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The document, when printed, contains 101 A4 pages. Refer to the disclaimer. All rights are reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

All rights are reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

©Argo Spier.
ISDN - 2003-09-06 and upon request.

A. Articles

1. RAAm - in 4 languages

Dutch, French, german and English

nederlands

De gedichtenserie Raam, een Kubrickiaans 2001-achtig ruimte-epos, beschrijft niet alleen een reis in de ruimte, maar beweert ook zelf een reis te willen zijn, een reis doorheen de ruimte van taal.
Argo Spier neemt de lezer mee doorheen een veelvoud van goed gestructureerde taallagen, lagen die in elkaar verstrengeld zijn en die in elkaar overvloeien zoals de dimensies van ruimte en tijd, afzonderlijk en toch onafscheidelijk van elkaar. Met een bijzondere en suggestieve stijl en een zekere geladenheid, eigen aan zijn werk, creëert hij in dit prachtige en compacte werk de illusie van een geboorteproces van taal en van een taal die zich ontwikkelt vanaf het vroege archaïsche begin van klank, menselijke klank, tot volwassen geworden zingevende expressie. Het schema van het werk volgt strikt de structuur van de film 2001 Space Odessy van Stanley Kubrick.
Zoals Kubrick, vertrekt ook Argo Spier van de banaliteit van het alledaagse leven - ik nam een foto van mezelf naast mijn ruimtetuig - om via een tussenstadium, zoals in de film, de laatste dimensie te bereiken: die van het irreële. In dit laatste deel van Raam belandt ook hij aan in een stortvloed van gedegenereerde klanken/kleuren die het vertrekpunt blijken te vormen voor het bereiken van nieuwe dimensies. Pas in die laatste laag/dimensie beseft de lezer dat het epos nog maar begint, het werk dient opnieuw te worden gelezen, maar nu van achter naar voor. Taal degenereert tot zinloosheid en brabbelklanken. Deze klanken bevatten het embryo van een nieuwe groei.
Gebruikmakend van Haiku erzats-achtige modellen, mimiek, samenpersing van/en geladen begrippen [geen minimalisme echter] en verwijzingen naar reeds bestaande literatuur, illustreert de auteur met Raam de expressieve draagkracht, weidsheid en picturaliteit van de Afrikaanse taal, alsmede de noodzaak van poëzie in het algemeen als Messias en beschermer van taal:
De intredelaag van Raam begint met een gewone refrein-slampamper of road, zoals die courant in het rit-rijm van de Zuid-Afrikaanse literatuur voorkomt. Het verhaal beschrijft de reis van een eenzame astronaut, mens of buitenaards wezen, [of een geïmiteerde mens?], een eigenzinnige, eigenwillige, halfpathetische figuur, die een tocht waagt vanuit een uitvalsbasis ergens in een niet nader te lokaliseren omgeving, een niet-locatie of een nergens zijnde zijn, naar de vreemde werelden van de sterren. Op zijn weg ontdekt hij de aarde een planeet vol houtwol zoals een andere. Plichtsbewust en Adam-achtig verwoordt hij alles wat hij ziet, zin zoekend via naïeve inventarisatie en ordening. Zoals Byron gelooft de reiziger dat er woorden zijn die dingen zijn, maar anders dan Byron wil hij het ding-achtige van het woord aan het woord opdringen. De alchemie die transformatie bewerkstelligt is zijn hoofddoel. Hij zoekt woorden die dingen zijn.

ik heb een indeling van de schadelijke vogel
soorten gemaakt geheel

volgens hun schadelijkheid

de tortelduif
de vink
de kraai
het winterkoningtje

ik onderscheidde allen die vloog

ook de valk en de varken
het nijlpaard
de groeiende worm in het sand

De obsederende dringendheid waarmee die onderliggende thematiek naar voor geschoven wordt en de angstaanjagende sfeer die over het werk hangt, bevestigen de noodzaak van het beantwoorden van de vraag: wat is taal, dit creatieve, fluïde, weidse medium waarin de mens zich beweegt?

een rivier
slingert omhoog

of ligt slap
roerloos vlak

een dier
leeft nu

of vliegt

een tijd
is een lijn

of zeven
een cirkel

[ik weet wat ik weet]

in de duistere schijn
van een stervende nacht

groeiend zichtbaar
een schijnbeweging

een hand

het beeld van de ram stervend
onder de klauw van een leeuw

De lezer vergezelt de astronaut en de schrijver en waagt zich tussen de sterren, dringt door tot in de wereld van de astrologie, suist met een geweldige vaart doorheen eindeloze en tijdloze ruimtegebieden, bezoekt planeten. Gaat de reis omhoog? Omlaag? Is er een afdaling/verzinking van taal? Verloedert taal? Ontwikkelt ze? Schepping? Degeneratie?
De reis jaagt voort en zoals het een futuristische shuttle doorheen de klankgrenzen van het ruimte/tijd continuüm past, knalt zij steeds verder. De snelheid waarmee het verhaal en de zich ontplooiende inwijding zich voortbewegen zijn dramatisch. Wanneer de Deep Space bereikt wordt, maakt de lezer al deel uit van het traject.
Met apocalyptisch uithoudingsvermogen probeert ook de schrijver vast te houden aan de begrijpbaarheid en aan de laatste betekenisvolle refreinen van zijn vroegste kinderliedjes en rijmpjes, dit in de tweede sectie van het epos, On top of God's path [de titel samen met het gedicht blast off vormen een referentie naar bestaande literatuur en naar de onstaansstijd van het Afrikaans]. Maar dan worden de zuigkracht van het epos en het proces van de geboorte van taal hem te veel. Hij verdwijnt samen met de lezer in het zwarte gat van complete taalverloedering/geboorte. Dadaïstisch taalgebruik ontstaat. Nu zoekt taal eigen wegen, ze doet pijn, ze schreeuwt het uit, eist nieuwe betekenis, syntaxis, semantiek, om het even wat....
Vanaf de eerste sectie, Syndroom, met de aankondiging van de fatale afloop van de reis in het gedicht Korsakov syndroom, doorheen het enige gedicht in Apokalyps, de derde sectie, de verschijning van Karios, dat op een onvergetelijke manier [met verwijzingen naar het visioen dat Johannes in het laatste boek van het Nieuwe Testament weergeeft] de verschrikkelijk dood/geboorte van taal suggereert [misschien een wanhopige verwijzing naar de bedreiging die zijn moedertaal ondervindt te midden van de politieke revolutie in zijn geboorteland, Zuid-Afrika], en eindigend met de verzen

geen teken meer,

er was een tijd
en tijden
en een halve tijd

en toen was er geen teken meer

tot aan de laatste gedicht, toilet, in de sectie Toilet, met inter-linguale klanken zoals shass,

shass shass shass shass m
skoen
shass m

ontplooit zich het verhaal van de eenzame, dolende astronaut, schrijver, en mens die onderworpen is aan de krachten van Ohamazd en Ahriman. Dit vormt een vaste structuur en creëert een fantastische en traumatische leessnelheid, grenzend aan demagogische Zen-filosofische uitspraken, met steeds opjagende en aanzwellende gedachtengangen, de kracht maar ook de breekbaarheid van de Afrikaanse taal illustrerend.
Inderdaad, Raam doet de lezer nadenken over wat hij zegt als hij spreekt, als hij taal gebruikt...

Argo Spier werd in 1947 geboren in Zuid-Afrika. In 1978 publiceerde hij zijn eerste dichtbundel, een reeks gedichten die de constante en dynamische processen van de degeneratie van taal behandelen. Zijn werk bereikte toen echter niet het verwachte lezerspubliek, door het feit dat hij slachtoffer werd van de Europese en Britse colour ban op alle Zuid-Afrikaanse culturele expressie, die toen van kracht werd. De boycot duurde tot 1992 en gedurende deze periode werd er geen werk van hem gepubliceerd. Raam is in het Afro-Nederlands [Afrikaans] geschreven en neemt zijn vroegere werk op, aldus bewijzend dat zijn moedertaal, het Afro-Nederlands (Afrikaans), nog in hem verderleeft en een waardevol instrument blijft om de discussie aan te gaan of taal in het algemeen überhaupt enige betekenis heeft. Raam werd herschreven in mei 1995 en beslaat 80 gedichten. Elk herwerkt gedicht is opgenomen in de huidige bundel.
De lezer wordt uitgenodigd om zelf creatief nieuwe vertalingen te zoeken en deel te nemen aan de ontdekking en de bespreking van het fascinerend proces van de creatieve degeneratie van taal.

francais

Le recueil de poèmes Raam, une épopée galactique digne de 2001, le film de Stanley Kubrick, ne décrit pas seulement un voyage dans l'espace, il prétend aussi d'être lui-même un voyage, un voyage dans l'espace du langage.
Argo Spier emmène le lecteur à travers une multité bien structurée de niveaux de langage, niveaux qui s'entrelacent et qui perdent leurs fontières définies, comme celles de l'espace et du temps, dimensions qui sont en même temps distinctes et inséparables. Avec le style extrêmement suggestif et d'une profondité irrécusable propre à son travail, il crée dans cette oeuvre merveilleuse et compacte l'illusion d'un processus de naissance du langage. Il évoque le développement du langage, à partir du début archaique lointain du son humain, jusqu'à son expression adulte et porteur de signification. La structure de l'oeuvre suit exactement celle du film 2001 Space Odessy de Stanley Kubrick. Comme Kubrick, Argo Spier commence par la banalité de la vie quotidienne

j'ai pris une photo de moi
et mon engin spacial

pour atteindre, en passant par un stade intermédiaire, comme dans le fim, la dernière dimension: celle de l'irréel. Dans cette dernière partie de Raam, il atterrit dans un déluge de sons et de couleurs dégénérés qui constitueront la voie de départ pour poursuivre encore des nouvelles dimensions. C'est là, dans cette dernière 'couche', que le lecteur comprend que cette épopée ne fait que commencer. L'oeuvre exige d'être relue, mais cette fois en prenant la fin comme début. Le langage se décompose, perd son sens et devient un balbutiement. Ces sons contiennent néanmoins l'embryon d'une nouvelle croissance.
En utilisant des modèles Ersatz du type Haiku, la mymique, la compression de termes à multiple signification [sans minimalisme néanmoins] et des références à la littérature existante, l'auteur démontre, avec Raam, la portée expressive, la profondeur et la qualité picturale du langage africain, ainsi que la nécessité de la poésie en générale comme Messie et comme protecteur du langage.
La couche d'entrée de Raam comporte un slampamper-refrain ou road usuel, comme on le rencontre fréquemment dans la rime-rit de la littérature Sud-Africaine. L'histoire raconte le voyage d'un astronaute solitaire, humain ou extra-terrestre [ou homme imité?], une figure entêté, semi-pathétique, qui risque ce voyage vers les mondes étranges des étoiles, partant d'une base quelque part dans une région non-définissable, un étant étant nulle part. En route il découvre la terre

une planète pleine de copaux de bois
comme la lune

Soumis au devoir et comme un deuxième Adam, il dénomme tout ce qu'il voit, cherchant un sens par une inventérisation et une disposition naive. Comme Byron, le voyageur croit qu'il y a des mots qui sont des choses, mais contrairement à Byron il veut imposer au mot le caractère d'un objet. L'alchémie que produit la transformation est son but principal. Il cherche des 'mots' qui sont des 'choses'.

