Today I was reading through contemporary conceptual poet Caroline Bergvall’s ‘Eclat’.
A statement from it hopped into my awareness and swung around the beams there:
‘Where are you not who.’
No question mark.
No punctuation.
So of course I wrote a poem. When re-reading it, I realised that it touched on the idea that there is no trace of an author’s self in conceptual writing – unlike more traditional poetry, where the self of the writer/poet/narrator is apparent.
éclat de conscience
where are you not who:
you might peek around the edge
of a deconstructed sentence
or curl up, contortioned,
in the shelf of an A,
drape yourself languidly
in delirious-sounding prose,
meander through memory-loss
in mis-spelt words,
imitate the yellow blob
that means something
(but not everything)
to someone.
wherever you are
you’ll not discover
who I am
here
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