Writing about your experiences is a difficult and unnatural act. Despite this writers believe and strive ever onwards. Perhaps they even take a course. Yes, I personally have (after much struggle) found some merit in engaging with my life. The enterprise involved a focus on (and unravelling of) the subject of my ‘self’, the idea, and I admit there has been some crafty gain. So I will continue to do it I suppose. But I am prepared to spend more time entertaining other notions. What I like to think of as natural, game-like options. This project is more textual; therefore it aims at achieving more. Let’s hazard a use of the word experimental.

A pause: simply uttering certain words can invoke bizarre notions. Consider Eduardo Kac and his dabblings in various forms of experimental bio-poetry. His ideas – amongst other things – include nanopoetry, xenographics, and dynamic biochromatic composition (Kac, 2005). All of these directions he labels experimental. Imagine telling a non-literary friend you were practicing in one of these three fields. To them such experimental work may seem incomprehensible. They may come to equate the two terms. You could rightly argue this non-literary friend will never understand much anyway, and that’s true, but the attitude can be seen elsewhere. Dr. Coral Hull told me once ‘…people (when I say people, I mean the public) really do like poetry that they can understand’ (2006, pers. Comm.., 31^st March); and of course I know others that would never write with that kind of public in mind, calling it ‘populism’. It’s been going on for years. In the early twentieth century Christopher Brennan famously disagreed with anyone who thought his work should be more accessible – Musicopoematographoscope was his brilliantly confusing poetic response. So, difficult or easy? Maybe, experimental or lyric?

In response I’m taking the middle-ground. ‘Experimental’ doesn’t equal ‘incomprehensible’. And sometimes it does, to some people. Sometimes it needs to (the unraveling of an awkwardly fictional ‘self’ is often necessary). Of course Kac’s work reaches beyond textual experimentation; Brennan doggedly refused to push his experimenting as far as he could have. I am limiting myself by citing their work. Here and everywhere, I am very interested in a textual push. Goodbye Eduardo and Chris.

I am saying then (or writing) that defining your own text as ‘experimental’ is not labeling it ‘difficult’ or ‘weird’. But, in some instances application of the term can obfuscate what is happening. Writing that a reviewer has found intriguing but incomprehensible can expect to attract the comment, often with ‘single inverted commas’ around it. Yes, writing should not be unreadable, rendered in invisible-ink. And any writing that involves concerted play with the elements of poetry – think rhythm, language, typography, syntax, semantics, or diction – could be called experimental. So any writing that is overly difficult and confusing, should belong in a different category. Michael Farrell (2006) previously discussed these basic elements of poetry on Reading Revival. His view was that the act of labeling writing ‘experimental’ is lazy, and that often not all of these elements are being played with. I agree with him. The word ‘experimental’ needs interrogation. And if it has been subject to this already, well, I was not doing the interrogating. One must be selfish to create a self.

A quick google reminds me that traditional scientific method involves observation, hypothesis and testing. But science relies on replication. Is a poetic experiment feasible? Perhaps the end-product of poetry is however, more repeatable than we might imagine. I don’t think it amounts to style, voice, et cetera. What is needed is simply a set of personal limits: what do you want to achieve? If you desire a ‘focused spontaneity’ (Dobrez (1999) thinks Dransfield did – I think you probably should too), you might practice readiness then save the heuristic. I could draw a musical analogy here: tonal scales and improvisation, that sort of thing. But instead I like to imagine I am the boy who could fly, thinking, preparing, ready to take off. Because I can imagine it’s never been done before.

In any field experimentation will lead to further work, or new directions. And so it is possible poetic experimentation is inevitable. All unsatisfied poets should experiment – we are then continually testing out new things, developing new writings, avoiding brick-walls. Some poets will not do this. They are satisfied with the weight of history upon their shoulders. They might spend a life testing only new subject matter. We should not disregard their work, but instead take our own very seriously. When I trial a new approach in my writing (for whatever reason) more often than not a good result follows. It is a consistent result, replicable even. The result is not necessarily a great poem. Depending on the way you think, this is a great poem:

talk is better than write

(it is curiously anachronistic)
i speak with an accent (one round of applause round)& i
know i don’t (however a spontaneous) how far does that go?
in the end all dignitaries waver & fall (they accuse me)
as i deliver a fading speech (& it rolls, a barrel madly scrawled)
over the table of contents (a podium all eyes spy me at it) i won’t subject
you to it (severed heads down the aisle) my motives are, how would you
put it, niggardly or meta (emission, a ‘one-off’ universal) that’s right, i am not any old
descriptivist (check the program) the dog whines at the chamber (one treacherous) a
door only because i tend to reinforce this behaviour (drowning out the dog nobody
spoke) & i must speak to him about it ((this morning; this occasional))
privilege my thought (another age & there in the glare)

