Introduction by Louis Cabri

Alan Davies Inaugural Reading 28 Sept 2011

In a time of trouble, what do we want from a poet laureate – is it a lyric about milkweed, as The Onion parodied / parried this week?

In troubled times, what might a poet laureate say? Maybe these words by Alan Davies:

“What we are writing now is the current life (the living life / the life living) of the body of literature – we must pursue it with the kind of diligence with which we strive to keep ourselves alive.”

This almost-Arnoldian message is rare in Davies’s writings.

The quotation is from a recent review – critique – of the poetic field. Alan has gotten in trouble over the past decades for his criticisms of variously-constituted moments in the poetic field. He asserts / articulates a horizon of poetry activity. Then he critiques its limits. And he tasks, asks us to go beyond them.

Here’s another quote from Alan Davies: “The fact that experimental work is accepted as art is a sign of decadence.” And – before doffing a leather toque, learning to smoke a cigar at AskMen.Com, downloading Huysman’s Against Nature and then bronzing a couple of Canada geese – take note that for Davies decadence isn’t a haven in troubled times.

Both quotations lead to enduring concerns in Alan’s writing, not least the relationship between art and life.

To offer a sketch of his writing trajectory as I understand it: the early 70s Boston phase, with John Wieners and Robert Creeley; then the Language Poetry in New York City phase of the mid 70s to 80s (during which he edits A Hundred Posters); then a turn in the early 90s to nature poetry in Upper New York State and to affects of direct address; and since George W., a re-engagement with poetry’s function as social critique.

Alan says writing makes the mind clearer. His writing gives us sentences demonstrating the form thinkings take. It’s the argument he makes and moreover it’s the way he makes the argument that counts, the form of that sort of counting. The poet’s responsibility is to sharpen the tools of thinking with language. Recently – paradoxically – this has involved writing about prelinguistic thinking.

Davies here, now, holds-out for the idea of the university as a thinking experiment with life. University’s not an experiment on life, moulding dough destined for neoliberal bakingsheets and the ovens of late finance capital.

What Davies hasn’t been interested in – call it as Pierre Bourdieu might, “the production and reproduction of legitimate language” – is engaging the processes that would institutionally legitimate his own language.

And in this regard, Davies since the mid 90s seems to have signalled a disinclination, a withdrawal from the spectacle of seeing his work published in the early internet era, even while continuing as a smallpress publisher.

But Alan Davies is with us tonight. It is an honour for me and gives me great pleasure to present Alan Davies.