Poetry and Indiscipline
New work by Denise Riley, Lavinia Singer, Jess Cotton, Rey Conquer, Hugh Foley and John Wedgwood Clarke
On 10 May 2024, Sam-Buchan Watts and Lucy Mercer held a closed, eight-person symposium in a seminar room at MayDay Rooms in London entitled ‘Poetry and Indiscipline’.
As poets and critics, they write, they are ‘drawn to W.J.T. Mitchell’s observation that ‘[his] real interest [as a critic] … has been not in interdisciplinarity so much as in forms of “indiscipline”, of turbulence or incoherence at the inner or outer boundaries of disciplines’.
They write: ‘Mitchell’s formulation strikes us as a suitable analogy not only for visual culture but for contemporary poetry too – and not only given poetry’s visuality and historical relation to visual arts practices. Are poetry and its related practices not in some deep ontological way tied to breakages and ruptures, a distorting assimilationism, intractability, uncertainty and questioning of systems of evaluation? Yet as the ongoing attacks on the arts and humanities (universities, funding, conservative reading practices) continue, poets and writers are increasingly dependent on an idea of interdisciplinarity that is sold by institutions as a cohesive and unifying force intended to bridge disciplines or often to further professionalise – and make legible the value of – our activities.’
Their invited speakers, Denise Riley, Lavinia Singer, Jess Cotton, Rey Conquer, Hugh Foley and John Wedgwood Clarke gave presentations on three themes: ‘Indiscipline and Institution’ ‘Indiscipline and Form’, ‘Indiscipline and Concepts’. Their presentations have since been transformed and condensed into pieces that we are pleased to debut on creative-critical.net.
You can read them all, as well as Buchan-Watts’ and Mercer’s introduction, on our website: https://creativecritical.net/poetry-and-indiscipline/
P.S. While you’re here, don’t forget to check out the most recent assignment of Daily Themes and please send us your work if you try the exercises: