Joined Up MusingThoughts on being a poet in the academy and community

Background

• 2006 - Trading Places (SBC)• 2009-2012 - Living Memory (CSCB)• 2012 - Union Print (BB)• 2013 - Waterloo Sights and Sounds

(CSCB)

Questions that I had pre 2006 • As a member of this geographical

community - what is my voice allowed to do?Listening to the cannon - Blake/KeatsMistress Quickly, Eliot’s Lil, Mrs ‘Arris - Crude and/or NaifListening to my neighbours - adds dimensionsand range including lyrical qualities

Trading Places

• Autumn 2006 - SBC - Project brief - to work with traders and customers in Lower Marsh Market to contribute work for a Sound/Photo Wall that would appear on Building Hoardings at SBC for duration of October - as part of Poetry International.

Trading Places

Trading Places

• Collecting tins in shops - Home for Lost Phrases

• Forms with tear off slipsLost phrase and its meaningContact details

Questions that have arisen • What do we mean when we say?

Red Hat, no drawers!

Colloquialisms as acts of translationInterrogating the phrase for both meaning andback storyWho is left out?

Red Hat, No Drawers!

• Doreen D - It means someone is a tart! A person of easy virtue!

• Doreen G - It’s not very nice, it means the person speaking likes to judge other people when they don’t even know!

Fink I Come Up Wiv The Vinegar Boat! • Dave - Well, there used to be a lot of

vinegar factories around here - so that’s why we used to say that

• Adrian - It’s from the military, at formal dinners and that - the vinegar or sauce boats and other condiments would come round last.

Black as Newgate’s (or Nugent’s) Knocker • Doreen G - it’s if your face was dirty! Your

mum’d say you was .....• Doreen D - it’s if something was bleak! Or

- someone gave you a dirty look!

Further developments

• Written work - Go Scratchyerself!, Charlie’s Dead, Lower Marsh Speaks, What you mean...

• Further projects - Slanguage! Union Press involving a wider range of coll.; W-Orte at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich - translation and coll.

What I gain as an academic from being a Community Artist

Being part of a broad discussion with participants and other artists -

Being able to experiment with thinking without needing much of a hypothesis - gives you material

Being able to respond spontaneously to events

What I bring to the Community as artist

The contribution to the end product

The writing and workshop leading

Asking questions

What is missing

The ability to draw together the participants andtheir learning process more directly to the Institution.

The Potential

Developing a broader and more democratickind of Community Education brief usingone off conference style events that allowparticipants of heritage/arts projects in to theUniversity.