there comes only one round of applause that is signally round (& i speak to him)
(this morning; this occasional no i don’t ) & it rolls like a barrel of severed heads
down the aisle (dignitaries waver & fall) for an instant drowning (privilege my
thought) out the dog (the dog whines at the chamber)
nobody (not any old descriptivist) spoke however (a fading speech madly scrawled) it
was a spontaneous emission, a ‘one-off’ symptom of the universe (over the table of
contents / subject) i check the program (my motives are)
it is curiously anachronistic: speak with an accent & of another age (i reinforce it)
& there in the glare of a podium all eyes spy me at it (niggardly or meta) right
they accuse me as one treacherous

(how far does that go?)

How far does it go? An experimental process can be just that little bit more than not worth the effort. A minor victory. In the case of the preceding poem I tested repetition, using it to create the ‘immersive’ feel in this poem. I have some confidence that this method has possibilities for further application. The point is that the small victories of ambition have to be emphasized, and experimenting does help the poet develop new cognitions. Small methods are filed away. When the unwritten words call for something, needling your mind with the need for a perfect vehicle, past experimentation can provide options. An array of options is vital to continued and interesting writing. It’s your unexpected lift on the long and lonely highway of cliché. So we can push experimentation further. It can get scientific. Rather than accidental play I seek to turn experimentation into a consistent and useful tool, a heuristic generator.

Michael Farrell (2006a) once said he began using chance and limitation in order to ‘escape a reliance on instinct (which often means convention).’ His methods – among other things – involve sometimes using dice to determine line-length, and I think using constraint has worked for him. This is perhaps an example of making one’s instinct encompass a drive to write with the potentiality of the unconventional. A heuristically based method of experimentation requires the calling into play of that which is unconventional and distant, that which is liminal. It is just as likely one might become reliant on chance procedures to disrupt a flow of conventional poetic notions; chance may then become the ‘centre’ of instinct. But instead short spurts of disruption can break up any conventional monotony. This is what I have found.

I have made use of chance procedures to determine aspects of some of my pieces, for instance ‘where is silicon valley?’ was self-generating: lines were progressively fed into internet search engines to produce new lines (Motion, 2005). Overall though, it is enough that these strategies are considered as possibilities. A progressively unconventional line does not always suit my purposes or your purposes. I see merit in a fluidity of purpose and approach. It can equal something to offer the poetic conversation. Many things can be used to disrupt instinct, and therefore there must be change: no one approach should become instinctual. Or more accurately, no one experimental approach should become instinctual.

John Kinsella advocates disruption quite a bit. He fancies it perhaps, in its many forms. In an article on ‘back-drafting’ he writes:

… through a process of drafting de-lineation, often in fact relying on the physical measurement of a line in a particular font (which often changes when the poem is published) by way of ‘weighting’, using the centre of the line not so much as caesura but as pivot, I distract or displace the expected measurements.

(Kinsella, 2005)

The re-working in question is a typographical disruption, based around the way text looks on the page, but also the display and output of a computer screen. It is something I think a writer can develop a feel for. There is an aesthetic judgement that can be made when viewing a poem on the screen. The typography (the font-size, the spacing et cetera) is an element one can isolate, and play with. An aesthetic decision I make with nearly all of my poetry is to write using one and a half unit spacing. Yet when pieces are published it is true, as Kinsella observes, that your own typographical feel is often changed. This can be a surprising positive or it can be a disappointment. Either way, I am always made aware of the visual presentation of text. It is there, an element of poetry.

Some of my poems demonstrate how I attempt to experiment with typography: the unpublished ‘holiday’ almost eliminates spacing, and (importantly for me) foregrounds typographical strangeness. This is a fragment:

damnkafka’ssisteriscryingatmydooragain

whatamisupposedtocareidon’twantto

gotoworktoday ifonlythepressureswould

stopgettingtomeidon’tanswerthephone&so

And so it goes on. ‘barcode 9 311532 071002’ (also published in Cordite) utilises a more subtle disruptive spacing schema (Motion, 2006). Here the large spaces in between words and phrases were originally going to serve as full-stops, but the piece evolved with a form of Kinsella’s ‘back-drafting’; the large spaces remained but with punctuation, for a stilted and intentional effect. A good isolated example is the line:

only the messages                          they continue.

