Projectivisms >> Symposium Way-making the Contemporary Projective, University of Cardiff, 8th–9th May 2018

This is a report detailing the ‘Projectivisms Symposium’ which took place at the University of Cardiff from 18th–19th May 2018.

As the two days unfolded it became apparent that Charles Olson's 'Projective Verse' manifesto was providing a gathering point for a variety of poets, performers and critics; it is tempting to turn this report into an open field poem because of the tensions, linkages and synergies between the various panels. Carpenter explored the book as a transitional object which gives a snapshot of the processes she uses as a digital artist to make everything seem on the cusp of being something else. She also explored the glitches that can occur when translating between different mediums; particularly from computer screen image with hidden code to paper based book or academic article. Marilyn Allen (University of Wales Trinity St Davids) followed with a performance of 'Conversation with a Digital Other'.
The performance involved slides, computer generated voice, a human reader and a megaphone which advised we 'Mind the Gap' and detailed a hypertext journey whilst exposing parts of our web browsers we tend to try and ignore (those annoying pop-ups). Questions from the presentations included the relationship between the computer screen and the 'material world', the role of the glitch as a pause or interruption and whether the glitch could also be found within traditional archival material.
The discussion of the relationship between who is in charge in the interaction between a human being and digital technology was then exemplified by Mark Leahy's (Independent Scholar) '"The threshing floor of the dance" A performance of threaded insert'. Leahy appeared in white gloves and bow tie in the centre of the room. He then put in some ear-phones and began making statements, 'Agape, we perform', moving forward a set number of steps, changing direction, moving again, making statements, ' a portion of depressed hair', describing the room, spelling out words, walking forward, spelling out words accompanied by a basic sign language, walking out of the fire escape, re-appearing through a different door. The performance with variations and repetitions lasted for twenty minutes. It turns out that Leahy was to provide 'the stave and the bar' for a reader's breath. Drawing upon Olson's interest in Jung she described the mandala as a contemplative device to scaffold or clothe psychic energy and 'gently' enable the confrontation of opposites: framework for chaos, inside that becomes outside. Rodrigo uses the mandala in her own poetry as what she called a ground; often this will be a diagram or shape which describes an energy field and which is used to give the poem some structure. She shared an example poem which used shape and refrain to enact a spiralling or helix structure.

Day 2
The Homer's famous lists were pretty much the same thing. It made me consider how far Olson had escaped the "Western Box" just at the moment when Ashford produced his own wooden case containing a Greek lyre. Sadly, he couldn't be pressed into song but did give some intriguing details about his own long poem which was using the archive of the British East India Company. Ashford's ambitious aim is to create an epic poem containing history with a better sense of the ironies of economics than Pound managed to convey. By the sounds of it, it is a project of epic scope worth looking out for.
Whilst the epic is one model for the long poem it is also a genre which has a fraught relationship to the lyric I. My own talk '"Scale far beyond any humanist Gaelic. The resulting poems are linguistically hybrid, words scattering across the page and are especially powerful when layered in performance with the field sounds where they seem to appear in amongst the swirl of wind and sea.
Saturday afternoon was given over to workshop sessions. The first was led by