Okay I have to share this; it's just too good a bit to keep all to myself.
I was online yesterday, reading a little of this and that, and I ran across this post over at HTMLGIANT called Laurel Nakadate’s Untitled : Pornstars Reading Poems, and it made me pause and think, "Hm, there's something you don't hear about every day." It starts off like this:
Poetry readings. Whether you love them or hate them, they can sometimes be an uncomfortable or bland affair. Some contemporary authors are committed to reinventing the format of “the reading”—using vulnerability, performance, and other attention-grabbing techniques to pump a little life into these often humdrum happenings. But video artist Laurel Nakadate takes the “the reading” to a whole new level.
In the video Untitled, Laurel has porn actresses read poems by Dora Malech. The interplay between Dora’s poems and the premise of the video is brilliant. The poems grapple with the tension between corporeality and disembodied intellect—being pure body or pure voice, being of the flesh or of the mind, but they settle on neither. Laurel’s video project and Dora’s text collapses those distinctions, using the body itself to speak. “If you give me a dollar I’ll take my top off / and let you see my heart,” reads actress Robbye Bentley. The body is not that which is mute, but that which sings. Another poem speaks to the ecstasy of being an embodied human with the line, “Believe me / when I tell you I’m kept / awake by the light / from my body, splayed star.”
The porn actresses in the video were asked to come to the “audition” (the audition being the final video itself) wearing their usually business attire: lacy lingerie, bright color bras. One woman—Robbye Bentley—even delivers her poems topless, covering her breasts with the poem “script” about a woman taking her top off for money. In recontextualizing the poetry reading event by having porn actresses read poems in settings like bathrooms and bedrooms, the video also dashes another expectation: that the porn actress is somehow less intellectual than the poet. The pairing of poetry and porn initially seemed unnatural to me. On the phone I asked Laurel, “Did the actresses think it was weird to be asked to read poems? How did they react?” She said no, that they loved it, that they were excited to be a part of the project.
Well, as I read and watched, I found myself thinking that this is a pretty nifty piece of work in its own way. I did. And I'm wondering, what do you think? You can read the rest of the article and watch some of the video "auditions" shot by Laurel Nakadate over at HTMLGIANT if I've made you curious.
And when you tire of that, I'd invite you to hit Lemon Hound's blog Conceptual Writing 101 were you'll find many fine little gems of conceptual writing, including this fine post about Mayer/ Bernstein Writing Experiments.
* Systematically eliminate the use of certain kinds of words or phrases from
a piece of writing: eliminate all adjectives from a poem of your own, or
take out all words beginning with 's' in Shakespeare's sonnets.
* Rewrite someone else's writing. Experiment with theft and plagiarism.
* Systematically derange the language: write a work consisting only of
prepositional phrases, or, add a gerund to every line of an already existing
work.
* Get a group of words, either randomly selected or thought up, then form
these words (only) into a piece of writing-whatever the words allow. Let
them demand their own form, or, use some words in a predetermined way.
Design words.
* Pick a word or phrase at random, let mind play freely around it until a
few ideas have come up, then seize on one and begin to write. Try this with
a non- connotative word, like "so" etc.
* Eliminate material systematically from a piece of your own writing until
it is "ultimately" reduced, or, read or write it backwards, line by line or
word by word.
(Only six more shopping days until Christmas you know - it may be time to start thinking about poems as gifts for all the friends you find it just too hard to shop for ) Then you can pop over to wewhoareabouttodie and check out a load of clips and links exploring the nature and process of "Conceptual Writing". Sound like a plan?
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And a Delightful Valentines to You...
Bar Napkin Sonnet #11
By Moira Egan
Things happen when you drink too much mescal.
One night, with not enough food in my belly,
he kept on buying. I'm a girl who'll fall
damn near in love with gratitude and, well, he
was hot and generous and so the least
that I could do was let him kiss me, hard
and soft and any way you want it, beast
and beauty, lime and salt—sweet Bacchus' pards—
and when his friend showed up I felt so warm
and generous I let him kiss me too.
His buddy asked me if it was the worm
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I wasn't sure which worm he meant, the one
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Bar N
Walking Forward in that Light
There have been five inaugural poets; two of them have read at the inaugural ceremonies of Barack Obama. Can I just say, I very much appreciate having a President who makes a public space for poetry. And so:
"One Today"
by Richard Blanco
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.
My face, your face, millions of faces in morning's mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoi
Any fool can get into...
Holy is my cow - A Daily Deviation! Holy...
(wait for it)
coooooooooooooooooow!
What with work and cooking dinner and washing dishes and work and doing laundry and work, nearly my whole day went by before I had a chance to log in to dA today. And what do I find when I do? A poem has caught my eye in the DD section for the day. And it's mine! What a great and generous gesture of kindness that it is. What a joy it is to receive such an honor.
Lots and lots (and lots and lots and lots and lots) of thanks to ~leyghan (https://www.deviantart.com/leyghan) and :iconthorns: for the honor, to the thousand wonderful deviants who've been so gracious and supporti
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Chirp, it's been twittered.
And way catchy title
And way catchy title