The following is the text which I presented Saturday, May 14 at the "Poetry & Translocality" panel at the Prague Microfestival. A fantastic discussion between David Vichnar, Louis Armand, Alistair Noon, Donna Stonecipher, and myself followed.
When I first encountered the term translocality some four or five years ago, and Alistair's treatment of it in the final issue of Bordercrossing Berlin, I was immediately intrigued. Indeed, here is a word that enhances our vocabulary, our ability to describe something, and it does so morphologically. What's more, it does so openly.
In his 2009 essay, "Transculturality as a Perspective: Researching Media Cultures Comparatively", professor Andreas Hepp describes the word as follows:
"Locality emphasizes that…the local world does not cease to exist. Irrespective of how far the communicative connectivity of a locality goes, this does not prompt questions of whether a person is living his or her life primarily locally…As a physical human being, he or she must reside somewhere. "Trans," as a prefix, guides the focus from questions of locality…to questions of connectivity. If research is centered on translocality this emphasizes, on the one hand, that those questions pertaining to all that is local still matter, but that on the other hand today's locales are connected physically and communicatively to a very high degree. And that is the reason why the local does not cease to exist, but rather, changes."
The word itself asks us to be wide, to widen, to be open, flexible, dare I say inclusive. Upon reading Alistair's essay and a few of his reviews circa 2007 and 2008, I felt that our treatment of the word needed to open up, and I began writing on it myself. I thought this for several reasons:
The first of these is: There is a distinction between the translocal writer as a political/social circumstance (and pertaining to the writer's career) and translocal writing, where translocal is an adjective and perspective that can be used to understand a text—indeed, perhaps, the way a textual line is even crossed.
This distinction is important if the term is to be applied to its full potential. On the one hand, limiting translocality to an author's certain set of circumstances is instructive if we're talking about what a translocal writer faces when trying to get published in her home country, for example. But when using the term as a tool to help reveal and unravel text, as a kind of handle into the workings of a line, obviously translocality offers us much more beyond an author's personal narrative or even beyond our current temporal.
Over the course of 2008 and 2009, I worked with this idea in many ways, including in the opening editorials of Versal 7 and 8. In Versal 7's editorial, I wrote, "Up to now, most of the monologue I've seen about translocal literature is restricted to the relationship between author and his (yes, his) narrative text: observations of a street scene in Prague by a long-time foreign resident (the author)—the locality itself becoming protagonist to the poem. This either reduces the self-sufficiency of a piece alone on the page—i.e. it is the author's biography that makes a piece translocal or not--or it limits it to narrative surveillance. Certainly not all poetry is traceable to a particular mise en scene, nor is all prose a story. The very pivot of translocality would indicate that there are many, many kinds of localities, and we need not focus solely on where our (or the author's) feet are standing."
Which brings me to my next point. Up until about 2008, the vocabulary of translocality was applied almost exclusively to narrative—and to some degree lyric—poetry, and as mentioned to works by people "living abroad". This goes back to the early conflation of the writer and the writing.
Indeed it may be said that translocality is on a scale, easily exemplified by what Alistair calls the "holiday poem" but treated with more subtlety and complexity in a book like Christian Hawkey's Ventrakle or much of Paris-based poet Jennifer K. Dick's work. The "move" into long-term residence abroad can change your writing fundamentally, not just your subject matter or references. It can change your writing at the level of the line. But it is only one of many pathways towards translocal writing. Learning another language can have this effect. Access to the media of our contemporary world can have this effect. Being from a family of multiple cultures can have this effect. Take filmmaker Ish Klein's poetry, for example [here I read "Lithuanian Sunset" from her first collection].
This is not to say we should not be talking about any of this here, just that we should open the dialogue to the full breadth of its instructiveness. Looking at literary production in a place like Amsterdam or Prague--places of high concentration of tranlsocal writers—can tell us something about the mechanisms of translocality, but it is not everything.
