Product 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 response 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 initially 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 communal incoherence and difference they challenge and delight.
About the Author
Rupert Loydell is Senior Lecturer in English with Creative Writing at University College Falmouth, and the editor of Stride and With magazines. He is the author of many books of poetry, including A Conference of Voices and the forthcoming Boombox!, as well as several collaborative works; he also paints small abstract paintings. He lives in a creekside village in Cornwall with his family and far too many books and CDs.
