Documentary poetry

Saw Juliana Spahr and Kristin Palm last night at SPT. Just an amazing event. Juliana is always an incredibly inspiring writer and performer, and I was jaw-dropped in admiration for her piece about Chilicothee, Ohio. And I was really pleased to see Kristin Palm again (she appeared in the second issue of There). I was also pleased to see her project, The Straits, was finally out in print. I'm looking forward to delving into it.

After the readings, David Buuck interviewed Kristin and Juliana about their work, the "documentary poetry" that they do, the "writing about place." As another "place-writer" and editor of a journal about place (OK, so There is a little bit on hiatus at the moment), I was very interested in how they saw the project they were working on. One thing I was suspicious about, though, was Buuck's continued reference to "found poetry" with regard to their work. And I don't think that's quite an accurate description of what either artist is doing. That points in a "Flarf"-ian direction and both Juliana and Kristin seemed to want to distance themselves from Flarf. If anything, it is research-based, fact-finding poetry, but the language itself seems more "authored" than "found," even when the language is borrowed or appropriated from other sources.

Kristin and Juliana were also asked why they are doing this work in poetry, and not memoir or non-fiction or essays or the like. I'm not sure why it is that they are writing the psycho-geographic (lovely word!), as they seemed to sidestep the question, but I think the answer for me is -- I don't know any other way to write. Valley/Ridge is poetry because poetry is what I write.