e-poets Plain Text: Poetry across frontiers (06)

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artist Heather Haley
Vancouver, BC, Canada

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Poetry across frontiers (06)

response from Chicago, USA

Hello, all -

On this thread of local v. global contexts, there's much to write. I agree with Kojo that it's very easy for the same people to go out and read the same things to each other, only to change venue and never change anyone else's mind. This is a kind of collective solipsism we see all the time here, and is one reason why reaching across geographic and cultural frontiers is so important. It's good to remember it need not be just us talking to us, but that we can take up productive discourse with like minds elsewhere, whether they are audiences or other artists.

I'm not good with names. In fact, I'm horrible with them. I can remember faces much better, even without my good glasses. But I've had to rehearse a few names and get them right because the same people come back to readings week in, week out, and few new faces ever appear. The irony is that I don't really have to know that many names to survive open mike poetry in Chicago. Many places, same old faces. So Chicago's situation is, in some ways, not that different from Johannesburg's, if I'm reading you correctly, Kojo.

Open mike poetry is both part of the solution and part of the problem. It allows a lot of people to get started, but beyond a point is limits horizons and puts the demands of the local fetish (or the imprint of the form/venue/medium) on the poet. After a while, there's no growth to be found in reading one's work publically. Or so it has appeared to me.

In America, a lot of people have half-recognized this, and are touring much of the country to engage new performance poetry venues. The idea is that travel broadens the mind... and the audience base. This, too, was and is good to a point, but again the effect reaches a limit. At one time, you could say that slam had regional qualities in the USA, or that it had flavors specific to particular cities. Now, much of that uniqueness is disappearing, and I think slam poetry is diminished because of it. I liked slam better when it wasn't so pat. And after a while, how much further can you go before people become numb to the proselytizing of performance poetry?

The next phase is, of course, building overseas connections, but I see the potential for encountering the same problems all over again, just on a larger scale. The fact that Jo'burg has a poetry circuit which, on the surface, sounds very much like the one in my own city is just a bit alarming to me. I would have expected something much different. There was a time not long ago that I would have taken that as a positive sign, but then I was only beginning to explore overseas connections. Now? I fear that it is a sign of homogeneity, that the gene of performance poetry may be more potent than our own cultures, and that we may assimilate too much of ourselves into this so-called "global village."

In my exchanges with the Germans in slam and performance poetry, it became clear that there is the potential for people to evolve very different kinds of work within linguistic borders. Taking up the slam poetry thread again, there is much travel and interaction within the German-speaking countries. Slam poets move among Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and (to a lesser degree) the Czech Republic and Denmark with some ease, and there seems to be a very different spirit in the work within this community than there is, say, in England. England, if anything, is closer to the rest of the English-speaking world, like Canada and the US, than Germany, no matter that London is a ninety minute flight from Berlin. Different language, different heritage, and therefore different prerogatives.

I worried about mixing cultures too well. We want to connect with, learn from, and appreciate one another, but we don't necessarily want to BECOME one another. So when I first went to Germany, I made a big deal about them building a slam aesthetic on their own terms, that they not succumb to a kind of American cultural imperialism. (I think John Paul O'Neill, in London, might have a word to two about that issue, too.) It turns out that my alarm wasn't so necessary. The strength of German language literature within the language barrier, regardless of it being on page or stage, was more than enough to ensure that performance poetry in Germany would have a unique identity. However, there are open questions of assimilation among countries where the English language is the common bond.

What we do not know about your situation, Kojo, is how Africa's own rich history and mix of languages will put a spin on poetry, and so begin to affect us. Nor do we know how our interaction with you will nurture or, possibly, hinder the poetry in your part of the world. You live within the sphere of the English language, but in a very different historical and cultural space than the rest of us in the e-poets community. All I can say is, choose wisely what you may borrow. And know that you do inspire us.

much respect -
- Kurt Heintz

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