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Comment by 陳老頭 on Thursday

詭異的Drift或Duree:文案本質是詩

從具體的廣告環境中，把文案抽離出來進行閱讀，這些文案仿佛具有了獨立的生命，因而提供了一種觀察廣告文案的新角度。

如果把廣告活動看做一種儀式的話，那麽，在這個儀式中，一個非常關鍵的因素就是廣告文案。廣告文案就像某種神秘的咒語。在很多宗教儀式中，咒語被認為具有神奇的力量，輕念咒語，人與宇宙萬物間溝通的開關一下子就打開了。好的廣告文案也是如此，一句看似不經意的廣告語，對消費者而言，仿佛是撬動心靈之門的按鍵。消費者被真實所觸動，然後領會、感悟，最終參與到消費的過程中。對於廣告活動而言，好的廣告文案，是靈魂，是活力之源，具有咒語一樣的魔力，它會觸發廣告效果的能量場，創造品牌與消費者的溝通。

咒語雖然是一種語言形式，但這種形式必然有不同於日常語言的特質。咒語是不可知的世界與可知的世界之間的橋梁，所以它必須創造一種表達方式，在其中必然有不可解的要素。這正是咒語的魅力和魔力所在。廣告文案也是對語言的一種重新發現和定義， 它把商品同消費者關係中不可知的層面通過語言表達出來，像咒語一樣激發消費者，形成對商品的感應。因而，廣告文案的語言表達必然具有某些反日常語言的特性，只有對語言的陌生化，才能讓語言本身的力量充分顯現。

在可知與不可知之間來去自如，所以，創作出一流文案的人必定是通靈者。他（她）雖然生活在常人中間，但就像遊弋在世間的貓一樣。貓的目光經常穿透了物質之墻，由於看到了前世、來世，以及其他豐富的跡象，它的眼神當然是飄移而詭異的。我看到許多優秀的文案創作者都具有貓一樣的神態與特質。無論他們呈現出怎樣的形態，或溫順、或威猛、或萎靡，無論他們是蜷伏，還是伸展，在特定的時刻，他們的眼中總是瞬間閃爍出迷離而決斷的光芒，就像貓在散漫的行走中突然警覺到未知形體的存在。

優秀的文案創作者，是社會的神經末梢。他（她）所表達的是自己的情感，但代表了不同群體最隱秘和最真實的內在需求和意識。他（她）對社會變遷所帶來的個體心理最細微的變化是如此敏感，以至於發出囈語一樣的呻吟，這種表達的結晶應該是詩，但同商業文化結合的時候，就成為了廣告文案。如南方朔先生所言，廣告文案是介於詩與非詩之間的。廣告文案用語言的形式凝聚和提煉了消費者的情感，並建立其同商品之間的精致鏈接，因而對消費者產生了引導和感染的力量。這是一種暈染，廣告文案賦予商品動人的意義和價值，吸引消費者關注和擁有商品。

(摘自：陳剛·序 李欣頻《誠品副作用》；本文作者為京大學新聞傳播學院副院長）

延續閱讀：文創叙事咒語

Comment by 陳老頭 on Monday

高阶创造力挑战机械人系列：“呼唤型造物”（Evocative Object）

以下三个成功的数字文化创意产品，在某种程度上体现了陈明发博士曾在爱垦網讨论过的“evocative object”概念，它们都融合了象征性、文化内涵和用户体验：

1. Google's AI-Powered Art Project (Magenta)

Google 的 Magenta 计划是个使用人工智能（AI）创作音乐、视觉艺术和其他形式作品的平台。该项目结合了先进的技术与创造力，允许用户通过简单的输入生成复杂的艺术作品。这种互动模式鼓励用户与技术共同创造，从而激发个人的创造力。