"Sites of translocal activity—Amsterdam, Paris, Istanbul, and elsewhere—are not the privileged spaces of translocal literary production, but they are its breeding grounds. What our relocated writers can offer us, if not manifestos and hundreds of poems about foreign street markets, is insight into the inner workings of the translocal line that can then be applied everywhere. How do they invite (or force) interdependence between a string of vocabularies from two (or more) languages within a single stanza? How is the distance of a line of poetry crossed in a translocal sensibility? How is this distance ever crossed? Watch what these heavy carbon footprints are up to, and this nascent translocality concept could very well become a crucible for understanding literary production in general." [Versal 7 editorial]
Which brings me to my final point. The application of the term to cities such as Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin and Prague has highlighted another issue: the prevalence of men in the local and translocal dialogue, at the readings, in the publications. For example, in Alistair's article in Bordercrossing Berlin, he names and quotes a handful of translocal male writers, yet he names only two women: Slyvia Plath and Elizabeth Bishop. No living women writers are mentioned in the piece, much less as practitioners of or participators in translocality. The "numbers trouble" highlighted by Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young in the Chicago Review in 2007 is no less of an issue in our translocal communities here in Europe, and certainly this state of affairs should not go uncriticized.
By being limited in how we talk about it—indeed, how we BEGIN the literary dialogue about it—we are putting translocality in the hands of a few, of a select. This is an oxymoron to the term, contrary to its very linguistic structure, and can lead to, for example, the omission of translocal women writers from literary history or literary criticism, the reduction of the field of inquiry from a translocal perspective, and even the rise of falsely-founded literary "movements" in its name. I'll end on a section from my editorial in Versal 8, which is a kind of call.
"The more geography and culture lose their grips on locality, the more the poles of discourse I’m used to holding become useless. And this is where translocality departs from dogmatic political, linguistic, or sociological artifices: it frustrates not only definition and literary explication but also the enclosures of manifesto and branding. We are all translocal, now. We can’t help but be. What is local and global in a given experience is becoming more and more difficult to discern. Who is left untouched by the world?"
Showing posts with label translocal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label translocal. Show all posts
May 19, 2011
June 21, 2010
Dear Tom van de Voorde, and Dear Amsterdam, Dear the Netherlands,
Last week, a few of us trotted down to Rotterdam for the Poetry International Festival, an annual to-do of (usually) great poets from around the world. This year, the festival highlighted American poets and poetry, and so we had the opportunity to listen to Katherine Coles, CK Williams, Christian Hawkey, Michael Palmer, Katia Kapovich (billed as an "American transplant" or some such other),
and...Wallace Stevens.
Here's the text from the English version of "Wallace Stevens: last Dutchman of America":
"A few decades after Peter Stuyvesant, the famous immigrant from Friesland who founded New York, another Dutchman, a certain Michiel Stevens, boarded ship to sail to the new world. What happened to him after that is anyone’s guess. All we know is that he married a certain Ryertie Mol, sired a few children, and in a jiffy a century and a half had passed. Apparently he didn’t leave much of a mark on history. Nonetheless, his legacy was invaluable, if only for the fact that he contributed his DNA to the grandson of the grandson of his grandson: Wallace Stevens (1879–1955), a well-to-do gentleman and solicitor for an insurance company, who earned enough money to maintain a couple of expensive hobbies."
From the rationale of ancestry follows, somehow, and very much in both the Dutch and English versions of this text, a kind of Dutch claim on (or colonization of, if you will) a major American poet. The text goes on to describe Stevens' impact on literature, which apparently would have been "completely different" without him.
Don't get me wrong: I enjoy Stevens' work. But I was rather dumbfounded by the exaggeration of an ancestry. I mean, hell, America is what it is because of a lot of horrible colonization. The majority of us are not from there, if you go back far enough. Using the logic of this text, the Dutch could likely lay claim to most of our nation, thanks to their exploratory philandering.
(And for the sake of hammering my goofy point home, the text from the Dutch version in the festival program actually begins:
"Peter Stuyvesant is not the only Dutchman who earns a star on the American flag."
Insert appropriate expletive here. Never mind that the stars represent states, not people.)
I have seen this subsumption of American-ness occur before. When Obama was elected President, an article came out in the Dutch press which claimed that he is part-Dutch, and through this or that verbal maneuvering, by the end of the piece the Netherlands was given credit for his progressive politicking. Then there was that whole weirdness that was NY400 (i.e. New York is the coolest city in the world because the Dutch founded it). Is subsuming each other just something we do? I grant that since I live in Amsterdam, I may just be able to see this from one side; the intense love/hate relationship that the Dutch have with America likely does not help my general refusal to suffer fools.
