Many people who spend their spare time - and their professional time - tramping up and down pub, club and theatre stages with a mic in their hand see themselves as somehow separate from the 'mainstream' - the elite who get paid hundreds of pounds just to roll out of bed for a festival reading or radio interview and have their books of poetry published by the major independents like Bloodaxe and Carcanet, or perhaps by one of the real biggies, such as Faber or Picador. But are people who link the words 'performance' with 'poetry' aware that there's yet another 'alternative poetry' in this country - the avant-garde? Some consider avant-garde poetry even more limited and navel-gazing than the so-called mainstream. Others see it as cutting-edge and daring, electric in performance and mentally dazzling on the page.

Want to find out which category you think it should fall into? There are readings of avant poetry going on around the country - and abroad - all the time, but here's just one selected opportunity - for those in London or who don't mind travelling - to experience 'alternative poetry' themselves, with stalls from the smaller experimental presses along with a series of readings by new and established practitioners of the art (or should that be craft?).

*

SMALL PUBLISHERS FAIR 2006

Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1 (Holborn tube)

Friday 20th and Saturday 21st October

Open 11am to 7 pm, admission free.

Participating presses include Arehouse, Bad Press, Coracle, Five Seasons, Libellum + Vanitas magazine, Moschatel + Cairn Editions, Poetic Practice Group / Royal Holloway, Reality Street, RGAP / aCAP, Colin Sackett, Veer Books, West House & yt communication.

Further details at www.rgap.co.uk/spf.php

Readings and events on the Saturday afternoon in the Brockway Room, adjacent to the Main Hall:

2.00 yt communication: Sean Bonney & Sophie Robinson
2.30 Bad Press: Emily Critchley & Kai Fierle-Hedrick
3.00 In memory of Stuart Mills: film by Rodger Brown of the reading at the Dead Poets Pub, 9th September 2006
4.00 Vanitas & Libellum: Vincent Katz
4.30 Coracle Press: John Bevis & Simon Cutts
5.00 Five Seasons Press: Gavin Selerie & Glenn Storhaug
5.30 Reality Street: Ken Edwards & Jeff Hilson
6.00 West House Books: Alan Halsey & Geraldine Monk
6.30 Veer Books: Adrian Clarke, Ulli Freer, Piers Hugill, Aodhan McCardle

The reason for putting this in the General Chat category and not the What's On category is that I thought perhaps people might want to engage with this idea, kick it around a bit.

Probably unlikely, since so few people post on this forum - apart from the usual suspects, you know who you are and I thank you - but I'd still be interested to know how many open mic and 'performance' poets are aware of the avant-garde's existence, or even consider themselves to be avant-garde, if only in terms of working experimentally with poetry/language.

:rolleyes:

I suppose I am always a little wary of labelling schools or types of poetry (or of any other artform). I feel that such labels can be a way of limiting both the artform and its audience. I don't know whether I have read any 'alternative' poetry or not, and I prefer to respond to any poem/painting/whatever without knowing any label that might colour my response. It may be naive to think this way: I know that any response has to be coloured by our individual experiences, knowledge and history; but I still prefer not to have the added influence, and perhaps expectation, of such a label.

To me, that's a bit like saying 'I don't like labels on my cheese, I'd prefer just to taste it and see whether I like it.' Over time, people develop tastes in poetry, and that really takes us to genres. Like some people prefer to read romances, others political history, others biography, others westerns or sci-fi.

Poetry has genres and sub-genres, like any other form of writing. It also has labels, whether we like or approve of them or not, and they can be useful, especially when trying to 'explain' what a poet or event is going to be like, what it's going to involve, i.e. whether it's to their 'taste'. So we have 'mainstream', we have 'performance' and we have, amongst other things, the 'avant-garde' or experimental writers. Like Cheddar, Stilton, Gouda.

It's true, labels can hinder and limit your experience of poetry. But they can also guide new writers and readers through a minefield of different styles, approaches and ideologies.

I'm a born labeller. :D

Yeh, but the Wensleydale doesn't turn into Cheddar does it? Labels in poetry seem a lot more slippery .... I am never really sure why one poet gets labelled 'cheddar' and the other avant-fromage. And the avant-fromage of today becomes the mousetrap of tomorrow. Where will it all end :blink: ?

and you don't get wensleydale that is a bit cheddary, or cheddar with a hint of wensleydale.
One of the problems of labelling for me is that I tend to like those who fall between - as in the page/stage discussions we had. I like page poets who perform their work rather than simply read it, and I like performance poets whose work will reward close reading through its layers and metaphor etc.