This is a poem where the content tells a story. The elements of this story are accentuated by typographical obstruction – the interplay of form and content is energised thereby. The ‘barcode’ is but one symbol of meaning, order, and mystery. All tools a writer can harness and hardwire.

But ‘meaning is evil and escapes over trees’. (It’s from an unpublished poem of mine). One can look at and study the meanings of words and find the gradations infinite: for example one can look for meanings in clauses, statements, even entire poems: and then beyond this and below. A way to experiment with meaning (or semantics) is to eliminate other foci – forget form for instance. A scientific ‘control’. As mentioned meaning can be observed in units of varying size. Playing with the meaning of single words is interesting; as is playing with lines full of meaning, or even a poem full of meaning. The semantic manipulation might be obvious in the following poem. The ‘experimental’ nature of this poem was not wholly retained (further editing was applied – the piece called for it) but there is evidence of what the process achieved. Meaning relates to perception and even truth. ‘lacrimosus’ began – as I saw it – as a completely ‘untrue’ poem, where meaning is twisted throughout into a state of falsity. I tried to write something I considered ‘bad’. But failure in this attempt is the stuff of paradox. By strengthening craft, heuristic readiness, one makes writing badly more difficult.

lacrimosus

murky

bad poem full of unrequite

enfolding

grievous hurt of aloneness

deep black hole solituded me

dark abyssed me

&poles opposite

anonymous

you move all haloed bliss / laughter & light

unknowing your eyes follow chirping sounds

i crouch & suffer

here: singular, tangled, despairing

emotion tormented me

clouded spite & eviled me

me bedevilled

you

read sunlit of unrequite then

not at all – my love a slow & ghostly creature

shut away cruelly romantic

grievous hurt of aloneness

& permeating deeper each

torturous second

poles opposite reflect black

deep blacknessed me

me pitch sentiment shrouded

empty world me

Even when attempting to write in a semantically ‘untrue’ mode (this piece admits and celebrates many elements of poetry I dislike) a creative purpose emerged. The syntactic distortion of expected word-placement is poetically interesting. As such the meaning even moves closer toward an emotional truth: the poem takes on a life of its own! ‘lacrimosus’ shows off an intriguing ambiguity of meaning (or tone?) as well as a fresh syntax. Once again, something was filed away.

Pi O is a writer who has also (but more famously) altered the syntactical arrangement of English in his poetry:

On my first book I had on the back cover ‘F… the spelling’ and that was really important because as long as I was being forced to speak in proper English and write proper English sentences there was no way to express… my experiences…

(Adie, 2004)

(The ‘F…’ word was not removed by me – we must hazard a guess as to its meaning). To create a language better able to express his particular meanings (circling the migrant aspect of his experience) Pi O also relates how he began to break up ‘…the position of the verb, noun and adjective in a sentence…’ This process was then, a process of experimenting with syntax, whether conscious or not. Furthermore it was a successful process for Pi O. By expanding his grasp of English to include syntactical arrangements that challenged Colonial English, he was able to successfully poeticise his experience and his particular community. Might this then be an experiment other poets should undertake – even if they do not have the particular aim of bringing an ethnic vernacular into their poetry?

If so the first step to take is to examine the patterns, and then to break them apart. Since the rules of grammar are so embedded, the first step must be to make the syntax strange. This is an overstatement – of course poetry does take liberties with syntax already – but to really try something new the syntax needs to be messed up until it seems very strange / confusing / even hard to read. Shklovsky (1991) felt this was what writing was all about – the purpose of art is to ‘enstrange’ objects and experiences, to re-awaken a reader’s senses; indeed he wrote ‘[a]utomatization eats away at things, at clothes, at furniture, at our wives, and at our fear of war’ (p. 5). And through his formal analyses Shklovsky highlighted one real power writing has. It can reawaken sensory pleasure in the reader, by making them see things anew. Although it may seem difficult to attempt to define or capture this ‘enstrangement’, one of my experiments was a relatively straightforward process, and it does illustrate that confusion can be used positively – to at least gesture towards a sensory newness.

