deepundergroundpoetry.com

Independence and I.

Scottish Independence?!
Independence from what
A nation is a jumble, a mess, a rabble
A nation is a collection
Which implies a collector
Like all creation myths someone has a stake
In its spread
Like a virus it infects all it touches
Till cells are not recognisable anymore
And organisms are replicators of rhetoric backwardness
  a garden I refuse to water
  but which plants the bitter seeds
So deep I must claw at the soil
  and tear the roots raw
The Earth screaming
 I have wounded it and myself
and what separates me and you
Is a border of skin
Not as we’re told a line on a map
What separates us is the concept of stranger
The fear of the unknown and a taught sense of danger
And not always illegitimate I might add, though that is sad.  
That I was born here and you here or there does not touch on
Or explain our fundamental similarity or difference
that  myth adds nothing  
 it speaks only to corpses
 shares only maggots as meals
but puts on the scales of solutions
Bags of dust and dirt often confused for answers
How alike and unlike you are to me
Ask yourself what that means, and how it helps
I don’t know if you get my meaning
Because my meaning is always slipping from under my finger tips
And becomes a mythology when frozen on your lips
I address you directly and ask you to consider what I’m saying
Is this voice I speak with a position?
Rhyme is a rhetoric all of its own, poetry is a language game
‘Positionless position’ is still a position all the same
 Authenticity where are you? And what would you look like if I found you?
All art is choices, conscious or not
This ‘I’ that writes, is a lie!!
This ‘I’ composed and collocated
This ‘I’ born from everything the ‘I’ sees
Reads and does
This ‘I’ is a collection too
Yet we do not call this ‘I’ a nation
Why?  
Why not independence for ‘I’  
Or better yet
Independence from  the tyranny of ‘I’
Would that not be
 truly
Radical  
independence?!
 
 
 
 
Inspired by a number of things I was thinking about today:-
 
 
 
 
I have huge amounts of contradictory unclear thoughts about art, especially my art which is poetry.
 
 
•Can you be prescriptive about literature/art?  Glaswegian Poet Tom Leonard says simply that poetry is what poets do and it's as simple as that. He seems to be saying it's open ended and that there is nothing that it must be.
•I'm against overly prescriptive ideas of poetry. I see that poetry and art can be many things,do many things. I have my tastes of course. And It's near impossible for me not to be prescriptive.
•Ideas about art are not neutral or scientific or objective or any nonsense they always imply ideas about what art is what it should do ,what its for etc.
•what should it be for?
•what do I want my poetry to do?
•What do I think about the situationist idea that Art is alienated creativity?
•Will art disappear in a society in which we can make decisions about our own lives  
•What should a poet in 2015's relationship be to page poetry and performance poetry
•Performance poetry reflects in many ways a rejection of what poetry has been in some senses how to navigate that?
•Is Realism a good thing or not?
•All art arises from a context and must be understood in a context. This suggests art is inherently political whether conscious of that fact or not.
•Art should entertain but also inform, challenge and very importantly criticize power relations.
•Satire is a very powerful weapon.
•The important of avoiding becoming stuck in one style, period of writing, one genre, one school of thought or tradition, one kind of writing. The importance to always be changing, shifting, trying to do something different, always being critical or original. How to do that?
•What to think about traditions of poetry?
•What to think about poetry in scots?  Is it limiting?
•performance poetry is the wave of the future
•how to have poetry which is accessible, democratic, inclusive, not ivory tower, not overly academic,authentic.
•How to avoid the spectacle in poetry?  Can it not be avoided as Ken Knabb says?
•what is authenticity in writing
•is every voice a position and a stance
•all choices in art are positions?
 
 
" Mühsam was ahead of his time in his recognition that all spiritual creation and especially the activities of writers cannot be divorced from the progressive aspirations of mankind, and particularly those of the proletariat, for freedom and justice. From the very first page he wrote the young poet never belonged to that category of esthete for whom art and literature only existed as a result of their efforts and for their benefit alone. For Mühsam art was the means of expression of the personality that was engaged in spiritual struggle, and like that personality, its activity could not be disconnected from the community. Artistic creation in the service of the totality, in natures as sensitive as that of Mühsam, could not just turn their backs on the injustices of current society, the oppression of the personality by the State and the exploitation of the masses by the capitalist economic system. Mühsam put the literary activity of the poet and dramatist at the service of the struggle against oppression and domination, and demanded that the other poets and dramatists do so as well. Long before “proletarian art” had become a fashionable slogan, during the period prior to the world war and before the Russian Revolution, Mühsam called for an art at the service of social revolutionary agitation. He was a trailblazer of political art, which, especially after the revolutions in central Europe, became the center of all artistic creation."
Written by ScottSF21
Published | Edited 4th Feb 2015
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