So sociological/psychological wonderings aside: Tom van de Voorde's less-than-scholarly article on Wallace Stevens simply has an unnecessary starting point. You don't need to claim Stevens as Dutch before you argue his importance to Dutch literature. Nor do you need to do so in order to market him to the festival audience. Van de Voorde's piece obstructs any "real" engagement with his work, especially for those in the audience who may have come across him for the first time. Stevens--as most poets, as most people--stands on his own feet without claims to place or place's claims on him.
Must we locate something before we can find even the will to engage with it?
and...Wallace Stevens.
Here's the text from the English version of "Wallace Stevens: last Dutchman of America":
"A few decades after Peter Stuyvesant, the famous immigrant from Friesland who founded New York, another Dutchman, a certain Michiel Stevens, boarded ship to sail to the new world. What happened to him after that is anyone’s guess. All we know is that he married a certain Ryertie Mol, sired a few children, and in a jiffy a century and a half had passed. Apparently he didn’t leave much of a mark on history. Nonetheless, his legacy was invaluable, if only for the fact that he contributed his DNA to the grandson of the grandson of his grandson: Wallace Stevens (1879–1955), a well-to-do gentleman and solicitor for an insurance company, who earned enough money to maintain a couple of expensive hobbies."
From the rationale of ancestry follows, somehow, and very much in both the Dutch and English versions of this text, a kind of Dutch claim on (or colonization of, if you will) a major American poet. The text goes on to describe Stevens' impact on literature, which apparently would have been "completely different" without him.
Don't get me wrong: I enjoy Stevens' work. But I was rather dumbfounded by the exaggeration of an ancestry. I mean, hell, America is what it is because of a lot of horrible colonization. The majority of us are not from there, if you go back far enough. Using the logic of this text, the Dutch could likely lay claim to most of our nation, thanks to their exploratory philandering.
(And for the sake of hammering my goofy point home, the text from the Dutch version in the festival program actually begins:
"Peter Stuyvesant is not the only Dutchman who earns a star on the American flag."
Insert appropriate expletive here. Never mind that the stars represent states, not people.)
I have seen this subsumption of American-ness occur before. When Obama was elected President, an article came out in the Dutch press which claimed that he is part-Dutch, and through this or that verbal maneuvering, by the end of the piece the Netherlands was given credit for his progressive politicking. Then there was that whole weirdness that was NY400 (i.e. New York is the coolest city in the world because the Dutch founded it). Is subsuming each other just something we do? I grant that since I live in Amsterdam, I may just be able to see this from one side; the intense love/hate relationship that the Dutch have with America likely does not help my general refusal to suffer fools.
So sociological/psychological wonderings aside: Tom van de Voorde's less-than-scholarly article on Wallace Stevens simply has an unnecessary starting point. You don't need to claim Stevens as Dutch before you argue his importance to Dutch literature. Nor do you need to do so in order to market him to the festival audience. Van de Voorde's piece obstructs any "real" engagement with his work, especially for those in the audience who may have come across him for the first time. Stevens--as most poets, as most people--stands on his own feet without claims to place or place's claims on him.
Must we locate something before we can find even the will to engage with it?
June 07, 2010
Place today
In the last few weeks, I've had the pleasure (god, who says that. And how else do you say that.) of meeting both Peter Gizzi and John Hennessy--in fact, it's been a year so far of little glimpses into what it would be like if I ever sucked it up and moved back to America, and subsequently into an MFA program because what else would I do--glimpses into that meeting thing that happens in the world's company of poets (and writers) and that so rarely happens here. Thanks, mostly, to those four weird days in Denver at AWP. But next week I might just run down CK Williams in Rotterdam, for the heck of it, but not literally run down of course.
Peter (and I think I am safely on a first-name basis with him because we have a secret handshake now) read at Perdu from, among other things, The Outernationale. I don't have a copy of the book yet because I'm broke, so I haven't seen the poems on the page, but the title piece is, if memory serves, variously interrupted by strings of suffixes which both stress and calm. Peter also read "Vincent, Homesick For The Land Of Pictures", which he said he had not before read aloud, but which was (and I don't really know how else to put it right now, and this word is either misspelled or does not exist) utterly transportative; for a moment I remember feeling as though I were in church (in a good way)--an experience I also recently had at a Jonsi show,
so maybe really it's just me, and maybe I should go to church?
