tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post4328357894220326001..comments2024-03-26T23:41:10.319+00:00Comments on Authors Electric: Free Poetry, Wordless Books, and Not a Literary Festival by Dan HollowayKatherine Robertshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17196712319655603442noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-54655880775674342702013-03-17T21:30:36.835+00:002013-03-17T21:30:36.835+00:00At 5:30 p.m. in my work week, something like dawn ...At 5:30 p.m. in my work week, something like dawn for most civilized folks, I needed a wake-me-up. I found it in the poem. Absolutely smashing, Dan.glitter noirhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11728649916344336118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-40744810019102104202013-03-16T14:44:55.907+00:002013-03-16T14:44:55.907+00:00I think I'm very aware that if I let myself, I...I think I'm very aware that if I let myself, I get very very sentimental, so I need to avoid the possibility (my novel Songs from the Other Side of the Wall is written in fairly conventional prose, as are the stories in Ode to Jouissance and really walk that line). I write a fair amount of non fiction where I let rip :) I'm also a huge fan of Banana Yoshimto, and find her way of creatig depth through omission fascinatingDan Hollowayhttp://danholloway.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-18567829406081681472013-03-16T14:30:46.748+00:002013-03-16T14:30:46.748+00:00thanks for replying Dan, just to say it was your i...thanks for replying Dan, just to say it was your imagery I said was brutalist rather than the theme, not to say the poem as a whole didn't have lyrical or emotional depth, but the language is so difft from your rat pieces. I look forward to more of your number novel.Lydia Bennethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09328239009863878547noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-33525607416495710002013-03-16T14:00:02.473+00:002013-03-16T14:00:02.473+00:00ah, that's clearer, thanks. and yes, i did get...ah, that's clearer, thanks. and yes, i did get the dates bit. cally, when i saw peter pan at the barbican a few years ago i refused to do whatever they asked me to do to stop tinkerbelle dying, so there. tinkerbelle lived, my children hated me, and i saved myself the price of several ice creams to show them who was boss. the power of numbers, see...Jan Needlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15823078224282953782noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-47735012857984037032013-03-16T12:52:53.844+00:002013-03-16T12:52:53.844+00:00Bill, thank you - many of those poems have come ou...Bill, thank you - many of those poems have come out of my experiences on the performance poetry circuit, often held in small cafes and mixed up with music - and on the back of much watching clips of the Beats, and reading Patti Smith's Just Kids and the like. <br /><br />Jan - they are, as you probably got, dates and the numbers relate to something on those dates - I'm keeping just what under my hat until next month. There are also two sections - one for Guy, and one for Evie, covering the same dates.<br /><br />Cally - I love palindromic numbers (and on a related theme I find something rather magical about multiples of 11). YES!! definitely. The 1st person plural in particular is designed to comment on the reader's relation to the text, but the "presence/absence of the author" is throughout - from the hermetic schoolboy to the artist who may or may not exist to the dominatrix who can only express her loss through violence. Would love to - I'm very sorry I've been too tied up to be in touch as much as I'd like - in addition to the stuff in this post, my wife's had another major breakdown and we've been struggling with lots of very ill pets, but after Not the Ox Lit fingers crossedDan Hollowayhttp://danholloway.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-26914282711922844812013-03-16T12:28:27.233+00:002013-03-16T12:28:27.233+00:00Great post. the only numbers I like are pallindrom...Great post. the only numbers I like are pallindromic! And even then, I spent a long time telling people 'I don't believe in numbers' However...<br /><br />Dan, I want to talk to you about Ag's shoes, specifically about the function of the 'narrator' and the relationship between narrator and author (against the whole death of the author thing - suggesting that the narrator is a place for the displaced author to hide and stay alive) as part of a feature for ebook festival about narrative and psychology. Would you be up for that? Nothing happening on it till May/June time and it would probably just be some email question/answers batting back/forth. But I felt the 'presence' of the narrator as something more in that book and would like to discuss it.<br />AND if there's anyone else around here who would like to be included in the feature - that is anyone who feels that in their fiction there is an interesting psychological relationship between narrator/characters/author - you know where to find me - just email! <br /><br />Jan - just say after me 'I don't believe in numbers. I don't believe in numbers' It worked for Tinnkerbell, we could radically alter the world if enough of us all say it at the same time! CallyPhillipshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15481379296340077102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-6846349045756260502013-03-16T12:16:33.809+00:002013-03-16T12:16:33.809+00:001961
