Juha Virtanen

Memories Arrested in Space: Eric Mottram’s Pollock Record

Virtanen puts forward a fresh and sustained examination of Eric Mottram’s collaborative project Pollock Record. Framing its analysis around the large sheets of poetic material that Mottram prepared for Pollock Record in the late 1970s, the chapter considers these collagist fragments in relation to the poet’s frequent use of found text, as well as the project’s interconnections with the ‘action paintings’ of Jackson Pollock. Virtanen demonstrates that Mottram might have originally intended to incorporate some of Pollock’s techniques to the performance of his piece. However, the chapter ultimately asserts that the event of performing Pollock Record shifts its focus from painterly procedures to a complex enactment of short-term memory that rejects the stability of documentation, and instead produces an occasion of cacophonous collective authorship.

This Blank Space from Which I Speak: Denise Riley at the Cambridge Poetry Festival‚ April 15th 1977

Virtanen provides an astute analysis of Denise Riley’s first ever public reading at the Cambridge Poetry Festival in 1977. The chapter outlines the connections between the pronominal slippage in Riley’s debut pamphlet Marxism for Infants; her early readings of Foucault and Merleau-Ponty; and the theoretical positions she develops in later texts such as Am I That Name? and Words of Selves. Virtanen utilizes both archival recordings and a new interview with Riley in order to show how similar concepts are perceivable in the subtle performance strategies of her first reading. The chapter also proposes that Riley’s reading poses important questions about the overlapping qualities of the ‘performance of authorship’ and the ‘performance of ownership’.

Be Kind to This Place: Allen Ginsberg and the First International Poetry Incarnation

Virtanen develops a much-needed examination of the First International Poetry Incarnation at the Albert Hall in 1965. The chapter offers a detailed account of the performance, which foregoes the common myths about its proceedings and instead presents the occasion as an event populated by myriad aspirations and encounters. Virtanen explores these features through a range of contexts, including the architecture and history of the Albert Hall itself; the distinctions between the British counterculture and the New Left; and Lefebvre’s theories of space. The chapter culminates in an in-depth analysis of how Allen Ginsberg’s reading that night negotiated between the event’s myriad aspirations in order to deliver a performance that simultaneously asserted the presence of the author-poet as well as the cacophonous collectivity of a multiplicity.

You Are Invited to Perform: Process‚ Mutation and Participation in Allen Fisher’s Blood Bone Brain

Virtanen conducts a comprehensive exploration of Allen Fisher’s Blood Bone Brain, a multimedia performance project developed in parallel with the poet’s early tour de force Place. Focusing on Fisher’s microfiche archive of the project and new interviews with the poet himself, the chapter offers a detailed outline of Blood Bone Brain’s multiple genealogies, which pays close attention to the project’s close relationship with Fisher’s processual poetics. In addition, Virtanen provides a thorough examination of a 1974 performance of the piece, which considers the numerous ways in which elements of Place and Blood Bone Brain extend and redevelop one another. The chapter concludes with an analysis of how Fisher’s emphasis on collaboration and audience participation complicates the concept of performing the poet’s authorship.

An Interview with Allen Fisher

This chapter presents the full transcript of Virtanen’s interviews with Allen Fisher, which is a key resource for the analyses that take place in Chap. 5. Virtanen and Fisher discuss a range of topics, including Fisher’s early involvements with the British Poetry Revival; his work with Fluxshoe and conceptual art; his views on process; his involvement with a performance of Pollock Record; details regarding Blood Bone Brain; and broader debates about poetry and performance.

An Interview with Denise Riley

This chapter presents the full transcript of Virtanen’s interview with Denise Riley, which is a key resource for the analyses that take place in Chap. 3. Virtanen and Riley discuss a range of topics, including Riley’s recollections of the second Cambridge Poetry Festival; her experience of poetry readings in general; the performance of authorship; feminist poetry in the 1970s; casual cultural misogyny within the British Poetry Revival; and the dramaturgical theories of Heinrich von Kleist.

Poetry and Performance During the British Poetry Revival 1960–1980

This book examines intersections of poetry and performance during the British Poetry Revival. Its investigations are centered on four specific performance events: The First International Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall in 1965; Denise Riley’s first public reading at the Cambridge Poetry Festival in 1977; Eric Mottram’s Pollock Record; and Allen Fisher’s Blood Bone Brain. Drawing upon a range of archival resources, recordings, and interviews, Juha Virtanen offers engaging and detailed “archaeological” accounts and analyses of these largely unexamined events as well as the potential dialogues between them. The appendices of the book also feature previously unpublished interviews with both Fisher and Riley.