The Invisible City: Urban Space and Contemporary Women's Poetry

写城市的诗人有着悠久的传统，但他们大多是男性。我打算通过写一系列探索城市概念的诗歌来纠正这种平衡。男性和女性体验或书写城市空间的方式相同吗？评论家彼得·巴里认为，男性诗人不仅更有可能写城市，而且更有可能说出特定的地方，好像他们对自己拥有城市空间很有信心，而女性诗人往往有一种模糊和不太具体的写作方式，表明缺乏所有权和信心。当然，把“男人”和“女人”一概而论是很危险的，我的研究将着眼于这些类别与城市空间概念的关系。然而，我将调查地理学家吉莉安·罗斯（Gillian Rose）的一个说法，即我们对空间的思考受到男性主导的传统的影响，这种传统认为世界是一个清晰的知识主体。为了说清楚，矛盾和困难被忽略了。她认为，这些矛盾的空间对于描述女性的经历至关重要。因此，女性写诗可能是拒绝拥有城市，但通过这样做，她们更充分地回应了对城市空间日益复杂的看法。我会在我自己的创作作品中探讨这个问题，也会在当代女诗人的作品中探讨这个问题，她们处理的是类似的想法，尤其是丽莎·罗伯逊，爱丽丝·诺特利和丹尼斯·莱利。班戈是一个被乡村包围的小城市，在班戈进行城市研究似乎很不寻常。然而，它是一个探索城市概念中一些悖论和变化的理想场所。我认为城市的概念正在改变，尤其是在威尔士。班戈不再是英国的一个省，但自权力下放以来，它成了北威尔士及其与世界其他地区关系的焦点。作为一名在威尔士出生的英国作家，我知道，从某种意义上说，我生活在一个陌生的城市里，在整个欧洲，这种情况越来越多，城市往往是国家和语言之间流动的中心。在全球资本主义时代，很难说这座城市的起点和终点在哪里。这座城市曾经是贸易和商业中心，但交通、互联网和城外购物中心改变了我们对城市空间的看法。在某些方面，我们所有的西方人都是这个城市的一部分。诗歌需要找到一种新的方式来回应这种情况，它不能依赖于怀旧，怀念那些地方，无论是城市还是农村，曾经给我们提供的确定性。当我使用英语时，我是全球关系的一部分，那么英语诗歌如何回应作为特定地点的城市呢？我将在我自己的诗歌中发展这个想法，我将与其他地方的诗人合作，探索诗歌与城市空间联系的不同方式。作为一种理解语言、身体和空间之间关系的方式，我将通过我的写作和表演来做一些调查。其中之一将是制作一些地方的音频和视频，我可以在表演中与我的诗歌结合使用。它们不会说明诗歌，而是一种质疑我作为一个女人如何通过身体和语言体验城市空间的方式。这项研究将使我们更清楚地了解城市的意义，特别是对女性而言，它将有助于创造与日益城市化的生活体验相关的诗歌创作和讨论方式。

There is a long tradition of poets writing about the city, but most of them are men. I intend to redress that balance by writing a sequence of poems that explores the idea of the city. Do men and women experience or write about city space in the same way? Critic Peter Barry has suggested that male poets are not only more likely to write about cities but also more likely to name specific places as if they are confident in their ownership of city space, whereas women poets tend to have a vaguer and less specific way of writing that indicates a lack of ownership and confidence. It is, of course, dangerous to generalise about 'men' and 'women', and my research will look at what these categories mean in relation to ideas about city space. I will, however, investigate a claim by the geographer Gillian Rose that our thinking about space is influenced by a male-dominated tradition that sees the world as a clearly-mapped subject of knowledge. In order to make it clear, paradoxes and difficulties are ignored. These paradoxical spaces, she argues, are vital for describing women's experiences. It may be, then, that women are writing poetry that is refusing to take ownership of the city but by doing so are responding more fully to an increasingly complex view of city space. I will explore this issue in my own creative work and also in the work of contemporary women poets who are dealing with similar ideas, particularly Lisa Robertson, Alice Notley and Denise Riley.It may seem unusual to be carrying out research on the city in Bangor, which is a very small city surrounded by countryside. However, it is an ideal place to explore some paradoxes and changes in the concept of the city. I would argue that the idea of the city is changing, particularly in Wales. Bangor is no longer a province of the UK but, since devolution, a focal point for north Wales and its relationships with the rest of the world. As an English-born writer in Wales I know that in some senses I am living in a foreign city, and that this is increasingly the case across Europe, where cities often provide a focus for movement between countries and languages. In an age of global capitalism it is difficult to say where the city itself begins and ends. The city used to be a centre of trade and commerce but transport, the internet and out-of-town shopping centres have changed our view of urban space. In some ways, all of us in the West are part of the city. Poetry needs to find a new way of responding to this situation and it cannot fall back on nostalgia for the certainty that places, whether urban or rural, used to offer us. When I use the English language I am part of global relationships, so how can poetry in English respond to the city as a specific location? I will be developing this idea in my own poems and I will collaborate with poets elsewhere to explore the different ways in which poetry can relate to urban space.As a way of understanding the relationship between language, the body and space, I will be making some investigations through my writing and performance. One of these will be to make audio and video recordings of places that I can use in conjunction with my poems in performance. They will not illustrate the poems but will be a way of questioning how I experience urban spaces as a woman through the body and in language.This research will lead to a clearer view of what the city is coming to mean, particularly for women, and it will help to create ways of writing poetry and discussing it that are relevant to an increasingly urbanized experience of life.