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A monthly series of active reading.


1)

S Kelly & SJ Fowler, 'Ways of Describing Cuts'

Robert Hampson, 'Out of Sight'



Thinking about physicality first, the object and how voice manifests itself in this object. It’s apt then that we think about single and plural voice and how this can manifest itself physically. Kelly and Fowler are in dialogue with each other, they are also in opposition; physically they come together at “drowning”, the physical space between them once vast is “cut” and merged. This action of cutting through the space to come together interests me. I wonder how they physically dealt with space, whether it is related to distance, or time, or a marker of separation between voice?

Hampson’s physicality comes in a slant, a block of slanted text justified and strong on the page, yet there is a difference between how it acts

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We are comparing a book with multiple pages with a single fold. A similarity that springs to mind is how in both cases there is resistance to the provided structure, so the dialogue between SJ Fowler and S Kelly is not played out on opposite pages but across an invisible horizontal divide that can disappear, and Hampson's text is printed across the fold and at an angle with the page, disrupting the visual experience of reading, from opening the fold to encountering the text, to reading the text.




“how it acts” – is it one act – is it a single appearance? As with Fowler/Kelly there is still a sense of the linear. As with McCaffery’s ‘Lag’ the text between commas presents a separate image or proposition, but it begins like a film treatment and ends with a full stop.

In Hampson’s piece we always consider the text in relation to our understanding of a block of prose – a rather abstract detached notion – how about in Kelly/Fowler? Are we reading the text on its own terms or in relation to an existing model? Is the fact of two poets sharing the same book presented as a new

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This disruption occurs in both through the physical and the use of text/voice. There is an interest in both texts in the physical rupture of the page and this is reflected in the ongoing textual rupturing. The use of speech, of how to speak or how speech is constructed is highlighted.

"not a poetry just a sitting and a speech"

S Kelly - SJ Fowler

This sense of conversation and dialogue being distressed or under duress, there being a pressure to express. One voice never allows the other to find itself. The one searching voice in 'Out of Sight' is constantly shifting and moving through a non poetry language. I wonder then how the poetic finds itself in both pieces. How the language becomes poetical and whether this is related to these physical dialogues being played out on the page.




reading experience? The sharing and action of sharing is of concern, as are they sharing or working against each other? Perhaps what is more necessary to consider is not that there are two voices, but these two voices both claim the “I”. There is then a shifting “I” in the text which flits between female and male. Both voices are claiming the “I” for themselves; what impact does this have on the text and our experience of it? The “I” in this text speaks to each other, moves between each other; I’m interested in whether the “I” stays whole

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I was also interested in reading, perhaps specifically in reading for this purpose, whether an important part of reading is identifying language that self-referentially gives a clue to the process, this need the reader of poetry has to find in the poetry itself clues to how it should be received, and I think the first thing a reader does is to force a literalness to parts of the text to fit this purpose. For example I read in Hampson's piece a reference to movie treatments, and this reading brought a significance to 'there's more money in treatment than in cure'.




Also, what does this do to the reader? A reader is often assuming the I of the text, relating to it. Should we pick a side here? We are asked to identify with both sides of a poetic dialogue but also to replace our notion of poet with “dialogue between two poets”. There is something exciting in this dialogue as it exposes process to a point and we feel each voice constricting and liberating the other. However, we still wonder about the directions the writing(s) takes when moving away from or towards this structure.

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This idea of literalness is interesting as we question how literal the author or authors are being. There is a mistrust between reader and author/authors in both texts as identity is always shifting away from the reader. In Hampson there is a constant and relentless labelling and retelling of this identity that leaves us freefalling with the 'I' perhaps? In Kelly and Fowler we mistrust the shifts between voices, I wonder where and if the I can rest, where you can rest. How the dialogue between bodies can resolve itself if at all possible. Does either piece resolve itself? Is there a sense that both are finished? Out of Sight



S Kelly & SJ Fowler, 'Ways of Describing Cuts', Knives Forks and Spoons Press

Robert Hampson, 'Out of Sight', Crater Press


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