Performance Poetry

La poesia, nata per trasmettere informazioni del sapere non genetico in una comunità orale, è l'unica arte che perde il suo medium originario: la voce. Questa tesi indaga il processo che, in Italia, porta a interessarsi nuovamente agli aspetti orali della poesia e alla ridefinizione della stessa, nonché al ruolo del poeta e al suo rapporto con il pubblico. Tale trasformazione è avvenuta a partire dalla fine degli anni Sessanta quando, caduti i pilastri della società borghese, ci si rende conto che la poesia non può cambiare la società e il poeta perde il mandato sociale. La fine della neoavanguardia e del Gruppo63 segna un momento di vuoto culturale in cui non vi sono più idee e tendenze comuni. In questo clima, nel 1975, l'antologia Il pubblico della poesia tenta una “ricognizione del vuoto” e, per creare uno spazio e un mercato ai poeti, si organizzano serate in una famosa cantina romana, il Beat72: il poeta rinasce nel ruolo di performer. Si sente pero' la necessità di coinvolgere un pubblico maggiore: nel 1979 prende vita il Primo Festival Internazionale dei poeti. Finalmente la poesia esce dalla pagina stampata e termina la separazione tra poeta e spettatore, che sale anch'egli sul palco. Alcuni autori iniziano a sperimentare vocalità e oralità: sono, per esempio, Vicinelli, Spatola, Fontana, Costa, ed esterno all'ambiente letterario, Stratos. Queste personalità fanno riferimento alla poesia vocale, sonora, al lettrismo, ai poeti Beat. Per gli studi teorici sull'oralità si sono presi in considerazione: Zumthor, Ong, Havelock, McLuhan. In seguito si è fatta una distinzione tra oralità primaria, secondaria e terziaria, con De Kerhove. Si è giunti così a prendere in esame alcune forme orali  degli anni Duemila: il poetry slam, portato in Italia da Lello Voce (si veda intervista in appendice), la poesia performativa e il web, con l'esempio del blog “Nazione Indiana”, che permette di proseguire il percorso sull'oralità in un contesto multimediale. 
(Qui presente solo indice e introduzione)

Maishe Maponya has made an immense contribution to theatre and poetry performance in South Africa. It has been suggested that, as committed and passionate poet, he is the Pablo Neruda or Federico Garcia Lorca of his country. Though Southern Africa is rich in art, music, poetry, theatre and literature and fête them when they are dead, it is notorious for its neglect of artists and their work when they are alive. This is not only not good for the artists themselves but also for their countries.  Maishe was forged in the crucible of the struggle against apartheid and first came to prominence in the wake of the Soweto Uprising of 1976. He fought oppression and denounced injustice in those dark days but then when the goals he and others fought for then and the dreams they dreamed came to be increasingly forgotten, Maponya did not hesitate to denounce this too. In the apartheid era he founded the Bahumutsi Theatre company and produced militant and electrifying plays. With the celebrated Allah Poets, he and the well-known playwright, Matsemela Manaka and the ‘Poet Laureate of Soweto’, Ingoapele Madingoane, staged dynamic performance theatre. After the fall of apartheid in 1994 Maponya became increasingly critical and published two brilliant and hard-hitting collections of poems,  'This Land is my Witness: Poems on the State of the Nation' and 'Truth be Told: Da’s Kak in die Land', both published by Themba Books. The apartheid government hounded and harassed him, banning his plays. The democratic post-apartheid government, simply ignored him – along with many other great South African writers and performers. It is time to give our artists their due and celebrate their lives and works while we still have them.

