fight path

“Writers of the world arise! It’s time to throw off the shackles of traditional publishing contracts and face a brand new digital future with a brand new set of priorities.” So starts an article on the Guardian ‘Comment Is Free’ blogs by Kate Pullinger, writer of fictions in media old and new. Kate argues forcefully that authors are in danger of being short changed by publishers as they rush to secure digital rights before anyone susses how different the dissemination of a digital text is to publishing the printed word.

2 thoughts on “fight path”

  1. dan visel

    It’s tempting to couple this with Ron Silliman’s recent meditation on the place of poetry in and outside of the blogosphere original post here, more discussion here). Silliman (who’s inescapable in the online American poetry landscape) implies that poetry in the print world is increasingly untenable, for reasons as much economic as any other, and that uncoupling poetry from the economic model of print publishing (such as it is) can only be a good thing for poetics. The meat of his argument:

    I can’t say that I’ve met any younger poets who consciously disengage from poetry’s existence on the net, tho I suspect some must exist. We are moving, faster than I think any of us (or me anyway) are conscious of, toward a day on which poetry is something that exists primarily on the web, having made the migration away from print & bookstores to a degree that right now seems unfathomable. Those older poets who currently refuse to publish on the web – they do exist – will discover soon enough that they have painted themselves into the proverbial corner. Far from being a “debased” terrain where works commingle without being presorted by “value,” the web simply is becoming the commons for such work.

    I have been fortunate, especially being an old paradigm guy, to have had some success with this new medium. I don’t think what I’m doing here is in any way unique. I think I’m more consistent & dogged, and that I’ve thought through my positions whether or not anyone agrees with them. When people who do generally disagree with me sit around and argue over a concept I first threw out here – like post-avant or school of quietude – I have to admit feeling pleased. Even rejecting one of these ideas, if done thoughtfully, furthers the discourse, and that is the point really.

    Silliman’s position is different from Pullinger’s – he’s operating from the assumption that poetry never makes money, which is certainly true. The web works for poetry because it doesn’t inherently impose an economic model.

  2. bowerbird

    spelled-out-words — whether on a page
    or on the web — have been left behind
    by all the smart poets a long time ago,
    as we moved to the performance arena…
    people thirst for the excitement of live.
    -bowerbird

Comments are closed.