Aalborg Universitet Dialogues on Poetry Mediatization and New Sensibilities Ringgaard, Dan; Kjerkegaard, Stefan Publication date: 2017 Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication from Aalborg University Citation for published version (APA): Ringgaard, D., & Kjerkegaard, S. (Eds.) (2017). Dialogues on Poetry: Mediatization and New Sensibilities. (1. ed.) Aalborg Universitetsforlag. Studies in Contemporary Poetry / Studier i samtidslyrik, No. 4 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. ? Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. ? You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain ? You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us at [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from vbn.aau.dk on: June 16, 2020 DIALOGUES ON Mediatization and New Sensibilities Edited by Stefan Kjerkegaard Dan Ringgaard DIALOGUES ON Mediatization and New Sensibilities Edited by Stefan Kjerkegaard Dan Ringgaard DIALOGUES ON POETRY Mediatization and New Sensibilities Redaktører Stefan Kjerkegaard og Dan Ringgaard OA-udgave © Redaktørerne og Aalborg Universitetsforlag, 2017 4. udgivelse i serien Studies in Contemporary Poetry / Studier i samtidslyrik Serieredaktører: Professor dr.phil. Peter Stein Larsen, Aalborg Universitet Lektor ph.d. Louise Mønster, Aalborg Universitet Professor dr. phil. Dan Ringgaard, Aarhus Universitet 1. amanuensis ph.d. Hans Kristian Rustad, Universitetet i Oslo Grafisk tilrettelæggelse: akila v/ Kirsten Bach Larsen ISBN: 978-87-7112-650-1 ISSN: 2445-7086 Udgivet af: Aalborg Universitetsforlag Skjernvej 4A, 2. sal 9220 Aalborg Ø T 99407140 [email protected] forlag.aau.dk Udgivelsen finansieret af bevilling fra FKK til projektet ”Contemporary Poetry between Genres, Art Forms, and Media”. Alle rettigheder forbeholdes. Mekanisk, fotografisk eller anden gen givelse af eller kopiering fra denne bog eller dele heraf er kun tilladt i overensstemmelse med overenskomst mellem Undervisningsmi nisteriet og Copy-Dan. Enhver anden udnyttelse er uden forlagets skrift- lige samtykke forbudt ifølge gældende dansk lov om ophavsret. Undtaget herfra er korte uddrag til brug i anmeldelser. CONTENT 7 Dan Ringgaard and Stefan Kjerkegaard DIALOGUES ON POETRY Mediatization and New Sensibilities WORD, PICTURE, SOUND 13 Andrew Michael Roberts THE EFFACED POETIC TEXT IN INTERMEDIAL ART WORKS 39 Claudia Benthien ‘AUDIO-POETRY’ Lyrical Speech in the Digital Age ARCHEOLOGIES OF POETRY 63 Rebecca Beasley MIGRATION, CIRCULATION, DRIFT: TRANSLATION AND VISUALITY IN MODERNIST AND CONTEMPORARY POETRY 89 Peter Dayan ON THE DANGER OF PUSHING POETRY TOWARDS MUSIC The successes and failures of Hugo Ball, René Ghil, and Stéphane Mallarmé DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY 111 Hans Kristian Rustad WHAT ALSO COULD POETRY BE? Technogenesis in Johannes Heldén’s Evolution 127 Matti Kangaskoski FROM PRESSING THE BUTTON TO CLICKING THE MOUSE The Shift from Static to Dynamic Media AMBIENT SENSITIVITIES 149 Anne Karhio FROM PAGE TO SCREEN The Poetry Project and the poetics of landscape 171 Michael Karlsson Pedersen FIRM GRIPS AND LIGHT TOUCHES An essay on things and halfthings in postwar German nature poetry CULTURAL CRITIQUE 191 Caspar Eric Christensen and Mikkel Krause Frantzen I AM A LITTLE BIT MORE DEPRESSED THAN YOU ARE Tao Lin as an example of a contemporary poetry of depression and other negative feelings 213 Mette-Marie Zacher Sørensen #.PLS. .SELECT. .UR. .CHAR[R(I)ED.H]AC(K)TOR.# Agency, interpellation and address in digital poetry GENRE AND FORM 235 Louise Mønster CONTEMPORARY POETRY AND THE QUESTION OF GENRE With a Special View to a Danish Context 257 Ole Karlsen «BARE LERKENE KAN LESE MORGENEN / DEN BLÅ BOKSTAVEN / I EN ALTFOR STOR RESEPT» Norwegian poetry 2000 – 2012 from a form perspective 281 Peter Stein Larsen WHY CAN POETRY MATTER? Or: Poetry as an Ideal – or an Expanding Genre BEYOND LITERATURE 297 James Day ART WRITING HUNG OUT TO DRY 313 Dan Ringgaard POETRY IS THE SIGNIFICANT FLOW OF LIFE Poetry as a Trans-Medial Concept in the Work of Filmmaker and Poet Jørgen Leth FROM A POET’S POINT OF VIEW 329 Morten Søndergaard A WORDPHARMACIST’S CONFESSIONS 337 Juliana Spahr CONTEMPORARY US POETRY AND ITS NATIONALISMS 369 CONTRIBUTORS DIALOGUES ON POETRY Mediatization and New Sensibilities DAN RINGGAARD AND STEFAN KJERKEGAARD Introduction Literature in a strictly modern sense can be seen as the product of a meet- ing between writing, the printed book and European modernity. Particu- lar modes of reading and writing have developed from this triangulation, along with the modern genres we today identify with literature, including the genre of lyric poetry. After the Gutenberg revolution the medium and materiality of