I started this blog on June 10, 2015 during a webinar on Harryette Mullen's Sleeping with the Dictionary held at the University of Lusaka, Zambia together with my best friend, Dennis Tembo, in order to provide the students and staff who took part in the event with a platform for further discussion. I am confident that this is just the beginning. I met Dennis Tembo in 2013 while we were in the United States, at the University of Louisville, participating in the program "Study of the U.S. Institutes (SUSIs) for Scholars", of the U.S. Department of State. The person who introduced me/us to contemporary U.S. literature, Thomas B. Byers (Tom, for his friends), probably the best Literature professor in the world, was also the one, as director of the program, who facilitated -- among a myriad other things, for which I will always be grateful -- an overwhelmingly rewarding, magnificent meeting with UCLA Professor and writer Harryette Mullen. She was just one in the long line of American writers we were so lucky to meet in the program and the first whose work was the main topic of a whole post-2013SUSI USLit seminar! Stay tuned for more!
This blog and everything that will be going on around it for the ages to come is a tribute to all those who made our encounter with contemporary U.S. literature possible!
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This blog and everything that will be going on around it for the ages to come is a tribute to all those who made our encounter with contemporary U.S. literature possible!
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One of Dennis Tembo's brilliant students asked me what the use of poetry, of language, of words was in a world like ours. The answer that came to my mind was the one I normally use when I am not able to find a better answer on the spot (as if there actually were such a thing):
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
AWESOME PRESENTATION
ReplyDeleteThe powerful play does go on...As Shakespeare writes " All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages." the parts or scenes on this stage we play cannot be played without words ...Even the blind would love to feel the words on paper ..While others cannot speak the words ...they still fight to produce sound ..Therefore this stage is nothing , but a word platform on which wordplay is synonymous to the players existence .
ReplyDeleteThink I kinda agree with you on the aspect. But I was just wondering, If words= existence, what about those whose world consists only of silence, were words remain meaningless, does that mean they do not exist? Are they simply a figment of our imagination? We the elite, the "privileged to exist" as a result of words
DeleteGood thinking.....
Deletewe all have thought before we sleep...and the composition of t thoughts are words, hence the question of sleeping with a dictionary is one that bring to my mind the idea that this dictionary is not and should not be limited to a lexical entry book...but the real dictionary we sleep with is our conscious..and the lexical entries of this dictionary( conscious) are the day to day experiences call them the Souvenirs of Anywhere...
ReplyDeleteMadalitso Phiri one of Mr Tembos students: writes "we all sleep with a dictionary , Multilingual people sleep with more than one and each dictionary(conscious) is language specific. But architypically we all sleep with the same dictionary of global problems and this dictionary(conscious)gives definitions of words in a universal language which we all speak ..and that is poetry".
ReplyDeleteMwamba?????
ReplyDeletethe name's Mwaba
Deleteblah blah blah
ReplyDeleteThank you professor
ReplyDeleteI am the student that asked the question about the necessity of writing poetry.
I am grateful for your response. It is very helpful. The view that It is essential to write poetry by virtue of existence is one which can be supported by many
We read because we are human. This also applies to writing, which is probably the only possible way we can contribute to the world.
ReplyDeleteCornelius, what exactly do you like about sleeping with the Dictionary. Would you say that the N+7 (POEM 49) works for you?
ReplyDeleteOulipo: N+7
ReplyDeleteAlthough poetry and mathematics often seem to be incompatible areas of study, the philosophy of OULIPO seeks to connect them. Founded in 1960 by French mathematician Francois de Lionnais and writer Raymond Queneau, Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle (OULIPO), or Workshop of Potential Literature, investigates the possibilities of verse written under a system of structural constraints. Lionnais and Quenuau believed in the profound potential of a poem produced within a framework or formula and that, if done in a playful posture, the outcomes could be endless.
One of the most popular OULIPO formulas is "N+7," in which the writer takes a poem already in existence and substitutes each of the poem's substantive nouns with the noun appearing seven nouns away in the dictionary. Care is taken to ensure that the substitution is not just a compound derivative of the original, or shares a similar root, but a wholly different word. Results can vary widely depending on the version of the dictionary one uses.
I literally cant wait to use this theory on a poem!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDelete