Full Description
Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh is a eclectic and exciting gathering of poem and prose-poem manifestos and unmanifestos that try to understand what poetry is and who or what it might be for. It is also about what the authors might want or demand from poetry, in either a general or personal way. Manifestos are often declamatory and incendiary, but I have tried to defuse polemic and overtly dictatorial rhetoric by juxtaposition, and by selecting work from a wide range of critical and poetic positions, not least that of satire and wit.
I've previously - as any of my students will tell you - dismissed manifestos, but have more recently found them useful to react against, to incite comment and both critical and poetical reponse with. Rather than read them as a definitive and final statement, I have come to see them as an important part of poetics: a useful way to think about reasons for writing, about processes and techniques one might use to make poetry, and about existing or potential relationships with real or imaginary audiences.
The book is designed to encourage and incite readers to engage with what all too often is regarded as a trivial and occasional art form. I believe, as do many of the other contributors, that poetry is far more than self-expression and heartfelt truth, it is where language is actually rooted and initiallly located; it is where thought itself comes into being. Language is wonderful and intoxicating stuff, an engaging and pliable medium with endless potential for reinvention and recreation. If the reader can find enthusiasm, passion, laughter and deep thought in this book - and then argue and engage with it - I shall be a happy editor. These manifestos and unmanifestos do not add up to a whole, but in their communcal incoherence and difference they challenge and delight.
Contents
Foreword
Alan Halsey
Nine Ways Of Looking At A Manifesto
Andrea Moorhead
Poetic Dissonance: A Manifesto
Andrew Taylor
A Poetics Of Absence
Andy Brown
Poetry
Nick Piombino
Second Silent Manifesto
Angela Topping
How To Capture A Poem
Bob Hicok
My Whole Life That I Know Of, I've Been Living: A Triptych
Bob Hicok
Troubadour
Brian Fewster
The Rules
Nick Piombino
Third Silent Manifesto
Cliff Yates
Flying: A Poetics
Dave Reeves
The Raw Edge Blues
Dave Bircumshaw
Ghost Machine Self-Assembly Kit
Dave Bircumshaw
His Story - One Version
David Hart
Instructions For A Good Time
Nick Piombino
Fourth Silent Manifesto
Gavin Selerie
34 (From Roxy)
Geoff Stevens
Manifesto To Myself
Guy Russell
Manifesto Of The Self-Publicists
Ira Lightman
Manifesto (1995)
Janis Butler Holm
Bother
Keith Hackwod
If You Must Have Nouns
Keith Jafrate
Manifesto
Nick Piombino
Automatic Manifesto #5
Kyrill Potapov
Deconstructionism Is Not Enough; Or A Quest To Discover
Why I Stutter When A Stranger Asks Me My Name
Lael Ewy
Towards A Manifesto For A New Poetry
Luke Kennard
A Manifesto Towards Repeating The Mistakes Of The Past
Nick Piombino
Government Warning (Automatic Manifesto #6)
Luke Kennard
The War Poem Letters
Mark Goodwin
La Belle Dame Sans Matrix
Mario Petrucci
The Idea
Mario Petrucci
Just As I Start
Michael Kerr
Poetry Finds Static
Michael Molyneux
Our Inner Peace Is Earth's Frontier
Paul Sutton
Strategies
Peter Taylor
Manifesto
Peter Finch
Technique Comes Hard
Philip Terry
Advice To A Young Writer
Nick Piombino
Automatic Manifesto #7
Robert Sheppard
A Voice Without
Robert Sheppard
Not Another Poem
Rose Flint
The City Of Cherished Words
Rupert Loydell
The 12 Laws Of Celestial & Poetical Mechanics
Rupert Loydell
A Poem's Not For People
Nick Piombino
The Lapsed Reader (Automatic Manifesto #8)
Sandra Tappenden
Dunce Embroidery
Sarah Law
Manifesto
Scott Thurston
Accreted Statement (Notes)
Sheila E. Murphy
Manifestoon
Stephen C. Middleton
(Instructions)
Steve Waling
Quote Mine (Selections)
Nick Piombino
Automatic Manifesto #9
Jackson Mac Low
Unmanifest
A.C. Evans
The Unique Zero Manifesto
Andy Brown
To All You Squabbling Poets
Paul Sutton
To All The Useless Idiots In The Future
Nathan Thompson
The Certainties of Manifest Poems
Acknowledgements
Contributors' Notes