其特点是强调用户的参与和个性化创造过程，赋予用户艺术家的身份，让他们体验到创造的乐趣和成就感。

3. Sifteo Cubes

这是一套互动型玩具，结合了物理触控和数字交互。每个小立方体都具有独立的显示屏、传感器和互动功能，用户可以通过摇晃、移动或点击这些立方体来进行各种创意活动和游戏。

它通过物理和数字交互，增强了用户的沉浸感和参与度。这种设计不仅提供了娱乐功能，还鼓励用户通过互动来激发创造性思维。

3. LEGO Ideas

这平台允许用户提交自己的创意设计，并通过公众投票和评审来决定哪些设计将被实际生产。这个平台成功地将用户的创造力和集体智慧转化为实际的产品，体现了互动性和社区参与的重要性。

它通过集体创造力和参与式设计，成功地将用户的想象力和创意融入到品牌的产品线中，创造了高度个性化和象征性的玩具。

这些产品在各自的领域中成功地实现了用户的深度参与、创造力的激发和象征性表达，对开发“evocative objects”极有价值的参考。


在某种程度上，短视频服务领域的TikTok 和抖音符合“evocative object”（呼唤型造物）的理念，特别是在以下几个方面： 

1. 用户生成内容 (UGC)

创意表达平台: TikTok 和抖音都是用户生成内容（UGC）的平台，允许用户通过视频表达自己的创造力和个性。这种方式鼓励用户利用短视频形式表达自己的情感、想法和文化背景。这些平台为用户提供了创作和发布内容的工具和空间，使得每个用户的视频都可以看作是一种“evocative object”——即具有个人象征意义和文化表达的数字作品。

呼唤性和互动性: 用户可以通过评论、点赞、分享等方式与内容互动，甚至可以通过模仿、挑战等方式进行多次创作，这种互动性和内容的不断迭代和演变正是“evocative objects”理念中的互换性。

文化表达: TikTok 和抖音上的内容往往反映了用户所在的文化和社会背景，从舞蹈、音乐到语言和时尚，这些平台成为全球文化交流和创造力展现的场所。这种跨文化的内容创造和传播方式与“诗性思维”中的象征性和隐喻性有着共通之处。

社会意识: 虽然虚拟平台本身并不是专门为环保、ESG等社会议题设计的，但用户可以利用平台传播相关意识和可持续发展的理念。例如，用户可以通过创作内容来推广环保产品或倡导环保生活方式，这种内容本质上是一种具有生态意识的“evocative object”。

诗性叙事: 很多创作者通过短视频形式传达诗性内容，结合视觉、声音和节奏，营造出一种诗性氛围。这种表达方式与Vico的“诗性思维”紧密相连，展示了如何通过多种感官体验来触动和激发创造性思维。

短视频的情感共鸣: TikTok 和抖音的视频通常通过简短内容迅速引发观众的情感共鸣，这与“ecocative objects”设计中注重情感和审美体验的理念相符。视频中的音乐、视觉效果和情感表达能有效地触动观众的内心，形成强烈的情感链接。

TikTok 和抖音多方面都符合“evocative object”理念，尤其是在用户创造力的激发、文化表达和互动性方面。尽管它们是数字平台，而非物質产品，但它们成功地将用户体验、文化内涵和创造性互动结合在一起，成为当今数字时代的重要文化创意载体。

相关：

陈明发博士〈TikTok年代：刷亮华团品牌路径图〉

Jeffrey M. O’Brien·TikTok经济时代

爱垦搜索

Comment by 陳老頭 on September 1, 2024 at 2:38pm

高阶创造力挑战机械人系列：“意念思维”（Noetic Thinking）

近年来，“意念思维”或“心智科学”（Noetic Science）领域取得了一些显着的发展，特别是在对意识本质和其与物质世界的互动方面的探索上。

首先，有几项引人注目的研究获得了Linda G. O’Bryant意念科学研究奖。

这些研究涉及意识的非传统理解，例如“超眼视觉”（EOV，‘extra-ocular vision’
），即无需物理眼睛的视力，以及探索“意识代理”如何与亚原子世界交互的数学模型。这些研究试图挑战传统的科学观念，提出意识可能不仅仅是大脑活动的产物，而是一个更加基础性的存在。

