Comments on: Poetry Marathon at the Serpentine Gallery, London

By: wystan curnow

wystan curnow — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:05:45 +0000

Hi Caroline, I like your added thought/s. I’ve been in two minds about ‘poetry’ for a while; ‘poetry’ is a genre, which is to say in the context of this marathon it harks back to a time when the visual arts were painting and sculpture, not to a present time of in which visual arts practice is largely ‘post-medium’ or ‘post-genre’. As is demonstrated by the Serpentine’s exhibition programme, and its inclusion of poetry. I prefer to think the literary arts are in some measure art similarly post-genre and post-medium, and certainly that any present day traffic between the visual and the literary is most likely to be of use on such a basis, but this is hardly received wisdom. It is not merely a matter of the relations between media or genres but of a different conception of the art object and its relation to its receiver. I agree that a longer term societal restructuring of the arts is going on, and is operative at many levels.

In Auckland there has been marked recent upsurge in publishing by commercial and artist-run galleries, the later are publishing literary writing by emerging artists, a quite new phenomenon. A local version of New York’s Printed Matter opened earlier this year. As at Chicago’s Art Institute, there are changes taking place at the University of Auckland in the composition of classes and the skills they possess. Fine Arts and Music School students have made a large impact on my current English Department Writing Poetry class, especially their knowledge of and feeling for modes of presentation and performance.
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By: prom girl

prom girl — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:37:18 +0000

I think this is art.
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By: mairead byrne

mairead byrne — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:40:56 +0000

Maybe they will!
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By: Jordan

Jordan — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:08:45 +0000

> I’d be interested to read

Me too. Maybe somebody will pay me to write it.

> do you use

I use it as it is used in Pound’s very silly poem to Whitman.
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By: jscape

jscape — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:38:18 +0000

Caroline, I’m really goaded by your second comment and by Mairead’s thoughts about student communities at RISD & SAIC, as this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I remember this train of issues being spurred powerfully by a night at the Stone four years ago at which you were present, and also by the Openport festival. These are emergent issues that arise from an experience and stultification of work, as receiver and maker, & out of collaboration with a younger generation in teaching, which also, lastly, beg for a kind of theorization, & thus far I don’t see the latter happening in a satisfying way; prose that thinks about the alteration of reading and authority incipient in production generously is still quite specific to distinct media sets. Commitment to reckoning with a “multi-sensory, less unified approach to artistic experience, knowledge and public influence” (yes!) calls for the expansiveness to press well beyond given categories, to recognize the continuum between scanning and interpretation, reception and composition, gesture and authority, between distraction and orchestration of knowledge. And also beyond the discursive–so that, it seems to me, the best thinking in these environs is in art itself. Some initial groping reflections of mine around a poetic/aesthetic tendency toward alloverness & ambience are due out soon in boundary 2, if you’re interested. But the stress on the “psycho-social” implications is terrifically compelling, as it impinges on the ways that communities of knowledge are being altered in this moment. A colleague of mine at UC, Lauren Berlant, is working on what she’s calling “ambient citizenship.” That’s a direction with potential. As teachers we can form responsive curricula that take a longer historical view; as poets I suppose a kind of abeyance is obliged, so that one floats the work before a forum is necessarily there, & hope it takes somewhere.
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By: john

john — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:19:05 +0000

20 years ago *is* now.

And Brakhage’s film is more than 40 years old . . .

In the realm of the “individual” arts of poetry, music, painting, sculpture, I pretty much agree with you; film I see as a “collective” art, though, and, while directors get the glory, they rely on a lot of other people, including composers and writers, even poets.
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By: mairead byrne

mairead byrne — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:39:05 +0000

Jordan, I admit my perspective is informed by immigration (between cultures) and migration (from university to art school), and know that a predilection for migration/mixture/diversity marks my poetics too. I’d be interested to read a more expansive treatment of your argument for *now* as a time
“when interart commerce is limited.” Also, do you use “commerce” as a metaphor or are you talking about money-making enterprise?
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By: Jordan

Jordan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:28:41 +0000

Oh, twenty years ago — I thought we were talking about now.
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By: john

john — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:14:16 +0000

I disagree about movie makers — they’re always working with visual artists and musicians, and even, sometimes, poets. The degree of dialog versus dictation varies from filmmaker to filmmaker, of course.

Heck, Stan Brakhage made a movie of . . . Louis Zukofsky! I saw it 20 years ago; don’t remember it much.
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By: Jordan

Jordan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:47:11 +0000

The movies are another insular art form – there doesn’t appear to be much dialogue between movie makers and… well, anyone (dictation isn’t dialogue).

