WRITER STATEMENT
Human behaviour is 93 percent predictable, a group of leading Northeastern University network scientists recently found. Our lives are patterns, learned behaviours, inscriptions from childhood, etchings, and encryptions. Time for a new pattern - new recurring phrases and phases - to find a way to freedom…
FOUR POETIC MOMENTS by Peter Devonald
Five experiments in the shape and form of poetry.
How does the pattern change the poetry?
How can meaning be ascribed to new figures and form?
Is the poetry lost in the contours?
Doe the search actually become the poetry? Or is it in the words and patterns?
The poems:
FOREVER IS COMPOSED OF NOWS@
An alternative word search for meaning. I like the idea of searching for significance in poetry – for the audience to discover or ascribe sense. There is something comforting and childish about word searches – but what words will come?
PURPLE SILENCE
A birth to near-death parallel experiment using scraps of poems cut and pasted in a similar electronic way to William Burroughs, "The Cut Up Method": but with less random and more meaning, perhaps.
The pattern is used for juxtapositions or false juxtapositions. I think how patterns create natural antonyms – but meaning can change within this network, creating strange obscure configurations of life.
DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR
An alternative eye test with meaning. I like the complete restriction of this pattern – how for the word to change there is almost no choice or free will.
THE LEITMOTIF
Words transformed by meaning and context: how does the shape change the sentences? How as a reader do you respond differently because of the pattern? Are other poems found through the variety of choice?
Enjoy/endure/be