其次，研究还扩展到意识如何超越个体并影响集体或宇宙级别的现象，例如通过“有组织的随机事件生成器”（OREGs，Organized Random Event Generators ）检测到的非本地同步性现象，这些现象暗示着意识可能在物理世界之外发挥作用。

此外，意念科学研究所（IONS，the Institute of Noetic Sciences）在提升人类潜能、心灵与物质互动以及集体意识等方面的研究也取得了显着进展。他们的研究目标是通过更深入地理解意识的本质，寻求解决长期存在的人类问题的新方法。

这些发展表明，“意念思维”正逐渐从边缘领域走向主流，并对传统科学和社会观念产生潜在的深远影响。

它是受承认的正规科学吗？

“意念思维”或“心智科学”（Noetic Science）虽然在某些学术圈子和机构中得到重视和研究，但在主流科学界中，它仍然不被广泛承认为正规科学。主要是因为意念科学涉及的很多领域，比如意识的非物质本质、心灵与物质的互动、超感知能力等，常常难以通过传统的科学方法进行验证。

主流科学通常依赖可重复的实验和严格的验证标准，而意念科学的许多研究则基于主观体验和难以量化的现象。这些研究往往涉及意识、直觉、超感知等领域，通常被认为是科学不可测试或难以验证的。

尽管如此，意念科学领域的研究者们正在努力通过更加严格的实验设计和跨学科的合作，试图将这些非传统的研究纳入更广泛的科学讨论中。例如，意念科学研究所就尝试通过实验来验证意识对物质世界的影响，这些努力旨在建立更加严谨的科学基础。

“意念思维”在主流科学中虽并未获得广泛承认，但它作为一个探索意识和人类潜能的领域，正在吸引越来越多的关注和研究兴趣。（爱垦网综合整理，仅供内部参考，敬请谨慎采用）

Comment by 陳老頭 on August 19, 2024 at 9:34am

[沉眠中轟然驚蟄]

我們的女士 / 身懷 / 痛楚 /身負十字架背負之苦 / 身懷痛楚，一再痛楚 / 宛若巨石上的疤痕般深刻 / 榔頭將她撬出粗岩之古老 / 睡夢 / 所啜泣之星辰四處雕琢 / 啜泣 / 刻印於石上之痛楚 / 他身負之痛楚 / 她背負過的痛楚 她聽見脆弱之形體崩裂 / 心知 /他 / 將一去不返 / 萬物靜止 / 不顧停留的微物 / 我們質問 / 沉重呼吸 一聲兩聲三聲 / 隨後暫停 / 永遠停歇 ——  引自第364頁

年輕女孩都很愁苦。她們喜歡自己悲愁。這會讓她們覺得自己很堅強。 —— 引自第68頁

她訴說她的愛，在半醒半睡之間 / 黑暗的時刻 / 欲語還休，低聲細訴 / 大地在她冬夜的沉眠中轟然驚蟄 / 綠草與花朵瞬間綻開 / 無視皚皚白雪 / 無視翩翩飛臨的皚皚白雪 —— 引自第14頁

徹日落雪 / 雪落徹夜 / 靜沉我窗 / 積雪白潔 /  有隻小家伙 / 羽翼豐滿 / 明亮斑斕—/ 外展雪般純淨容顏 / 明亮神采欣然成歡 / 傾心敘言 / 喜悅綿綿 ——克里斯塔貝爾·蘭蒙特 — 引自第72頁

（摘自从（Possession），作者: [英] A·S·拜雅特；出版社: 南海出版公司；出品方: 新經典文化；譯者: 於冬梅 / 宋瑛堂；出版年: 2008-5）

Comment by 陳老頭 on July 30, 2024 at 7:16am

Towards Topopoetics: Space, Place and the Poem by Tim Cresswell

Abstract: This essay focuses on the theme of poetry and place – a project I have called Topopoetics. It introduces the idea of topopoetics drawing on the work of Aristotle, Heidegger and more recent philosophies of place, dwelling and poetics.

