2019.selfie (2019)
Marjorie Perloff’s 1987 essay ‘Can(n)on to the Right of Us, Can(n)on to the Left of Us: A Plea for Difference’, considers the proposition that ‘no definition of the lyric poem can, in short, be wholly transhistorical’, implying that the historic trajectory of lyric poetry has been in a state of flux since its inception.[1]Though the lyric is frequently set up as a tradition of poetic writing, reaching as far back as Ancient Greece, the lyric mode itself is difficult to pin down, with writers such as Claudia Rankine and Eileen Myles offering new contemporary modes of lyric writing, challenging who can articulate a lyric-self. Within more recent criticism, Perloff calls for a ‘renewal of the lyric’, proposing a 21stcentury reconsideration of what it means to write a lyric poem. I have taken this as a call to action, and through the creation of 2019.selfie, have explored what it means to propose a lyric for the temporal moment of 2019.
Gillian White frames the contemporary lyric as a form which evokes shame in both the poet and reader, attributing this affect of 21stcentury lyricism to its status as a public utterance of the personal.[2]Parallels can be drawn between White’s lyric shame and the emerging concept of digital ‘oversharing’ on social media platforms.[3]The overshare constitutes a similar utterance (tweet, status, or post) of the overtly-personal, usually unsolicited, on a far-reaching public digital platform. I propose the digital platform of Instagram as a site for a 21stcentury lyric, wherein I tread the line between lyric shame and digital shame. I experiment with the flippancy of language and meme-culture native to social media, navigating a journey through forms of personal political expression deemed acceptable and non-acceptable by the online community. For instance, whilst the main body of ‘mrs may won’t let the british people down…’ discusses the first in a series of 2019 parliamentary defeats for the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, the gravity of this political moment is weighed against the fleeting significance of the ‘walmart-yodel-boy’, who became trend in international internet culture.[4]In turn, this reference is positioned in conjunction with a quotation from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, ‘out, damned spot! out’, shifting the focus of the poem from pillar to pillar of literary, digital, and political moments.[5]
2019.selfieis framed as a public profile which the reader can follow and interact with, through the digital actions of ‘commenting’, ‘liking’, and ‘sharing’. As a platform specifically designed for mobile phone use, the majority of readers will access the project through the intimate space of their smartphone. The in-app layout helps to muddy the boundary between social media profile and poetic experimentation, algorithmically dispersing the poetry amongst authentic posts made by Instagram users. Tagged by a range of found hashtags, the pieces intercept a broad number of image feeds, regularly jarring with the surrounding context. For instance, ‘screen snap shot shoot…’interrupts content pertaining to ‘#proudrepublicantroll’, as demonstrated by fig 1.
Consequently, users intending to access a series of pro-republican, pro-trolling images will instead be redirected to 2019.selfie, as will those whore are interested in ‘#supermodel’, ‘#goodvibes’, ‘#like4like’, ‘#disneypintrading’, ‘#goat’ and so on. Here, I explore the potential for ‘poetic embarrassment’ or shame when writing pertaining to the personal is seemingly misplaced within a public, digital space.[6]
Equally Maggie Nelson experiences what I would describe as a digital lyric shame when considering ambien-induced blog posts by poet, Jackie Wang. Nelson expresses, ‘it was an act of grace that I got sober before I got wireless’, anxiously recognising that the instancy and permanence of a digital footprint constitutes a presentation of the self which isn’t mediated and cannot be retracted.[7]Nelson positions Facebook as a ‘stage’, drawing connections between social media and performance art.[8]Therefore, moving between text and video-content, 2019.selfieintends to consider presentations of the self in both lyric poetry and on social media as performative. Carefully mediated photographs make up the body of conventional Instagram feeds, with features integrated into the posting process which ensure each image pertains to the rule of thirds. Structurally, my poems resist the criterion of Instagram content, stretching down the page or positioned within a single corner of the page. Equally, the videos which accompany each poem follow the trace of the hand after a stereotypical Instagram photograph has been taken. Like Ann Hamilton’s ‘my love’ (2003), a video piece documenting the trace of the hand as it calligraphically spells out the sentiment ‘my love is increasing’ on animal skin, the romantic subject matter of the videos (natural landscapes and the City of London) is at odds with the grotesque.
[1]Marjorie Perloff ‘Can(n)on to the Right of Us, Can(n)on to the Left of Us: A Plea for Difference’, The Lyric Theory Reader: A Critical Anthology, ed. Virginia Jackson and Yopie Prins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014).
[2]Gillian White, Lyric Shame: The “Lyric” Subject of Contemporary American Poetry(Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014).
[3]"overshare, v." Cambridge Dictionary Online, Cambridge University Press [accessed: 7 April 2019].
[4]‘walmart-yodel-boy’ refers to a viral video of 12-year-old Mason Ramsey, singing in an American supermarket.
[5]William Shakespeare, Macbeth(London: Penguin, 2015) act 5. Scene 1.
[6]Gillian White, Lyric Shame: The “Lyric” Subject of Contemporary American Poetry(Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014) p. 26.
[7]Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts (London: Melville House, 2015) p. 76.
[8]Ibid. p. 75.