CONTACT WITH POETS

silence what about the visual art community? What do you believe that the
2 communities have to learn from each other, as epitomized in the Text
Festival?
Trehy: I wouldn’t say that the response of the poetic community
in the UK has been silent—that is the default position of the Hegemony of
the Banal, but it’s poetry is pretty quiet too—(Ron Silliman’s phrase: the
School of Quietude). The response of the poetic community has been
more complex related to the local (UK) structures of dialogue and status.
The visual art community gives a more relaxed impression of critical
engagement with the Festival. I am not sure why that is—maybe it is that
the venues of the events are more in their comfort zone, a familiar vocabulary
of spaces. I am always careful of this juxtaposition of visual to poetic
though, because for me (and them) sound artists, performance artists,
media artists—any other language forms—are all part of the mix: I find
poets are most keen to treat it as a dialogue between the two ‘communities’,
maybe that is part of their isolation from the practice of the other
art-forms.
beaulieu: In terms of that isolation from other art-forms—what
do you believe that the poetic community has to learn from the art community?
Trehy: I suppose it could do with not being isolated! It’s generally
been my position that significant things happen when art-forms are in
dialogue. This is one of the things the Text Festival assumes.
beaulieu: Has the mandate of the festival changed since its first
incarnation? What to you have been some of the highlights of the festival
to date?
Trehy: There is something about the word mandate that suggests
that its imperatives came from somewhere else, from outside; I think
the reason why it has developed a unique status is that it generates its own
context. I suppose no-one else can see the festival the way I do because I
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