure to sound poetry – Steve McCaffrey and the mindblow of seeing what was a familiar poem completely deconstructed, uncommon syntax and broken down into the base material of language, the kinetic, the aural and visual.

She said poetry is "the identity inside the blur". (Or else my handwriting is pure crap there.)

a.rawlings said poetry isn't the drafting but the getting into with research, thinking, rethinking and 40% of the end end product poem as editing.

derek beaulieu remarked on visual poems as being for the page not a score for audio performance. He doesn't read his visual poems and convert them to sound. Anyone else can if they like but the performance of poetry is the eye to image, the reading of it. Flatland came as a performance of the act of reading. He went letter by letter over a novel on a light table. The recurrent combinations of letters seemed to form their own rhythms of characters, actions, plot, oceanic vowels [or the occurrence of vowels? my short handwriting could go either way.]

Can you customize a poem to an audience and see how each interprets? Each poem is made by the writer and his job ends there. The audience picks up the task.

When one makes a dichotomy of us vs them, page vs. sound, it doesn't do either side on the argument any good.

The risk in poetry happens on the page as much as it would in oral performance.

When it comes to a matter of making big bucks from blockbuster poetry, access to people who want to access is what matters. The internet in particular can get work into the hands of a reader who wouldn't otherwise see it unless they were in the room with the writer. It expands the potential audience. He quipped the internet has expanded his base audience by at least 10.

A man in the audience wondered why is poetry not more mainstream in Canada. In Iran anyone on the street can recite to you Hafiz. Poetry is integrated into lives and the poet is highly esteemed. Why not here?

Bok: Poetry is a high art form but it has become crafter, artisinal like glass blowing or crotcheted doilies. We tolerate a high degree of incompetence in poetry like we would not tolerate in film or music. We give financial reward to music and film like we do not give to poetry as a society. Why should we have the bar so low that selling only 1000 units of poetry is considered a best seller when to have a successful movie the bar and the rewards are much higher.

When we say "good for you for trying" to poor poetry, that's therapy and not art. In visual art we say, pah, my little daughter could do a better painting than that. Why do we not apply the same critical standards to poetry? We could look at poetry the way a carpenter looks at someone else's chair.

Bok said poetry should not bore the audience with cliches and should provide something new.
Poetry should be as science and you don't know what the answer is when you start. It should push epistemology. The exploration not the form is the point.

(That reminds me what Clifford Stoll said, do it once, it's science. Do it twice, it's engineering, do it three times and its technician work.)

A poem is akin to an Ikea chair without an alan key nor instructions and the only rule is that you are to make something from it, and hopefully not a chair. You defamiliarize language and exoticize language.

Adeena Karasick: The universe shifts when someone reads these letters. That's the hope. They reshape someone else subtly. Someone's perspective on any level may shift. Poetry to change others is a political act. Poetry if it is not semantically followable can still lead thru disjunctures thru a backdoor in imagination and cause an alternate way of understanding.

Role and Shape of Performance Poetry

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:46:37 GMT

The following is paraphrased not quoted, and reconstructed from my notes of the first panel discussion of Doing it in Public symposium on performance poetry at Trent. [Some photos from]. It was moderated by prof High Hodges.

What role does performance poetry play?

Jill Battson: Performance gets works to the public between books

Lebogang Mothibatsela: Performance gets work out faster and breaks down the 4th wall. Sometimes you have to use different words to make that connection the words and the audience.

Ziysah: Poetry text is communication. In performance poetry words are adjusted to the who's there, based on knowing who the audience is and eye contact of what they're getting.

Motion Brathwaite: Can poetry on the page transfer the same meaning without the tone if sung? Bob Dylan is a songwriter but people give him the name poet as well. Not many people can bridge song and word.

Lebo: We have spoken word poetry now. Next we'll have acrobatic poetry. It's what communicates. I refused the term poet for what I did, just called them thoughts but eventually recognized that you don't have thinkers on stage, you have poets. So I accepted the convention.

Why is performance poetry back?

Motion: It was never gone. Dub poetry was born as the sibling to reggae music when people were hearing the notes and not hearing the message. So take the music away and people can hear the words again. The griot was the origin of hip hop, the building of a storytelling of a community. It's thousands of years old. Each generation makes a new label for poetry and calls it new. Now performance poetry has a cool factor that makes it the same level as drama or singing.

Ziysah: It's mainstream art worldwide. Political repression fuels art and resistance. The top 40 charts and the mainstream that can be spread by technology and MTV, are being resisted by the same mainstream technology using myspace and youtube to make a counterculture to keep diversity of voices.

Jill Battson: The new peak of performance poetry isn't a change in the poetry or in the poets. It's the same people. It's just a by-product of a fad of media attention.

Lebo: In this age of information overload, people have more to say, more to synthesize, more international news, people are physically living closer to each other but speaking less with less community. Poetry gives an open entry point to express all this. It's not just for the depressed and in-love anymore.

On Poet and Audience

Lebo: If the audience doesn't get you you may as well read it in the bathroom to yourself.

Ziysah: A mic technologizes the voice and can be a barrier between the audience and the poet.

Motion: Spoken word isn't any less literate. Literate or illiterate is contextual. To understand references that's in term of culture. Understanding depends on context.