If you have read Peter's work then you may nod when I say that his attention to place (perhaps especially in The Outernationale) piqued my interest immediately--and John, similarly, is busy with it, though in different ways. In particular, John's the Poetry Editor of Amherst College's new and upcoming journal The Common, which aims to publish work that "[embodies] particular times and places both real and imagined: art powerful enough to reach from there to here."
Sound familiar?
I am excited by these recent crossings with these poets, who are busy with questions similar to my own, and I hope AWP accepts our cool panel idea on the subject, too.
Peter (and I think I am safely on a first-name basis with him because we have a secret handshake now) read at Perdu from, among other things, The Outernationale. I don't have a copy of the book yet because I'm broke, so I haven't seen the poems on the page, but the title piece is, if memory serves, variously interrupted by strings of suffixes which both stress and calm. Peter also read "Vincent, Homesick For The Land Of Pictures", which he said he had not before read aloud, but which was (and I don't really know how else to put it right now, and this word is either misspelled or does not exist) utterly transportative; for a moment I remember feeling as though I were in church (in a good way)--an experience I also recently had at a Jonsi show,
so maybe really it's just me, and maybe I should go to church?
If you have read Peter's work then you may nod when I say that his attention to place (perhaps especially in The Outernationale) piqued my interest immediately--and John, similarly, is busy with it, though in different ways. In particular, John's the Poetry Editor of Amherst College's new and upcoming journal The Common, which aims to publish work that "[embodies] particular times and places both real and imagined: art powerful enough to reach from there to here."
Sound familiar?
I am excited by these recent crossings with these poets, who are busy with questions similar to my own, and I hope AWP accepts our cool panel idea on the subject, too.
May 09, 2010
Birthday wishes
I’ve just finished a visit with my 74-year old father and on leaving, had the curious feeling that I won’t see him again. This, coupled with being on the eve of the launch of Versal’s 8th issue (in fact the party in Amsterdam is probably just finishing up) I’m feeling retrospective.
Versal began in 2002, the same year the “war on terror” was launched. Now, I wasn’t there for the production of the first three issues of Versal, but I was in Europe in 2002. Seen from the lens of an ‘American’ in Europe, I watched as the US seemed to go crazy about weapons of mass destruction, European ‘obstinacy’ in the UN in relation to invading Iraq to pre-emptively strike a sovereign nation that, it turns out, didn’t have such weapons. Anger in the US was particularly strong towards France, with fries being renamed and wine being poured in gutters as protest.
Does all this have a point? Yes, indirectly. It shows the context in which Versal came to be in Amsterdam. It shows the place in which wordsinhere began a little literary journal to highlight work from around the world. Translocal Americans living outside the US, it felt to me at the time, weren’t infected with the insanity that seemed to spread over the US. For example, groups of people burned albums of the Dixie Chicks, a country western band, for speaking out against the tide of fear and war in which the US seemed enshrouded. It reminded me of what I’ve heard about McCarthyism in the US of the 1950s, or living in Germany or Italy during the second world war. Or the ultra-nationalism in the Balkans during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Examples are legion.
If a population goes crazy—for whatever reason—who is there to stand up for reason? If a government one day declares that two plus two equals five, and has primed people in the country through fear or coercion to believe it and silence those who say it equals four, where do the voices go that express two plus two equals four?
I’d like to think that voices of people who are outside the pockets of insanity could provide that voice of reason. Could provide, at the least, a plurality of viewpoints during periods of widespread hysteria and fear. I’d like to think that Versal is such a place: that in providing a forum for story, poetry and artwork from contributors around the world, it shows us the reader that—in this world at least—there are a multiplicity of voices, that hegemony bred from ignorance and fear need not dictate to the world.
Hmm, perhaps this entry doesn’t have a point after all. Perhaps I’m just musing about death and life, decay and birth, and celebrating eight years of Versal as well. Happy birthday, Versal.
Versal began in 2002, the same year the “war on terror” was launched. Now, I wasn’t there for the production of the first three issues of Versal, but I was in Europe in 2002. Seen from the lens of an ‘American’ in Europe, I watched as the US seemed to go crazy about weapons of mass destruction, European ‘obstinacy’ in the UN in relation to invading Iraq to pre-emptively strike a sovereign nation that, it turns out, didn’t have such weapons. Anger in the US was particularly strong towards France, with fries being renamed and wine being poured in gutters as protest.
