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

诗人写这座城市有很长的传统，但他们中的大多数都是男人。我打算通过写一系列探索城市理念的诗歌来纠正这种平衡。男性和女性以同样的方式体验或书写城市空间吗？评论家彼得·巴里指出，男性诗人不仅更有可能写城市，而且更有可能命名特定的地点，似乎他们对自己对城市空间的所有权充满信心，而女性诗人的写作方式往往更含糊，更不具体，这表明他们缺乏所有权和信心。当然，对“男人”和“女人”一概而论是危险的，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·罗斯的一种说法，即我们对太空的想法受到了男性主导的传统的影响，这种传统认为世界是一个清晰绘制的知识主题。为了说明这一点，我们忽略了悖论和困难。她认为，这些自相矛盾的空间对于描述女性的经历至关重要。因此，女性可能正在写诗，拒绝拥有这座城市的所有权，但这样做是对日益复杂的城市空间观的更全面回应。我将在自己的创作中以及当代有类似想法的女诗人的作品中探索这个问题，特别是丽莎·罗伯逊、爱丽丝·诺特利和丹尼斯·莱利。在班戈进行城市研究似乎不寻常，班戈是一个被乡村包围的小城市。然而，它是一个探索城市概念中的一些悖论和变化的理想场所。我认为，这座城市的理念正在发生变化，尤其是在威尔士。班戈尔不再是英国的一个省，但自权力下放以来，它是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，在某种意义上，我生活在一个陌生的城市，整个欧洲越来越如此，城市往往为不同国家和语言之间的交流提供了一个焦点。在一个全球资本主义的时代，很难说这座城市本身的起点和终点。这座城市曾经是一个贸易和商业中心，但交通、互联网和城外购物中心已经改变了我们对城市空间的看法。在某些方面，我们所有在西方的人都是这座城市的一部分。诗歌需要找到一种新的方式来应对这种情况，它不能依赖于对城市或农村地区过去提供给我们的确定性的怀旧。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一个特定地点的城市？我将在自己的诗歌中发展这一理念，并将与其他地方的诗人合作，探索诗歌与城市空间相关的不同方式。作为理解语言、身体和空间之间关系的一种方式，我将通过我的写作和表演进行一些调查。其中之一将是对我可以在表演中结合我的诗歌使用的地方进行音频和视频录制。它们不会说明诗歌，但将是一种质疑我作为女性如何通过身体和语言体验城市空间的一种方式。这项研究将导致对城市意义的更清晰的看法，特别是对女性来说，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.