Of course movies are art.
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By: john

john — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:40:36 +0000

I’m sorry — I’m not sure what you mean. That the movies aren’t art?
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By: Jordan

Jordan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:53:39 +0000

> then I remember the movies

See, I would have called that a case in point.
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By: john

john — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:11:10 +0000

Jordan,

At first I think, yes, little commerce, but then I remember the movies. The movies subsume all the arts — poetry, painting, music, story. Gesamtkunstwerk, baby.

And hey — just remembered! I’m working on a book of poems with an abstract painter friend. Her work is gorgeous; I’m delighted to be working with her on the project.
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By: Jordan

Jordan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:11:11 +0000

Mairead, I’d say now is a fairly good example of a time when interart commerce is limited.
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By: Dan Flynn

Dan Flynn — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:46:15 +0000

I love Philip Larkin’s poetry and his use of language has informed my appreciation of poetry as well as my own writing. I am reminded about one of his slightly polemic poems, “Sunny Prestatyn” (1962). This poem explores the irony of an artful travel ad, which is subsequently vandalized by felicitous art and ultimately replaced by less art, succinct language. I too can laugh at parody, after all, such lateral, visual connections allows us to inherit meaning, go further in metaphor; however, the artist’s rendering of Larkin in a bathing suit, perhaps too suited, remains too far from reality. I think the connection to what informs us as writers and readers must always be tangible or at least believable. We may lose poets and artists as we go and this loss may not be our choice but the abundance of contemporary poets and artists must wait to fit in that canon. I am left thinking that poets can stand anywhere and read but artists must use a limited wall space. Also, didn’t Baywatch air after Larkin’s death?

Sincerely,
Titch Thomas
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By: mairead byrne

mairead byrne — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:42:26 +0000

I wonder if Jordan could give good examples of times in history when the arts/artists were impervious to each other; and what geographical/sociological/political conditions prevailed.

Caroline, I like your reference to the array of tools and techniques with which young writers are adept. Last week I was at a conference at the School of Visual Arts where Janet DeSauniers described School of the Art Institute of Chicago graduate classes in which half the students are writers, half studio artists, and the across-the-table/screen/platform exchange of tools and permissions which takes place. At no time, perhaps, have teachers of writing been obliged to learn from their students at such breakneck speed. The teacher/student relationship is reversed before it is established; in fact, reversal *is* the establishment.

At the same time, while accommodating flux, institutions cherish institution; some people work best within disciplines. I suppose my solution to the silo v field tension is the farm, where both silos and fields are necessary. But I have to learn more about farming in order to apply this with more specificity!
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By: Caroline Bergvall

Caroline Bergvall — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:43:43 +0000

Thank you all, these are really great and valuable comments. Let me add one more thought to your varied responses. I think we agree that the questioning and at times great frustration as to how to achieve a productive, in-depth, integrated presence of poetry (or literary arts) within the broader contemporary arts is one that many of us have been experiencing. Jordan’s point that there might not always be the necessity of open exchange between the arts is important here. I venture to take it one step further. I think it is to do with shifting value rather than exchange. Exchange, or thwarted exchange, might be a current by-product. By this I mean, there are separate skills and sensibilities, and importantly also, separate or rather parallel histories. But I wonder whether the peculiar, at times strident, perceived separateness or discrepancy between knowledges (and influence) in art is not also psycho-social. I wonder whether it isn’t also to do with the reshaping of culture away from the singular authority of verbal and literary authority (what speaks to culture and how), as we are moving towards a more multi-sensory, less unified approach to artistic experience, knowledge and public influence. Indeed, younger writers are frequently familiar with all sorts of techniques and tools that are also an integrated part of other art modes. This of course also pushes to be applied to our teaching practices and necessitates the development of a responsive curriculum within English, for instance. Which is why it is so important to keep on thinking this one through. This could mean that much of our acquiescence to the vitality of visual and sound arts and the potential that one can see in poetry as an expanded mode of writing (the many forms this might take) might simply be part of a long-term societal restructuring of art. Our discomfort, the imperfect fit we’re going through becomes relatively minor or liveable seen from this perspective. It becomes something one might need to take into account in what we do as poets. What we can achieve does have to do with creating or maintaining a conscious and radical understanding of language’s work.
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By: Jordan

Jordan — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:42:02 +0000

What if constant open exchange between the arts is impossible to sustain, is a developmental stage in the history of a culture (art’s just going through a stage)…
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By: James Davies

James Davies — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:32:06 +0000

I was incredibly disappointed when I found out about this event late on and could not attend. This seems like it could be one of the most important and exciting events in the UK for a long while in terms of audience numbers and having alarge group of great poets together at any one time. The list of poets you mention are mouth-watering. The premise of the artists sounds great and obviously I cannot comment on their performances but I would have found them interesting for this one off event.