Introduction & ToC of monograph
"Live Poetry: An Integrated Approach to Poetry in Performance"
Amsterdam: Rodopi 2011



Given the increasing popularity of literary festivals, open mics, and poetry slams, one could justifiably claim that the English-speaking world is currently experiencing a ‘Live Poetry’ boom. Yet, despite this raised awareness for the aesthetic and social potential of performed poetry, academia has barely responded, failing in the process to update and adapt its concept of poetry to meet these recent developments.
Bridging this critical gap, this volume provides for the first time a full methodological ‘toolkit’ for the analysis of live poetry by drawing together approaches from diverse disciplines concerned with speech and forms of cultural performance. Most notably, these include literary studies, paralinguistics, musicology, kinesics, theatre and performance studies, and folklore studies.
This innovative methodology is demonstrated through sample analyses based on a mixed corpus of audio and video recordings of poetry performances, as well as on personal interviews with practitioners of live poetry. Of value to the scholar and poetry enthusiast alike, this volume presents an indispensable guide for anyone interested in understanding and analysing poetry’s evolution through its current ‘spoken word’ renaissance.

www.livepoetry.net

This thesis will explore the work of performance poet, Kate Tempest, and the status of her poetry as an empowering mode of Foucauldian counter­-conduct. It will outline the urban, impoverished demographic Tempest speaks for and its implications for the motifs of alienation, apathy and frustration in her work, and how certain traits of her poetry attempt to offset these negative phenomena of modern consciousness. Firstly, Tempest’s particular brand of hip hop will be considered in relation to Jonathan Bate’s theory of ecopoetics, the poetic creation of a dwelling  place.  This consideration will be assessed alongside her other form of poiesis, the creation of myth, and the way these two modes work in conjunction to create an empowering discursive space for her audience to authenticate and ground themselves. Finally, this thesis will discuss the ways in which Tempest’s oral context fundamentally enriches the democratic, communalising and dissident elements discussed above.

Dieses Buchkapitel beschäftigt sich mit der Körperlichkeit von Lyrik-Performances. Nach der Einführung zur Medialität der Lyrik wird demonstriert, wie eine Semiotik des Klangs bzw. multimodale Diskursanalyse (G. Kress, T. van Leeuwen) ihre Anwendbarkeit auf den Lyrikvortrag findet. Weiters wird die Rückkoppelung der Subjektivität des artikulierten Ich durch die Performativität des lyrischen Texts besprochen, die besonders im Falle der Autoren-Lesungs-Lyrik zutage tritt.

In How Viral Poems are Annotated: On ‘OCD’ by Neil Hilborn Kila van der Starre explores how, where and by whom viral poems are annotated. The article focuses on the performance of the poem ‘OCD’ by Neil Hilborn that went viral in the summer of 2013 and has been viewed more than 10 million times on YouTube. Researching online poetry performances and annotations can be seen as a new type of literary reception study in the digital age. It shows that poetry in the twenty-first century is a widespread, actively experienced and annotated, transmedia genre in what Henry Jenkins calls ‘convergence culture’ (Jenkins 2006: 2).

The performance of ‘OCD’ triggered a broad array of reactions, including oral, written, creative, analytical, applauding and critical annotations. The video received more than 9,000 comments on YouTube from 130 countries and the poem was translated into at least thirteen languages. People used self-made films with actors, drawings, stop-motion techniques, footage montage and voice-overs to produce adaptations of the poem. Probably the most common annotation to the performance is a video in which a ‘cover’ performance of the poem is recorded; on stage for a live audience, in the original language or in translation, in the US, France, Germany, Servia and more.

The way that Hilborn's poem is transcribed, translated, adapted, remade, remixed and analysed gives us insight into how people experience and understand poetry. Also, the ways in which online and offline annotations coincide give an alternative view on the idea that print and digital media are separate tracks that do not interact. By focusing on different types of annotations Van der Starre explores the ways in which active participants are ‘making meaning’ of the performance. The article shows how emotion, identification, translation, genre, authenticity, analysis and interpretation play a role in the way that people experience and understand the poem.