29/10 18:15 (457), 30/10 10:30 (577) 13:15 (1...1961<br />29/10 18:15 (457), 30/10 10:30 (577) 13:15 (126) 14:15 364, 3/11 23:45 129, 10/11 22:17 134, 25/11 09:38 148 <br /><br />Dan, maybe i'm dim as well as innumerate. My father, an engineer, despaired after trying to explain to me for an hour how many eighths there were in an inch. I've now wrestled with your 'opening paragraph' for ten minutes, and I promise you I'm alone in a wilderness. I'll have to revert to words: wtf are you on about?<br /><br />Please, if you can, enlighten me.Jan Needlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15823078224282953782noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-76098303500102686592013-03-16T12:12:46.733+00:002013-03-16T12:12:46.733+00:00Interesting that you say your lyric poems are best...Interesting that you say your lyric poems are best in a jazz bar live, Dan. I downloaded the pamphlet and started reading silently but, after only a couple of pages, went back and started again but reading aloud. I'm not a poet but I love rhythms in language and yours, together with the intricate tanglings of rhymes and euphonies, have the excitement of jazz improvisations. (I know, I know, Pseuds' Corner is beckoning, but that's the effect they have.) I found myself unable to stop and read them all and I know I'll be reading them again. Thanks.Bill Kirtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16345949773423764808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-25274082840146501522013-03-16T11:54:03.927+00:002013-03-16T11:54:03.927+00:00Lydia/Valerie - y, I'm disappointed to be miss...Lydia/Valerie - y, I'm disappointed to be missing your show though if I'm in Cheltenham early enough I'll come and say hello in Cafe Rouge. <br />What an interesting question - my writing always tends, often veers positively ferociously, to the sentimental. My show is " a lyrical, heartbreaking, but ultimately joyous picaresque across the neon-soaked night cities of the world in search and celebration of lost friends" which sums up the level of emotional charge, and if you download the pamphlet you'll see poems like "We Were Makig Fairytales", "Holly", "i cannot bring myself..." and "Hungerford Bridge" where I had to have the steer on full lock to avoid mawkishness. Likewise in my novels, the form is often experimental, but the core is always emotional, as in The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes, which is essentially three different stories about the loss of the most important thing in your life. And Evie and Guy, for all it is written wholly in numbers, is a story of obsessive lust that turns to aching love and then loss and the long, painful search for wholeness over emptiness and brokenness. I think I find the use of jarring forms a way of tempering the sentimentality (though with the lyric poems that's hard, which is why they're best not on the page but in a jazz bar live late at night), working as a negative of kitsch where sugary forms are used to temper an almost unpalatable harshness. Also, my main influences are artistic - Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas, and musical like Patti Smith, Janis Joplin - so the confessional aspect with its emotional longing drives everything.<br /><br />Interesting that you find this poem harsh - for me it veers uncomfortably close to mawkish - the theme is a regular one of mine (and the central theme of Evie and Guy), that of two people who are together completely but also totally separate and yearning at a preconscious level to be properly together. For me the opening stanza is almost sugary sentimental in its expression of longing.<br /><br />Jan - I am no mathematician either, though I love numbers dearly (I'm an arithmetician if anything). But trust me, they function entirely like words only, because they do not have preprogrammed meanings the idea is that they mainline the emotion even more directly by bypassing our presuppositions.Dan Hollowayhttp://danholloway.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-40153788984842640862013-03-16T10:59:40.728+00:002013-03-16T10:59:40.728+00:00as a non mathematician - with failed certificates ...as a non mathematician - with failed certificates to prove it - the idea of a novel all in numbers makes me sweat with fear. don't be so cruel, dan!Jan Needlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15823078224282953782noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-24429195304216580732013-03-16T10:46:21.012+00:002013-03-16T10:46:21.012+00:00Also let me say I will be performing at Cheltenham...Also let me say I will be performing at Cheltenham Poetry Fesitval also on April 24th, at Cafe Rouge, and it's been arranged for 8pm overlapping your event. I wish I could see you perform but it's not to be! Good luck with your albion beatnik readings, I'm performing some of my pathology poetry etc in June. Lydia Bennethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09328239009863878547noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-23361905832126690032013-03-16T10:43:46.503+00:002013-03-16T10:43:46.503+00:00Hi Dan, what a wide-ranging post! Much food for th...Hi Dan, what a wide-ranging post! Much food for thought. Am also fascinated by the contrast in style between your poem here with its somewhat brutalist imagery, and your tender, even sentimental postings about your beloved rats. is this a deliberate schism, a choice, or is your poetry sometimes similarly emotional? Your book written in numbers intrigues me, as a mathematician. I'm wondering how you will be able to assign values or meanings to the numbers eg the groups of digits after what look like dates and times. Lydia Bennethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09328239009863878547noreply@blogger.com