Does all this have a point? Yes, indirectly. It shows the context in which Versal came to be in Amsterdam. It shows the place in which wordsinhere began a little literary journal to highlight work from around the world. Translocal Americans living outside the US, it felt to me at the time, weren’t infected with the insanity that seemed to spread over the US. For example, groups of people burned albums of the Dixie Chicks, a country western band, for speaking out against the tide of fear and war in which the US seemed enshrouded. It reminded me of what I’ve heard about McCarthyism in the US of the 1950s, or living in Germany or Italy during the second world war. Or the ultra-nationalism in the Balkans during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Examples are legion.
If a population goes crazy—for whatever reason—who is there to stand up for reason? If a government one day declares that two plus two equals five, and has primed people in the country through fear or coercion to believe it and silence those who say it equals four, where do the voices go that express two plus two equals four?
I’d like to think that voices of people who are outside the pockets of insanity could provide that voice of reason. Could provide, at the least, a plurality of viewpoints during periods of widespread hysteria and fear. I’d like to think that Versal is such a place: that in providing a forum for story, poetry and artwork from contributors around the world, it shows us the reader that—in this world at least—there are a multiplicity of voices, that hegemony bred from ignorance and fear need not dictate to the world.
Hmm, perhaps this entry doesn’t have a point after all. Perhaps I’m just musing about death and life, decay and birth, and celebrating eight years of Versal as well. Happy birthday, Versal.
January 21, 2010
"I'm holding on too tight. I've lost the edge."
I admit it. I love Top Gun. There's so much wrong with it, I know this. But I saw it as a kid, completely fell in love with Tom Cruise and/or Meg Ryan, and I get a kick out of the soundtrack.
I thought of Cougar's lines yesterday when I received an email from a fellow Amsterdam writer who runs workshops in town. Over the years I've tried to build a circular network with her, to no avail. She refuses to have anything to do with us. The only time she ever did was when we created "lit goodie bags" for the now (sadly) extinct Amsterdam Literary Festival. We offered every organizer in the community a chance to add something to the bag, so she jumped right in.
With our renewed initiatives to keep the local literary community here strong and healthy, I thought it would be a good time to try her again. I emailed her asking if she might consider adding a link to our site, and threw in a note about the great community we share and how we can work together to keep it alive and well. About a week later, I got her reply (yesterday):
Dear Megan,
Sorry, but I don't list other workshops on my site; and the only links are to writing experiences that I've had personally or non-profit writing organisations.
Hope to see you soon.
All best,
Jane Doe
Seriously? When did wordsinhere become "other workshops"? I know she knows better. That's when I thought of Cougar. She's holding on so tightly to what she perceives as her own square centimeters of this literary community. And it's a shame, because community doesn't work like that, at least not how I read it. Writers should be able to move around as they like, and should be given the information to do so. It's not an "us and them" thing, at least it shouldn't be.
It reminds me of one of the first meetings I had with another literary organization when wordsinhere was first getting off the ground back in 2002. I contacted the Dutch organization that promotes translation (into and from Dutch) and had a coffee with its director. I told him about our plans to start an international literary stage (the now-extinct Open Stanza, which ran from 2002-2007), and he looked at me with great confusion and said something like, "I don't understand why you want to meet with me about this. We work with writers to translate their texts. You're an American. I don't see the correlation between what you're doing and what we're doing."
Seriously?
In my reply to Jane Doe, I pointed out that wordsinhere is non-profit but I wished her success with her work. Then I mentioned that at last weekend's literary borrel - a free event which we organized for anyone who wanted to come, to meet other writers and find out about some of the offerings in town - a woman came up to me and asked me if Jane Doe was there. The woman had heard about her workshops and wanted to know more. I told this woman that Jane Doe knew about the event, but I wasn't sure if she was coming.
In my reply to Jane Doe's dismissal, I wrote, "At our last literary borrel someone asked if you were there. It's a shame there isn't more connectedness in this community, you may have been able to garner some more clients."
Yeah, I have my limits.
[Cut to Meg Ryan and Goose, great balls of fire.]
