Glitch Poetics

In the Dec-Jan 2015-16 issue of Art Monthly, there's an article by Nathan Jones. Here's the start - "Technological breakdowns stop us at the moment of dissolution into a mesh of media, tools and technologies, offering us a fleeting moment of insight about the things we use and how we relate to them. In this sense, our experience of media is precisely - and perhaps uniquely - the experience of their failure".

Artists like Caroline Bergvall "force and accentuate errors in language ... to extend what language can say into the formerly unspeakable territory of its own production". "What I am calling glitch poetics operates to extend and make critically available the liminal moment of our relationship with technologies through language".

Bergvall mumbled recordings, "Inhabiting the accidental slippage and the inherent noise of analogue recording as purposive tactic". Others have used predictive text to "overload the desire of the technological algorithms for ever-greater intimacy and complicity".

Finally we learn that "at the frontier of language and technology, artists are extending what is sayable in order to articulate the formerly withdrawn but now increasing coercive apparatuses which are involved in saying and in doing. By engaging with timeless questions about the interior self and exterior self in language, these artists are addressing increasingly insistent issues raised by computational prostheses".

He describes a performance by Scourti as "containing many words of apparent significance, phrases which gestured towards making a statement of some kind, but the cumulative effect being one of circularity and incoherence ... it continually appears to make sense yet ultimately says nothing at all".

Mixed genre poetry books

It's not so unusual for prose writers to write poetry too. They used to publish them in separate books. The situation's less clear nowadays. For example, consider "Certain Windows" by Dan Burt (Lintott Press, 2011). It's 64 pages long, with poems from PN Review and the TLS. There's a 35-page prose autobiography of his early years. How did such a situation arise?

Many decades ago, there were places in the US/UK that published snippets of prose - I think Readers Digest had little pieces for example. But these outlets dried up so the authors of these short texts, if they wanted them published, had to send them to poetry magazines. Of course, prose-poetry existed, but that term was reserved for surreal, discontinuous works. So what they did was add line-breaks. Also popular was the idea of making all the stanzas the same size of rectangle, as if there was a metrical/rhyming pattern. Read Paul Durcan's poems to see how it's done.

Then Flash emerged, providing a natural home for short narratives again. Various other short prose formats became popular too. Authors of short pieces no longer needed to add gratuitous line-breaks. Some authors have taken advantage of this. Carolyn Forché has re-published her famous "The Colonel" poem as prose. Don Paterson publishes books of aphorisms

I think it's time that editors questioned line-breaks that do little, just as they challenge words and lines that don't pull their weight. Some editors do, but line-breaks have so many putative purposes (many so subtle that I can't see them) that editors tend to leave the layout alone.

Just to add to the fun, there's a trend to use "/" instead of a line-break. Some people use multiple spaces between words. In addition more people than ever are writing poetry with an aim to be published, so it's no surprise that people are spreading into less traditional areas of poetry, straying into hybrid zones.

The conflation of short prose with poetry has led to more books having a mix of poetry and prose. E.g. -

• Helen Tookey's "City of Departures" (Carcanet, 2021) begins with poems, but ends with pages that are unashamedly prose.
• "Citizen" by Claudia Rankine won poetry prizes but much of it wasn't trying to be poetry, it seems to me.
• "Small Hours" by Lachlan Mackinnon (Faber, 2010) ends with a long section of text which I'd call prose. Some reviewers said so too.

Nowadays poetry readers seem capable of not caring about line-breaks. When they start reading a poem I think they decide whether it's the sort of piece where line-breaks matter and read the piece accordingly. Neither do they care much if there's obvious prose in a poetry book. I suspect it's been going on covertly for a while. I read a U.A. Fanthorpe book recently. It looked like a mixture of poetry and prose. Her famous "Not my Best Side" is like the prose I try to write. I doubt if the Trades Description Act can be applied. That said, I think Poetry judges could be braver.

If you can't beat them, join them. I have prose and poetry versions of some pieces. I’ve short-lined and long-lined versions of poems. I've even (shame on me) taken a paragraph from a story of mine, added some line-breaks, and had it published in a poetry mag.

2 poetry podcasts

Both these podcasts tackle a poem or 2 per episode, but in different ways.

