'I resorted to the usual way of not feeling anything, of concentrating on every inch of skin, on the opening of every pore until I could feel nothing else and the sensation of me filled the entire universe. But I was not, I could feel nothing, and when I had come to this point of not being, I took the precaution of appropriately looking down' (Tambudzai in The Book of Not by Tsitsi Dangarembga, sequel to Nervous Conditions). Explore how any text(s) by authors on the module address 'not being.'

'I resorted to the usual way of not feeling anything, of concentrating on every inch of skin, on the opening of every pore until I could feel nothing else and the sensation of me filled the entire universe. But I was not, I could feel nothing, and when I had come to this point of not being, I took the precaution of appropriately looking down' (Tambudzai in The Book of Not by Tsitsi Dangarembga, sequel to Nervous Conditions).
Explore how any text(s) by authors on the module address 'not being.'

Denise Riley

Don Paterson

Dark Looks

The Rat

The Poem: Lyric, Sign, Metre

The role and responsibility of the poet

The resistance of the poet to be seen/identified

Reader/Poet relationship -> are the two spheres actually permeable?

Hides in the anonymity of the island

does the poet exist outside of his poetry?

Also what are the functions of the two spheres? What are the merits in keeping them separate?

Does that just invite mindless desperation for the reader? Do they now get a kick from stealing and deducing things that weren't there/weren't meant for them? I mean one could ref. Dickinson in this like, she never published those poems, we took them ya know

If so, what kind of claim does the poet have towards their material? Where does ownership lie?

omg a stretch but what if we looked into the legal ramifications of publishing poetry? Is there a poetic equivalent of groove theft?

The writer is completely unimportant in the appraisal of a literary work -> v formalist?

If, if only
I need not have a physical appearance! To be sheer air, and mousseline!

The poet exists in a state of monomania

exaggerated or obsessive enthusiasm for or preoccupation with one thing.

dullness = human? We can't talk about fantastical subjects for fear of being unrelatable so we stick with abstract mundanities.

Riley seems almost aggressively opposed, very I dont give a shit

Tries to separate herself as a poet/poem (?) from the existence of her readership, and fails??

So take me or leave me. No, wait, I didn’t mean leave
me, wait, just don’t – or don’t flick and skim to the foot of a page and then get up to go –

It's lowkey giving whitman

Poetry [...] proceeds from a generous instinct, not a selfish one. Whatever private torments might have been assuaged in our writing, we want to give these damn things away in the end.

A poem which makes the reader work unnecessarily hard for nothing more mind-blowing than its literal sense will soon become deeply irritating.