Notes to Poetry

Posted on Categories Pedagogy

Notes to Poetry — 19 May, 2023

by Simon Elmer

Paperback £15.00
Hardback (forthcoming)

 

 

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Description

Like the samizdat ‘self-publications’ that were circulated in the Eastern Bloc between the 1950s and 1980s, this book tries to retain the values of poetry in a world in which poetry no longer has any accepted role, it would appear, other than creating the illusion of individual freedom within the mirrored cell of identity politics in which art and culture has been imprisoned today. All the poems discussed in this book contain some, many or all of these values, and these Notes to Poetry have no greater goal than to illuminate a space in which they can more clearly be read in the darkness of the present time, when the future of all art is in doubt. These values are not universal, and the readings offered here are restricted to those works in which the author is interested. But what is universal is the contempt in which the values of poetry are held today, and not only because of the threat they represent to our uniform adherence to the principles of biosecurity: surveillance, censorship and unquestioning obedience to the state, all of which have been uncritically adopted by our culture industry under the corporate manufactured blanket of diversity, inclusivity and sustainability. Poetry, whose history is the never-ending struggle between freedom and power that today is experiencing one of its most crushing defeats, is a repository of these values. If we are to survive the digital totalitarianism, state authoritarianism and corporate anarchism of the present, these values must be defended from permanent erasure and kept alive for the future.

List of Contents

Preface

I. Themes

The Night | The Work of Death | Eroticism | The Dance | The White Goddess | Sacrifice | The Quest for Sovereignty | Community | The Labour of Love | Beauty

II. Readings

The Gospel of Sovereignty | Venus and Adonis | A Midsummer Night’s Dream | Meditations on Love and Death | The Marriage of Heaven and Hell | Ode to Joy | Hymns to the Night | The Rural Muse | Wonderland | A Season in Hell | The Celtic Twilight | Roads | Dada: Poems and Manifestos | Ursonata | Four Quartets | The Sovereign Muse | The Tomb of Louis XXX | The Bridge by the House of Earth | Concrete Poetry | Moortown Diary | Bog Poems | The Wreckers’ Yard | End Times

III. Manifestos

Notes to Poetry | The Community of Readers | Geopoetry | Already Unread | An Open Letter to Nobody

About the Author

Simon Elmer was born and lives in London. In 2002 he received his PhD in the History and Theory of Art from University College London, and he has taught at the universities of London, Manchester, Reading and Michigan. In 2015 he co-founded Architects for Social Housing, for which he is Head of Research. His books include The Colour of the Sacred: Georges Bataille and the Image of Sacrifice (2007); The Road to Fascism: For a Critique of the Global Biosecurity State (2022); Virtue and Terror: Selected Articles on the UK Biosecurity State, Vol. 1 (2023); The New Normal: Selected Articles on the UK Biosecurity State, Vol. 2 (2023); and with Geraldine Dening, The Truth about Grenfell Tower (2017); For a Socialist Architecture: Under Capitalism (2021); and Saving St. Raphael’s Estate: The Alternative to Demolition (2022).

Publication Details

Publisher: Architects for Social Housing (May 2023)
Distributed by Lulu Press, UK
Language: English
Hardback and paperback: 240 pages
ISBN 978-1-4477-0878-0 (clothbound)
ISBN 978-1-4477-6587-5 (paperbound)
Dimensions: 8 x 5 inches (20.2 x 12.7 cm)

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Simon Elmer
Architects for Social Housing