j'ai classé les oiseaux nocifs
selon leur nocivité
la tourterelle le pinson la corneille le petit empereur
j'ai distingué tout ce qui vole

le faucon aussi le porc
l'hippopotame
et le ver dans le sable

l'homme dans le désert
le cri-cri

La nécessité pressante avec laquelle ce motif sous-compris est avancé et l'ambiance terrifiante qui règne sur l'oeuvre, soulignent l'aspect incontournable de la question suivante: le langage - cet univers créatif, fluide et étendu dans lequel l'homme se trouve - c'est quoi?

une rivière
assaille

ou affaiblit
à plat

un animal
vit maintenant

ou vole

le temps
ressemble une ligne

ou sept
un cercle

[je suis certain
de ce dont je suis certain]

dans le dard noir
d'une nuit dépérissante

grandissant vers transparance
un mouvement lent ou une main

empoigne la vision d'un bélier
mourant sous la griffe d'un lion

Le lecteur accompagne l'astronaute et l'écrivain. Il se risque entre les étoiles, pénètre dans le monde de l'astrologie, traverse avec une vitesse énorme les espaces galactiques infinis et éternels, visite des planètes. Le voyage se déroule-t-il en montant? En descendant? Y-a-t-il une descente/un glissement du langage? Le langage, dégénère-t-il? Se développe-til? Création? Décadence?
Le voyage se poursuit et comme il est de mise pour un shuttle futuriste à travers les limites sonores et franchissant la continuité de l'espace et du temps, la vitesse est mirifique. Le temps avec lequel l'histoire et l'initiation progressent est dramatique. Quand le Deep Space est atteint, le lecteur fait déjà partie du trajet.
Avec une endurance apocalyptique l'écrivain lui aussi essaie de conserver la compréhensibilité des derniers refrains significatifs des chansons et des rimes de son enfance, ceci dans la deuxième partie de l'épopée, On top of God's path [le titre, ainsi que le poème blast off, renvoient à la littérature existante et au combat de naissance de l'Africain]. Mais à cet instant la force aspiratrice de l'épopée du langage devient trop forte. Accompagné du lecteur, il disparaît dans le Trou noir de la décadence/naissance complète du langage. Un usage quasi-Dada du langage voit le jour. Dès maintenant le langage cherche ses propres chemins, il a mal, il s'écrie, il exige une nouvelle signification, une syntaxe, une sémantique, quelque chose ...
En commençant par la première section, Sindroom, avec l'annonciation du développement fatal du voyage dans le poème Korsakov sindroom, à travers le seul poème dans Apokalips, et en passant par la troisième section,où l'apparition de Karios suggère de manière inoubliable [avec des références à la vision que Jean décrit dans le dernier livre du Nouveau Testament] la terrible mort/naissance du langage [peut-être une référence désespérée à la menace que subit sa langue maternelle au milieu de la révolution politique dans son pays de naissance, l'Afrique du Sud], il finit avec les vers:

puis
l'apparition du loup

ce fut un temps
et des temps
et un demi temps

et puis il n'y avait plus de signe

Dans le dernier poème, toilet, les sons sont dépourvus de langage:

shass sj shass shass
sannie se jas m

L'histoire de l'astronaute solitaire et vaguant, de l'écrivain, de l'homme écrasé par les forces d'Ohamazd et d'Ahriman, est endossée par une structure architecturale et crée une vitesse de lecture fantastique et traumatisante, aux confins mêmes des paroles démagogiques de la philosophie Zen,enrichie par des pensées enivrantes, illustrant la force mais aussi la vulnérabilité de la langue africaine. En effet, Raam oblige le lecteur à réfléchir sur ce qu'il dit, quand il parle, quand il emploie le langage.

En 1978 Argo Spier a publié son premier recueil de poèmes, une série de poèmes qui traitent du processus dynamique et constant de la dégénération du langage. En ce temps, son oeuvre n'a néanmoins pas atteint le publique attendu,dû au colour ban européen et britannique sur toute expression culturelle en Afrique du Sud, dont il tomba victime. Le boycot a duré jusqu'en 1992 et pendant cette période aucune de ses oeuvres n'a vu le jour. Raam est écrit en Afro-Néerlandais [l'africain].
Son recueil Raam reprend les thèmes de son travail antérieur, prouvant par cette voie que sa langue maternelle, l'Afro-Néerlandais (l'Africain), est toujours vivant en lui et toujours un instrument de valeur pour trouver une réponse sur la question si le langage en général a une signification quelconque.
Raam fut réécrit dans le moi de mai 1995 et comprend 80 poèmes. Chaque poème retravaillé est inclus dans le présent recueil. Le lecteur est invité à chercher lui-même des traductions créatives et à faire des découvertes, à prendre part à l'inter-activité, l'évaluation et la découverte du processus fascinant de la dégénération créative du langage.

deutsch

Raam entführt den Leser auf eine Reise durch Zeit und Raum, vergleichbar mit Kubricks 2001 - Odyssee im Weltall. Von den frühen archäischen Anfängen der Sprache spannt sich der Bogen bis zur Sprachexplosion der Gegenwart mit ihrer Suche nach Verständigung, Bedeutung und Ausdruck, um sich bis zu einer abschließenden Ebene zu entwickeln, die nur mehr Dadaistisches Geblabbere und Chaos zu bieten scheint.
Die Gedichte bedienen sich Strukturen, die dem Haiku verwandt sind. Sie sind in hohem Maße dazu geeignet, verdichtete Bedeutungsinhalte einerseites und die Bildhaftigkeit des Africaans andererseits wiederzugeben.
Argo Spier beschreibt in seinem Werk die konkrete Reise eines einsamen Astronauten, eines ziemlich pathetischen und, eigenwilligen Außerirdischen, den Erdenmenschen ähnlich, eine Reise von seinem Ausgangspunkt im Nirgendwo zur sonderbaren Sternenwelt.
Auf seinem Weg entdeckt er die Erde und gleich wie Adam erfüllt er seine Pflicht, indem er die Dinge, die er sieht, benennt und so dem Dasein und der Existenz eine naive Bedeutung verleiht. Gleich Byron glaubt der Reisende, daß es Wörter gibt, die Dinge sind, aber ungleich Byron, der noch keine gefunden hat, zwingt er den Dingen Wörter auf.

