Tonight, I have the pleasure of taking part in a fabulous event (details here, please come!) as part of Not the Oxford Literary Festival looking at the role of the the movement and manifesto in contemporary culture. It’s something I come back to again and again and have written about here at length.
One of the movements I will be looking at tonight is Brutalism (the literary, not the architectural, version), and in conjunction with this event, it was an honour to talk to my favourite poet and one of the founding members of the movement, Adelle Stripe, about Brutalism and where she sees its place 10 years after it burst onto the scene as the first (and possibly to date only) digital ism. And enjoy this wonderful reading.
Before we start, please look her up on her website (and follow links to all her books – Dark Corners of the Land is the best poetry book I have read from the current decade)
– Brutalism came about at the start of an incredible period of change for the internet. Do you think that changed your direction or the direction of literature in general in ways you didn’t see coming?
AS: It’s hard to say if our actual ‘writing’ changed anything, only time will prove that – but I do think it encouraged a few writers out there. It felt like a liberating time, what was once confined to the printed page could be put online and shared within seconds. We used blogspot and myspace to make it happen. We have witnessed the digital equivalent of Gutenberg in our lifetimes, which is quite a thrill. The digital revolution has changed all of our lives – for better or worse. There are often times when I cringe at some of the stuff I wrote back then, I would never put that sort of thing online now…I’m far too cautious…
– Do we still need Brutalism? Do we still have it, and if so who are its heirs?
AS: No, we defiinitely don’t need Brutalism. It was a moment in time, the right thing to do in the summer of 2006. We were inspired by Sniffin’ Glue’s ‘here’s three chords, now go form a band’, wrote a pile of thrill-seeking poems in response, and put them out there. We ruffled some of feathers, and that was about it.
-How much of what you set out to achieve did you manage?
AS: The plan was to piss in the filing cabinets of the publishing industry and set them on fire. That didn’t quite happen. But, by becoming artists as producers we retained the power over our own work, and dictated the terms of distribution. I edited the chapbook and learned how to use Quark. Lisa Cradduck did a set of cross-hatched drawings for the poems, and Ben, Tony and myself cooked up a short manifesto. Once everything was in place we sold it online. It was a learning process for all of us, but I’m glad we did it. It was our punk rock version of Lyrical Ballads.
I think, over time, we all did quite well out of it. Ben wrote his novel based on Richey Edwards the year after, which was published by Picador and Tony put out Down and Out on Murder Mile and Sick City on Harper Perennial in the following years. It’s been a much slower journey for me, although I’ve written 3 chapbook collections and I’m working on a novel at the moment.
– Why do you think it’s so hard to get people to get passionately involved in artistic movements?
AS: Semantics? I don’t know. Sometimes language is too complex. People need a hook, and often visual hooks work better than words. I have a copy of Blast in my office, and it’s still a total thrill to pick it up off the shelf. The Vorticists were around at the right time, and connected artists, writers, poets and thinkers – it was published 30 days before WWI broke out. There was great tragedy there – Gaudier-Brzeska etc. But also the style of Pound, Wyndham Lewis, Epstein, West and Wadsworth made that book pack a punch. Looking at Blast now, I can’t believe it was published in 1914 – even today it looks (and reads) like something from the future.
– What are the walls that need tearing down in literature today?
AS: I think the main wall is that working-class writers don’t have the right opportunities to publish their work. It is completely dominated by Oxbridge and UEA. This has resulted in anaesthetised prose and suffocating poetry with no radical pulse. The smaller publishers are taking the risks. Publishing is ruled by editors and agents who are part of the ‘informal’ Oxbridge network, and this, in turn, locks out opportunity for anyone else. This includes BAME writers. There is a big struggle to be heard and taken seriously.
Diane Shipley asked us last week whether we would consider spending a year reading only books by women. The Year of Reading Women project has become a huge talking point, yet the Vida statistics show that in the accustomed snafu little progress has been made in balancing the media’s gendered coverage of the literary world.
