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Welsh Poetry, Psychogeography & EcoPoetics
It is 12:20 in Providence a Friday…
I scroll through the madding blogs and check in
with Harriet
to see what the poets
in Wales are doing these days…
Zoë Skoulding
What ARE the poets in Wales doing these days, fifteen years after R. S. Thomas’ God-haunted Collected Poems
, fifty-five years after Dylan Thomas’ wildly popular Under Milk Wood
and seventy-one years after David Jones’ incomparable, impeccable In Parenthesis
? If you read Welsh, you already know about the literary journal Barddas
and the reluctance of many Welsh-language poets to allow their work to appear in English translation. If you don’t read Welsh, you can check in with PoetryWales
, edited by Zoë Skoulding, a magazine intended to bring into dialogue various poetry communities in Wales (and the rest of the world). In the new issue (Summer, 2008), there’s an illuminating essay on the thin history of alternative poetry in Wales, a remarkable translucination (or inspired mis-translation) by Harry Gilonis of the Canu Heledd
, a ninth century Welsh verse-and-prose saga, and reviews of new books by Peter Riley and Elisabeth Bletsoe by Peter Finch, a Welsh “poet and psychogeographer.”
Psychogeographer? It turns out that Skoulding, the editor of PoetryWales
, likewise describes herself as a psychogeographer. The word, defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviors of individuals,” might serve to link 20th century Situationists with 21st century Ecopoetics, if Ecopoetics is considered to be less pastoral nostalgia than the kind of home-making (eco-poetics) that expands attentiveness to our interaction with the spaces around us. (It’s curious to note the continuing influence of the Situationists on various contemporary writers, from American poet Joshua Clover to Japanese poet Kiwao Nomura).
In the case of editor/poet Zoë Skoulding, who often performs her work to music and clips of site-specific sounds orchestrated by Welsh musician Alan Holmes, the Eco-poetics comes to resemble a kind of industrial opera. To get a sense of how this sounds, listen to the mp3 below. Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not Under Milk Wood
anymore.
Download file
(This download opens the music file right away.)
You can also go straight to Zoë’s website.
(At the other—rural, North American—end of Ecopoetic soundscapes, you may want to bend an ear to the “Little Dictionary of Sounds” by Jonathan Skinner hosted by Palm Press.
Posted in Group Blog, Uncategorized on Monday, September 8th, 2008 by Forrest Gander.
Comments (6)
Forrest,
thanks for the post on this topic. For what it’s worth, as either a pedantic textual note or an actual political claim: the SI aggressively rejected the term “Situationism,” as they claimed to be committed only to practice and not to an ideological program. And I think this is probably fair, more than when many folks casually disparage “-isms” and present themselves as postideological. The SI certainly had articulated and highly politicized ideas as well as actions, but they offered no positive program, took no joiners, and endeavored to have no participation in “politics” as such. I think their commitment to negation gives them the right — the cred — to refuse the “-ism” in this case. As my friend Annie sez:
solid, j
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Thanks Jane. You make a good point, although how people want to define themselves and how they come to be defined can vary of course. And particularly in relation to psychology (and psychogeography), the word Situationism has taken on a life. But in light of your point, I’m going back in to make a change.
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The richest, most impossibly complex prosody in Western poetry is Welsh. The intricacy and esotericism can be mind-boggling.
I’m curious if any of these younger poets are working within some of those forms, even “translucinating” them, as you have it. Is the recovery of formal traditions an element of that “reluctance to appear in English translation”?
Kent
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Some younger poets remain interested in the infamous cynghanedd!
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Not an academic- how many people still read Welsh?
If it is not translated, the poetry remains a curiosity, a rebel. Unread.
Maybe it’s good, or perhaps, the poetry is poor and hiding?
Perhaps this refusal to translate is just cyhoeddusrwydd?
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Forest, re “how people want to define themselves and how they come to be defined can vary of course” — inarguably true. Perhaps the most optimistic view of that process is that it produces multiple, overlapping definitions, and thus somehow more meanings; I would suggest that the word “Situationism” hasn’t only taken on a life, but taken on a meaning that the Situationists might disavow or even contest. So that’s a gain, somehow, in what can be done with words. But it’s also a risk that the usage might mislead about the very thing it seems to refer to. I know, I know, this problem is endless — look what’s become of “Luddite.” I guess I wished only to say that I think we gain by holding onto the word’s use and the history of its misuse both. Best.
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