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Silent disco

Originally Published: October 13, 2008

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Have we entered a version of silent disco in which the primary experience of the poem is as received signals rather than noise?
For a poem to operate as a poem must it now be concentrated on the idea of itself, must it appear to be either the square root of poem or hardly a poem at all?
What's a disco? asked my American penpal in 1974. She also sought clarification on ‘jumble sale’ and ‘youth club’.
Silent disco: I thought it was the most miserable thing I’d ever heard of (a room full of people with headphones on, dancing alone and in silence) until one night a year ago in Nova Scotia when there was well and truly nothing else to do. Someone described me as looking joyful. It’s not often I get called that.

Lavinia Greenlaw has published three books of poems, most recently Minsk. Her two novels are Mary George...

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