The point is not to cover the familiar ground of ‘sense-of-place’ in poetry but rather to explore how the poem is a kind of place and the way in which poems create space and place through their very presence on the page, through the interactions of full space and blank space, stasis and flux, and inside and outside.

What can poetry tell us about space and place? Conversely, what can thinking about space and place tell us about poetry? These are the questions that motivate this essay. My aim is to both answer them and to reveal how spatial and platial thinking can inform forms of interpretation beyond the interpretation of space and place in the geographical world.

I develop a topopoetics – a project that sees poems as places and spaces. The distinction between space and place that is most often made is one in which space is seen as limitless, empty, divisible and subject to mathematical forms of understanding while place is seen as bounded, full, unique and subject to forms of interpretive understanding.

Place has been most frequently described as a meaning ful segment of space – as mere ‘location’ in space overlaid with things such as meaning, subjectivity, emotion and affect (Tuan 1977; Buttimer and Seamon 1980; Relph 1976; Cresswell 2014).

The definitions of space have become more sophisti cated thanks to interventions from critical theory and philosophy which have taken space out of the realm of the abstract and absolute in an attempt to reveal the work ings of space in the production of society (Soja 1989; Lefebvre 1991; Massey 2005).

At the same time work on place has added layers of power on the one hand (Cresswell 1996; Massey 1997) and a deeper philosophical role in human existence on the other (Casey 1998; Malpas 1999). There is not space here to rehearse all of the twists and turns in these debates. One aspect that is worth lingering on is the ques tion of which comes first, space or place? (Con't)

Comment by 陳老頭 on July 27, 2024 at 10:06am

It has become commonplace to see place as arising from space. In this sense space comes ‘first’. If space is an undifferentiated field – an abstract categorical axis of existence in the Kantian sense, then place has to occur in space. Places here are spatial moments, or points in space on which experience and meaning are layered.

Place comes after space. Space is a fundamental fact of the reality of the universe while place is what humans make out of it. The philosopher Jeff Malpas sees this as a relegation of place to the increasing importance of space in thought following the Renaissance: “The ‘rise’ of space is thus accompanied, one might say, by the ‘decline’ of place.

Indeed, in much contemporary thought, place often appears either as subjective overlay on the reality of materialized spatiality (place is space plus human value of ‘meaning’ …) or else as merely an arbitrary designated posi tion in a spatial field” (Malpas n.d.).

This way of thinking is turned on its head by philosophers of the phenomeno logical tradition following Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty who see spaces being formed out of the reality of place.

Place, here, becomes fundamental and primary while space is what follows once places come into existence as a kind of relation between places. In The Phenomenology of Perception Maurice Merleau-Ponty locates consciousness and intentionality not in the head but in the body.

How does the body relate to space? The most obvious way of articulating this is to think of the body as located (like place) in space where space is an external and continuous field in which the body exists and which the body has to navigate.

This is a body in Cartesian space that exists as an object. Merleau-Ponty rejects this view and argues instead for a ‘body-subject’ that exists in lived space – space which unfolds through the existence of the body rather than providing a precondition for the body. The human body produces certain kinds of orientation such as inside and outside, up and down, front and back and left and right that continually produce space rather than simply inhabit it.

As Merleau-Ponty put it: We must therefore avoid saying that our body is in space, or in time. It inhabits space and time … In so far as I have a body through which I act in the world, space and time are not, for me, a collection of adjacent points nor are they a limitless number of relations synthesized by my consciousness, and into which it draws my body.

I am not in space and time, nor do I conceive space and time; I belong to them, my body combines with them and includes them (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 161). Merleau-Ponty, then, insists that the bodily space is primary to external Cartesian space. Bodies are not simply in an already existing space – rather space is produced by the body.