‘couch’ began as a simple observational piece, written very quickly. Because the piece was simple to begin with it was useful for some concerted play – the outcomes would then be fairly easy to observe, and evaluate. I first reordered all the lines so the last line was now first, and so on. This resulted in a disjointed feel. The main ideas were presented backwards and one line wouldn’t easily flow into the next; but each line still retained a grammatical coherency, like the traditional ‘unit of thought’. To further play I then rearranged the words in each line, trying to force the maximum ‘strangeness’ into the lines with unlikely syntax (unlikely combinations of nouns, adjectives, verbs et cetera). So a first line that started out as a prosaic:

earlier on during the day i move the couch outside

(which is already slightly grammatically inconsistent) became the last line of the piece. This shook up any sense of narrative flow in the piece. But then after re-arrangement this line ended up as:

outside couch earlier during the on day i move

Also, the first line, that began as:

the recliner never finer; the times humdrum.

ended up as:

humdrum the like never recliner finer times

and this is a line that is not only more interesting and beautiful, but also contains allusions to something more complex – something about the experience of writing about an experience. This may be accidental, but I don’t think so: the arrangement of words simply brings out this more nuanced theme. This theme, plus the way it is put, I believe makes the piece engaging. And it goes like this:

couch

humdrum the like never recliner finer times

the elements people the sometimes that past to walk their purposes

the not comfort was remiss quite but not absolute juxtaposing the of me

stoned suitably sparkles for the of the night the anyway

the & to the whatever summit

went across out & began i the journey armrests

i the later couch there put then now

found places lush suitable grass the amongst sun &

outside couch earlier during the on day i move

So one poem ends up more intriguing than it originally was. There is a sense of images roaming free, rather than being forcibly ordered into a coherent piece of writing. ‘couch’ began as a pedestrian piece, one that dealt with the particular feelings of sitting on a couch in a garden. It probably would have been thrown out but with some play it became unusual. More importantly though, this process demonstrates that even though intentionally poetic writing might sometimes subvert the imbedded structures of language, it also relies on them a great deal to generate interest. The ‘strangeness’ of syntax in ‘couch’ is certainly not something to work into all writing, but it is a difference that I find intriguing. Slight reworking makes words new – just look at any snippet of poem by e.e. cummings, for example:

i like my body when it is with your

body. It is so quite a new thing.

Muscles better and nerves more.

(1977)

There are many untried possibilities for the arrangement of words; there are many poems to write. Arrangement is an important act (the most important?) but some might argue there is still the matter of choosing the right words to arrange.

Word-choice is surely problematic; it is not so easily experimented with. It is possible to write with certain ‘meta’ ideas of diction in mind – for instance writing with an elevated tone, writing in a curious vernacular or slang – although these experiments are rather light, and do enable a sort of reading that assumes the ‘finding’ of the character, or author within a poem is possible. I find simple scrambling of diction with a thesaurus more interesting. Because my ‘self’ will not be revealed with any close reading of my work. Only the self I have built. Writing, or construction, precedes the ‘self’. Indeed I might argue that the ‘jubilant assumption’ of one’s ‘specular image’ – the way Lacan (2001, p.1286) describes the process of an individual identifying their self – might be indefinitely postponed with the act of writing The profound sense of loss Lacan proposed we experience when assuming our imago (in the Mirror Stage) need not be so bad. There is a freedom that comes with escaping certainty, or at least with deciding on one’s own limitations. The words will just come.

Will the lines just come though? Control of line is perhaps the one unique tool a poet has that other writers do not. Deciding where your lines end and how your stanzas are grouped is an important element of poetics. One thing more specific research into my own work has revealed (embarrassingly) is that it can be easy to relax and fall into a particular habit of lineation. Geoff Page (2005) once said at a reading that he now finds it natural to write regularly metered lines; but I don’t think this can happen for all writers. I don’t think it should either. To have a competent grasp of poetic tools it is necessary to experiment with line, and to keep experimenting (Page may well have done this – he seems content with his style). The poems I have previously discussed show that marrying the use of line with a particular purpose is one of the best ways to come to terms with it. This purpose may be to aid clarity; kinetic movement; a visual aspect; even a movement of emotion, or focus. The aim is to develop one’s confidence with line and to be able to adapt it to whatever purpose arises: line manipulation becomes a tool, just as the other elements that have been focussed on become tools. There is heuristic analysis at play as the poet writes and it is most certainly mediated by the tools the poet possesses, or even invents.

Now I draw near to the end of this work, even though I can see so much ground that hasn’t been covered. And now is probably the time when the title of this essay should make some impact. Well, I’ve heard many a conservative voter say ‘Should we really change, just for change’s sake?’ And I think, no, surely we should keep what is worthwhile. Yet there is a need to continually try new things, if only in order to know what is worth keeping. I’ve found I do need to keep what works in place – to file it away as a flexible heuristic. I also sense the need to continually add to the processes. Like artificial intelligence, but not artificial, not too artificial.