I thought of Cougar's lines yesterday when I received an email from a fellow Amsterdam writer who runs workshops in town. Over the years I've tried to build a circular network with her, to no avail. She refuses to have anything to do with us. The only time she ever did was when we created "lit goodie bags" for the now (sadly) extinct Amsterdam Literary Festival. We offered every organizer in the community a chance to add something to the bag, so she jumped right in.
With our renewed initiatives to keep the local literary community here strong and healthy, I thought it would be a good time to try her again. I emailed her asking if she might consider adding a link to our site, and threw in a note about the great community we share and how we can work together to keep it alive and well. About a week later, I got her reply (yesterday):
Dear Megan,
Sorry, but I don't list other workshops on my site; and the only links are to writing experiences that I've had personally or non-profit writing organisations.
Hope to see you soon.
All best,
Jane Doe
Seriously? When did wordsinhere become "other workshops"? I know she knows better. That's when I thought of Cougar. She's holding on so tightly to what she perceives as her own square centimeters of this literary community. And it's a shame, because community doesn't work like that, at least not how I read it. Writers should be able to move around as they like, and should be given the information to do so. It's not an "us and them" thing, at least it shouldn't be.
It reminds me of one of the first meetings I had with another literary organization when wordsinhere was first getting off the ground back in 2002. I contacted the Dutch organization that promotes translation (into and from Dutch) and had a coffee with its director. I told him about our plans to start an international literary stage (the now-extinct Open Stanza, which ran from 2002-2007), and he looked at me with great confusion and said something like, "I don't understand why you want to meet with me about this. We work with writers to translate their texts. You're an American. I don't see the correlation between what you're doing and what we're doing."
Seriously?
In my reply to Jane Doe, I pointed out that wordsinhere is non-profit but I wished her success with her work. Then I mentioned that at last weekend's literary borrel - a free event which we organized for anyone who wanted to come, to meet other writers and find out about some of the offerings in town - a woman came up to me and asked me if Jane Doe was there. The woman had heard about her workshops and wanted to know more. I told this woman that Jane Doe knew about the event, but I wasn't sure if she was coming.
In my reply to Jane Doe's dismissal, I wrote, "At our last literary borrel someone asked if you were there. It's a shame there isn't more connectedness in this community, you may have been able to garner some more clients."
Yeah, I have my limits.
[Cut to Meg Ryan and Goose, great balls of fire.]
November 23, 2009
Trans-
Last month marked my eighth year in the Netherlands, a number I never expected to reach. It also marked the seventh year since a small handful of writers and I put our heads together to come up with what you now see here, Versal et al.
Just back from a trip to the States and still feeling the whir of jetlag; the sensation that I'm straddling the Atlantic is slightly more keen than normal, and the months of scribbled notes I have made to myself on translocality -- upon confrontations with art, late-night drinks with friends in bars, after people ask me "so what kind of Work does Versal publish?" (caps intended) -- seem rather daunting. I'm trying to work something out, and I promised Robert, sort of, that I would work it out on the blog. But I'm a reviser, see, and hesitant -- wary -- of absolutes. If you read my editorial in Versal 7, then you can probably guess that my work to define translocality is rather, in many ways, to undefine it.
But. Last weekend, Crossing Border put on a "minisymposium" on the "correlation between (literary) magazines and literary publishers", pivoting around the (in)famous McSweeney's and its various projects, with a few Dutch publishers thrown into the mix. I ended up not being able to make it down to The Hague in time, but regardless I feel the need to say something about the fact that Versal was not asked to join the local contingent of speakers at this event. To take a card from McSweeney's deck, we're a cool group of Gen X-cusp-Yers, and Versal is no Dutch eyesore.
The symposium's focus on the relationship between literary journals and publishers, and seemingly on how "paper" as a medium is the great savior of print (a recent Eggers theme), would have benefited from Versal's translocal perspective. Here is, perhaps, where I've lost you (if I didn't lose you already because you thought this was going to turn into a bitter rant). Here is also where all my little scribbles become a great daunting pile. But stay with me for a few more paragraphs; this isn't a five-paragraph essay. That Versal was not asked to join the program underscores the question the symposium seems to have started with, about the relationship between publishers and journals -- which is layered something like: between literary publishers and writers, between readers and printed matter, between the computer screen and paper, between global and local. One could say that it's all the same "between", just seen from different perspectives. And that between is the (growing) black hole that translocal writers fall into, or the crack we fall between, pick your metaphor/onomatopoeia.
