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    A Spectator
    A Spectator
    A Spectator
    Ebook91 pages42 minutes

    A Spectator

    By Per K. Brask

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    About this ebook

    Ekphrasis” is a literary description of, or commentary on, a work of art. A Spectator, the first published collection of ekphrastic poetry by poet, author, playwright and dramaturg Per K. Brask does that, and more. Written in "plain speech," these accessible and insightful poems express the poet's playful attention to a live performance, work of art, exhibit or life moment. These beautifully wrought personal reflections on concrete things are sure to delight and inspire.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFICTIVE PRESS
    Release dateApr 18, 2012
    ISBN9780987917065
    A Spectator
    Author

    Per K. Brask

    Per K. Brask is an accomplished poet, translator and author. He has published poetry, plays, short stories, essays and literary translations. His co-translation with Patrick Friesen of Ulrikka S. Gernes’ Frayed Opus for Strings & Wind Instruments was short listed for the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize.Per He lives in Winnipeg, Canada, with his wife, Carol Matas, an international bestselling author of books for young people.

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      Book preview

      A Spectator - Per K. Brask

      Ekphrastic Poetry

      By

      PER K. BRASK

      An EKPHRASIS Book – Smashwords Edition

      Published by FICTIVE PRESS (a division of 2815699 Canada Inc.)

      Copyright © 2012 by Per K. Brask.

      EKPHRASIS and FICTIVE PRESS are trademarks of 2815699 Canada Inc.

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Brask, Per K., 1952-

      A spectator [electronic resource] : ekphrastic poetry / Per K. Brask.

      Electronic monograph.

      ISBN 978-0-9879170-6-5 (Smashwords ed.).

      I. Title.

      PS8553.R296S64 2012 C811'.54 C2012-901938-0

      Cover design: Doug Long & Morri Mostow, FICTIVE PRESS

      Cover image: In the Theater by Honoré Daumier, circa 1880.

      (Oil on canvas. Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany).

      Photographs: Per K. Brask

      Line drawing of Per K. Brask by Heather Spears: heatherspears.com/

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      To Carol, of course

      and in memory of Inge Brask (1928-2010)

      FOREWORD

      Spectatorship will always reveal more about the spectator than the spectacle.

      John Freeman, Autobiographical Spectatorship

      The Australian philosopher Paul Thom coined the term playing attention to evoke the various levels at which spectators during a performing arts event may be playfully attending: between the performer’s present actions, past actions or anticipated ones; between performers; between content and form; between this performance of a work and previous ones; between the life on stage and personal life and life outside the event. (See Paul Thom, For an Audience: A philosophy of the Performing Arts, Temple UP, 1993, p. 205.)

      Thus, each spectator puts together his own story, while watching the performance, a story that doesn’t only focus on the performance currently attended, but a story that draws together many aspects of the spectator’s life in general and the spectator makes up a meaning, perhaps, from these various strands of experience. Or, as Jacques Rancière appropriately says in his essay The Emancipated Spectator, this variegated activity suggests that spectators put their own poems together. (See Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, Verso, 2009, p. 13.)

      Of course, spectating isn’t an activity limited to attending performing arts events. Attending arts events in general, exhibitions and installations, puts some of us in the position of spectators, just as one may put oneself in the spectator position while observing events in daily life. Although most of the poems in this collection were written in response to theatrical performances, some are also responses to art exhibitions or life moments; they are all attempts to express the grasping for some meaning pursued by this one spectator’s playful attention. That is, a spectator who (re)acts.

      Per K. Brask

      Let us open with a quote, a haiku from Monica Prendergast’s prologue to her book Teaching Spectatorship (Cambria Press, 2008, p. xxi), a work I found vastly motivating:

      seeing performance

      an audience brings itself

      into new being

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      COPYRIGHT

      DEDICATION

      FOREWORD

      SITTING THERE

      MACBETH

      UPON WATCHING HAMLET IN ASHLAND, OREGON

      THOMAS OSTERMEIER'S HAMLET AT KRONBORG CASTLE

      THE BBC/RSC HAMLET ON DVD

      JULIUS CAESAR

      CYRANO adapted by Frank Langella

      JAKE’S GIFT

      MUNGO PARK – THE MAN BEHIND THE NAME

      DOVES

      JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS

      THE BORNHOLM REVUE

      AI WEIWEI

      SPAMALOT IN WINNIPEG

      THE SHUNNING

      ALAN WILLIAMS

      WATCHING JOE HAYES

      IN THE NEXT ROOM

      ALL OR NOTHING

      AT THE PALM SPRINGS ART

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