For me, it is this that represents the real challenge – the representation of books by women in places like this rather than the actual reading of them. Putting the focus onto reading seems like a rather handy arrogation of responsibility on the media’s part.
I very much believe that where we find discursive barriers we should make ourselves into bulldozers. I have always tried, as a literary organiser and promoter, to create shows and programmes that go beyond the gender-imbalanced norms. On the other hand, the Vida statistics show not only the lack of representation of women’s books, but the lack of women in the media doing the writing about those books.
So, as a male commentator, I feel a natural conflict. Is it my place to write about books by women? Or is it my place to insist I am removed from public spaces and my place taken by a female commentator? I am very aware of the difficult position of “ally” in modern intersectional thought on diversity in all areas (and I’m extremely grateful to the author Christina Springer for sharing this great article. My own experience of being “on the receiving end” of allies comes in the sphere of mental health where I frequently come across organisations box-ticking their engagement duties by enlisting spokespeople to explain things on behalf of those of us who have mental health disabilities. I feel the bristle as they open their mouths and utter something that bears no relation at all to my experience yet leaves everyone seemingly contented that I have been duly “represented” with the result that I’m silenced twice over – by my “ally” and by the fact that their intervention means the space for further discourse is now closed. So I know that whenever I open my keyboard to tap out words on the matter of women in literature I am, at least in some part, not ameliorating but becoming part of the problem.
What I have done hitherto has been simply to reflect my tastes in my commentaries. I have promoted works I truly believe in by writers I love. I have talked about those works that provide taking off points for the themes and questions that matter to me. I have put on shows featuring performers whose words and style I love.
But Diane’s post has foregrounded a feeling that was always there, an inkling nudging me annoyingly in the shoulder going “oi, oi” and shrugging an “oh you know” every time I dare to shout “What?!” The feeling that I’m doing something political, and that it doesn’t always leave my mouth tasting of honey.
I have always known that what I speak about is political. It’s a choice. A choice made in a highly charged context of cultural discourse. It couldn’t not be political. And yet I have always sided myself loudly and overtly with those marginalised by mental health issues and let that whisper me sweet reassurances that I was doing it OK because mental health disability is an outsiderdom I’m firmly inside.
It’s comforting to construct these narratives for ourselves. If we close our eyes and listen to them (a telling metaphor in all its resonances) we can almost pretend intersectionality doesn’t exist. And yet it does. I am spoken for by those who silence my disability, and yet when I do speak I do so as a white male. When I write about women’s writing, I speak for them as those I resent speak for me. I can no longer pretend to myself that I’m just doing “good politics” and neatly avoiding “bad politics.”
So what’s the answer? I’m sure many readers will be wondering “what, you mean there’s a question?” Questions of intersectionality and allyship usually raise those responses. And they make the first part of my answer simple – if, next time an article like this appears, more people are at least aware that there’s a problem when men write well-meaningly about women and fewer people shrug “what problem?” then I’ll have done something right.
(Anna Percy, the brilliant poet who co-runs with Rebecca Audra Smith and Sara Ellis Stirred Poetry, Manchester’s fabulous night of pro-women inclusive spoken word)
The real answer, I think, is that just as it is impossible to speak unpolitically so it is impossible to speak from a position that is beyond reproach. We all speak from a privileged position of some kind. Our words will always exert power over someone, muffle the voice of someone. So the answer is not silence, or we would all be silenced. And the answer is not good intentions. Good intentions neither affect power networks nor the impact of our words. As much of an answer as I can give is to be as aware as possible of where we stand in these incalculably complex networks, to make way wherever possible for those voices our own voice silences, to acknowledge those voices that have shaped our own, and to create channels where we can for those voices to speak and be heard. Most of all I think the answer is for us not to believe we have the answer but to listen and learn to have the many possible answers spoken by those in a position to give.
I welcome any suggestions as to further answers to the issues raised. I also welcome any women writers whose works would interest readers of this blog to talk about them here.
dan holloway 