I have thoughts and opinions most days about visual poetry in general and infusoria in particular. I have a blog post from last week in which I say everything I want to say about my own work. I even distinctly remember writing a Masters thesis all about visual poetry. So did I tell the nice television lady any of that? Did I fandango. I read the back of my green box poem and paraphrased that, putty-brains.
In our defence, the television station first called Jelle to arrange things about an hour in advance. It wasn't some spectacular feat of organisation and publicity on our part; none of us had any idea it was going to happen. If I had had a little more presence of mind, I would have asked to talk about the organisation of the exhibition itself, which interests me, rather than about my work, which basically doesn't.
And one of the things I might have said - not that it would really make sense in a three-minute spot - is how excited I am about the possibilities of new media for semi-underground or otherwise low profile art forms. I need to blog about it in more detail when I have time to gather my thoughts, but clearly Facebook and blog providers have changed everything. The people who are interested in what Krikri does are never, never going to be all in the same country - or even the same continent - at the same time. But there are so many possibilities for community.
I am reminded of Carlfriedrich Claus, a visual poet who lived in East Germany all through the Cold War. He corresponded fairly intensively with poets in the West and published regularly in Belgium and elsewhere despite the Iron Curtain. (Possibly because his poems are huge tangles of illegible handwriting. The censors must have gone home weeping.)
If he can do that, we can do anything.
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