In the well identifiable inhospitable state of affairs of the literary world, to be a Dalit Woman writer is to suffer a twofold marginalization from the social paradigm. The restrictions, so to say, aren't but only limited to gender oppression, but also extend to class subjugation. In such a set up, Meena Kandasamy's writings create a rupture. Seen from her subject position, Kandasamy's poetry seems to experience the prevalent ideologies from a radically different standpoint and endeavors to challenge them. Her poetry seems to seduce and steal the male generative energy. She reconstructs the images of women inherited from male literature. The dichotomy between the literary and the social context diminishes in her works. Kandasamy offers an alternative image of women-the Dalit women and the female personas from the Indian mythology. Her poetry protests against the very culture of words that has attained an arbitrary image. At times visual, her poetry attacks the binaries-both earthly and heavenly. One evidently identifies the containment suffered and the freedom sought. This paper intends to study her collection of poetry Ms. Militancy, and identify therefore  Kandasamy’s  efforts  to  break  through  the  tendency  of  Western  Feminism  to universalize the female experience, and confirm  what Sharmila Rege says: ‘the category of dalit woman is not homogeneous’. The paper shall also borrow critical ideas and opinions majorly from
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Sharmila Rege and Gopal Guru.

Hailed as the badshah of mizahiya shayri, Khateeb, who is still relatively unknown across the subcontinent, was prolific, and composed and performed a great number of his works in Dakhani. Suffused with regional idioms, pithy folk wisdom and the sumptuous inflections of the Deccan’s vernaculars, his poetry was accessible to and singularly popular among the people of the region. Khateeb was not just a guardian of Dakhani, he became one of its most be- loved ambassadors. He lit a lamp in the darkened corner to which the language had retreated; his poetry was like a stick of incense burnt in propitiation to its glorious history.

Desde la irrupción de la poesía concreta en los años 1950 brasileños hasta el movimiento arte porno en la década de 1980, el interés sigue siendo hacer una micro-cartografía de transgresiones poéticas y políticas contra formas autoritarias de gobernanza de la vida que prioriza intersecciones entre literatura experimental, poéticas del cuerpo y activismo visual para poner en evidencia el deseo de devenires disidentes, relaciones, complementariedades y enlaces movilizados por el intento de superar incógnitas. Son prácticas que sobresalen por la ocupación de territorios otros en la inauguración de campos de visibilidad, que se atreven a tomar el espacio público cercenado/vigilado y, a la vez, emplean estrategias de trabajo artístico colectivo. Encarnan im•pulsos activistas, pulsiones inconformes o pasiones inevitables que se reflejan en el uso de los lenguajes, los modos de activarlos y la capacidad de invención para interferir en la esfera pública. Son prácticas que prolongan la escritura hacia el cuerpo deviniendo en performance poetry, con la dramatización e improvisación que exige la práctica poética in situ. En el límite, se asumen como dispositivo de actuación cotidiana en la compleja ecuación arte<>vida, marcando así el camino desde la poesía experimental hacia un cuerpo experimental, un cuerpo-poema o cuerpoema (el cuerpo como plataforma de experimentación poética). Así pues vamos a retomar aquí el trabajo de poetas y artistas que produjeron poesía experimental (concreta, visual, táctil, sonora, performática) teniendo, además, el género como eje crítico en esa tarea de indagar los mecanismos y engranajes del lenguaje y en el intento de salir de la disposición binaria construida como lugar de entendimiento y sentido común por la colonialidad.

This paper investigates the concepts of 'poets with history' and 'poets without history' as proposed by Marina Tsvetaeva, in the context of British contemporary poetry. Furthermore, it explores elements of poetic craft in Alice Oswald's 'Falling Awake' and Hollie McNish's 'Nobody Told Me.'

