Monday, September 28, 2009

Critical Animals / TINA


On Friday I'll be heading up to This Is Not Art (TINA) in Newcastle. In the afternoon,
as part of Critical Animals, I'll be taking part in a group reading of Gertrude Stein's Stanzas in Meditation in Civic Park. Other readers will include Penny Duff, Derek Motion, Michael Farrell, Ella O'Keefe and Jal Nicholl - and members of the audience are also invited to read. The reading runs from 2:30-5:30pm. I expect to arrive fashionably late, probably about halfway through.

On Saturday morning I'll be involved in a panel discussion with Derek Motion, Jill Jones and Michael Farrell (plus facilitator Aden Rolfe), talking about the place of the experimental in contemporary Australian poetry. From the program:

Contemporary Poetics (Looking In): the place of the experimental in contemporary Australian poetry.

Sat 3 Oct: 9.30am – 11.00am

Banquet Room, City Hall

Is experimental poetry now the norm in Australia and what does experimental mean in 2009? Who makes up the audience for experimental poetry? Does the diversity in Australian poetic practice entail a progressive, permissive playing-field? This engaging and exploratory panel discussion includes readings by the panellists.

The impulse for the panel came from John Kinsella's comments in his introduction to The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry (2009):

"The publication or presentation of innovative verse-novels, prose poetry, hypertextual poetry, multimedia and performance poetry, installation poetry, concrete poetry and many other cross-generic forms is standard in Australia now. Experimentation is the expectation rather than the departure, but this surely leads us to question what actually constitutes the experimental, and to begin looking elsewhere for what is truly working against the status quo."

Jill Jones has blogged in response to this here. I'm really looking forward to continuing this discussion, and to meeting the other panelists.

Once the panel's done there are a million panels/performances/happenings I want to check out, but there'll also be time to kick back and hang out with the other (critical) animals and festival peeps. I'll be staying in the tent city if anyone's looking for me...

3 comments:

  1. It is such an interesting question. Is there a mainstream any more, and is the fishing good in it? There will be a lot of talking I imagine, I am hoping for photos and video (especially of Derek, I hear he's quire cute). I only have one sentence to contribute, every piece of writing is an experiment.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Stu, Look forward to seeing you later this week - and continuing the discussion.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Paul: "Is there a mainstream any more?" I imagine that's one of the questions we'll address. Not sure about recording facilities, but I'm planning to blog about it in some detail once I get back to Melbourne.

    Jill: Likewise! See you there.

    ReplyDelete