This article derives from recent experiences in making poetry this spring and summer, and from a number of exchanges on British and Irish Poets List. I have reworked some of my messages, front-channel and back-channel, quoting them directly into this text without much reference to the previous discussion.

I am always aware of the visual appearance of my writing, using the spacing and lineation, sometimes, to score reading aloud, using typographical and visual effects as attenuations and extensions of the alphabet, which, as I have remarked elsewhere, is a poor notational system.

Nevertheless, much of my writing is published in linear form, with relatively little formatting and little or no graphical addition to the standard alphabet. Like many others, I often refer to such writing, of my own and of others, as "linear verse"; and I often refer to the rest of my writing as "visual text".

The latter is in widespread use, but we use the term often without making entirely clear what we mean by it. The danger of that might be that our usage will become sloppy and ambiguous. On the other hand, too close a definition leads to exceptions or exclusions, both of which are unuseful.

In my case, the use of "visual" in this phrase indicates poetry which is not limited to plain or slightly formatted text in lines but which also is not necessarily concrete poetry.

I do not propose here to say what merit there may be in distinguishing between visual poetry and concrete poetry. Not only are such terms used in different ways by different practitioners and critics; but I am at a loss to know how to reconcile these differences. I recall discussing this with Derek Beaulieu when he was preparing what was published as Courier: an anthology of concrete and visual poetry (ed. Derek Beaulieu; housepress, canada, 1999; ISBN 1-894174-20-8; edition of 115) and expressing my concern about the wide use of the term "concrete poetry" and consequent dilution of any meaning it may still have; yet also having to express my concern, and dismay, that I had no alternative suggestion.

My use of the word "text" in "visual text", instead of "poem", is an avoidance of arguments over whether or not what I am talking about is poetry! That's a line of inquiry which I find unproductive.

In fact, disputes about the nature and category of what one is doing are more likely to occur when poems are taken from the page and performed, and at that point, when visual poetry meets sound poetry. There isn't even an agreed vocabulary for the transition and what happens there.

As Bob Cobbing and I demonstrated in WORD SCORE UTTERANCE CHOREOGRAPHY in visual and verbal poetry (editors Upton & Cobbing; Writers Forum, 1998; 156pp; ISBN 0 86162 750 4), the practice here is extremely various; and one cannot simply say that the performance of a visual poem / text is a sound poem because a great many practitioners will disagree. The inherited word "reading" hardly does it; and "performance" has all sorts of connotations.

Recently Ralph Hawkins and Bob Cobbing launched (by performance at Sub Voicive Poetry on 18th July 2000) their collaborative publication G Curled Ribbon (Writers Forum, 2000; ISBN 0 86162 996 5). A look at G Curled Ribbon may be illuminating in this context because it links two entirely different praxes whose practitioners know each other's practice well and with mutual respect.

The contents are linear poetry by Hawkins and graphics by Cobbing. As I understand it, Bob Cobbing had sent Ralph Hawkins postage stamps on envelope fragments, to which Ralph responded with linear poems and by adding some of his own stamps + poems. Cobbing then arranged the whole thing on the page, enlarging and thereby emphasising the fragmentary visual material upon which the poems were based.

For Cobbing, the mix would not have presented difficulties as the starting point for performance. I do not think that I exaggerate if I say that he'll have a go at anything; and, in this case, he was fulfilling a role he has taken before, in Paul Dutton's Partial Additives [Writers Forum, 1994; ISBN 0 86162 551 X.] for instance, where the semantic texts came from Dutton, and Cobbing extended them visually. However, in that case, both poets are familiar and content with texts which include non-alphabetical elements; and they are each accomplished performers of such texts.

In their unrehearsed launch performance, Cobbing and Hawkins did not actually read the same text, but different parts of the same text, as if they were separate to some extent. Cobbing took the envelope and frank marks and Hawkins the linear texts. They analysed what Cobbing had synthesised, choosing without direct comment not to engage with the book as it had been made. Indeed, at the first page, Hawkins complained, good-naturedly, that he could not read his text because Bob had printed graphic material over some of it. To Cobbing that would not be the obscuration of an existing readable sign but the creation of a new one.