Kate Tempest, British performance poet, rapper, playwright and musician, came to public attention when her epic narrative Brand New Ancients won the 2012 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. This critically acclaimed and popular piece both draws on and subverts the conventions of epic narrative in order to recount the ‘small heroics’ and ‘everyday epics’ of a South London community. As recent international works by Alice Oswald, Hélène Cixous, Barbara Köhler and Margaret Attwood demonstrate, Tempest is by no means alone in drawing on the myths and aesthetics of classical antiquity in her contemporary literary productions. Neither is the association of Homer with spoken-word poetry or hip-hop culture a new area of research. Yet the twenty-seven-year-old’s position as a ‘teller’ of poems in an immediate, musically rich and specific performance setting aligns her authorial persona – in contrast with the authors mentioned above - more closely with the historical figure of the Homeric poet as a result of her adaptations. This case study explores the ways in which the critical reception of Tempest’s poetic output, firmly fixed in a ‘post-literate’ culture (Erik Pihel), places her on a continuum with the Homeric tradition of oral narrative, often linking her specifically with the biographical figure ‘Homer’. This close association functions in a reciprocal manner to authorise Tempest as a poet of literary worth and to ‘update’ and democratise classical literature for modern audiences. For, like Patience Agbabi’s recent re-telling of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Tempest’s work adapts one of the cornerstones of the Western canon for a hyper-contemporary, street-savvy audience. Her broader use of the myths of classical antiquity, in for example her latest lyric sequence Hold Your Own, exert subversive political force due to Tempest’s consistent application of the modes and themes of a tradition associated with a masculine literary elite to settings of urban, class-based impoverishment and queer feminist culture through a medium immersed in the subcultural sounds and ideology of hip hop. My case study focuses primarily on Brand New Ancients, Hold Your Own, Tempest’s spoken-word poetry and material from a recent ‘In Conversation with Kate Tempest’ event hosted by the Oxford University’s Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama. I explore, first, Tempest’s re-workings of Homer’s epic narratives, second, the diegetic construction of the poet figure (her identity and function) and, finally, draws on reviews, essays and newspaper articles in order to examine Tempest’s critical positioning as a ‘brand new Homer’.

""" Slam poetry, which first came into being in Chicago in 1986 as a competitive form of performance poetry, is only the latest development in a series of poetry movements in the United States that radically turned away from the written-to-be-silently-read to a written-to-be-performed poem. The book investigates contemporary American performance poetry as a continuation of poetry as an oral and social medium that finds its cultural realization in an interaction between the poet, the poem and the audience. After a survey of the historical development as well as different performance movements in the United States, the author provides an analysis of representative audio and visual poems of these movements by Jerome Rothenberg, Allen Ginsberg, Gil Scott-Heron, Ntozake Shange, Laurie Anderson, and Patricia Smith. The book is highly recommended to teachers who want to take poetry ,,off the written page in their classroom and engage their students in a multimedia experience with poetry, but will be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about this particular performance genre.
"""

Speech and recital contests are not rare in the language learning landscape of Japan and elsewhere. However, preparations often neglect important aspects of a good delivery. Too often, student recitals are delivered either in a monotonous fashion with too little attention being paid to segmental phonology and prosody, or highlighting measures like pitch or volume are overused or inappropriately applied. At Aichi Prefectural University a special class has been developed in order to tackle this problem. For this class, a format piloted by Anke Stöver-Blahak at the University of Hanover in Germany has been adapted to the Japanese teaching context. Students are thoroughly familiarised with what is a successful spoken performance. Students are practically introduced to basic aspects of drama pedagogy, phonation, voice coaching, and to simplified concepts of target language (TL) prosody. Further, a strong emphasis is placed on identifying one's audience and adjusting the delivery accordingly.