What happens to the translocal writer, exactly? For many professions, longer-term work abroad is considered a CV must-have at any level, but writers who live more permanently abroad are better off, in many cases, going back home. From a logistic standpoint, an emerging translocal writer may face the following challenges:
1. Disengagement from his/her home literary community (e.g. loosening networks, lack of "being in touch" with "what's going on")
2. Limited engagement with his/her "new" literary community
3. Rejection from journals in either community due to the work's foreignness
4. Hesitation from "home" publishers who tend to prefer local (i.e. residential) writers who can give lots of readings, etc. to sell books
This symposium was an exciting event to hit the Netherlands, whether you like McSweeney's or not. If any of you were there, I'd love to hear about it. So here, finally, is my hypothesis: I believe that translocality is instructional, that translocal writing, e.g., can be a way of understanding literary production and craft in general. Journals like Versal are that greatly-needed bridge between national literary cultures, the spanning scaffolds that will enable literary publishers to notice the ever-increasing number of writers who are taking part (like so many others) in this global world. Using "the hell out of the medium" as McSweeney's asserts oversimplifies the answer to the great digital question of our literary age (i.e. how is the publishing community going to survive it). It's not just about making paper carry its weight. Part of the answer also lies in the traverse between the local and the global, and finding the writers who are working there.
Just back from a trip to the States and still feeling the whir of jetlag; the sensation that I'm straddling the Atlantic is slightly more keen than normal, and the months of scribbled notes I have made to myself on translocality -- upon confrontations with art, late-night drinks with friends in bars, after people ask me "so what kind of Work does Versal publish?" (caps intended) -- seem rather daunting. I'm trying to work something out, and I promised Robert, sort of, that I would work it out on the blog. But I'm a reviser, see, and hesitant -- wary -- of absolutes. If you read my editorial in Versal 7, then you can probably guess that my work to define translocality is rather, in many ways, to undefine it.
But. Last weekend, Crossing Border put on a "minisymposium" on the "correlation between (literary) magazines and literary publishers", pivoting around the (in)famous McSweeney's and its various projects, with a few Dutch publishers thrown into the mix. I ended up not being able to make it down to The Hague in time, but regardless I feel the need to say something about the fact that Versal was not asked to join the local contingent of speakers at this event. To take a card from McSweeney's deck, we're a cool group of Gen X-cusp-Yers, and Versal is no Dutch eyesore.
The symposium's focus on the relationship between literary journals and publishers, and seemingly on how "paper" as a medium is the great savior of print (a recent Eggers theme), would have benefited from Versal's translocal perspective. Here is, perhaps, where I've lost you (if I didn't lose you already because you thought this was going to turn into a bitter rant). Here is also where all my little scribbles become a great daunting pile. But stay with me for a few more paragraphs; this isn't a five-paragraph essay. That Versal was not asked to join the program underscores the question the symposium seems to have started with, about the relationship between publishers and journals -- which is layered something like: between literary publishers and writers, between readers and printed matter, between the computer screen and paper, between global and local. One could say that it's all the same "between", just seen from different perspectives. And that between is the (growing) black hole that translocal writers fall into, or the crack we fall between, pick your metaphor/onomatopoeia.
What happens to the translocal writer, exactly? For many professions, longer-term work abroad is considered a CV must-have at any level, but writers who live more permanently abroad are better off, in many cases, going back home. From a logistic standpoint, an emerging translocal writer may face the following challenges:
1. Disengagement from his/her home literary community (e.g. loosening networks, lack of "being in touch" with "what's going on")
2. Limited engagement with his/her "new" literary community
3. Rejection from journals in either community due to the work's foreignness
4. Hesitation from "home" publishers who tend to prefer local (i.e. residential) writers who can give lots of readings, etc. to sell books
This symposium was an exciting event to hit the Netherlands, whether you like McSweeney's or not. If any of you were there, I'd love to hear about it. So here, finally, is my hypothesis: I believe that translocality is instructional, that translocal writing, e.g., can be a way of understanding literary production and craft in general. Journals like Versal are that greatly-needed bridge between national literary cultures, the spanning scaffolds that will enable literary publishers to notice the ever-increasing number of writers who are taking part (like so many others) in this global world. Using "the hell out of the medium" as McSweeney's asserts oversimplifies the answer to the great digital question of our literary age (i.e. how is the publishing community going to survive it). It's not just about making paper carry its weight. Part of the answer also lies in the traverse between the local and the global, and finding the writers who are working there.
