Lawrence Upton
The kind of poetry as a well-made well-placed bomb will not only dismember and thus disable one's enemy's intentions, but also turn their bodies and what may be learned from them into something not only harmless but also, partially, unrecognisable and, perhaps, therefore, indescribable and, therefore, uninterpretable; so the unexpected understanding of a crafted phrase which has been placed in the auditor's environment and left as a puzzle ready to trip and go unstable in an unexpected contradistinction (a big leading foot goes down with an inappropriate stress on a lexical wire and all the attention of those listening goes through critical into the demolition of the ability to reconstruct what it was one thought might have been in the process of being said) may give those who think things simple a jolt there are many mechanisms available to linguistic engineers but the difference between transformation of the means of production of meaning, whereby it will be impossible for us to be misunderstood in socio- economic terms which are not in our class of interests, and the armed truces of difference of opinion, leaving us with the almost universal panmunjom of unreal realities of diplomatic speech crossing razorwire borders (at work, at school, in bed) just to stay alive is effected by the ability of our makers to produce the perfect weapon through which they who cast the first stone at their comrade will find belief in the gravity of their situation leaving them; so that they cease circuitous worship of the norm just long enough to ensure derision and hence superiority of their unwilling adversaries' position -- let them really believe the world is flat and see how they like the plumbing through which they who make an over-pompous point will lose their insubordinate ranks to sleep and its increase of potential thence to be outranked by the simplicity of first waking's utterance, an irritable dismissal perhaps? Leave the inadequate teachers to their gabbling silence: words which encourage those who hear them to turn to those who utter less fortunate phrasing and say "shut up, you do not understand: listen and do not lie to me again"; words which make us laugh at liars; words which dispossess their hearers of the inclination to lie; words with the strength and purpose of a honeycomb; words with the fleet existence of a trailback marijuana smile; words which are words and nothing more; words which bury an emperor's army with a meadow; words which move a finger from a trigger; words which wash away sand-castles, word tides no longer tied to locality; spontaneous systematisation of the system by the system for the system (which is not the system the system thought it was) in which an act of humour is an act of survival, natural not forced selection; species of saying which are saying of species not the species; code of the genus which our genius elaborates -- hence democracy from, finally, theocracy; not degradation of unspoken ideas -- the autocratic voice will always speak if you have the words to trick it; but the spread of seeds in an autumn wind; syntaxes of ants taking carrion windfall into the ground; sounds which move, as wind moves leaves, the hearer over stone; wind which is also molecules in systems; systems which use their context as their mechanism; mechanicals turning the world of words into whirls of words which speak lightly about chaos that is the kind of poetry Poet; graphic artist; sound artist. Forthcoming publications: Balcony Poems for Richard Kessling & walking poems. Recent publications: wrack (2012); Memory Fictions (2012); Unframed Pictures (2011) and Wire Sculptures (2003). Co-edited Word Score Utterance Choreography in verbal and visual poetry (1998) with Bob Cobbing, with whom he wrote collaboratively (NB D.A.N. 1994-2000 & Commentaries on Bob Cobbing 2013).
2008-2011 funded as AHRC Research Fellow at Goldsmiths: "Notation for Sound Art involving live presence". Visiting Research Fellow in Music, Goldsmiths, University of London 2011 +. Academic Member Athens Institute for Education and Research. Belongs to Cloud Appreciation Society.
photo, synthesis - Singing Marram (for solo viola) commissioned by Benedict Taylor (2013). Upton is now working on a graphic score for harp and voice. Second solo exhibition from recent projects September 2012 St James Hatcham. Maker of "artists' books" especially in collaboration with Guy Begbie. Has made many text-sound compositions with John Levack Drever (2004 +).
Convenes Writers Forum Workshop; directs Writers Forum.
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