Speaking at a TEDx event in Manoa, Oʻahu in 2013 kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiian) poet Jamaica Osorio declaimed 'Global warming will break the foundation of the community/ without even shaking the penthouse suits/ whilst the men and women who finance the earth's deterioration/ play the role of its saviour … tallying the brown bodies that float by.' In this article I introduce Osorio's poetry as an example of indigenous ecocriticism interacting with global power flows as she astutely pinpoints an asymmetry of causation and impact dictated by economic and racial power. Her anger is rooted in her genealogy as a kanaka maoli woman, an American citizen, a queer poet and indigenous activist. Kānaka maoli trace their genealogy back to the islands of Hawaiʻi, and make little distinction between human and non-human family; many feel real fury at the environmental destruction capitalist-driven development has wreaked on their islands. Historian Arif Dirlik posited that indigenous epistemologies 'assume strategic significance' as 'counter resolutions to the contradictions of hybridity'. I suggest that Osorio's career is metonymic of the techniques kānaka maoli have used for centuries to ensure cultural survival; remaining rooted in place whilst working to build audiences and allies internationally. Osorio's poetry performances, watched on YouTube by thousands of people across the world, provide a lens through which contemporary indigeneity can be observed replacing itself, using international networks, in a national system which continues to privilege movement over fixity regardless of the cost to the places it moves between.

Les diferents formes de la improvisació oral cantada, vives en geografies diverses amb denominacions diferents han experimentat recentment un auge especial. Remarquem la seua vigència al País Basc i en altres indrets de l’Estat espanyol (Canàries, Múrcia, Andalusia, Galícia), així com a la Mediderrània (Sardenya, Malta) i Amèrica, des dels repentistes cubans fins els payadores argentins i xilens. Les trobades i encontres entre intèrprets i versificadors de diferents cultures ha donat com a resultat un enriquiment mutu i l’establiment d’un diàleg intercultural a partir de les tradicions particulars. Les possibilitats del gènere (memòria, domini de la llengua, capacitat per modificar un argument) han motivat la seva transposició didàctica en l'àmbit escolar, primer a Mallorca, més tard, a Catalunya i finalment a València, on l'anomenat cant d’estil, amb les seves conegudes albades, ha rebut una atenció en recerques recents. A partir del curs 2006-2007 es va iniciar a diverses escoles de primària de Catalunya el projecte interdisciplinari “Corrandescola”, basat en la improvisació de textos del repertori tradicional a l'escola coordinat per Albert Casals (2010). Les formes de la cançó improvisada posseeixen un interès escolar, que ha aglutinat projectes interdisciplinaris. En el context mallorquí s'ha aprofitat, amb finalitats educatives, la vigència de la cobla de picat, on els glossadors han d'aportar aptituds interpretatives i d'interacció tant amb el seu contrincant com amb el públic. En l'àmbit de l'educació secundària, s’han desenvolupat experiències com ara el projecte “Patrimoni cultural: la poesia oral improvisada”, amb la participació de quatre centres de l'àmbit lingüístic català.
S'exposen els resultats de la nostra recerca a partir de les possibilitats d’aquest gènere etnopoètic performatiu, iniciada amb un treball de camp a Mallorca, l’indret on la glosa ha experimentat una recuperació i un canvi de funcions socials, en diferents àmbits d’actuació del col•lectiu “Glosadors de Mallorca”. El nostre objectiu consisteix a explorar les fòrmules de transposició didàctica d’aquesta forma de literatura oral, que apel•la als elements de la memòria col•lectiva de les comunitats que l’han creada i que, per a les generacions joves, és permeable al diàleg intercultural amb altres tradicions. Les dades recollides tenen com a objectiu fornir-nos d’un marc teòric i d’un estat de la qüestió que ens permeta la introducció de les formes bàsiques de la improvisació poètica dins seqüències didàctiques més amples centrades en la creació i perfomativitat poètica, per a diferents nivells educatius.

