124 contemporary poetry
might exert’ (p. 86 ). Fagan details the timing and enunciation of
linguistic performance as ‘brushing one syllable’ up towards the
lip, ‘spilling’ to gather more details ‘revisited’ (p. 86 ). In ‘The
Grain of the Voice’ Barthes makes the distinction of the grain as
a physical manifestation, the grain ‘is in the throat, place where
the phonic metal hardens and is segmented, in the mask that
signifi cance explodes, bringing not the soul but jouissance’.^56 The
emphasis on the ‘grain’ forces us to reconsider how one applies
the analogy of music to poetry; as an element of resistance in the
recital, the grain raises a challenge to the idealisation of closure and
perfection. Equally we can read this physical gesture of linguistic
performance in Fagan’s poetry as a ‘horizon of intimate syllables’
(p. 88 ). This appreciation of linguistic and sonic density becomes
in ‘Sentience’ a ‘horizon of intimate syllables’, each word in effect
as ‘certain as teeth in eating space over and over’ (p. 88 ).
CONCLUSION: PERFORMANCE WRITING AND
EXPERIMENT – CAROLINE BERGVALL
In the past two decades there has been a steady expansion in the
range of intradisciplinary writing which interrogates and addresses
conceptualisations of performance. This is loosely referred to
as ‘performance writing’. Ric Allsopp suggests that the fi eld of
performance writing can be defi ned in its widest sense as ‘the
investigation of the performance of language’.^57 He proposes that
‘performance writing’ acknowledges that textual events are pro-
duced ‘not only through a syntactical and semantic exploration
of language but also through the impact of its material treat-
ments’ (p. 78 ). Read in this light, performance writing challenges
our conceptions of the purely literary by emphasising multiplic-
ity and interdisciplinarity. Allsopp comments that performance
writing highlights ‘the great diversity of artistic and writerly
practices... which rely on the use of text and textual elements’
(p. 78 ). He suggests that these may include elements of theatre,
poetry, installation art, animation, soundworks and electronic
art.
Caroline Bergvall’s poetic practice may also be referred to as