|
|
Bring The Thing,
David Berridge (if p
then q)
Hoofs, Holly Pester (if p then q)
NTST, Geof Huth (if p then q)
1000 Sonnets, Tim Atkins (if p then q)
Thus &, Derek
Henderson (if p then q)
Ad Finitum, P.Inman (if p then q)
if p then q books operate in an
interesting corner of the poetry publishing spectrum, embracing a range of
experimental and 'sound-based' writers of differing persuasions and
distinctions. Some of the work here is less interesting 'on the page' than it
might be performed or read out and this is a problem with print-based
material but the risk of publishing is well worthwhile I think and iptq adds spice and variety to the overall picture. The
books are well produced yet basic in their design - each cover has bold black
type with a single-colour backdrop, ranging from pink to green - so there is
an explicit avoidance of ornamentation in the presentation though they are
not unattractive to the eye.
David Berridge's Bring the Thing
takes as its basic form 'the diary entry' - Day 1 - Day 100 - though the
entries are not always what you might expect. There is a use of space, layout
and typography which appears essential to the project and these poems are as
visually appealing as they are witty and sometimes linguistically
provocative, as in this stanza from 'Day 38':
there is no
certainty what the thing is that must be brought
the thing is
certainly what must be brought
the thing can
be distinguished from what is not the thing
the thing has
something more than that which it is not.
There is a fairly wide range of format and intention within Berridge's work,
from the foregrounding of short, fractured narrative, through repetitive,
sound-based poetry to open-field poetics, offering alternative reading
options. Stimulating and mainly minimalist.
Holly Pester is a writer/performer whose work certainly benefits from being
heard or performed. That said you can experience snatches of her 'sounded
poems' from these visual approximations:
Heave the
bowels
hop the
bowels
the rocket
ship
Haul away?
Jonny?
Heave her up
and away we go
heave away up
whiskey
Lift a cup
a cup of men
heave her up
and away whup go
a roaring leg
a sprawling
hinge
heave her up
and away whup go
heave her up
and away whup go
blow yur hip
off fee fi fo
(from
'EFFORT NOISER - A Space Shanty for the Lunar Landings')
There's a long prose block of text entitled 'Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize
Acceptance Speech' which combines playfulness with what I take to be serious
political comment
and a number of similarly dense texts which combine humorous sound-based
'nonsense' with seemingly arbitrary snippets of language which despite
everything retain a strange sense of 'belonging' - 'Don't go over the top /
Don't talk into the wind / Fish / Stay in rough winds / Jean's moustache is
longer than they thought ...'
(from 'S-C-R-U-F-F').
Geof Huth's NTST is compiled of what he terms 'pwoermds', a combination of 'poem',
'word' and 'worm', it would seem. This is writing which has defamiliar
isation at its core yet remains
playful, witty and at times hilariously funny. The entire text is made up of
familiar words which are changed in some way, so, for example, for 'meaning'
read 'meanign'. Each page is laid out as centred, has what appears to be
treble spacing and is one word per line, though very occasionally two words
will be 'run together' a la e. e. cummings. Sometimes you look at individual
words and get flustered because the slight changes are disorienting and
initially puzzling. Take this extract from 'International / Pwoermd Writing
Month I':
pw(o'er)md
goneyes
geodeode
grayn
t7w8l9f10t11h12
fjshjng
ysthem
wr;t:ng
thou'ghts
shifght
Admittedly, these poems work best when read through quite
quickly - even though the 'blocking' device makes this quite difficult at
first - so you get an overall feel of the technique, and build up strategies
to deal with the inbuilt resistance of Huth's method. These are very much
'process' poems and I wouldn't want them as a strict diet but then I wouldn't
want to read any single poet ad nauseum,
even those I'm most addicted to. Taken in small doses these poems are
enjoyable and stimulating. I'm sure that hearing/seeing them performed would
add something to the overall effect.
I'm not quite sure why Tim Atkins' 1,000 Sonnets is thus titled but the preface from John Ashbery
gives some idea of the framing of these poems which are all 14-liners with
various of the lines left out, leaving the reader to do a lot of the work.
While this process has its pleasures I wasn't entirely convinced by this
collection and prefer previous work by Atkins, notably that included in foil (etruscan books, 2000). Then again, there's a
build-up over the body of this material which means the whole is greater than
its parts and there are moments where curiosity over the merging of different
forms of discourse proves stimulating and humorous:
Sonnet 43
A small
quantity
.................
& city at
...........
trauma or not
.
..............
produces
strong spectroscopic evidence
for joy rides
in stupendous
coverings
..............
say, the
upper right
.
member
Derek Henderson's Thus & follows
in a tradition of writers working with Ted Berrigan's Sonnets sequence. Here Henderson uses a sort of 'arbitrary
but strict' Oulipo technique to minimalise an already fairly minimal text and
it works pretty well overall. Take this extract from XXXVIIII:
tail's
raggy
bend
'im
crab
sure
ass ails
lays
jelly
Eeeeeeeooooowww
La Vie
races
raise
Long
toed
Shit
lickin'
partners
Mating Madame
whip
Jimmy's
small wiggles plum moans Ladies shimmy
P. Inman's Ad Finitum mixes a
minimalist approach with an up-front presentation of his work as 'art-object'
so the material appears naked at times and doesn't always stand up to
scrutiny, at least for me. Like all of the writing in this selection of
books, however, the whole is often greater than the parts and the jumps in
perspective are sometimes intriguing:
cream loam beagle
.
all of Lake Superior color alike of acreage
arms left for brown
.
subkulakization
or a detail those several perspire of them
instead whatever lies outside
a typewriter blank of plain
.
as far as
I go lined across
her mind
to frost
.
laces peak pencil seabed
(from 'pluper')
A mixed bag then but it's good to see a publisher putting out material from
the outer reaches of the poetry fringe and managing to build up an audience. iptq also publish excellent poetry from Tom Jenks and
Philip Terry, both established writers whose work is well worth exploring.
© Steve Spence 2014
|