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A monthly series of active reading.

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Re:active re:reading.

1)

10/12 - 01/13



The personal is something which is driving these poets, but in very individual ways. Returning to the Hampson I sense that sense of absence; I wonder about what surrounds the language in terms of where it has been lifted from. This idea that language always comes from somewhere else, somewhere outside the poem. The poem giving it a new context constructed by the poet. A Davenport cell is a context, a bit of Waffle is, the way in which Flick moves in Crewe’s constructed landscape for it. Context of and for the poet is of interest to me. How / where / why the text is built into a context and where this then fits in a wider context of poetics or art or literature.

//

The 'personal' and the single consciousness - we often talk about multi-vocality and multi-consciousness but this sense of or rejection of the 'personal' brings us to the single consciousness who is reading, who is of course one of many (potentially, conceptually) but singly is reading 'for' - 'reading for' another like him/her? Is this naive? Is this why writers resist the personal? There is the heightened persona personal of Robinson, or the fantastic figure of Flick in Crewe - do these personae represent this desire of consciousness?




I’m changing the subject, but … … How do the poets show their influences? Terry re-visions Queneau. Davenport references everyone and the title is from Bob Cobbing but also a near-homonym for Apollinaire etc. etc. But both are finding new territory. Davenport presents us with a grid that for Mac Low was a means to a poem, there it is the poetic text.

//

The action of reading as an experience which should be challenged and is under construction: Davenport builds cells of multiple and physical reading strategies. I think he is not only asking how to write but how to read. Terry also challenges my how to read. With James Davies' comments in my mind returning to this I see it as a more formulaic piece, asking questions of reading in relation to the book, reading as a movement from and between and across ideas/structures/experiences. The awareness of how we read becomes important to me. Or how we are reading. Or might re-read.

Our reading/re-reading brings with it a context




There is something fragile and breakable within all these voices for me. You touched on Fowler and Kelly building a joint vocabulary or voice, but it still breaks away in the poems' structure. This is something occurring in the Ashcroft too, is there a pre-occupation with attempting to find a voice? Not one of the texts function with one voice. Is there a pre-occupation with attempting to find a voice? Not one of the texts functions as one voice. Is there a pre-occupation with attempting to find a voice? Not one of the texts functions in one voice.

with – as – in –

//

To speak the poet must appropriate - covertly, consciously, subconsciously, unconsciously, conspicuously, inconspicuously, subtly, unsubtly, from seeing something, from hearing something, from out-sourcing, from in-sourcing, from delegating the work of 'poet', from taking on the work of 'poet' -

voicing voices voices
voices voice voicing
voice voicing voices

Vocabulary is important
Choices of vcices

Why does the same word(s) crop up in two different books?

e.g. 'dock leaves' in Kelly/Fowler and Crewe.




Let’s think of the texts among these eight books that seem to be more actively referencing a specific space i.e. site in which the poet finds herself – in Terry, Crewe, Ashcroft, Robinson, I read this.

Hampson and Davenport are explicitly re-locating the site of another text or texts. The textual site. In Terry, Crewe, Ashcroft, Robinson, in their sites – from their sites – what can writing do? What is it trying to do?

//

The poetics then as a functioner of language is a body moving form one body to another. Body is built and re-built. Body is writer is language is book is voice is reader is context is always moving away from me

We have placed these bodies alongside each other to arrive at more bodies.

Some questions

- Do we resist or depend on the book?
- How is the book being played with temporally?
- Where is gender in these works?

These are questions I always ask and have been asking and will continue to ask of these and more bodies.




Kelly & Fowler / Hampson (10/12)

Welton / Davenport (11/12)

Robinson / Ashcroft (12/12)

Crewe / Terry (01/13)


more press free press RESPOND

press free press RESPOND

A monthly series of active reading.


2)

Matthew Welton, 'Waffles'

Philip Davenport, 'Appeal in Air'



Form and content and how the situation of text and language can inform this is interesting. Davenport is working within the “form” of a spreadsheet, it is determining the inevitable form the language takes; the very physical space then constructs and deconstructs the language. Words are broken by the line of the cell – words are enclosed. The relationship then is one where the form becomes part of the construction of language. Davenport is not being allowed to build form in the same way Welton is. Welton has constructed his own cells of working, these also allow for a building of interaction between the language and the form it takes. Waffles repeatedly utters that it is under “construction” – the making of these phrases is interesting to me. The stencil action of repeating, yet altering; a word becomes a sound becomes a word again; there is a progression and

//

There are conceptual sections and divisions in Welton that are intricate and multiple, and yet the book observes a rigid visual decorum, perhaps pushing hardest against this in the square bracketed italicised sequence in the first construction. Davenport's post-poetic idea is to embrace the spreadsheet as a visual norm.




Is the personal in Davenport shown up in

e.g. “Can’t remember” (D469)

which appears in the row that is generally a list of names of contemporary experimental poets. It seems to show the human/personal in this data-collector, this spreadsheet filler. In Welton the personal similarly appears, in his confessions

e.g. “The real mistakes I maybe make”

but also in reference to the speakers girlfriend and “girlfriend’s kid”. Welton defines a particular local personal field through repetition of certain words.

//

The sense making stategy; a way of working which attempts to work through process using language as a tool.

In Waffles we have three distinct strategies at play in three sections. How do these link together? Is there a common strategy?

Language is being manipulated in both texts with a playfulness. Does this allow for more accesibility?
What makes these pieces accesible?
How do we read each of them?
Can we read the Davenport with one voice?
By putting these together we see just how difficult the Davenport is to navigate.
By difficult I mean;




This “I” is important in Waffles as it is one which is moving as an “I” in the poems but also as the “I” of the poet. I wonder about the separation or closeness between these two “I’s”.  The link between the poem and the personal perhaps? We see definite cognitive moves taking place in Waffles, there is a visible “construction” and de-“construction” of the forms this “I” finds itself in. Do we see it move from an “I” of “multiplicity” to and “I” of “minimality” as constructions of six principles?

//

The poet's mind and eye in Waffles refers back to the same real/unreal images and among these repeated images e.g.

monkey
coffee

is 'a pile of apple waffles'

To pull this word out for the title is to emphasise its other meaning to do with speaking - but also, as we have just mentioned - this grid structure that may or may not be a clue to the constructions.

Either way there is a play between the visible real/unreal and the invisible structures and concepts perhaps producing the visible - it is language that connects




Davenport is celebratory, public, joyful, claiming poetic space, hijacking the spreadsheet form. Welton also constructs his own space but within an already understood poetic framework.

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The idea of context and where to place these texts is worth considering. We have drawn them together by chance, yet they each comment on the other interestingly.
Davenport creates a structure of poets within his text; an army perhaps, constructing a space for this work to sit in, to be nested in.

I wonder then where to place Waffles, what traditional or non traditional space. It is pushing outwards with its conscious decision to play with form & break verse traditions by paying attention to the construction process of form. This interests me; its construction interests me.

Davenport begins with a topical structured space of the spreadsheet, yet explodes it with language. It is a reading score of experience & constructs a space which is



Matthew Welton, 'Waffles', Egg Box Publishing

Philip Davenport, 'Appeal in Air', Knives Forks and Spoons Press


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