August 19, 2009
Poets with healthcare
A few years ago when I came Stateside, my father asked me to join him on his weekly indy radio show to talk about the Dutch healthcare system. My father is Tony Garr, a major advocate in Tennessee for healthcare reform. He's one of those advocates who spends his days talking to folks who've lost their care or can't get it, and his nights flying to Washington to talk to politicians about how things could change. He's been doing this work since before I was born. He's also nearing retirement age. These days must feel to him like the last best chance he has to help realize a fair and affordable system for all.
Mark Wallace, a poet I recently met when he and K. Lorraine Graham came though Amsterdam, just blogged French system anecdotes from Paris-based poet Joe Ross. Reading these, and comparing them to my own Dutch experiences (which have also been positive), I began thinking about how many of us Americans out "here" must feel exiled from our homeland in many ways, though of course the state of exile itself is by no means our situation:
1. Love exiles - My friend Martha McDevitt-Pugh began an organization several years ago called Love Exiles, calling attention to the unequal marriage rights in the USA (and elsewhere) for (transnational) queer couples.
2. The Bush years - I left America in September 2000 and watched the country seemingly fall apart from my (safe?) vantage point in Glasgow, first, then Amsterdam. I saw much of the political fire get drained from even my most activist friends; I saw my parents and their friends grapple at the last strings of all they'd fought for in the 60s and 70s (and not just in terms of legal rights, though of course those were threatened - but watching them fight for human kindness, forgiveness, the values that came out of the Civil Rights Movement, etc.).
3. Healthcare - At least in Europe, American "expats" can participate in public healthcare systems that are not only affordable, but also very, very good. In the Netherlands, it is mandatory that every resident have healthcare. I have been very sick here and hospitalized several times; the care I have received has been nothing short of excellent. I would not be covered Stateside, and would be drowning in debt by now.
For me, at least, none of this adds up to any real sense of exile (and by real I mean danger) because when I want to go back to the States, I will. And I'll still be queer, and left and a Crohn's patient. But I wonder to what extent my "freedoms" here in the Netherlands have impacted my abilities to do what I do now: write, begin a literary organization and journal, make a living from texts and translation (and at that, freelancing it). I hate the weather here, but I am in this country's debt.
Mark Wallace, a poet I recently met when he and K. Lorraine Graham came though Amsterdam, just blogged French system anecdotes from Paris-based poet Joe Ross. Reading these, and comparing them to my own Dutch experiences (which have also been positive), I began thinking about how many of us Americans out "here" must feel exiled from our homeland in many ways, though of course the state of exile itself is by no means our situation:
1. Love exiles - My friend Martha McDevitt-Pugh began an organization several years ago called Love Exiles, calling attention to the unequal marriage rights in the USA (and elsewhere) for (transnational) queer couples.
2. The Bush years - I left America in September 2000 and watched the country seemingly fall apart from my (safe?) vantage point in Glasgow, first, then Amsterdam. I saw much of the political fire get drained from even my most activist friends; I saw my parents and their friends grapple at the last strings of all they'd fought for in the 60s and 70s (and not just in terms of legal rights, though of course those were threatened - but watching them fight for human kindness, forgiveness, the values that came out of the Civil Rights Movement, etc.).
3. Healthcare - At least in Europe, American "expats" can participate in public healthcare systems that are not only affordable, but also very, very good. In the Netherlands, it is mandatory that every resident have healthcare. I have been very sick here and hospitalized several times; the care I have received has been nothing short of excellent. I would not be covered Stateside, and would be drowning in debt by now.
For me, at least, none of this adds up to any real sense of exile (and by real I mean danger) because when I want to go back to the States, I will. And I'll still be queer, and left and a Crohn's patient. But I wonder to what extent my "freedoms" here in the Netherlands have impacted my abilities to do what I do now: write, begin a literary organization and journal, make a living from texts and translation (and at that, freelancing it). I hate the weather here, but I am in this country's debt.
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