A similar logic is at work in Heidegger’s account of the work done by building a bridge over a river. The bridge swings over the stream “with ease and power.” It does not just connect banks that are already there. The banks emerge as banks only as the bridge crosses the stream. The bridge designedly causes them to lie across from each other. One side is set off against the other by the bridge. Nor do the banks stretch along the stream as indifferent border strips of the dry land.

Comment by 陳老頭 on July 23, 2024 at 7:47am

With the banks, the bridge brings to the stream the one and the other expanse of the landscape lying behind them. It brings stream and bank and land into each other’s neighborhood. The bridge gathers the earth as landscape around the stream (Heidegger 1971, 150).

Heidegger’s bridge brings a place and a surrounding landscape into being. In so doing, it also produces space. The bridge as a place does not just connect pre- existing spaces or operate within a pre-existing space – it brings space into being.

In this sense, place comes before space. This is a reversal of the more frequent suggestion that places exist in space and that space comes before place. Heidegger is clearly making a different argument from Merleau-Ponty.

Nevertheless, what unites the two passages is an insistence on the way spaces are brought into being in relation to platial bodies and structures as active agents. Place comes first. One final preliminary point about place before moving on to a discussion of topopoetics. One of the defining qualities of place, across disciplines, has been the way in which places bring things together.

They are seen as syncretic mixtures of elements of multiple domains. Different scholars use different terms to describe this fact. Philosophers following Heidegger write of places as sites of gathering (Casey 1996). The geographer Robert Sack uses the metaphor of a loom to describe places as products of the process of weaving (Sack 2003).

Writers informed by the philoso phy of Gilles Deleuze and Manual Delanda refer to this process as assemblage (DeLanda 2006; Dovey 2010). Things mingle in places and places are constantly being made through gathering/weaving/ assembling and constantly being pulled apart. Among the things that are gathered in place are objects (materialities), mean ings (narratives, stories, memories etc.) and practices.

Philosopher Edward Casey puts this as well as anyone. Minimally, places gather things in their midst– where ‘things’ connote various animate and inanimate entities. Places also gather experiences and histories, even languages and thoughts. Think only of what it means to go back to a place you know, finding it full of memories and expectations, old things and new things, the familiar and the strange, and much more besides. What else is capable of this massively diversified holding action? (Casey 1996, 24)

1 Towards topopoetics

In the remainder of this essay I mobilize some of what has preceded in relation to thinking about poetry. I argue for poems as places (as well as about places) that can be interpreted spatially. The term topopoetics originates from the term topos as developed by Malpas and Casey in their readings of Heidegger and others (Casey 1998; Malpas 2012b).

Topo comes from topos (τόπος), the Greek for ‘place’. This is combined with poetics, which comes from poiesis (ποίησις), the Ancient Greek term for ‘making’. Topopoetics is thus ‘place-making’. The particular lineage I am invoking for topos derives from the philosophy of Aristotle. Importantly, for our purposes, topos appears in both accounts of how the world comes into being and as a figure in rhetoric. In rhetoric a topos is a “particular argumentative form or pattern” from which particular arguments can be derived.1

It is very much like a form in poetry – a sonnet or a villanelle. It has a particular shape. This rhetorical view of topos is linked to the world through the art of memorizing long lists by locating things on a list in particular places. “For just as in the art of remembering, the mere mention of the places instantly makes us recall the things, so these will make us more apt at deductions through looking to these defined premises in order of enumeration.” 2

Comment by 陳老頭 on July 20, 2024 at 6:51am

In Aristotle’s rhetoric it is important to choose the right kind of topos for the argument at hand, just as it is important to select the right form for a particular poet. It draws our attention to the importance of (among other things) the shape on the page. The richer meaning of topos emerged more fully formed in the writing of Martin Heidegger and has recently been elaborated by the philosopher, Jeff Malpas (Heidegger 1971; Malpas 1999, 2012a).

