Odds and Ends Essays, Blogs, Internet Discussions, Interviews and Miscellany

“academisation” brought out from under the bed yet again, the only problem being that the term is not (of course)
being used literally here, or anywhere, as the above author is neither claiming that avant-garde poetries are
increasingly being written by literary studies professors (“academics”), nor that avant-garde poetries are now being
produced primarily in literary studies degree programs (“academic degree programs”), nor even that the only
evident consumption of avant-garde poetries is now happening on college and university campuses (broadly, “the
academy”, though as noted this includes both the scholarship-oriented fiefdom of “literary studies” and the “creative
writing”-inflected spaces delineated by creative writing workshops-even if all the students in such workshops are
also, to complicate things further, taking traditional literary studies courses to complete their MFA degrees).
[Quoting from Jeffrey Side’s Introduction to The Argotist Online feature on ‘The Academisation of
Avant-Garde Poetry’] ‘Academic poetic output is operating to a healthy extent in the US, where
university creative writing departments are flourishing. The University of Pennsylvania has its Kelly
Writers House programme, its PennSound website and its Center for Programs in Contemporary
Writing, all sympathetic to academic avant-garde poetry. The University of Pennsylvania also edits
Jacket2, an influential online poetics website, which was formerly called Jacket, and which was edited
by the independent John Tranter before he passed it over to the university. And similar things are
happening in the UK, with various institutions such as the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre at
Birkbeck University, and the Poetry and Poetics Research Group at the University of Edge Hill, both
promoting academic avant-garde poetry’.
We must put aside that the only university referenced here-Penn-is one that does not have a graduate creative
writing program (which maybe, depending upon our working definition of “Academy”, puts it outside the
“Academy”?), just as we must put aside the author’s minimal awareness of what’s happening at any of the 200+
American universities which do have graduate creative writing programs. No mention is made here of the evident
and notable avant-garde sympathies of the MFA programs at Brown University, University of Notre Dame, University
of California-San Diego, Temple University, California Institute of the Arts, Mills College, Cornell University, Columbia
College Chicago, Naropa University, The New School, Saint Mary’s College of California, University of Colorado-
Boulder, University of Montana, University of Utah, or any of the other avant-friendly universities even the greenest
MFA applicant in America would be aware of. No-we get none of that. We get no such acknowledgments here,
because-as noted already on this blog, in previous essays-the avant-garde, of whose various poetics and poetries I
consider myself both an admirer and a student (and sometimes an adherent, poetics-wise if not often aesthetically)
seems fixated on discussions of “the academy” despite not understanding its contours in the slightest. It is no
coincidence the author of this brief piece mentions Penn, one of the only universities in the United States to have a
conspicuous non-degree-granting avant-garde outpost-as no other presence of the avant-garde in the academy is
cognizable to these avant-garde poets and critics. It seems their distaste for academia is so virulent they’re unwilling
to even “know thy enemy”.
A greater issue is this new coinage, “academic avant-garde poetry”, which bears the same ills of easy
misinterpretation (or even meaninglessness) as does its originary term “academisation”. What does it mean for an
“avant-garde poetry” to be “academic”? Again, the discourse of these fellows is designed to create the appearance of
a mutual understanding of terms when in fact no such consensus does-or could-exist.
[Quoting from Jeffrey Sid’s Introduction to The Argotist Online feature on ‘The Academisation of Avant-
Garde Poetry’] ‘Consequently, one could say that the term “avant-garde” has now, essentially, been
appropriated by the Academy, and, as such, has become associated with the sort of poetic writing
practices that could be fairly said to represent “establishment” poetry, to the extent that the historical
resonances of the term “avant-garde” have become meaningless. In contrast, Bob Grumman’s term,
“otherstream”, which Berry uses in his essay to describe poetry that is marginalised by the Academy,
can be seen as a more apt replacement for the term “avant-garde”, which has now become obsolete as
an appropriate description for poetry that isn’t anecdotal, descriptive or prose-like’.
We see here that the author’s use of the term “Academy” has suddenly switched; as ‘poetic writing practices’ are
being discussed now, we must assume we’ve now returned to “creative writing” spaces within the academy, and
literary studies scholars-all of them; their entire institutional history-have suddenly been divorced from any
working definition of “the Academy”. (For surely we could not include those scholars, else we be forced to admit that
the avant-garde was ‘appropriated by the Academy’ just as soon as prominent avant-garde poets started storming
the academy-via the acceptance of teaching positions-in the 1980s. Indeed, we might then be forced to note, too,
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