Η παρούσα εισήγηση στοχεύει στην προσέγγιση της επιτελεστικής ποίησης (performance poetry) μέσα από το πρίσμα της δημιουργικής γραφής. Αν «δημιουργική γραφή» σημαίνει το παραγωγικό ενέργημα του γράφειν, τότε πώς μπορεί να συνδεθεί με μια ποιητική πρακτική, η οποία φαίνεται να χαρακτηρίζεται περισσότερο από προφορικότητα παρά από γραπτότητα; Στο πλαίσιο αυτό θα αποσαφηνίσουμε τι είναι η επιτελεστική ποίηση, ποια τα βασικά της χαρακτηριστικά και τα εργαλεία για την υλοποίησή της, ενώ θα αναφερθούμε, εν συντομία, στους πρώτους διδάξαντες. Πώς επηρεάζεται η διαδικασία της ποιητικής γραφής όταν προορίζεται να παρασταθεί ζωντανά μπροστά σε ένα κοινό; Πώς σχεδιάζεται και πώς υλοποιείται ένα επιτελεστικό ποιητικό opus, που φαίνεται να προϋποθέτει μια αναγκαιότητα, κατά το «εικός ή αναγκαίον» του Αριστοτέλη;

In September 2016, an international group of young scholars came together at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, to discuss their research projects in the context of the workshop "Voices from the Margins: Societal Change and the Environment in Poetry." Not yet entirely expecting how turbulent the next few months would be in terms of poetry and protest, but very much aware of the increasing relevance of both fields and the hybrids they engender, we wanted to provide a platform to discuss poets who engage with social and environmental issues. The main focus here were poets who write from a position of marginality, be that geographically, socially, economicallyor on the basis of race, gender or sexual orientation.

The heroic deeds of the Banī Hilāl tribe of Bedouin Arabs, as they migrate during the tenth and eleventh centuries from the Arabian Peninsula across the Levant, Egypt, and into North Africa, are preserved throughout the Arabic- and Amazigh/Berber-speaking world in a cycle of narratives known as al-Sīrah al-Hilāliyyah.
(Chosen in 2017 as ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) in Humanities Open Book (HOB) for outstanding out-of-print books in the humanities. Award is  free e-books on ACLS site)

This essay discusses Neil Hilborn's viral video of his poem 'OCD' and the poet's volume 'Our Numbered Days' from a perspective informed by the work of Susanne K. Langer. Issues of genre, form (written vs. performance poetry), and performance are discussed. I do a close reading of Hilborn's performance of the poem in the video and question the wisdom of publishing performance poetry as a volume of poems.

Art is based exclusively on the data gained from the online archive (even though some of the data are controversial). The performances mentioned in the archive are catalogized. The main challenges of the archive-based research in performance studies are underlined.

DESPITE the promise of the title, I don't think this panel will pretend to offer a comprehensive overview of the current Australian poetry scene. Our three panellists, though, will provide their thoughts on some key aspects of contemporary poetry and poetry publishing. To provide some sort of context for the panel, I would like to briefly point out what I think are some of the debates and institutional forces which have organised the poetic field in recent decades.

Recuperare e promulgare lo spirito dell'avanguardia futurista comporta una personale predisposizione a un approccio totalizzante che prescinda da sterili settorialismi per tentare nuove connessioni tra parola, colore, gesto e materia. Arrigo Lora Totino riesce in pieno in questa impresa ponendo la parola come invariante del suo poliedrico e diversificato fare, in un'interazione tra i mezzi che lega il gesto alla materia, la scrittura al collage, la voce all'azione. Si tratta però di una parola svincolata dagli stretti lacci della sintassi e ribaltata, spezzettata, negata, de-semantizzata, ridotta a puro significante, su una via indirizzata "verso una poesia totale", per dirla con Adriano Spatola 4 , all'insegna di una concezione espansa della poiesi in cui convergono una pluralità di forme e di linguaggi, per una poesia che sia di volta in volta concreta, visuale, gestuale, sonora. È proprio in quest'ultima tipologia, ramificatasi nel corso del secondo Novecento in una vivace molteplicità di soluzioni, che tutte queste forme sembrano trovare una sintesi: le tavole di poesia concreta e visuale fanno spesso da partitura, mentre il gesto estende e spazializza l'atto fonatorio in una stimolante configurazione sinestetica e ambientale dei mezzi e dei messaggi. La poesia sonora, intermediale 5 per definizione, batte il ritmo di un rinnovato spazio acustico 6 in cui logiche e strutture tipiche di culture orali 7 e primitive tornano a nuovo vigore, ripercuotendosi su molte delle esperienze artistiche e musicali coeve 8 .