So it must be re-observed that the formal methods employed mirror Lacan’s fictional self. I build structures – neither real nor fictive. But always jubilant. And it is paradoxical (the escape from experiential writing leads to the constriction of self?) but, I think anything of true worth tends to have a hint of paradox. I did find on review that this essay seemed too prosaic, too straight-forward: it lacks a lot of what I value in poetry. And yet on completion I feel like it had to be done. This somewhat transparent type of meta-writing helps clarify part of what is important to me. It makes things clear to myself and then perhaps to some others. The procedures and thought outlined here is a small sample of what I do. A lot of the time when thinking about experimentation and method, all you have to go on is the poem. As in this conclusion:

a talking paul auster

for & after fay zwicky

previous to being born alive, i was read aloud to a scruff man
by the candlelight & cold of sarajevo. the surrounding sky
such a clear aqua for winter, myself the kernel of an idea
softly glowing, a devastating & interesting point

that will sadly never exist. all around me the world
only beginning to resolve like a good movie,
diverting attention from complexities. i saw myself pacing
over non-coloured lines toward the sea, half a figure at best,

one step away from communicating, dumb. of heightened
clarity now & cockled, i feel sure i am able to pursue triggers.
just one or a stretching twenty weighted sentences always
loaded with stories, anger, & my selves.

‘hey paul!’ people say to me, tones jostling for an opening,
some time too. these sidelong shufflers all summed up
by rebellion & intellectualism, all of them – you can see
it in the way the eyes work & how every look counts

for a bit. asking questions about what things
were like too, for them, before they lived. i never
answer absurdities. for me ‘now’ is a simple mid-
point: there is only distinct phasings & the two

parts equal: ‘poetry’ & then ‘get up & dance’.
my night-time song is pure & referential, it balloons
in other writer’s dreams, where most profound things
belong. of course, can all stragglers maintain strength

while competently putting their finger on it? no, they
speak in interview & are not imagined by the whimsy
of a hirsute woman in the andes; words still summarise
only my classic jab at the repetition of being human.

ah the lyricism in walking & talking like this. see
this fable twisting as smoke, a slippery curlicue
to blind. if i could ever reach people it would
be like that, dripping through a paratactic summation

of insubstantial intent. i like that, feel other
minds sigh in complicity. even outside the
boring slats of brooklyn bodies let things go,
for brief moments. unguarded.

i once said the novel is the closest you can get
to another’s mind & i like the way i said that. i often
feel very close to the image i present, what i do.
inject, if you want, my thoughts that are forever.

* The thumbnail picture that this essay is linked to is a detail from a drawing in Lucas Ihlein’s series ‘Hands Open Like Eyes Open Like Hands’.

References

Adie, K. (2004). ‘Revolutionary now poet in residence’, in Illawarra Mercury,
22^nd September. Fairfax Holdings.

Brennan, C. (1981). Musicopoematographoscope. Hale & Iremonger: Sydney.

cummings, e.e. (1977). ‘i like my body when it is with your’, in selected poems:
1923 – 1958. Faber & Faber: London.

Dobrez, P. (1999). Michael Dransfield’s Lives: A Sixties Biography. Carlton
South, Victoria: Melbourne University Press.

Farrell, M. (2006a). ‘interview with michael farrell by richard lopez’, in
e-x-c-h-a-n -g- e-v-a-l-u-e-s. Beckett, T. (ed.)
http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/

Farrell, M. (2006b). ‘Monday, June 12^th, 2006’, in Reading Revival.
http://readingrevival.blogspot.com/

Kac, E. (2005). ‘Biopoetry’, in Technoetic Arts 3: 1, pp. 13–17.

Kinsella, J. (2005). ‘Line Breaks and Back-Drafts: Not a Defence of a Poem’, in
Poetry Review, vol. 95, no. 4.
http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/review/pr95-4/kinsella.htm

Lacan, J. (2001). ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the as
revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience’, In Leitch, V. B. (ed.) The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Norton: New York, pp. 1285-1290.

Motion, D. (2005). ‘where is silicon valley?’, in Cordite Poetry Review #23
(writing as Baz Malley)
http://www.cordite.org.au/archives/001069.html

Motion, D. (2006). ‘barcode 9 311532 071002’, in Cordite Poetry Review #25
http://www.cordite.org.au/archives/001218.html

Page, G. (2005). Reading at the Riverine Club, Wagga Wagga.

Shklovsky, V. (1991). Theory of Prose. Sher, B (trans.) Dalkey Archive Press:
Illinois