ich habe jene Vögel, die schädlich sind, in Klassen eingeteilt
die Turteltauben, die Finken die Krähen,

die Rotkehlchen

Ich habe alle aufgezählt,
die fliegen können
auch die Falken und die Schweine
das Nilpferd den Wurm

in den Sand
der Mensch in der Wüste
der Hahn

Es ist hierbei völlig ohne Bedeutung, ob die Auslegung der Wirklichkeit faktenmäßig richtig oder falsch ist. Das Wesentliche besteht in der fesselnden Dringlichkeit der zugrundeliegenden Frage nach dem Wesen der Sprache, jenes wandelbaren, schöpferischen Mediums, in dem sich die Reise vollzieht. Sie ist die Quelle des Geheimnisvollen und Unheimlichen, welches das gesamte Werk umgibt.

ein Fluß
zeigt seine Hörner
oder fließt
träge

Ein Tier
lebt jetzt

oder fliege
Zeit gleich einer Linie

oder sieben
ein Kreis

[ich bin mir dessen sicher,
dessen ich mir sicher bin]

und

im dunklen Aufblitzen
der vergehenden Nacht

wächst zu Durchsichtigkeit
eine langsame Bewegung

oder eine Hand
faßt das Bild des Widders

sterbend unter der Klaue des Löwen

Wir bewegen uns unter den Sternen, betreten die Welt der Astrologie, wir gleiten dahin wie in einem Raumschiff durch die Unendlichkeit der Zeit in einer zukünftigen Welt, losgelöst von physikalischen Gegebenheiten und den Gesetzen der realen Zeit. Wir gelangen auf eine neue Ebene. Neigt sie sich hinunter oder hinauf? Schöpfung oder Zerfall?
Die Reise geht eilends weiter. Der Eintritt in den Tiefen Raum' symbolisiert das Eintauchen ins Africaans und in die Sprache an sich.
Im Schlußabschnitt Über dem Pfad Gottes versucht der Autor mit außergewöhnlicher Beharrlichkeit, an der Vertrautheit verständlicher Strukturen festzuhalten, indem er auf die letzten bedeutungstragenden Reste von Liedern und Reimen aus seiner frühen Kindheit zurückgreift.
Dann aber überwältigt ihn das Übermächtige, führt ihn zu einem dekadenten, Dadaistischen Sprachgebrauch - er mischt, verletzt [überschreitet] Grenzen, schreit nach neuen Bedeutungen in Syntax und Semantik - was auch immer sich bieten mag. Das Gedicht Korsakov Syndrom legt bereits zu Beginn die unabwendbare Tragik der Reise fest. Weiter spannt sich der Bogen mit Die Erscheinung des Karios, das einzige Gedicht des Apokalypse-Abschnitts,das in Anklang an die Visionen des Hl. Johannes im letzten Buch des Neuen Testaments in unvergeßlicher weise den furchtbaren Tod der Sprache beschreibt. Hier lassen sich [vielleicht] Parallelen zum Tod der Muttersprache des Autors imzuge der politischen Unruhen in seinem Vaterland ablesen.
Schließlich endet Argo Spier mit den Versen,

dann
das Erscheinen des Wolfes

es gab eine Zeit
und Zeiten
und Halb-Zeiten
und dann
gab es keine Zeichen

mehr

Den Schlußpunkt setzt das Gedicht Klo, das sich [zwischensprachlicher Laute] allgemeiner Lautmalerei bedient.
Im letzten Abschnitt erreicht und hält die Geschichte des [wandernden] suchenden Astronauten, Autors und Menschen schlechthin, der den Mächten von Ohmazd und Ahriman ausgeliefert ist, ein traumatisches Tempo, vergleichbar mit den demagogischen Äußerungen der Zen-Philosophie. Noch größere Gedankensprünge werden unternommen, um sowohl die Kraft als auch die Zerbrechlichkeit der Muttersprache des Autors unter Beweis zu stellen.
Raam veranlaßt den Leser, darüber nachzudenken, was er sagt, wenn er spricht, wenn er Sprache verwendet.

Argo Spier veröffentlichte seine erste Sammlung im Jahre 1978. Es handelt sich hierbei um eine Reihe von Gedichten, die den kontinuierlichen, dynamischen Prozeß des Sprachverfalls thematisieren. Geschäftliche und kulturpolitische Schwierigkeiten verhinderten es, daß seine Werke ihre Leserschaft erreichten, bis 1992 der Boykott gegen Südafrika aufgehoben wurde. Ein weiteres Erschwernis war die Tatsache, daß die Gedichte in Afrikadeutsch oder Africaans geschrieben sind.
Er prägte den Begriff Necro Poetica und entwickelte ein Gedankensystem rund um die Auferstehung und Wiederbelebung von kalten, toten weil gebrauchten Wörtern, um ihnen schließlich die ihnen zukommende Stellung zuzuweisen. Der Autor arbeitet zur Zeit an der Erweiterung dieses Konzepts. Die vorliegende Sammlung ist eine Bearbeitung früherer Werke und soll zeigen, daß seine Muttersprache noch immer in ihm lebendig ist und ein wertvolles Ausdrucksmittel darstellt, wobei sie Teil wird der Frage, ob Sprache im allgemeinen, wie Wittgenstein sagt, Überhaupt Bedeutung tragen kann.
Raam entsstand im Laufe von zwei Nachmittagen im Oktober 1993 und umfaßt circa 80 Gedichte. Jede Überarbeitung ist in der Sammlung enthalten. Der Leser wird dazu eingeladen, selbst Änderungen vorzunehmen, auf Entdeckungsreise zu gehen. Er soll eingreifen, analysieren und den faszinierenden Prozeß des schöpferischen Sprachzerfalls erkennen.

