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via Possum Ego by Dale on 11/19/08
BIG BRIDGE (HTTP://BIGBRIDGE.ORG)CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Contributing editor Dale Smith seeks work that explores definitions, theories, and practices of Slow Poetry. Deadline: December 31.
The online poetry journal Big Bridge seeks essays, poems, visual art, performance documentation, eco-criticism, creative writing pedagogy, and other material that addresses or explores issues generated by conversations initiated last summer over Slow Poetry. Arguments, moreover, that offer critical perspectives on Slow Poetry are welcome.
Since Slow Poetry is strictly a descriptive platform, feel free to contribute new ideas, arguments, and issues that may be useful for the ongoing development of a slow poetics. Here are some critical perspectives to consider that form the basis of Slow Poetry theory and practice:
The current global contraction is going to change the way poets understand the social and physical production of their work. Over the summer I began borrowing ideas from the Slow Food movement and from systems strategist John Robb to introduce ways of thinking about poetry in our current geo-political context.(1) These new approaches, with others, are important for a number of reasons. Since World War II the world has experienced unprecedented growth as access to cheap energy and resources created an era of market expansion and, in the process, the deterioration of the nation-state. Now, with markets contracting, energy and resources becoming inconsistently dispersed, and social networks disrupted by the end of the growth model,(2) poets will increasingly face a number of difficult decisions in their work and in their daily lives—like everyone else.
With market capitalists supporting unfettered growth as a model of social good during the last several decades, it's no surprise that post-World War II poetry experienced a similar expansion. The proliferation of movements and schools of poetry after the war introduced practices of poetry and community that in many ways have been reduced by the homogenizing structure of the creative writing department in more recent years. The Spicer Circle, The Bolinas poets (centered around Joanne Kyger, Robert Creeley, and others), the Coyote poets, (who published work in the 1970s journal, Coyote, edited by Jim Koller), Gary Snyder's circle in the Sierras, the Black Arts Movement and Umbra Workshop (attended by Lorenzo Thomas, David Henderson), and many others,(3) helped reinforce practices of poetry that were socially engaged, aesthetically inspired, and pragmatically organized to promote work that significantly opened new directions of thought and social realization.
As models of growth recede in industry and finance, however, we can expect poetry and other art forms to face extraordinary pressures too. Such new problems might include the failure of conventional, petroleum-based food production, new limitations on long-distance travel and communications, inadequate oil and natural gas supply, outdated electricity grids, and increasingly bankrupt municipalities. Approaching such an awesome spectacle of contraction, Slow Poetry might be able to provide dialogue on the contribution of poetry to the new communities that are bound to form as the current economic crisis intensifies and the nation-state further deteriorates along with its legitimizing forms.
With this in mind, we might discuss ways to produce fewer books while developing multiple poetic practices more locally—through readings, performance, public art, and more ephemeral newsletter-like publications. Those of us in academic positions might, moreover, develop pedagogies that direct students toward a world and away from the competitive models of publication, and the set-up for failure that often involves. How, for instance, might poetry be used to introduce argumentation to students—helping them prepare for other decision-making situations wherein agonistic discourse is stressed over obedience to a single perspective? Creative writing pedagogy, moreover, could be applied to prepare students to participate in the material production of texts and performances without developing expectations for prize-winning publication. Poets, especially, can ready themselves and their communities through the ongoing practice and dialogue of poetry in any form.
The preference for the perfect-bound book—based in the environmental hazards of paper and ink production and the legitimizing interests of institutions—also will, by necessity, recede as handmade and online publications begin to carry the more important news. This is already happening. Micro presses, renegade newsletters, online blogs, magazines, and listserves more frequently convey the vital substance of our labor, while the larger presses legitimize work in a system that operates largely without peer review or other oversight processes to support the complicated tasks of literary judgment.
Slow Poetry argues, instead, that social values and skills of production can be reinforced with poetic action on all fronts. Where there is community—people forming in groups to build a meaningful existence—there will exist a poetics at the heart of it. Poetry reinforces attitudes and beliefs—and it can express great doubts.
But we cannot forget the power of the negative too—the critical and cantankerous spirit of poetry remains vital for pointing out the failure of our proposals. Slow Poetry is a movement of negation and simplicity; of acknowledged failure and the obdurate space of hopelessness. Any attempt to rise above such base values litters the world with unjustified optimism. Slow Poetry then provides a space for the negative to assert itself into the tasks of community. There is then a moral dimension to Slow Poetry. No environment is innocent—especially ours. Slow Poetry values doubt over belief and blindness over vision. The point of departure, after Robert Duncan, is "in the dark."
Please send material in word or pdf format to dmsmith@mail.utexas.edu. The following links contain essays, notes, and comments that provide background on Slow Poetry:
K. Silem Mohammad, "Nuissance Value and Slow Poetry," Lime Tree, July 2008 available http://lime-tree.blogspot.com/2008/07/nuisance-value-and-slow-poetry.html
Travis Nichols, "For slow and slow that ship will go," Harriet: a blog from the poetry foundation, August 2008 available http://poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2008/08/for_slow_and_slow_that_ship_wi_1.html
Kristin Prevallet, "Practicing Slow Poetry," Letters from Citizen Kay, July 2008 available http://citizenkay.blogspot.com/2008/07/practicing-slow-poetry.html
Dale Smith, "Slow Down," Bookslut, July 2008 available http://www.bookslut.com/marsupial_inquirer/2008_07_013233.php
Dale Smith, "Slow Poetry," Possum Ego, June 2008 available http://possumego.blogspot.com/2008/06/slow-poetry.html
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Notes:
1 See John Robb, Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007); and Robb's blog, Global Guerrillas at http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com; and Dale Smith, Possum Ego at http://possumego.blogspot.com.
2 World news headlines today announce that pirates have taken hostage an oil tanker off the coast of Somalia with an estimated 2 million barrels of oil. Might such piracy eventually threaten safe passage through the Suez Canal?
3 The list here is long, though we shouldn't neglect to mention the various iterations of the New York School and the Deep Image movement along with the elemental interest in ethno-poetics, inspired by the anthologies of Jerome Rothenberg. Bay Area Language Poetry also features prominently as an example of community formation during the 1970s, and is a model that many have learned from.
4 Note how both DHL and the U. S. Post Office have cut thousands of jobs in recent days.
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