literature to some extent became invisible because it became self-evident. In the past, literary scholars continually asked what literary works contained, but rarely asked what it was that contained literary works. This is no longer so. The two media revolutions that followed the invention of the printed press, the emergence of first analogue media like the gramo- phone, film and typewriter, and then the network-based digital media, have put this marriage of literature with books and writing into question. It is no longer self-evident that literature is something written or published in books. Or to put it in another way: a process of mediatization has made lit- erature acutely conscious of its relation to its own media. In fact, the mod- ernist emphasis on language, on writing and finally on the book itself that we have witnessed in the wake of the analogue and the digital revolution can be interpreted as a rising awareness of literature´s relation to different kinds of media and matter. This development not only points to a range of opportunities that contemporary literature now investigates, exploits and criticizes, but also makes it clear that literature and the idea of the literary work has always been shaped by its medium, adding a new dimension to literary theory, analysis and history. This is one point worth making within the framework of this book: that the investigation of the literary present, of what happens to the words of literature in general and those of poetry in particular as they leave the book and venture off into a digital informed reality, must be accompanied by a renewed interest in the media history of literature. 7 Another general point that could be mentioned is the relation between the new sensibilities that is played out in a digitally informed reality and the impact that these sensibilities have on literature in books. Studying the relation of literature and media in a contemporary perspective is not just a question of studying electronic literature (for instance), but requires a study of the influence that new media and new technologies have on the huge majority of literature that is still written and published in books. Once we frame our perspective like this, it becomes obvious that the term new sensibilities cannot be reduced to those created by media, let alone those played out within electronic or digital literature. Rather the reading environ- ment that new media produce plays a crucial role in our understanding of contemporary literary culture, and in the development of new sensibilities. It is a hybrid or multi-modal environment in which written and spoken words interact with sounds and images, it is one of social events as opposed to the private, intimate and hallucinatory world of literature as we knew it, and it is somewhat importunate given that the boundaries between what is private and what is public are being eroded. It often also turns out to be a conceptual environment since the challenge seems to involve extricating and elevating ideas from the overwhelming stream of information to frame chaos rather than creating something new. The things, words and concepts invented in such environments are difficult to define since the institutions that ruled the field of literature, and art in general, have been weakened. This of course includes the institutional ideas of what constitutes the literary work. It is a world of process where links, speed and remediations constantly rearrange or reinvent not just the literary, but also other kinds of art that the book, literal- ly speaking, closed. And because of this these works will be increasingly ow- nerless. Finally it is a world of Babel, as the national tongues that were born with literature to some extent seem to partake in new alchemistic and global relations. Hence, we believe that it is no coincidence that the Berlin-based Cia Rinne, with roots and relations in Denmark, Sweden and Finland, and Caroline Bergvall, who was born in Germany to French-Norwegian parents, but has lived and worked in England for many years, are among the most widely discussed artists in this book. Both of them place their work between languages, between nationalities and not least between the arts. So far we have been talking about literature and not poetry for the obvi- ous reason that the broad outlines that we have tried to sketch out frame the 8 whole field of literature. Once we turn towards poetry we must, following these lines, ask questions in at least two directions. First, how the perspective or consciousness of media can renew our understanding of poetry; and se- cond, what kind of new sensibilities are produced by and within contempo- rary poetry and how can they contribute to the study of poetry.