Here topos is mobilized through the idea of the topological to indicate the primary nature of place for being. To put it bluntly, to be is to be in place – to be here/there. The connection between poetry and the idea of place as the site of being is right there at the outset as Heidegger’s insistence on being as being-in-place originated from an encounter with the poetry of Hölderlin (Malpas 2006; Elden 1999).

Heidegger’s topological thought includes two key concepts – Dasein and dwelling. Dasein means (approximately) ‘being there’. It combines Heidegger’s career- long enquiry into the nature of being with a recognition that being is always placed – that existence is thoroughly intertwined with place.

The way that we make a home in the world is referred to as dwelling. The way in which you are and I am, the manner in which we humans are on the earth, is Buan, dwelling.

To be a human being means to be on the earth as a mortal. It means to dwell (Heidegger 1971, 145). How, exactly, people enact this dwelling (or fail to enact it) becomes a central object for philosophy in Heidegger’s later texts.3 In an important series of late essays Heidegger invokes poetry as a form of dwell ing. He goes so far as to suggest that it is an ideal form of building and dwelling. Poetic creation, which lets us dwell, is a kind of building.

Thus we confront a double demand: for one thing, we are to think of what is called man’s existence by way of the nature of dwelling; for another, we are to think of the nature of poetry as a letting-dwell, as a – perhaps even the – distinctive kind of building. If we search out the nature of poetry according to this viewpoint, then we arrive at the nature of dwelling (Heidegger 1971, 213).

This observation (linking poetry to its root meaning of ‘making’) gets right to the heart of the constitution of topopoetics. Poetry, as Heidegger observes, is a kind of building and thus a particularly important kind of dwelling. This building-as- dwelling, however, is more than the practical stuff of constructing in the correct way – it is, in Heidegger’s view, about the essential character of being-in-the world – being in, and with, place. 

1 For a discussion of topos, see Rapp 2010: 7.1.

2 Aristotle Topics 163b28.32.

3 Heidegger was a member of the Nazi Party, a membership he later denounced. There is no doubt that these ideas of dwelling were easily incorporated into a Nazi ideology of proper authentic (Aryan) dwelling counterposed to an inauthentic (Jewish, gay, Romany) form of (non) dwelling. Following Malpas I do not believe that this necessarily means that his ideas are irrecoverably infected.

An engagement with the philosophical basis of topos adds to our original definition of place (above) as a gathering of things, practices and meanings in a particular location. While place is all of these things this definition fails to underline the basic significance of being placed to being-in-the-world. A topopoetic account is one which recognizes the specificity of the nearness of things in place and at the same time focuses our attention on the way in which the poem is itself a form of building and dwelling.

Comment by 陳老頭 on July 18, 2024 at 6:07am

Poems of place are not simply poems about places, rather they are a species of place with a special relationship to what it is to be in (external) place. Included in this is a recognition that poems (as places) have a material existence as a gathering of words (literally ink) on the page which takes a particular spatial form.

Topopoetics means closing the gap between the material form of the poem (topos in the sense of rhetorics) and the earthly world of place (topos as place). It means attending to the presence of place within the poem. To do this the rest of the essay considers the role of blank space, the tension between shape/form and movement and the relationship between the inside and outside of the poem. 2

Blank Space/Full Space Before, there was nothing, or almost nothing; afterwards, there isn’t much, a few signs, but which are enough for there to be a top and a bottom, a beginning and an end, a right and a left, a recto and a verso (Perec 1997, 10). My interest here is in the combined impact of two meanings of topos – as correct form and as place – on understanding poetic approaches to and renditions of place. The act of building and dwelling that is a poem starts with a blank white space. By writing poems we gather that space and give it form.

True – it already has edges and texture (it is, in Perec’s terms “almost nothing”) but words (as place) bring space into existence. The space becomes margins and gaps between words – even holes within letters. This relationship between poem and place and the space that takes shape around it is one of the defining elements of poetry. Glyn Maxwell, in On Poetry, ruminates on blank space and silence in poetry. Regard the space, the ice plain, the dizzying light. That past, that future.

