Essays on Performance Writing, Poetics and Poetry Vol 1: On Performance Writing, with Pedagogical Sketches

Hall, John (2013) Essays on Performance Writing, Poetics and Poetry Vol 1: On Performance Writing, with Pedagogical Sketches. Shearsman Books, UK. ISBN 9781848613171

Abstract / Summary

This is the first of two (see Vol. 2) closely related essay collections in the field of poetics, each with a concern for the complementary practices of writing and reading; this one comes at poetics by way of the interdisciplinary notion of Performance Writing and also includes a few related essays that take a pragmatic approach to arts pedagogy, particularly from the points of view of inter- and cross-disciplinarity. Of the 21 essays eight were published within the REF assessment period, with others submitted to earlier exercises. So far as possible they retain the shape of their original context of publication, with the appropriate modes and styles of address. An author’s preface and a foreword by Dr Lynch offer a framing for the collection, its provenance and purpose., Performance Writing was born out of a literary response to textual tendencies in visual, sonic, performance and digital practices and involved an attempt to rethink writing in the light of wider technological and cultural changes. This is the first published collection on the topic. The author’s practices as poet and teacher have an explicit influence on the approach. Defining pieces include ‘Thirteen Ways of Talking About Performance Writing’ and a Lexicon entry on Performance Writing from Performance Research Journal. Others explore specific grammatical considerations from the perspective of an expanded writing practice; there is an essay on the performativity of reading the ‘illegible’; on the use of imperatives in modes that resemble traffic signs; on the relation of the ideas of privacy, domesticity and public space; and on the part that words play in the work of the performance company, Lone Twin. The most recent essay revisits the founding principles of Performance Writing and attempt to assess whether or not the project remains salient. The collection helps to provide an affirmative answer.

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