english

Raam is a 2001 Kubrickian Space Odyssey through numerous levels, taking the reader from the earliest archaic beginnings of language right up to the explosion of modern human sound, with its quest for meaning, communication and expression, and evolving at such a rate that the final level seems to consist of nothing more than Dadaist babble, chaos.
This work uses ersatz haiku models, which have proved highly suited to the conveyance of condensed meaning and to reflecting the pictorial force of the Afrikaans language. Argo Spier describes in it the physical journey of a lonely astronaut, a rather pathetic and self-willed extra-terrestrial being imitating an earthman, from his base in no location to the strange world of the stars. On his way he discovers the Earth and, like an Adam, he does his duty by naming the things he sees and so giving a naïve meaning to existence and the fact of being.
Like Byron, the traveller believes that 'there are words that are things', but unlike Byron, who has not found any yet, he forces words into things.

I have devided into categories
those birds that are harmful the love

dove the fink
the crow the robin

I have pointed out
all that fly

also the falcon and the pig
the hippopotamus the worm

in the sand

man in the desert

the cockerel

It is of no relevance whether the interpretations of reality are correct or incorrect.
The compelling urgency of the underlying question - what is the essence of language, this creative fluid medium through which the journey passes - is the source of the eeriness surrounding the whole work.

a river
rams up

or weakens
flat

an animal
lives now

or fly

time
equals a line

or seven
a circle

[I am sure of
what I am sure of]

and,

in the dark flash
of a fading night

growing into transparency
a slow movement or a hand

grabs the vision of a ram
dying under the claw of the lion

Moving among the stars, entering the world of astrology, streaking through it like a shuttle through the time continuum in a future world, not bound by friction or the real-time mode, we arrive at a new level. Down or up? Creation or degradation? The journey goes on apace. The entry into deep space is the entry into Afrikaans and into language itself.
In the final section, On top of God's path, the author, with extraordinary perseverance, is attempting to cling, by means of the last meaningful remains of the songs and rhymes from his early childhood, to the familiarity of comprehensible meaning. But then the epic draws him in, deep into a totally decadent, Dadaist use of language; mixing, hurting, screaming out for new meanings, syntactic or semantic, anything...
Starting from the assertion of the fatality of the journey found in the poem Korsakov sindroom [in Syndroom, the first section of the work] passing through the appearance of Karios, the single poem in the Apokalips section, which [by references to the vision of St. John in the last book of the New Testament] unforgettably describes the terrible death of language [possibly referring to the death of his own mother tongue in the midst of political revolution in his native country], he ends with the verses:

then

the appearance of the wolf

it was a time
and times
and half a time

and then there was no sign

any more

leading up to the last poem, toilet, which includes inter-lingual sounds such as:

shass sj shass shass
sannie se jas m

In the last section, the story of the wandering astronaut, author and human being amidst the forces of Ohmazd and Ahriman sets and holds a traumatic reading tempo, almost like demagogic expressions of Zen philosophy, and makes ever greater mental leaps, proving both the power and the fragility of the author's mother tongue.
Raam sets the reader thinking about what he is saying when he's talking, when he's using language...

Argo Spier published his first collection in 1978, a series of poems concerning the continuous dynamic process of language degradation. Politico-cultural setbacks meant his work didn't reach its intended audience until 1992 when the boycott of South Africa came to an end. An additional hurdle was that it was written in Afro-Dutch or Afrikaans. The present collection is a treatment of earlier work, demonstrating that his mother tongue is still alive within him and is a valuable tool, becoming part of the discussion on whether language in general, as Wittgenstein put it, has any meaning at all [not an exact quote].
Raam was rewritten in the space of two afternoons in October 1993 and comprises some 80 poems. Every rewritten poem was included in the collection. The reader is invited to make alterations and discoveries for himself, to interact, discourse and to discover the fascinating progress of the creative degradation of language.

2. Wallpaper poetry and Necro Poetica

Contents

a. Belim Tower Road
[Samson 's soaring drive to the South]

In Belim Tower Road, Argo Spier creates a world of many levels. On the first level there is a world in which the character Samson relives his past while driving south along the highway towards an ever evasive Belim. He never reaches Belim. In this imaginative world he enters the vast desolate hinterland of literature with all its accumulated debris of words and sediment of sentences. He does this in a strangely unscrupulous way, not respecting any of the acknowledged genres of litera-ture, mixing philosophical utterances with poetry, poetry with story telling and dramatic dialogue with ordinary expression. Belim Tower Road is an encyclopaedia of sound and pictures and there is a somewhat dark undertone to the whole of the anthology. The plot of the story is set in the first poem with the verses ...

I dimmed the light I closed the
door
I walked off

the patio the day was done the
office
was dead

the court has spoken
also it was autumn
the train ...

Dramatic and clever punchlines and carefully placed hints push the story along as it slowly reveals its true driving force : the creation of poetry with recombined words and an endless generation of words, images, themes and stories. Words are taken from everyday sentences and existing literature and novel pieces of poems and poems are compiled.

