Poets need feedback. All of the feedback we received for our performances and readings was received by our audience in the form of applause and an occasional comment or two. Sometimes people would write to us. I had a few letters and notes from people through the mail appreciating my poetry, and one notable complaint. One person took umbrage about one of the poems I read, called Vegetarian. She herself, she informed me, was a vegetarian, and then proceeded to berate me for the words I had written. I think if the Vegans had landed on the planet by then, she might well have claimed to be one. She was adamant and militant about her vegetarianism.
In writing, I replied that she might have misunderstood my poetry. I was not sniping against vegetarians, but rather praising their stance, and bemoaning my lack of discipline in my own dietary practices. She replied by return of post, a huge diatribe including several printed sheets of documents that claimed the health benefits of vegetarianism. She had missed the point. Completely. This went on for a few weeks. Back and forth. Her final mail to me was a small package rather than a letter. Must have cost her a fortune to send it through the mail. At this point, I politely wrote back thanking her for her concerns, and wishing her well. This exchange took place over a couple of months. It served to inform me that some people, passionate or not about their beliefs, can sometimes be seriously wrong, but will go to any length to try to prove their point.
Today of course, in the age of Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms, anyone can voice their views to anyone else, and regardless of all the drivel, vicious trolling and vacuous spam we receive, there is the power of immediacy. There is nothing quite like live poetry. During my time performing (and I hope I can resurrect that time) I had the pleasure to meet many talented individuals including luminaries such as Stewart Henderson, Steve Turner and the late great Larry Norman - all of whom I consider to be excellent poets leading lights in the poetry world.
But I spend most of my time now online, either reading live or responding to discussions and comments on Facebook poetry groups such as Pure Poetry and two of my own groups Invisible Poets and Wheelsong Poetry Group. (Join us if you wish.) Some of the content posted is astoundingly good in quality, and I of course join in, sharing my own compositions. The beauty of these groups is that you can gain almost instant feedback on your work. It's often complementary, with an occasional comment about how it can be improved or extended. What would have taken days or even weeks back in the 80s and 90s now takes seconds, and can also be immediate through live chat and messenger systems. Oh how the world of performance poetry has changed!
Steve Wheeler, Plymouth, England
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ReplyDeleteDo you not feel you loose intamicy with social media
ReplyDeleteHi Geoff. Intimacy is not the same as immediacy. But if we are talking about intimacy, then there is evidence that social media can bring people together to share and create connections that lead to friendship across the globe. The idea of social presence can be allied to immediacy (the theme of this blog post) and this was a characteristic of social media use that I studied for my thesis that was published in 2004. My key finding was that any technology (including phone, email, video and social media) can amplify psychological distance just as it can reduce it - it all depends on the intentions of the users. So a conclusion would be that social media is a neutral medium.
DeleteGreat discussion. I guess my point (not well made) the immediacy of socal media spoils the intamicy. I would argue the easy "like" can and is misconstrued. While comments, as you pointed out, have a positive influence. Wonderful discussion. Thank you for this
ReplyDeleteHere's an extract from a paper I published in 2005 called 'Creating Social Presence' which may elucidate some of my above comments:
ReplyDeleteShort et al supposed that social presence represents the perception that one is communicating with people rather than with inanimate objects. This is despite being located in different places where all communication is digitally mediated. The ability of people to work together effectively in groups is central to social presence theory, so the model is of great interest to distance educators (Stein &
Wanstreet, 2003) and provides a pertinent theoretical focus for this study. According to Short et al, when social presence is low, group members feel disconnected and group dynamics suffer. Conversely, when social presence is high, members should feel more engaged and involved in group processes. Whilst the direction of causality may be questionable, Short et al’s explanation is nevertheless a useful one. They see social presence as the ability of individuals to collaborate effectively through technology, even when they are located in different locations and time frames (Sarbaugh-Thompson & Feldman, 1998). It is a form of ‘absent presence’ – an illusion created by the human mind’s ability to manufacture feelings of connection and interaction, even when separated by distance. This is achieved through the hearing of vocal inflections, paraverbal utterances and ambient sounds (in audio communication such as telephone
conferencing), and via textual cues and non-verbal devices such as emoticons and images (in text based communication such as e-mail).
I hope this helps to illuminate some of the finer nuances of our discussion. You can locate the full paper here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steve-Wheeler/publication/240698859_Creating_Social_Presence_in_Digital_Learning_Environments_A_Presence_of_Mind/links/55413fdb0cf2718618dc9d69/Creating-Social-Presence-in-Digital-Learning-Environments-A-Presence-of-Mind.pdf
Sir, excellent points well made. Certainly, my own experience of creating, administrating and being part of systems that bring together common goals within an organization or group of like-minded people give testimony to your thesis. Although not the main point of your blog what came to mind was the seemingly by product of such social environments. In my experience the churn of users within a particular environment leads to the eventual collapse of such systems. The ability of such systems to provide immediate responses predicates on the ability of such systems to make it convent and easy for the users of that system to provide responses. Over time, in my experience, this easy response becomes devalued. Once the environment fails to give credible responses then users of the system move away. The experience you outlined in your blog brought to question what keeps that poet standing on that pile of timber? Yes, it is the immediate response. However, I think it goes much deeper than that. That connection, the intimacy of the situation. Can social media provide that? I would say that the real question is does the effort outweigh the reward?
ReplyDeleteOnce again thank you for this fascinating and thought provoking discussion