Saturday, May 26, 2007

 

They keep on giving each other awards....


I just got back from Paris, where I attended (and participated in) E-Poetry 2007. As seems to happen more often that not, I managed to offend quite a few people, even though this time I tried really hard not to. Oh well.... Guess I won't be invited back. Not that I really want to be. This was a strange experience. Although there were a few outstanding presentations (Talan Memmott's Twittering was the best piece there, one whose text and presentation were meaningless without and completely dependent upon one another, elegant, nuanced, compelling and engaging in every possible way), but more were actually embarrassing, kind of slam meets the quest for tenure--lots of noise and wild graphics, little substance, even some nudity (not recorded nudity--a real-by-god presenter disrobing on stage).

After Pablo Gervas' presentation of his research on artificial creativity (specifically his project's attempt to generate poetry), a participant pointed back to Pablo's statement of motivation, and asked just why would you want to make a computer write poetry. It was a reactionary question. The questioner felt that poetry is a way to link people, poet to reader, and with the machine at one end, you've debased the form. This at a conference that feinted at asking questions about their placement vis-a-vis the avant!!! Why would an attendee even think to ask the question, suggesting as it does self-censorship? Really very out of place.

In January I mused over why any avant poet would want to read at the MLA Convention. I'm starting to feel that way about "e-poetry" conflabs.

I think I've figured it out: If you get together all your friends and find ways to host such things, everyone gets lots of c.v. entries and a better shot at tenure.


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