The farmers are picking up
their furniture

all along the Gourits River
all their cattle are washed away

Habakkuk 3 verses 16-19

On one level the author is telling an ordinary story, the story of Samson's life, but on other levels he is dabbling in the sub-conscious mind and the hidden secrets of poetry. He tries to cover his tracks with many false trails and sometimes plain deception. He leads the reader on but not in a shameless way, it is more his way of courting the reader that is so charming. His poetry is colourful, picturesque and the many minor themes linking into one another make it a pleasant drive for the reader down the highway to Belim together with the main character, Samson.
On the way to Belim there is statement and understate-ment, irony and hilarity, expectation and tears, contradiction and compli-ment. There is the relationship with Liza and the young Lynx fillies in the vault, the Jehovah's Whiteness, who could be Samson and Liza's illicit son, the diary with notes for poems in Samson's keeping, the devil's anatomical parts, the admin-istrative per-sonnel with names like Matty, Marc, Doc Luc, Jo, Paul and Pete, all names of writers in the New Testament, and there are the Barbarian files, Barbara being the author's first love. All this is cloaked in a cloth of Buck-ovskian story telling.
On yet another level, the author ex-periments with some mordac-ity and daring in a cult-like manner with the recombination technique, creating what he calls his proof of dark matter in language or Necro Poetica. Necro Poetica, the horrific act of a poet's meddling with existing literature and trying to resurrect words, words old and cold, used and spoken, abused. Using contradicting semantic values and many categories and experiment-ing with new syntax, the author seeks new fragments of meaning within existing literature. He rearranges often vulgar utterances and ordinary and commonly-used words to tell altogether different stories with the same words and recombined sentences. His structure is the archaïc but potent one of a road journey, in this case to the mysterious Belim Tower. The following poem is an example of the fullness, thrust and inventiveness Argo Spier displays in Belim Tower Road.

talk of Fire talk of Hearts the Hearts of Poems
Summer Poems full blossomed Poems Poems
with Fire on their Edges

Women in their Souls

they burn
they smoulder

they're as ripe as an Orchard on the Slopes
of the Lusiadi of Camoes

talk of that Fire ...

talk till the Cows come Home
and eat up all the Hay

and the Maid say
Frenchmen are Frog-faced men

the Sky is up there where it's supposed to be
the Lilies 're in the Field the Water's where the Trees are

it looks like a previous Day
it smells like agricultural Atmospheres

are Frenchmen Frog-faced soldiers?

talk of Fiery Hearts of Poems and Men sic talk
of the Ceremony of Consummation of blood

or if you don't want to talk
don't or talk

about the Guys who went with Dias

On yet another level the anthology contains two kinds of poems, the first of which one might call the flat ones and the second the resurrected ones. There is an ambiguity in the understanding of which is which. In the first half of the compilation Samson is telling his story, starting where he left the Clerk of Court's office to first take the train and then, the next day, to buy a car. The rest of this half is filled up with the story describing the work he had done in the Administrative Office where new laws were made. The author uses flashbacks and reflexion to give the story its actuality.
Another story is simultaneously unfolding. The author himself is driving south in his mind while typing on his 486 Mhz 66 clone computer.
In the second part of the anthology, the section with the 50 Barbarian Files, again something new happens. Totally new and different poems surface. These are the resurrected ones. There are 18 of them and as the author mentioned in a poem preceding the 50 files they are pieces of pure Necro Poetica. The numbers, the so called File numbers at the top of the poems, refer to the page num-bers of Lawrence Krauss' book, The Fifth Essence - The Search for Dark Matter in the Universe, Vintage Press, 1990. In these poems a new context is given to words and sentences that were once trapped in a dis-cussion of the strange contradic-tory things that hap-pen in the Quantum world of Particle Physics. And as Krauss claimed to have sufficient mathe-matical proof for the existence of Dark Matter, Argo Spier claims that he has found Dark Matter in poetry. The author emerges like a butterfly out of a cocoon, as a master of recombination, a sorcerer and deliv-erer, a saviour of castrated words.
The 18 poems could also be viewed as 18 god-desses (the satanic number 9, times two, convert-ing it to a holy number) that eva-nesce from the dead and by doing so, unveil their new virginity. A ceremony of consumma-tion is taking place, a final climax which the author has been preparing from the beginning of the compilation. The 18 resurrected poems are perfect examples of the suggestive power and dark side of Necro Poetica. File no.: 227/In the early pri-mordial poetry is beautiful without having to have meaning other than its own existence.

a seemingly innocu-ous difference
presented itself
as in a basin
and began to grow
first
remaining largely unaltered
simulating itself towards expectancy

Poetry has never seemed so easy. Take the chains of the past away from words and they show innocent new faces. The main character, Samson, knows what imprisonment means. He is caught up in a fast changing pre-Mandela South-African world, but also in a mediocre world in which poetry is a dubious subversive thing. He can't live in such a world and escapes into his diary, he gets into the train, leaving everything behind and goes to Belim. His laconic acceptance of the course his life is taking and his joy when driving and doing poetry, as well as his persisting in going to Belim reminds one of characters such as the Chinaskian character in Buckowski's poetry or, even more, the Oom Schalk Lourens character in Herman Charles Bosman's Mafeking Road. The following poem reflects some of these character traits, but is chosen here because it also shows the author's inventiveness in creating atmosphere and suspens.

I need some more References with
Portuguese Phrases

the Barbarian Files are coming up

no one is going to take me seriously
I have to get the Atmosphere right
keep the Illusion about Belim
running there must be more

References quick

Santa Joao di Vila do Condo
that's nice
Viseu
Ildefonse
Douro
Ribatejo

and

Toureiro I am a Toureiro
I have a Car

every Priest down from here to Belim
knows that by now ... Farpas

I go my own way Corrida's but that's Spanish
try Manuelino and Azulejos Everybody

knows Azulejos as well don't they?

The anthology is dedicated to the honourable Mister Bartholomias Dias, Dreamer and Roadrunner - Discoverer of vast open Countries and the Master of the Belim Tower, and together with the many references to Portuguese phrases throughout the anthology, one is led to assume that it's the Belém Tower on the Taag in Lissabon that's being referred to. 7 times, the number of the creation, the following verses recur in the anthology

Oh lonely Bar-b-Que's on Sundays at the Dam
oh Illicit son

oh cool Messias Vinho Verde
shipped

all the way from the Belim Tower
Lisbon Main Street ...