In the publishing world of cyberspace and hypertext it is not surprising that there are millions of pages written and read whose words have never been spoken or heard at all. In addition, the number of sound files of poetry keeps rising, and there are electronic poetry archives, such as the renowned Electronic Poetry Center at SUNY Buffalo that contains an incredible collection of sound poetry and visual poetry. Moreover, there are radio and TV stations that broadcast poetry on the Internet, as well as video clips of performances that may be viewed online (e.g. http://www.e-poets.net). When characterizing the writing poet in her traditional media context, one needs to locate her in an interaction between the poem and the recipient. Since theoretical approaches to literature differ considerably, I will refer only to some basic yet important features. First, most poets use writing as a means of storing and exploring written language. Even slam poets who want to stage their poems, need to write in what Amiri Baraka calls "longhand" (Packard 1987, 305) on the page; frequently the type-writer, or the computer is used. Second, the crucial difference between the "stager" and the "pager" is that the latter has no intention or choice of facing the audience in person, and sometimes not even through the published page. Third, just as the author becomes a fictional writer through the means of writing as well as through the dynamics of language in the text, the reader, too, can only be seen as a fictional reader that encounters the writer in a world of writing.

This chapter explores the central role of poetry in Iran’s contemporary religious culture and politics. Its immediate focus is the socio-cultural nuances embedded in annual Shiite rites through a close reading of two contemporary poetry presentations that were performed at two significant points in recent Iranian history: the first Iran-US presidential telephone call since the Islamic Revolution (2013) and the national debate surrounding the UNESCO ‘Agenda 2030’ for Sustainable Development (2017). By examining the two poetry performances and their widespread reception, this chapter explores the creative confluence of religion and poetry in current Iranian politics. Understanding the significance of poetry as a culture-making and culture-sustaining medium may further our understanding of religion and politics in Iran today.

Access Link: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/poetry-iran-contemporary-theo-political-culture-maryam-ala-amjadi/e/10.4324/9781315646435-37?context=ubx&refId=eb1b6a10-560f-4c07-ab05-3bb001326ebc

Citation:

Ala Amjadi, Maryam, ‘Poetry in Iran’s Contemporary Theo-Political Culture’, in Routledge International Handbook of Religion in Global Society, ed. by Jayeel Cornelio, François Gauthier, Tuomas Martikainen, and Linda Woodhead (New York: Routledge, 2021), pp. 444–55

Although globalisation involves by definition the growth of the economic, social and cultural integration of different areas in the world, the question of inclusion and exclusion is still, and perhaps even more, worth asking. The slow crumbling of Nation-states, highlighted by the trends in world literatures and transculturality, has not yet solved the issue of how the states use their power of discipline, surveillance and control to regulate particular bodies in order to maintain the global hierarchy of states (Foucault). A compelling question, considering that most states are characterised by what Jafari S. Allen (2012) refers to as a "racialised and classed heteropatriarchy", is what happens to black queer bodies?
In the context of Anglophone studies, this essay explores issues of 'home', belonging, community and self, with specific attention to the experience of contemporary black queer performance poets who live and work in the United Kingdom, and will do so from the vantage point of the diaspora, which is itself a kind of "way out" of the Nation-state. Through the performative poetry of Keith Jarrett (London based poet and short story writer of Dominican descent) and Dean Atta (poet of mixed Jamaican and Greek-Cypriot descent living in London), the essay concentrates on the importance of the performance – be it racial, sexual, involving videos, the written or spoken word – to undermine the stereotypes concerning the black and queer body, and the use of language as a creative tool to formulate other possible avenues for black queer existence and recognition. The two performance poets are linked by their attempt to create a 'home', a community, where 'black' and 'queer' do not need to be antithetical terms (as in the widespread discourse of 'blackness' and its essentialist take in most black communities), or where 'black' is not synonym with 'fetishised desire/fantasy' (as in most of the white gay subculture). A place where the queer black body can 'come home' and 'be home', as Keith Jarrett suggests in his "Meditations on Home" (2014), where he writes: "I have also grown to accept my body as a home, rather than a temple. Temples are sacred; you visit them once or twice a week [...]. Homes are where we store our memories and our secrets. We invite lovers [...]. Our homes gather wear and tear, and this gives us 'character'".
Strong of the "private is political" feminist lesson, particularly of the so called Third World Feminism, these artists find their sites of resistance and self-making by rendering public what is private, by disorienting the audience and creating provocative performances with erotic, spectral and highly inter-textual references. Their performances, like their circulations inside and outside academic contexts, contribute to expand recognition of their (private) experiences and to legitimate their political expression.

