Reflection

My English work has been a developing journey into relationships between art, poetry, and post-modernism. It has allowed me to produce an inquiry into artistic/poetic concepts, genres, and philosophies. My poetry transcends the rational and sensible worlds, entering into subconscious realms and absurd spheres of creative thought. I have sustained an exploration into the relationships between poetic language and the image, investigating numerous radical theories in literature and art. Movements and eras such as expressionism, renaissance, absurdism, data, and surrealism have been intermixed with post-modernism ideology to create hybrid poetry that lapses in and out of styles appropriate to my meanings.

I have examined and blurred genres, surpassing boundaries and mixing styles that are considered to be historically distinct. My collaboration, overlapping and blatant recycling of ideas were used to pursue and exemplify the image. My work is a pastiche of influences devoted to creating exuberant poetry, flamboyant in style and meaning. I have divorced myself from trends and expectation. The immediate sensations evoked by the image are central to my work.

I explored the ideas of poetry and art merging, both becoming a single expressive entity artistically unified by the importance and common dependency of the image. I have attempted to create a synthesis of poetry and art, reconciling the two be delineating a common artistic essence. My work embodies an inquiry into when poetry ceases to exist as poetry and becomes changed in the realm of art vice versa. My work voices claims against the universal notion of art. Through poetry, I am seeking to establish some order or connection through irregularity and the disorder that accompanies post-modernism. My work explores changing attitudes about how the world functions and how humans as creative beings response to it. My questions in a sense, are presented and resolved within my poems. Post-modernism allows me the freedom of shifting and alternating between consciousness and sensation, between the fine lines of delineated fields of thought.

The modern American poet ee cummings, is the quintessential modern protagonist that fuels my investigation. His influence has been constant and suggests continuity in my work. A prolific and revolutionary painter as well as poet, he referred to art and writing as his "twin obsessions", his fascination for poetry and art somewhat parallel my investigation. It was the inventiveness and unconventional genius of this artist that lured me to research his work. cummings derives technical organization from painting and colour theories, he delves into the qualities of colour, form and feeling which are of interest in my work. I have borrowed cumming's poetic technique and adopted his emphasis on words as units. I have rejected formal poetic conventions ie. Versification, punctuation, language and structure is in exile. There is no syntactical coherence through my work. I have overridden custom and formalism is violated in order to echo my reaction against convention. Modes of artistic organization to ensure that family does not interfere with my attempt to exalt the image. I am not a prisoner to tradition but rather have accessed higher realms of consciousness through literary treason. The cryptic and ambiguous nature of his work and the intensity he renders through manipulating the image, inspired me to be intrepid in my own approach to poetry. I explored avenues of research at my artistic whims and any vein of interest that my creative intuition and inclinations signaled.

My page arrangements lean towards eccentricity, introducing aesthetic qualities to enhance the image. My poetry is unconventional in the formal poetic structures that I rejected. By breaching conventional rules, poems become a visual experience in a literal sense as well as psychologically visual through figurative language language. The visual experience is heightened and exists on multiple levels. The poem becomes visual in form and content. I have grappled with the perimeters of poetic expectation and have explicitly criticized the restrictive parameters of conventional poetry. My language is at times, as absurd as the human condition, it would seem hypocritical to write in a style that disclaims my protest.

My work is creative, investigative but also a reaction to the conventions that dictate what audiences perceive to constitute poetry. My work is unconventional in my combination of mediums. I have collaborated and used the visual and written language to enhance one another. The weaving of mediums blends and marries artistic divisions. It is through combining the poetic word with the visual image that we can gain admittance to systems of expression in common artistic harmony. Language and image emerge from abstraction in combination and synchrony. Ideas melt into one another in a concoction of imagery and philosophy, I have tried to make art and poetry indistinguishable.

Art and poetry have different merits and capacities that are complementary and indicative of the image. I integrated aesthetic principals into my poetry and found that the process of painting is strikingly similar to writing poetry. It seems as though I was painting images with a palette of words, the vocabulary is pliable and connotative allowing me to create shades of meaning and image verbally. Words stretch around forms and coinages that I try to describe, transmuting the image in an artistic metamorphose. Similarly, paint is sculpted by the brush to communicate the impression in my mind. An image can be immediate, subtle, fleeting or as severe as my words allow. I can pluck words like candidates to adorn my ideas and sensations. I consider poetry to be a more explicit vessel of expression and the liberties of language are perhaps greater than that of aesthetics, yet, the visual language is more equivocal and polysemous. Art is more dependent on explanation but communicates abruptly and instantly. Together, these mediums work to heighten and render the image with a more precise and evocative clarity, blending art and poetry makes the image more receivable.