Frank Skinner is a well-known UK comedian with hidden depths. He does a good solo job with a range of poems old and new, some of them rather challenging. His target audience includes people who don't usually read modern poetry - he's aware of which aspects they may disapprove of. He's enthusiastic, not pretentious, and doesn't hesitate to reveal aspects of his personal life if it helps illuminate the piece. In his most recent episode he talks about 2 poems from Caroline Bird's "The Air Year", making me realise I'd missed some points - e.g in the title poem "the mime scene" alludes to "the crime scene".

In "Poem Talk" an avant-garde poem is discussed by 3 or 4 American academics who help each other try to understand the piece. A recording by the poet is played. They often come to no firm conclusions. I learn much from their comments, which at times seem very generous. They're fairly honest about their puzzlement though they never go as far as blaming the poet.

Apprehending

You've seen the plot before. The local police have been told not to apprehend a criminal but keep him under surveillance because Interpol want to catch the whole network. But an ambitious, impetuous young cop who's unaware of the big picture arrests the criminal because he thinks the criminal's getting away.

Apprehending a poem can have the same plot. Committing yourself to the first interpretation ensures that you get the bird in the hand, but you might miss out on many more that two other possibilities in the bush.

So follow at a distance. Wait for it to make contact with more significant agents. Try to picture the whole network. The first idea you have may be the easiest to find because it's the most superficial. Don't think that the title says it all. Don't think that the rhymes are what it's all about. Remember that even low-level operatives are cunning enough to lead you down blind alleys.

The vocabulary of poetry appreciation

Wine-tasting has its vocabulary. So does poetry appreciation. Orbis magazine has many pages of reader feedback which provide a useful sample. In the recent issue 198 I noticed that the most popular phrases are about

• how well the poet collected the data/experience: "precisely observed", "beautifully observed", "precise observation"
• the conversion into words: "captures" was popular (of "a moment", "the past", "the essence", "the intensity"). There's "compressed energy"
• the artifice/craft of the words: "constructed" appears twice ("beautifully constructed", "well constructed") and there's "exquisitely crafted", "well made" and "clever". "precision of language" appears too - see my Poetry and Precision article.
• the effect on the reader (getting the original data/experiences back): "evocative" appears more than once. There's "immersive" and "relatable". Also "amusing"

These phrases suit the idea of poets having experiences that they try to communicate to readers using expertise which ideally can be measured. I think the poems in Orbis have a wider aesthetic range than this, but only certain types of poems attract comment, it seems to me.

I'd imagine that if Shearsman magazine had a correspondence page, the vocabulary would emphasise other features.

The phrase "skilfully written with the rhymes barely noticeable" caught my eye. It's common to think that the artfulness is best hidden - it's the effect that matters. When rhyming words are chosen at the expense of meaning, the rhymes will stand out. But it's ok when the rhymes in "Do not go gently" stand out, because nothing is sacrificed, I guess.

Rejection records

On 25th April, 1917 Freud wrote in his journal "No Nobel Prize". Of course, few people have disappointments on that scale. At this time of year I expect to get some acceptances to balance the many rejections of earlier months. Surely some editor or other can make an error of judgement in my favour for once. But the rejections keep piling in. Here are my top 5 sources of poetic woe

Magazine	Rejections	Acceptances
Acumen	33	9
Iota	25	19
Poetry Review	24	0
Rialto	21	4
North	19	1

I'm most disappointed by my North failures. They say they accept 10% of submissions. I'm not even reaching that level.

Here are my short story records

Magazine	Rejections	Acceptances
Ambit	11	0
Stinging Fly	6	0
Into the void	5	0
JMWW	5	0
Prole	5	0

I've never expected my poetry to be in the Forward Anthologies. I've sometimes had hopes of being in a Best British Short Stories anthology. It's quite possible that the anthologist didn't even read my more promising candidate stories - it's rather difficult for him to get hold of all the publications. I'll keep plugging away, sending stories to the outlets that I know are read.

Literary Quiz - Places

Answers are at the end

Which city is this in?

On which bridge is this sign?

Where are these two towers?

Who is represented here, and where?

Where is this pub and why is it famous?

Where is this sign?

Where is this?

Joyce in Dublin. Bunyan in Bedford. Two Towers in Birmingham (where Tolkien grew up). They're near a watermill where he used to play. They're models of 2 nearby towers which might have inspired him. George Bernard Shaw in Wheathampstead (waiting for a train at a no longer used station). The Oxford pub is where Tolkien and CS Lewis drank. Samuel Beckett bridge is in Dublin. Dante's bones are in Ravenna I think.