Cobbing vocalised the visuals only, even though the pages had large blocks of semantic text, without verbalising; and he used a number of disparate musical instruments. He was seen to be paying considerable attention to the text before him and was presumably acting on his often expressed belief, which I do not share, that every mark has its particular sound. Hawkins read the words that he had written which were on the page, apparently regardless of the visuals.

It seemed to me that neither of them was making much effort to reach the other in terms of technique though somehow that made their performance, as performance, all the more interesting and enjoyable. They were listening to each other. They were performing simultaneously and together.

Some "discomfiture" was expressed on the British and Irish Poets List to which I sought to respond. It was felt that, in my words, the two poets were doing different things.

Now, there may be something in that; in this case.

Hawkins response to what I shall call the stimulus material had produced texts which were at some distance in terms of structure and medium from that stimulus material. On the other hand, the graphical material output by Cobbing is only slightly modified and not particularly visually interesting of itself, although the arrangement on the page overcomes that, making it extremely interesting. The bulk of Cobbing's transformation took place in performance whereas Hawkins had effected his transformations already except for the transformation of alphabetical text into uttered word which we almost take for granted. In that regard, they were doing exactly the same except that Cobbing had his own script.

The degree of full collaboration in the book is minimal because the feedback loop had not been completed. Hawkins responded to visual material with a linear response and then the book appeared. With Cobbing being, in addition to collaborator, also the designer, printer and publisher, it is not surprising if he felt more at ease with the product than Hawkins.

However, wide apart as the different making processes may have been, I do not see any reason to see the makers as engaging in separate practice. If the performance was a little more of a jam session than it might have been and a little less of a definitive performance, if such a thing is either desired or possible... well, I can live with that. I enjoyed it.

The wide gulf between the kinds of material in G Curled Ribbon is deceptive. (Apart from everything else, we should remember that both poets' names are on the book in its entirety.) Cobbing's work ranges from the linear into many areas of the visual: this book finds him at the far end of one axis of his engagement with the literal.

There is, too, an interesting element to G Curled Ribbon, in that it contains clear evidence of its process and retains its sources. How often I have sought to restrain a yawn as, at the front of the room, the poet I have come to hear read has told a string of anecdotes to explain the background to their writing with the clear separation of experience and / or material and the poem based on or in that experience and / or material. G Curled Ribbon gives us the whole thing, both as product and as stimulus material for further production.

Given this dual nature and the disparity of kinds of texts, it is unlikely that there will be any one possible definitive performance.

In performance, the utterance that we make may be directly (reading) or indirectly (improvising from) related to the text, but so much depends on context; and in that way there is a great similarity between the linear text and the visual. The linear text can be read in many ways, because the notational element is so small. The reader provides much that is only implicit in the text. Similarly with a visual text.

Of course, the visual text is not made in the context of a consensus as to its utterance, but some consensus may be reached by sympathetic performers working with similar or related assumptions. The longer you work together the greater the empathy, with good will. (Thus, Cobbing and I work together without much difficulty, even though we do not agree on the nature of the connection between mark and sound in the texts we use.)

It seems to me that G Curled Ribbon is a hybrid, where Hawkins was doing something different to Cobbing compositionally, responding to semantic or semantically-associated elements in the visual material, while Cobbing was working visually in order, later, to utter his visual production. The book is good to look at, but it lacks an integration between the two textual elements, though there is a sympathetic correspondence. And that I think is where the problem lay, if there is one, at the level of the book rather than at the level of individual poetic.

I question that a problem exists because I quite like the unintegrated feel of the book. It seems to ask: What do I sound like? It makes us ask: Why?

What it isn't is an illustrated book. It doesn't tell a story although it is full of fragmented stories. It asks the witnessing reader for the story. The feeling that it isn't complete is quite welcome even if that makes it less than conventionally entertaining.

