[-empyre-] Introducing Hazel Smith into our 'somewhat glorious pit of language'

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

Dear Empyreans,

For the rest of May, please welcome the Australian poet/scholar/editor Hazel
Smith, picking up on "Electronic Poetry". Jim Andrews will stay online too.


In a recent note, Hazel touches on themes that are alive and kicking on
empyre this month. She is, in her words,  on to

" the relationship of the sonic, visual and linguistic, and the 'semiotic
exchange' which occurs between these different languages.  The ways in
which the visual might distract from the linguistic/literary, and the need
for innovative sound work as part of the development of electronic poetry."

What is the distraction? Here's a rich area to explore.  Perhaps we can get
into something on the derive and drift, a la Guy Debord and the
situationiste movement.


Looking forward to a lively two weeks.  Thanks again to Jim Andrews, whose
bit from his essay POETRY AND PROGRAMMING is apropros:

 What has this to do with language? Several things. What is the body of
language? It is changing through digital art and also the forms in which
digital art is possible. And they change one another. Digital art changes
the experience to engineer. And it deepens the conceptual
significance. It also  considers the politics, the 'position' of the work in
the ethical and virtual realms of relations into which it enters in the
verbo voco visuo, in the neath-textual behaviors and inscriptions, in the
converse between people via the Net, in the somewhat glorious pit of
language.


About Hazel Smith:

Hazel  works in the areas of poetry, experimental writing,
performance, multi-media work and hypertext, and her web page is at
www.australysis.com. She has published two poetry volumes, the most recent
of which is Keys Round Her Tongue: short prose, poems and performance
texts, Soma Publications, 2000. She has made two CDs of her performance
work, is a member of the multi-media group austraLYSIS, and co-author of
many multimedia and hypermedia works.  From 1991-2001 Hazel was a Senior
Lecturer in the School of English, University of New South Wales. She is
now Senior Research Fellow in the School of Creative Communication,
University of Canberra, Deputy Director of the University of Canberra
Centre for Writing, and Editor of the multimedia journal InfLect.  She is
co-author, with Roger Dean, of Improvisation, Hypermedia And The Arts Since
1945, Harwood Academic, 1997, and author of Hyperscapes in the Poetry of
Frank O'Hara: difference, homosexuality, topography, Liverpool University
Press, 2000.


--cm