Nothing is less true. That is a deception. Belim not Belém. The Clerk of Court structure and Samson's driving on the highway south is but an archaic peg on which to hang the author's real intentions and, anyway, Belém is north of South Africa. The Road to Belim is poetry. It is the Road to the altar called Belim, the altar on which the ceremony of resur-rection of the 18 god-desses is to take place.
Throughout the anthology prepara-tions are made for this ceremony and the ritual of consummation or resurrection. Careful hints and references are placed on the way to this section of the anthology. The ar-chaism of travelling is only the author's vehicle towards the deliver-ance awaiting the 18 Vestal virgins, their rebirth, in the 50 Barbarian files. Probably the deepest level is to be found in this strange allusion and in the various con-nections be-tween words like Be-lim and biblical words such as Samson and Mirjam Siffra, who became Liza when she started work at the law-enforcement office. Mirjam Siffra means Mary the Im-maculate and Samson is a Naz-arite chosen for life to fight idolised images. Samson is on his way to Belim to view Africa, an image, a mirage, an idolised continent?. The word Belim in itself sounds biblical and prophetic. Is it a reference to the Bel legend which also has something to do with idolised images? The 18 files are true naked poetry. They consist of words saved from the grave into which they were put in 1990 by Krauss. The author has recombined them and seems to be saying, look, this is their proper place. Look, these are the true symbols. Look, the Road to Belim is the true art of Ne-cro Poetica. Only on the altar of Belim does true poetry exist. Only there is true po-etry resur-rected. Argo Spier is the chosen Naz-arite battling his way through deca-dence and the misuse of language ... through illusions.
Belim Tower Road is a well-struc-tured anthology and offers an easy read and much on which to reflect. It contains some of the most delicate poems the author has written. A last one should be mentioned. It is found in the anthology among poems dealing with the death of a father of a 12-year-old girl named Marianne.

Oh cold cold tear
cold tear hot

on my cheek why?

hey ... tear ... why
are you

dripping

down

from my eye?

The term Necro Poetica was developed in the Workshop MBM Word in 1993/1994, during the author's chairmanship of the work group.
LWCFSD Poetic Society.

b. Sampel four
[The Masked Man of Santa Margarita and the poets of Graaff Reinet]

In Sample Four Argo Spier takes Wallpaper Poetry (the endless generation of words, images, themes and stories) to its limits by incorporat-ing a series of so-called Computer poems into the story he is telling. He uses a simple plot, a group of four poets get to-gether in a pub in a small South African Town, the Karoo town of Graaf Reinette, to philosophise on the meta-physical aspects of poetry and the art of writing tout court. The Computer poems are printouts of wini.ini files from his own computer and, in the way they are presented in the plot structure of the anthology, they are beautiful examples of the dynamic characteris-tics of Wallpaper Poetry.

Everywhere
level
projection
alignment
report
correction
analysis
feedback
limit
history
graph
results

skip the rest

look out the window see the rain

The author uses common and ordinary words and sentences, words already used and abused, and re-combines them to form verses and icons of language. The message is ... in the magical mind of the poet things happen ... in the pub in Graaf Reinette poetry is born ...
In the fol-lowing verses the daring drive and the author's use of so called ordinary language recombined, set the tone of much that is to follow.

it rains ... it rains so much
you won't believe it
it's Death creeping up on you
it
seeps ...

it walks ...

it stands up straight

it watches you.

Argo Spier, a pupil of the South African poet, N.P. van Wyk-Louw, claims to be the Master of recombination or, put more forcefully, the Master of Wallpa-per. He collects and re-combines parole, creating a sort of 'meta' language, poetry ... the scrolling kind. His poems are pictures brought to-gether in a cata-logue. Fact, he is selling Wallpaper and Sample Four displays the various designs he is offering. In his own words:

see I am scrolling Wallpaper
as fast as I can.

The terms Wallpaper poetry and Ne-cro Poetica (the ghastly ritual of writing poetry, Wallpaper poetry, Argo Spier kind) were in-vented by the author in the Workshop MBM Word in 1993/1994. Sample Four is the fourth anthology dealing with these concepts and in practically all of the poems in Sample Four traces of the cornerstones and criteria of and for wallpaper could be found: Coinci-dence and historicy. Every-thing that is brought to life happened in time and/or refers to existing litera-ture, utter-ances, names of places or existing people, etc. When the author mentions 7 plants in a desert, it refers to the 7 plants he saw at Mitzpe Ramon in the Negef desert in Israël. If he refers to numbers of cars, jeeps, these num-bers exist and, when traced, one will find the particular cars and they will be Japanese Land Ranger Jeeps and their numbers will be ex-actly the same as mentioned in the poem.

the people of Cannes
are all old

they all wear wigs
bleached

fashion
from Main Street Hades

they go up and down
foreshore Boulevard Anglia

in their Toyota Land Ranger Jeeps
displaying numbers like

9392XA06 and
5238XL06

they buy cigarettes and booze
at cheap tobacconists sic
and they look at the boats
trying to flee the encroaching

Day of Armageddon

they don't get away ... those who did
drowned ...

the XTL la Salis sank ... didn't she?
Otto Joseph Matelot on his way to China

drowned ... didn't he?

Apart from the ambiguity that some-times arises in the actual rela-tionship between ritual recombination and storytelling Wallpaper Sample Four is a well-structured anthology. The author uses a Jungian dream mandala as model. A tetrakis, Greek for the concept 4, forms the four corners. of this mandala. In the anthology four geographical regions are described : the Great Karoo, South Africa, the Negef, a desert in Israel, the Côte d'Azur, France and in Flanders, Bel-gium. Towns in these regions, incidents that occurred, the character traits of people and small talk are en-capsulated in this superstructure. The author summons up the flow of his own life, a weird drea-m, and resur-rects, as in a drama, the various acts of his own personal history, and the reader is drawn into this dream real-ity. The author constantly flirts with the reader, appealing, begging him to come into the dream.