Already it isn’t nothing. At the very least it’s your enemy, and that’s an awful lot. Poets work with two materials, one’s black and one’s white. Call them sound and silence, life and death, hot and cold, love and loss…. … Call it this and that, whatever it is this time, just don’t make the mistake of thinking the white sheet is nothing. It’s nothing for your novelist, your journalist, your blogger. For those folk it’s a tabular rasa, a giving surface. For the poet it is half of everything. If you don’t know how to use it you are writing prose. If you write poems that you might call free and I might call unpatterned then skillful, intelligent use of the whiteness is all that you’ve got (Maxwell 2012, 11). Poems are patterns made from space and which make space. Even before a word is read you can see a poem’s shape – the black against the white in Maxwell’s terms.

This is one of the most pleasing things about poetry and it serves no function at all in a novel or most other forms of writing. Writing a poem is a little form of place creation that configures blankness. This resonates with Wallace Stevens’ ‘Anecdote of the Jar’: I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill. The wilderness rose up to it, And sprawled around, no longer wild. The jar was round upon the ground And tall and of a port in air. It took dominion every where. The jar was gray and bare. It did not give of bird or bush, Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Here the roundness of the jar (roundness is repeated throughout the poem in ‘round’, ‘around’ and ‘surround’) orders the “slovenly wilderness” around it – it orders and regulates a kind of blankness (the ‘almost-nothing’ of wilderness) in a contrived and designed way.

Comment by 陳老頭 on July 16, 2024 at 4:46pm

Culture brings nature into perspective and makes it make sense in much the way the marks of the poem make the blank space make sense. Stevens’ jar performs similar functions to Heidegger’s bridge. The poem does the same thing – bringing space into being.

Silence is the acoustic space in which the poem makes its large echoes. If you want to test this write a single word on a blank sheet of paper and stare at it: note the superior attendance to the word the silence insists upon, and how it soon starts to draw out the word’s ramifying sense-

potential, its etymological story, its strange acoustic signature, its calligraphic mark; you are reading a word as poetry (Paterson 2007, 63). Here, British poet Don Paterson suggests that the self-aware special-ness of the poem is created by its being surrounded by blankness, which he equates with silence. There is a merging of sight and sound – pure blankness and silence. The sense of sound is the only sense which has a unique word for absence.

While silence is the absence of sound there is no word for the absence of smell or taste for instance (we have to resort to terms like ‘tasteless’). Perhaps it is for this reason that blank space is compared to silence. It also reminds us of the origins of poetry in spoken forms. The blankness is not just something to be filled but an active component in

the creation of the poem. The blank page is the friend of the poet allowing an infinite variety of form in the simple sense of shape. When the single word appears on the blank sheet the word-as-poem and the space around it are simultaneously brought into being. In this sense, one does not precede the other.

Paterson describes the act of poetry as an emergence out of silence and space. This is not quite right. This assumes the pre-existence of a blankness and silence within which the words emerge.

Perhaps, instead, the blankness is produced by the creative act. The blankness emerges with the noise. There are similarities between the poet’s relationship to blank space and the painter’s relationship to the canvas. They are clearly not the same thing.

In most painting the canvas is covered. The first thing many traditional painters do is cover a canvas with paint and then start to work on the detail. The canvas is obliterated. The poet, on the other hand, cannot fill up the space he or she is confronted with. The poem needs to play with the space and allow the blankness to be part of the process. Don Paterson puts it this way: Our formal patterning most often supplies a powerful typographical advertisement.

What it advertises most conspicuously is that the poem has not taken up the whole page, and con siders itself somewhat important. The white space around the poem then becomes a potent symbol of the poem’s significant intent (Paterson 2007, 62). The space around the poem once written advertises the poem’s importance as special words. (Con't Below)

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