Some "edginess" and "embarrassment" was identified in Hawkins... Well, some edginess and embarrassment can be productive. Before a performance of Domestic Ambient Noise [Cobbing and Upton, Writers Forum, 300 pamphlets, 1994-2000], I have often thought: "I'm not sure how this is going to sound? What is this is doing to my/our text? How will this come across? Would I / should I have agreed to do this (if I'd known)?" And from such edginess comes the energy that gives the performance its edge. It's a matter of context, and of expectation.

If it's not an illustrated book then it's a visual text. I think anything can be a visual text. I see no reason not to think that anything can be a visual text. I see no use in identifying anything as not a visual text. I do see possible problems in identifying anything as not a visual text. I'd prefer to be descriptive rather than prescriptive.

It follows for me that the best we can do is to say what kinds of visual text are or have been in use and try to spot what kinds of visual text might now be made.

Sometimes, for denotative purposes, I make a distinction between "the linear text" and "the visual"; but I do not think that such a distinction is widely applicable.

In much visual work, not least Cobbing's, the visual retains, and sometimes acquires, linearity.

These differences and similarities were what Cobbing and I set ourselves to investigate post-DAN, although we did not express it that way to each other at the time. We set up some procedures in draft form and went away from each other for the purpose of generating our individual starting materials. We haven't yet (July 2000) met to take it further; but, at the same time, we have been making two other sequences of which the latter, plouk [Writers Forum, 2000; ISBN 0 86162 994], is relevant here.

The starting point is printed material, advertisements, fliers etc which have been sampled and the samples transformed... It retains its alphabetical origins; I might be prepared to argue that it is very heavily formatted text; it cannot, though, be "read" as if it were only alphabetical - the formatting has gone beyond the supportive.

I tried using the term "visually-emphatic text" which, whatever its virtues as terminology, is a mouthful; though it has been used by others at least once! The point was to argue that "it" is "all" one field of practice with the individual instances differently-located along various axes. So not something which is a separate genre or sub genre but poetry which emphasises one aspect of itself to a great extent.

I am up for "aurally-emphatic", except that it too is orally-ungainly, + olfactorily- and tactilely- etc... that's 4 senses out of 5... oh yes - Here's my new book of poetry. Would you like to lick it?

I am very interested by associations that I certainly feel between the text and expressive and responsive gesture and movement: body as readable shape, line as physical movement, page as room and so on.

I was impressed by Robert Sheppard's work presented with dancers a few years back, although that seemed to be a case of a poet reading and a dancer dancing at the same time. I feel I might have followed that up for myself. I have, increasingly I think, used gesture in my performance; but there's a long way to go.

It's a pity that touch screens have not become more popular. I'd be much more interested in offering you the chance to point to places on your screen than I am in getting you to click there with a sophisticated flick of the wrist, the rest of the body hardly moving. [When, earlier this year, I referred to the use of a touch screen as a gestural interaction, in an email exchange, I mistyped and spoke of "getting you to lick on the screen"; and I may follow that up at some point in an installation, if I can think my way round the hygiene problems.]

Going beyond the linear is something which happens again and again. It is not, therefore, something happening for the first time at the end of the end of the twentieth century along with mobile phones, the commercialisation of the internet and the pill for men. History isn't linear.

The visual text is the text that is not, or is less, cleaned up, rationalised, standardised, made ungraphic, et cetera... But this is my perspective from where I believe we are now.

I am not saying that the visual is prior to the linear. I expect that, chronologically, the linear precedes or sometimes precedes the alinear.

In this context, I don't think that it matters.

I do not see what Cobbing is doing has anything to do with concepts such as ur-language.

The visual text is an attempt at a whole response. It isn't, therefore, that the visual text is a special case, a variation from the norm of the linear.

Perhaps, when it is necessary to denote one's linear poetry as distinct from the visual, the term "lineated poetry" might be better, indicating that it is writing to which someone has taken a physical limitation.

One has to be trained to write in straight lines; and writing paper often comes with straight lines on it. This indicates a non linear tendency; although that is not necessarily an indication of priority, only that linearity is a cultural option.

Perhaps, however, that linearity affects how we structure our writing. Perversely, just regarding lined paper or the word-wrapping word-processor as a recording medium may leave us more flexibility of poetic thought than acceptance of the linear as the way things are.

