This strated off with BBP asking the below question and then the discussion sparked was too interesting to be lost in Twitter threads, so it's been compiled below as a crowd-sourcing effort to learn what the poets think.
What is experimental poetry? Rule breaking, constrained, mindset work? Playing with time, altering how we use language, freeing words? Art as poems, em dash gone awry, perception and shadow exposed, code, hissing, invisible ink? Richard Capener I’ve been banging this drum a while. All I’ll say is I don’t like experimental, not least because the term’s popularity seems to be in lockstep with it become more conservative. I prefer avant-garde because it gives us as set of narratives we can point to, while allowing it […] to be self-critical, self-evaluating, something constantly under discussion. This, I argue, can move away from assuming the avant-garde is about newness and the cutting edge. James Knight That’s an interesting and productive way of seeing the avant-garde. It’s a term I favour, though part of me has misgivings: it usually implies the march of progress, a perpetual move from obsolescence to novelty; itself arguably an old-fashioned idea. The avant-garde is an old tradition with its own conventions, prejudices and assumptions. It’s worth questioning them from time to time. Maybe writing sonnets in iambic pentameter is more disruptive of expected norms than the forms and methods associated with the avant-garde. @beirbuapress Experimental is too broad and everyone does it. Avant-garde is more appropriate alright. Richard Capener I’m not sure if experimental = avant-garde anymore, and so how much of a gateway drug it might be… If a (hypothetical) writer is introduced to cut-up, and produces a blank verse sonnet, it strikes me as falling into what they might be trying to move away from. […] @beirbuapress My only problem with using avant-garde – it’s, sometimes surprisingly, familiar to many but some associate it with the 1900s first wave, same with Surrealism. Will Alexander won’t be labelled as surrealist as he said it limits him. All terms limit but how to explain dense work? Richard Capener Sure – I’d never say Alexander is a surrealist for that reason, but surrealism as an influence can’t be ignored anymore than Coltrane or Sun Ra can on his writing… But yeah, it’s this weighting on the early avant-garde I find problematic (and inaccurate). Beir Bua Press Replying to @RichardCapener3 @nikkidudley20 and 15 others Oh yeah, he is a surrealist in many ways but moves into kinetics as he’s all about the verbs. Maybe fighting all labels works. But it’s not reality. I need labels for sub call outs as, I discovered in the journal, that they acted as a filter. @kyleflemmer I’m against avant-garde as it conveys a false sense of linearity, with some people ‘ahead’ of others, a hierarchy with a genius at the top, or a battle to be won. Positioning some work as ‘advanced’ is pure marketing and means almost nothing. Experimentalism is free to move in all directions, free to repeat what others have tried, free to fail. Avant-garde is conquest, experimentalism is play. Elsewhere @RichardCapener3 points to self-evaluation as moving the avant-garde away from progressivist elitism, but I would argue that integrating evaluation and feedback is a central tenet of experimentalism. Repeating trials, changing variables, etc. @beirbuapress True but is that just dealing with its translation and history? Can avant-garde poetry written now, in this cultural context, not be considered an individual’s war cry? My own work is that – each one a shout to think for myself…. @kyleflemmer Sure it can, though I’ll add that I see this as an oppositional model, you vs. the world. I’m coming around to the idea of thinking in community, working alongside others to make my little contribution. Luckily, we can adopt these positions or change them at will! Not to knock on Richard, who’s take is more historically nuanced than mine . I think he’s being true to the historical avant-garde movement, while I’m being critical of the term’s use in the contemporary context. Experimentalism is free to move in all directions, free to repeat what others have tried, free to fail. Avant-garde is conquest, experimentalism is play. Richard Capener I appreciate the engagement! It’s not that I’d deny self-evaluation as a defining trait of “experimental”. Rather that I don’t see such a trait in how experimental is used in current literary scenes. Far from moving in different directions, which I’d like to see, […] it funnels in one direction: writers discovering ideas for the first time, trying them out and proclaiming they’re experiments (at my grumpiest). With these ideas taken out of context, writers will only ever drive themselves into cul-de-sacs. @kyleflemmer Every chemist repeats a 1000 experiments someone already did to learn enough to test something new. What’s wrong with writers doing the same? Innovation is built on practice, and most practice is repetitive. Richard Capener I don’t disagree with that definition of experimental, but again – that isn’t the definition I’m seeing in the popularity of experimental writing. (Caveat: these critiques aren’t aimed at groups or journals. Rather, how the term gets circulated in poetry environments). @kyleflemmer It seems we’re both unhappy with how these terms are