'A New Geography of Delight': Communist Poetics and Politics in Sean Bonney's The Commons. Issue 1 (28th September 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Clay, Jon
• Is Part Of: Journal of British and Irish innovative poetry. Volume 7:Issue 1(2015)
• Publication Date: 2015-09-28
• Subjects: Sean Bonney -- Deleuze & Guattari -- communism -- minor literature -- The Commons; 821.005
• DOI: 10.16995/biip.2
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1758-972X

Abstract

Abstract : The radical political thrust of Sean Bonney's poetry is well known and broadly understood, but it is not always clear in what way it is specifically communist, or even what communist poetry is beyond the utilization of slogans. For a poem to be genuinely communist it is arguably necessary for it to be a minor poetry, as defined by Deleuze and Guattari in their book on Kafka, otherwise it will be recuperable by a bourgeois mainstream that might be characterized as 'majoritarian'. Bonney's poem The Commons 1 is examined through the three characteristics of minor literature elucidated by Deleuze and Guattari and at the same time a concept of a minor, communist poetry is developed – it will be proletarian, experimental, always necessarily political because of its cramped conditions of existence and composition, and essentially collective. The Commons fulfils these conditions and at the same time offers, both potentially and simultaneously realized, a transformation of existing conditions at once angry and joyful, a new geography of delight.