Michael Palmer in Wellington May 5th 2008

Michael Palmer is associated with a generation of poets which includes Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, and Clark Coolidge - “poets working in the dark, and at the margins” - and with the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets. Even more, he is celebrated for his own expressive lyrics. His poems are among the most beautiful written in the last 50 years - both resisting meaning and finding new ways to bring it into being. - IIML newletter

Palmer is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Company of Moths (New Directions, 2005), which was shortlisted for the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize.

Although called a L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet he does depart from that genre frequently at times lyrical, surreal, narrative driven. Palmer talked about “matching an object to it’s name, about asking questions of the poem - if line A =1 then B=?. He does not identify with the Postmodern idea that words never really signify.

Palmer, like most poets, enjoys playing with the sounds of words and like sounding words, he plays with repetition, his poems are very musical. When talking about understanding poems he said that a poem is not a test, it comes out of all our bodies, the language is ours to begin with, the music. If we appreciate that music inside of our bodies - that’s the way into a poem. Perhaps then it is fitting that he has taken part in several collaborations with dancers about which he said they (the dancers) dance to spoken word but also to hidden language, that there are instructions in the structure of the poems. I love this concept!

He also discussed how the poem exists in the overlap of The Poet, Past Poets, The Reader and Future Readers, if I was clever I would produce a set diagram to illustrate this. This echoes some of Paul Muldoon’s comments at Writers & Readers week earlier this year. I recommend reading some of his work.