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Streaming verse : Looking into the mirror
Middleton, Kate
Middleton, Kate
Author
Abstract
In this article, I investigate the way multiple contemporary poets incorporate the medium of television and its many genres into their poems. I take as a starting point the continuing centrality of television in the way contemporary culture seeks to both represent and understand itself and examine the way that poetry takes on the challenge of addressing this ubiquitous medium. By incorporating and responding to mass media, the poetry of television is likewise seeking to understand contemporary culture and the poet’s place within it. In examining texts by Susan Stewart, Anne Carson, Claudia Rankine and Bianca Stone, I consider the appearance of television as both mythologising force and, in the age of 24-hour news and live streaming, ambient noise, while examining the ways that these poets move between description, critical observation and interpretation, and active mimesis. In the slippage between these approaches, we see the poets undertaking the act of ‘audiencing’ (Turnbull, 2020, p. 13), shifting between passive and active modes of engagement.
Keywords
poetry, contemporary television, audience
Date
2021
Type
Journal article
Journal
TEXT
Book
Volume
25
Issue
64
Page Range
1-16
Article Number
ACU Department
School of Arts and Humanities
Faculty of Education and Arts
Faculty of Education and Arts
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Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
License
All rights reserved
File Access
Controlled