Slip came about as an incidental to the bulk of the work I first wrote on the theme of ‘Moving’.
A week or so before Slip appeared I’d decided that I’d explore ‘Moving’ through what I call a poetry-engine. Basically this involved combining two separate texts that I’d produced by outpouring or writing quickly. One text was entitled ‘Moving’, the other ‘Stillness’.
Gavin had mentioned Derrida to me, and had suggested thinking about the poetry-engine as a ‘différance’-engine, in line with Derrida’s thoughts about the gap (or difference) between written and spoken words, and also the slippage (or deference) of meaning between words (When we look up a word in the dictionary we are referred, or rather deferred, to yet more differing words, each of which could be looked up again, thus deferring meaning even further.) So, when I initially wrote about ‘moving’ and ‘stillness’ these two words ended up being heavily informed by the theme of language and its slipperiness.
The combining of the two oppositional texts produced a series of ‘spliced’ lines. I then went on to use each ‘spliced’ line as a starting point for a poem; this led into a series of strange pieces that seem to possess an underlying coherence or narrative. However, none of this work was used for Slippage - but I now realise that Slip was urged and informed by my exploration through the poetry-engine, or rather ‘différance’-engine. So, Slip turns out not to be so incidental after all.
In many ways Slip is simply one long play on words, or a series of puns. However, I hope that the reader will be invited in to play further with the words and so inevitably discover, or rather create, the complexity that apparent simplicity so often slips into.
Finally, I’d like to say: it has been delightfully informative for me to witness how Gavin has played with Slip’s words through visual and sonic movementMark Goodwin - April 2005
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© Mark Goodwin and Gavin Stewart 2005