carelessly tossed around, which I think is lovely. Glad for the chance to hash it out! Richard Capener Yes – really what it all boils down to is how these two terms are ahistoricised. And, god, I HATE ahistoricity. I’ll say one thing on this then I’ll pipe down – I’ve never called my writing or what I publish by others avant-garde. I’ve always said “writing in relation to the avant-garde”. I might even go as far to say the avant-garde can be invoked as a critical framework as opposed to an aesthetic one. The avant-garde is a set of narratives as opposed to one monolithic thing. Some of those narratives were domineering, fascistic. That many other narratives sprung from these narratives, I argue for a fluid, generative definition that can contain conflicting ideas… it funnels in one direction: writers discovering ideas for the first time, trying them out and proclaiming they’re experiments (at my grumpiest). With these ideas taken out of context, writers will only ever drive themselves into cul-de-sacs. I appreciate the engagement! It’s not that I’d deny self-evaluation as a defining trait of “experimental”. Rather that I don’t see such a trait in how experimental is used in current literary scenes. Far from moving in different directions, which I’d like to see, […] Marcus Slease cafe OTO in London is my fav creative space. “a home for creative new music that exists outside of the mainstream.” That seems welcoming. Avant garde is its own tradition. I want to get messy with traditions. Experimental might be a better way to describe it. @kyleflemmer I’m against avant-garde as it conveys a false sense of linearity, with some people ‘ahead’ of others, a hierarchy with a genius at the top, or a battle to be won. Positioning some work as ‘advanced’ is pure marketing and means almost nothing. Chris Kerr Not boring, not banal, not bourgeois. Nikki Dudley Love the thoughts on possibilities and subjectivity. Very true. I personally love having people creating more, publishing move, even if it differs from the definition of whatever we create is! I’ve spent a long time trying to make this genre (whatever you want to call it) more accessible so I like to encourage anyone, no matter what they’ve read or done before, to try and create. Billy Mills Replying to @RichardCapener3 @nikkidudley20 and 15 others I think there’s a real danger of over-thinking this. Labels are critical tools, but no writer writing is really thinking about the label, they’re focused on the problem at hand, which is the process of making the poem using the tools at their disposal. The rest is afterthought. Nikki Dudley Really good point. That’s why I hesitated to join in with this debate! @beirbuapress Experimental is too broad and everyone does it. Avant-garde is more appropriate alright. Richard Capener I’m not sure if experimental = avant-garde anymore, and so how much of a gateway drug it might be… If a (hypothetical) writer is introduced to cut-up, and produces a blank verse sonnet, it strikes me as falling into what they might be trying to move away from. […] I can’t remember who said this but, “Products of thought, not ways of thinking.” Writers might engage with these techniques as products of thought, but ignore the ways of thinking they came from. It’s experimental for them, but not for other readers – it’s hyper-subjective […] which I do think it fine, incidentally, but a lot of oomph might be left on the table if a writer is trying to broaden their horizons. If confusion, alienation, confrontation is avoided we might be shutting down possibilities for writers, not opening them up. Nikki Dudley Love the thoughts on possibilities and subjectivity. Very true. I personally love having people creating more, publishing move, even if it differs from the definition of whatever we create is! Teo Eve I made this slightly tongue in cheek visual poem a while ago commenting on how yesterday’s avant garde becomes today’s thinking inside the box. As a label it has a short half-life: it stops being truly avant garde as soon as it’s out in the world (& ofc the term’s rooted in time) Geoffrey Nilson Experimental or avant-garde used to hold radical political connotations, something that has been siphoned off in favour of different goals (publication, establishment respect, job placement, book sales) I used to think experimental meant confronting the reader (at the levels of meaning, diction, syntax) or rejecting expectations of the literary but these are just postures now, co-opted by the neoliberal A writer can “experiment” with craft and come up with conventional poetry, can write traditional verse with “experimental” content. Positions and position-taking inside a literary field. We’re all playing the same game with different words Gregory Betts If you are trying to get somewhere, to effect some specific kind change in form or culture (in any direction), then avant-garde still makes sense. If you are working in the terrain opened up by the historical gardes, but aren’t revolutionary per se, then I prefer post-avant. Richard Capener I’d probably agree with effect change as it links to a critique of structures which the avant-garde has always done. Depending how much emphasis folk give the early movements, there’s an argument to be made that anything after 1930 is post-avant-garde […] Gregory Betts But the Situationists… 🙂
Beir Bua Press 