The word-processor might be thought to be the triumph of the linear; but it could also be seen as an unfortunate survival of an earlier technology, in this case the limited teletype, like the querty keyboard surviving from the typewriter.

Writing on blank paper could be a liberation, if one is needed. Unlined paper is perhaps more easily thought of as a space in which to work than is lined paper.

Cris Cheek has quoted (British and Irish Poets List, 27th July 2000) Johanna Drucker saying that all writing appears to be hypertextual in our retrospective view; and, at a colloquium held at Birkbeck College, London on 5th July 2000, John Cayley softly remarked that everything is digital, which he later glossed as meaning structured so as to be easily manipulated, prefatory to speaking of his own "writing with programmable media".

There is something to be said for these observations though I would wish to say that some texts are more hypertextual than others.

Domestic Ambient Noise, already mentioned, does have many hypertextual qualities. You can start anywhere on any page and go anywhere to any other page or pamphlet; and there is most definitely the effect of going through a link as you turn a page. The page is a compositional and performative unit, not just a writeable volume. A hypertext with coded links would be much more limiting ...

Making a hypertext, solstice (trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/mcdonald/solstice/10.htm), recently, I noticed my initial inclination was to write as many links as possible... and then I thought it would be much more interesting to make unexpected links and not so many of them, to make it a bit of a maze, to make some of the links conceptual jumps and others expansions.

I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to have a great many links then I'd be happier to do that on paper and hand my reader a pile of paper to shuffle through, because that would give the greatest freedom of navigation.

There are advantages to network-based text over paper-based text: it's available to many people cheaply regardless of where they are (providing they have access to the net); it enables the handling of large quantities of pages that would be unmanageable on paper on a desk or in a hand; it provides hit certainty and search facilities that can be accurate.

There are advantages to the paper-based text: text changes its properties when it is on a screen, as I have argued elsewhere; getting lost and losing control and place can be extremely stimulating and illuminating.

As it is at present, the computer kit necessary to interact with the web isolates the reader. Where the reader is a performer to many, there's a lot to be said for the physical performer with paper pages.

Having said all that, especially that the visual text tends to be that which is not clean and not rationalised, both virtues, there are some qualifications to be made. Moving away from or beyond pencil and paper is not compulsory!

For instance, a play makes use, often, of multiple performers, of space, of props, perhaps of sound effects and music; but a bad play remains a bad play no matter how much time effort and resource it takes to be produced.

Generally speaking, I prefer to listen to a lyric poem which I enjoy, even though it uses nothing beyond the voice of the poet / reader and the paper it is written on, if indeed it is written down, to a multimedia presentation from which I derive little enjoyment.

It might be thought that it is efficient use of one's time to use as technically uncomplicated methods of writing as possible, given that each new piece of writing is, in manufacturing terms, a process of research and development.

And taking that lyric poem and making a multi-media event of it, may well overblow it. There is nothing inherently productive or creative in using one medium rather than another. On the contrary, less is probably always more.

If one has a technical interest in a medium, something which fails artistically may still be of interest. I find some web art interesting technically, but uninteresting in terms of content and presentation; but I am interested in the web medium as a medium and so in examples of its use even if they fail in what is, presumably, their main purpose.

One may wish to examine a book of poetry in which one has no poetical interest because of the binding or the papers used.

In linear poetry, I find it hard to fully distinguish between the technique and content. What is said and the how of saying it are close together; and studying how the poet made their poem is part of the process of reading that poem. That is much less likely to be the case with web art, I think.

I do not favour a direct comparison between linguistic skills in natural language and linguistic skills in programming languages. Programming languages are more limited in scope than natural languages and they do not evolve in the same way - the "evolution of programming languages" is likely to be a metaphorical evolution. In natural language, the oral and the literal interpenetrate; and it carries, simultaneously, the denotational, the connotational and the emotional. A programming language makes a computer behave and that's it.

Let's not confuse the quantity of dry ice or the number of lights with whether or not we wish to listen to the guitar playing. If a piece doesn't work, all the bells and whistles one can obtain will be no more than diversion.

_________________________________________________
return to top