However I agree totally with what you say. Poetry is seen as a pejorative term by by most people in general and perhaps by some artists. Or seen by artists as an inferior discipline which cannot achieve the same ends. I often talk to people who can talk to me at ease about contemporary art but when they find out I write and read poetry look at me like I’m a stamp collector and ask ‘what do I write about’ – meaning ‘what’s the topic of my poems?’ Is it about war? or maybe about seeing the strangeness in the everyday.

This is due to the canons of art and poetry not matching. Many people simply are not aware of contemporary poetry (hopefully this event will have alerted them) .Anyone who hasn’t dismissed the popular canon of poetry has no knowledge of possibilities: but they might well know text art. The problem lies with the fact that the popular canon of art is essentially contemporary whereas the popular canon of poetry is modernist (and almost to a state of regression): dull or embarrassing.

People know how to read contemporary art and therefore should be able to read contemporary poetry (and by this I mean innovative, experimental, etc.) but there is a block, almost like a malfunction; people assume that poetry is twee and simply a flowery/clever description of something and that anything interesting in language happens in text art: although contemporary poetry is far more interesting than text art on the whole. Text artists often have or seem to have no background in contemporary poetry and produce similar things to poets but which are not as interesting. It seems to me that because of the mix of poets and artists some audience members will have had an eye opener.
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By: mairead byrne

mairead byrne — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:11:28 +0000

I savor this: “Poets’ impact on the development of interdisciplinary arts provides a crucial, if often largely ignored, contribution to subsequent art or literary histories.”
The Marathon itself sounds stupendous but poetry’s fugitive migratory osmosis-in-all-directions processes and friendly, if reclusive, handshakes invite notions of new structures, new metaphors for public performance/presentation beyond the monolithic, even the fertile and delightful monolith of the marathon. One of the interesting things about poetry is the extent to which audience and performers are one and the same, although this identification weakens perhaps the more famous the poet is.
Contemporary information environments demand a level of sophistication both verbally and visually: this affects both visual artists and writers. Just as writers have to, at least minimally, make decisions about font/color/image/design in digital environments so visual artists have to claim a level of fluency and flexibility with language on a day-to-day basis on the web. Poetry brings *voice* to the enterprise; maybe that’s what gives people pause. heck, *voice* gives poets pause too — few poets raise their voices, widen their voices, narrow their voices, do anything with their voices at all. And a lot of people don’t much like speaking in public (including a lot of poets). Obviously poetry issues an open invitation for fun with every aspect of voice but few take it up.
I see my students, at Rhode Island School of Design, looking down at the page as if it were a stage, approaching text as if it were an archaeological dig, using color, working with great subtlety with sound, locking text away, just doing too many things to text, in particular, and the performance of reading and writing to an extent, to list here. Students are not institutions, I concede. But another interesting thing about the economy of poetry is the extent to which it operates one-by-one.
I like that word “scission”!
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By: jscape

jscape — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:48:58 +0000

Caroline, I’m grateful for the thoughtful report on this ambitious event. I’m afraid–& I reckon you’d agree–that the problem you identify as “sclerosis between verbal and non-verbal arts” is not limited to Britain. Despite all abstractions issued regarding the value of interdisciplinarity and cross-media work, the institutionalization of the arts at large appears to necessitate self-disciplining & shelving in the form of media/genre specificity and near-immediate adherence to a school, channel, or ideology, lest one’s production be left behind as anathema in the rush of reception; that’s pervasive here as well, & all the more criminally in a haven like New York, which is so abuzz with interest and promise that it produces anxiety about what warrants, and what will return, the investment of every spectator’s limited font of attention. That which fits itself squarely within a matrix already given is easiest to assess. Inhabiting languages’ estrangement and exploring alien media risks unfolding outside of professional realms. Hence the canned presentations of preauthorized poetry in fearful museums instead of a truer collaboration of unforeseen consequences. I say “appears,” “risks,” because obviously there are exceptions. But not nearly enough.
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