I have exploited the autonomy that accompanies post-modernism, utilizing it to introduce and consequently criticize ideas of absolute knowledge and truth. This aspect of post-modernism and my candid perhaps irreverent treatment of sacred genres and styles, is important in my work. Criticizing absolute claims and sacred icons, permits me to introduce the idea of divisions between high and popular culture - this is essential to post-modernism and hence my work. Art has been converted, deconstructed, and made a shrine in popular culture where all all artistic respectability and dignity has been eroded and plundered by post-modernism. Using universal images such as Mona Lisa and Venus, I can manipulate and challenge ideas of what poetry is. My work referring to Andy Warhol( Pop artist) illustrates this idea and he epitomizes my criticism. I have used his identity of an artist, as a weapon to fight against post-moderism but also to use it. I have subverted Warhols criticism to further comment on the diminishing distinctiveness of art. Poetry enables me to address these ideas of what poetry is. Icons such as Mona Lisa and Venus, also allow me to experiment with symbols and the idea of art/literature becoming commodities. In some of my poems I have borrowed famous quotes from Shakespeare in order to deconstruct and intermix high culture literature inside the canonical perception with popular meaning. This idea stemmed from the original idea of Shakespeare's plays being intended for popular theatre. I have tried to return high culture to popular audiences and borrow only Shakespeare's notoriety and status for the purposes of my criticism. Post-modenism allows me to amplify my dissatisfactions and incredulity, post-modernism nurtures human anxieties.

How post-modernism yokes poetry and art together is the primary motivation and curiosity fueling my work. Post-modernism allows me to question poetic certainties. Post-moderism is so elusive, as under defined as it is over defined but it is firm at the creative core of my work. Post-modernism was integrated into my work because it is linked to my interest radical thought and universal language systems, encompassing ideas of semantics and semiotics. Post- modernism has licensed me to straddle many diverse genres. I appropriated ideas, assimilating them into new contexts and extending and reconfiguring these contexts. I borrowed not only images but ideologies from different epochs. I reinterpreted the surroundings that sacred images appear in. I attempted to present images paradoxically in juxtapositions. Through post-modenrism, representation and reality are intertwined in an inextricable embrace. My poetry reconciles many veins of interest to create a mosaic of symbolism and meaning, each poem reflects stages of my investigation.

The surrealist and abstract expressionist movements had a profound impact on my work also. They instigated my preoccupation with automatism and techniques such as free verse stream of consciousness which allow the image to be caught in the immediacy and spontaneity of thought and creation. Images do not become stale but rather are amplified with the fresh randomness to be found in these techniques. Many of my poems have been executed without premeditated composition, this allows for a greater access to richer and more intuitive poetry. Psychoanalysis and Freudian research has been collaborated with ideas of automatism to render more nightmarish and hallucinatory imagery. Exploring dream sensations and lapsing in and out of consciousness are all linked to my experimenting with artistic control.

My poetry has also entered into the personal domain as I have written subjectively about personal experiences and ideas that are important in my life. These poems have been intertwined with my research ideas ie. My interest in absurdism "The Theatre Of Absurd". These poems celebrate my freedom in moving in and out of different moods, phases and themes. It is inevitable that my personal experiences become the focus of my artistic energies. These poems trace my emotional states of being and establish relationships between my existence, experiences and consciousness

Because post-modernism was born from a desire to accommodate technical innovation, it is appropriate that I utilize technological conveniences to reinforce my post-modern content through post-modern media. Any other form of presentation would contradict me devotion to post-modernity. The Internet is a testimony to my enthusiasm for post-modernism. Technology allowed me to incorporate visual enhancements which magnify my ideas and help to communicate the interrelationships between poetry and art. Whilst my work is an examination of post-modernism it is also a celebration of it and consequently a celebration of new media. Technology gives me the opportunity to exhibit my work literally with a world wide audience, in a sense, making my poetry more impersonal, more exposed and this is congruent with post-modernist philosophy. With post-modernism, art has transcend its assumed environment, the galley, and so too has poetry transcend its supposed environment, the confines of the page. The Internet allows me to annote my work, supplying an introductory philosophy, and also to communicate with my audiences through e-mail feedback. Web audiences can access and comment on my work with which makes it infinitely developmental, in perpetual progress. The Internet also allows me to explain, elaborate and reflect on my work, it guides my audiences through the maze of poetry and themes. My work has been a journey through technology as much as through poetry. I found a new appreciation for modern technology and the acquisition of new computer skills. My web page is designed for any person who has the an interest in poetry, art and post-modernism, any body who has the creative interest to trace me exploration of ideas and interrelationships.

In conclusion, I have gained many valuable skills in composing and researching poetry. Initially, my ideas were vague, I was hesitant to launch an investigation in fear of being swallowed by the black hollow of post modern mystery. I have utilized and harnessed my interests and passions, channeling them in post modern direction. My ideas have matured throughout this process and I have acquired a more sophisticated understanding of literature and the philosophic structures that shape my thinking. I found a great freedom in my protest and an independence that became the very vehicle for exploration. My poetic skills have been refined and I have gained much insight into the conventions of poetry. I enjoyed researching artists and poets and through acquainting myself with their work, I have come to grater understanding of movements they advocated. However, the most exciting aspect of of my research was being free to explore the scope of post-modernism. I have come to realize that post-modernism it is fundamental to understanding my culture and how I read my culture whether through art or literature. Poetry is freedom and a powerful assertion of human imagination. The image is an extension of feelings. Poetry and art are foremost a condition of the soul, everything out side the image is subservient. My work has been an excursion into the complexity of the image and postmodernism, a revision of the evolution of the image in literature and art. I consider that the evocation of the image and heightening/embellishing its sensorial experience should be preserved at all costs. I only hope that my audiences will enjoy my website as much as I have enjoyed creating it!


Please Note: Some poems contain spelling errors, however all are intentional.