Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

From: Ann Louise Vickery
Subject: Delurking /Delousing/Coming Clean
Having only joined the poetics list a short time ago, I have followed the gender
trouble (let’s get out of the old binaries of boys vs girls at least) discussion with
great interest. It seems that the concurrent discussion on the relationship
between theory and practice would be more interesting if it passed beyond
rather than below the abstract limbo stick to speak in terms of greater
specificity–which aspects of practice have been institutionalized, which aspects
are still excluded from the academies, can this be linked to trends in pedagogic
practice such as the teaching of certain theories over others or how they are
taught in relation to poetry. I have appreciated the comments of Kali Tal (hello
Kali!) as well as all the other women who have contextualized gender problems
on poetics list from their own perspective.
At this point, I would like to "delurk" and try to articulate my own politics of
location. I am a Melbournian doctoral student … who is researching ways in
which contemporary poetry contributes to feminist cultural practice. I also
teach a course on postmodernism which has such items as the Hoover
anthology and Laurie Anderson on its syllabus. I am interested in the challenge
that the internet offers both in terms of poetic community formation and
discursive horizons.
It is not surprising that the net creates its own disciplinization and exclusion
effects; rather we should be asking how these can be changed. Although
statistics are the fool’s creditcard, my information was that women make up
only 5% of the population who use the net. So the poetics list is obviously
attracting women to enter its space. The question then arises as to which
women and how they engage with the net both as a medium and as a practice.
Being Australian, I am speaking on the margins as a not-so-dutiful daughter to
the many on the list who are or have been associated with Language poetry in
one way or another. Yet, as part of the university, access to the list was easier
for me than it is for many Australian women who are interested in
contemporary poetry and poetics but who feel isolated. The net is one way in
which such isolation can be dissolved.
From my Asian-Pacific position, I cannot contribute to matters of US funding
and I feel that much of what is discussed on the poetics list has a localized
politics of which I am uninformed. However, I feel that such a connection is