What works on the page may not work with a performance. What works with an audience may not work to record. The tool of the microphone is used differently in the studio. You find out things in the studio, like you're popping your Ps or not saying a word clearly. It's a noisy place performing in a bar and if people are watching you they can figure out what you said. You can forget words and say wait a minute and its ok, but with a studio its different. The focus is on the words and the technical. In person you can scream or whisper. The mood is different.

Motion: Slam poetry is like a jazz jam session. It forces you to construct and play and try out things with each other. It pushes your skills and you teach each other. It pushes you to push yourself. If you're just composing alone it's like "I'm the best poet ever!" and then you go out and see what others are doing and you go "oh shit. I'm the best poet ever in my bedroom!"

See Fred and Ginger Dance, waves crash

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:32:33 GMT

bpNichol computer poems, 1984 now online. "First Screening is some of the earliest programmed, kinetic poetry." It's such fun. How did bpNichol think so multi-dimensionally and make things so simple to grasp at the same time. How wonderful that these guys (Jim Andrews, Marko Niemi, Geof Huth, Dan Waber, Jeff Rivett, Jason Pimble and a handful of other digital archeologists) recovered it to accessible.

[via Arc Portage]

And Happy World Poetry Day.

Past half a ream

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:52:43 GMT

I've been looking back at archives of what I've posted here. Since Aug 5, 2005 I've made 340 entries. That's 310 pages in this occasional poetry journal. (That's a lot more than I expected. About time to make a backup, isn't it?)

I seem to have shifted substantially from posting poem drafts to writing about what I'm reading and who I'm hearing. Interesting.

Firestarters

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:24:46 GMT

When there's no spark, some exercises might be flint.

Margaret Wilkinson of Northumbria University does a column of Mslexia's workshops. It has a few dozen prompt directions and under each a few idea of directions to spin from there. For example find a fresh eye for the day by list-making your way to a new spot by putting things in the head that might not normally follow by comparing lists such as:
Things I've never seen
Advice my mother gave me
Things that should be kept uncovered
Things my lover hates
Things I have forgotten

Who knows what might turn up.

Another prompt is how to monkey with writing you can't chuck yet. "it seems generally unwise to use already problematic poetry or prose as the starting point for a new piece. [...] Still want to go ahead? Okay. You’ve been warned." Use recycling by writing it backwards, read things as its opposite, as if you are in Taming of the Shrew, switch up the pov or systemically remove every example of one part of speech.

Other writing prompt sites: Dragon Writing, Poefusion of Friday 5 word prompts and 3 Word Wednesdays

Doing it in Public, workshops

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:02:16 GMT

In the Doing it in Public Performance Poetry Symposium in Peterborough, Feb 29th and March 1st there were 3 nights of poetry readings, a part day with panel discussions, and a part day of workshops.

The performances showed the diversity of what falls into poetry – from feedback loops of Jill Battson's part words and instruments overlaid to Motion's plea for young mothers and young men to stay clean and blow people away with their words, staying away from guns. Ziysah did a hip hop sort of reclamation of the words people shout out car windows in I'm a mofo and I've just detonated all your ammo. Lebo asked what defined the edges of spoken word and did we need to decide. She said that Trent's slam series someone came to the open mic and did a set of several beatbox pieces. Not a word, not an instrument, but a mood in pieces of vocal expression art.

Motion in one of her spoken word pieces interwove song snippets, a word, a line into her spoken narrative. She sings beautifully and it all hooks together into a rich tapestry yet it is a kind of intertextuality that some people seem want to want to avoid. Our cultural references must be sly, clever, a tribute quote, a embedded references tagged with our own spin, but the direct insertion of a chunk of quote seems less done, especially in page poetry. Spoken word seems to be more comfortable with giving honor to what came before and is happening now in that direct way.

If we have a song in our head, why not directly quote? a.rawling in her workshop remarked on how one wants to automatically resist some thoughts, such as when a refrain comes into the head as you're doing free writing. A little self-censor-flag pops up saying, hey, that's not your own thought. But you can let that flow as well and write thru and see what comes after. Resisting where your mind goes may not be as fruitful as letting it chase its own bliss without reprimands.

It seems to link to what Pema Chodron talks about in Learning to Stay

The pith instruction is, Stay. . . stay. . . just stay. Learning to stay with ourselves in meditation is like training a dog. If we train a dog by beating it, we’ll end up with an obedient but very inflexible and rather terrified dog. The dog may obey when we say "Stay!" "Come!" "Roll over!" and "Sit up!" but he will also be neurotic and confused. By contrast, training with kindness results in someone who is flexible and confident, who doesn’t become upset when situations are unpredictable and insecure.

Ciera Adams and a.rawlings ran a vocable workshop exploring sound, breath, vocal range, projection, how the body positions shift the physical sounds you make. One exercise was throwing an invisible ball to someone in the circle and making the noise of the ball before throwing it someone else. We did all kinds of huffing (in the breath sense) and sound improv circles of taking a a few words of text and as a group making sounds, verbal or non-verbal.

The workshops were a chance to explore in a controlled space other elements of expression and poetry. In the concrete poetry workshop derek beaulieu gave out materials (transfer rubbing letters, typewriter, stamp pads, crayons, markers, etc) and instructed us to explore textures, text as an object.

He mentioned how the standard page width is a kind of score. We are used to thoughts that wide and the pause it takes to return to the left column. What if we use the whole page, not just the left and the ragged right margin for meaning? He taught how to do a couple kinds of book binding at the end.