Amideo, Emilio, 2017, “Unhomely Lives: Black and Queer Belongings in Contemporary Black British Culture”, in Rossella Ciocca, Annamaria Lamarra e Maria Laudando (eds.), Transnational Subjects: Literary and Cultural Encounters. Selected papers from XVII AIA Conference, Vol. 1, Napoli: Liguori, pp. 36-45. (ISSN: 1972-0645)

2013. The points are kind of the point, but they're not the point: The role of poetry slam in youth spoken word. In Contest(ed) writing: Reconceptualizing literacy competitions, ed. Mary R. Lamb. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 168-188.

Гладун Д. Сучасний літературний перформанс і текст. "Безкінечна подорож, або Енеїда": особливості комп'ютеропису // Дослідження різних напрямів розвитку філологічних наук : Міжнародна науково-практична конференція, м.Одеса, 29-30 листопада 2019 року. — Одеса: Південноукраїнська організація "Центр філологічних досліджень", 2019. — 184 с. — С. 145-147.

This article places youth spoken word (YSW) poetry programming within the larger framework of arts education. Drawing primarily on transcripts of interviews with teen poets and adult teaching artists and program administrators, the article identifies specific benefits that participants ascribe to youth spoken word, including the development of literate identities, therapeutic experiences, overcoming of shyness, and increased self-confidence and self-esteem. The author describes the writing workshop format common to many YSW programs and analyzes the specific contribution of performance to the benefits that participants identify from YSW. This article draws on James Gee's (1991) concept of Discourses to explain the strong identification that many YSW poets feel toward their chosen genre.

How and when did Persian poets write poetry in the medieval period?  This paper considers some social and visual dimensions of poetry, including the miniature paintings from pre-modern manuscripts that provide us with an iconography of poets, performance of poetry, minstrelsy and literate discussion.

Comme en attestent les récents débats du Kwani? Litfest 2010 (festival littéraire à Nairobi), la littérature contemporaine au Kenya est marquée par l’idée, souvent contestée, de l’émergence d’une nouvelle génération littéraire. Formulée en opposition à la génération postindépendance,cette « génération Kwani » serait constituée de jeunes auteurs vivant et écrivant la ville, se détachant des questions ethniques et postcoloniales et s’inscrivant dans de nouveaux réseaux institutionnels. Cette proposition peut être éclairée par une géographie des pratiques littéraires de ces jeunes auteurs. En retraçant les itinéraires quotidiens et les performances d’une sélection représentative d’auteurs, nous souhaitons comprendre comment se construit la figure de l’écrivain contemporain kenyan. Dans la dernière décennie, l’agenda culturel de Nairobi s’est densifié,offrant une palette de lieux à travers lesquels les écrivains peuvent se définir. Il s’agit d’identifier et de saisir l’usage de deux types de lieux figurant dans leur espace vécu : les lieux de socialisation (bars, restaurants,clubs, loisirs) et les lieux de légitimation (associations, centres culturels,universités). Ces lieux, incarnés par des institutions et leurs évènements,peuvent servir de clé d’analyse du champ littéraire kenyan.