In the mist hanging over the sea
you can see

a man walking on water
that man is me ... see

be my numenozum I'll be yours
weird dream nice tetrakis

in the waterHole Ben GP Jo Moze
and me ... do you hear me?

do you dare come beat the water
with me? do you dare?

walk on water ... walk?
yes I dare

for poems

The journey through the four regions mentioned, however, transcends the author's personal in-volvement. The poems are part of a Necro-Poetic seance the author is preparing. What the reader sees is Wallpaper but what he gets is Necro Poetica and dealings with the spirits, words and utterances of those who are long dead.
The use of the Biblical symbols of death, rain and wa-ter, and the call to the reader to walk on water, a New Tes-tament reference, underlines this.
The Otto Matelot poems are perfect ex-amples of what is really at stake in Sample Four. Otto Matelot left Cannes 1886 on a sailing trip to China and never returned. The author brings him back in time not so much with the story he is telling about the ship-wreck in which Otto died, but by using words used by Otto's loved ones who were left be-hind. He does this by copying ex voto texts from the walls of the chapel at the lighthouse on Cape de la Garoupe and incorporating them into the verses. One can trace the author's steps.

The Prince with the Iron Mask fled
to Sainte Marguerite ... didn't he?

the Spirits are crowding the Chapel
next to the Watch Tower

on Cape de la Garoupe

Ex-voto Puget Re-A.N.D.
de la garde pour une guérison 1956
the people of Cannes
are all old and past

and afraid and morgified
and citing

backward masking mes-sages ...

Otto Joseph Matelot a bord du Lutin a fait partie de l'éxpèdition de la Chine du Tonkin et de l'Annam 1886

The author is constantly trying to increase the scale of the mandala. He surges into myths, enters the myth of the Masked Man of Sainte Marguerite, giving his three friends the names of characters used in Plato's writing, echoing the pseudo-so-phistic dialogue the four poets are engaged in in Graaf Reinette's pub. Absurd dia-logue and hilarious art-historical references call the tune, all the time, while wallpaper is scrolling and Necro Poetica taking place.

next day ... static life
they gathered on the beach of Miramar
(they knew about the nightly raid)

Phaedo Phaerus Timaeus
and

the Masked Knight of Sainte Marguerite
sat on a rock feet in the water

don't be metaphysically naïve
the soul belongs to the world of fluid forms
that's why it rains so much it's easier to fight

that way when all is wet
the earth dogged

're you sure?

absolutely poems are written
that way
the Demiurge crafted the world
that way
poems need water
that way

to spring to life

not true!
poems cannot spring to life
they grow

and etc.

'd you think the Muse is alive? I mean
exists? whispering poems when you're dry

from watching sky my oh my why do you ask?
you ask
I don't know it's just that
the cutting edge is so thin an'

if you open up the door hell anybody
can come in
ghosts and so and what do you do

when the wind blows? when the Mistral
comes in from across the koppies?
I mean you are a ghost aren't you?
you're the one asking questions like
'd you think the Muse is alive? I mean
exists? whispering poems when you're dry
when your neck's stiff from watching sky

I don't know ask Timaeus he writes poetry
with loops such as 'd you think the Muse is
alive? I mean exists? whispering poems
when you're dry when your neck's stiff
from watching sky

etc.

Unlike the finite wini.ini files Wall-paper poetry can keep on scrolling for ever by means of loop verses. What is impor-tant is the pictures the reader sees on his com-puter screen!. Nothing else matters. What matters is the Soul of Poetry, words, just the words, and as far as that goes, Argo Spier's work is a con-stant abjur-ing drive into that soul.
The spiritualism aimed at is not really the bringing to life of ghosts, but the bringing- to life of language itself. It is the Voo-dooism of utter-ances. His work is source-seeking and iconogra-phic and with Sample Four he walks the tightrope be-tween poe-m and non poem, the tight rope be-tween crea-tive implementa-tion of syntactic variation and copy writing. His work even borders on plagiarism, if the copying of car numbers, ex votos, the running and rewriting of wini.ini files can be consid-ered as such.
But that doesn't bother him, he is ...

telling stories with poems
high quality mummification ... in
Jericho
at the Dead Sea side
but that's good
poems keep to themselves that way
and you're safe

Sample Four was com-pleted and published digitally in May 1994 and is a compilation of 180 po-ems. ARGO SPIER has written several anthologies, four of which explore Necro Poetica and Wallpaper. The term Necro Poetica was developed in the Workshop MBM Word in 1993/1994, during the authors chairmanship of the work group. - LWCFSD

B. Press Releases

1. Green Muse Trying

'... honest, sincere and touching, but naughty and daring too, tender relations and libidinous desires, a story stangely told, with a multitude of recuring themes neatly developed in both poetry and prose ... irony verging on pathos. In essence, the human condition in all its hilarity and typicality, a constant source-searching art-historical drive ... naked and fresh'

'Yellow is the sun and unlike
Softy shitty worlds of dreams

Shiny is the gold
That drips from the melting pots

Where wizards purify lead copper
Bronze and tones of yellow

Oh and the yellow tones of the sun
… Its green'

2. Carrillion press release

View Lucy Ayling's story about 'carrillion'

To: All Major Belgian, British, South African and Australian Newspapers
Date: 10/05/99
Care of: News and Art Editors
From: Argo Spier
Contact Address: nvt
It is a tribute to the little Belgian girls who were sexually abused or went missing in the years 1995-1996.

What stimulated the poem was the painting by Harriet Halbed(1850-1933),'The Little Girl at the Door', in the Royal Art Museum in Canterbury, and the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170. The poem will be donated to the museum for distribution. 50 schools and institutes across Europe, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia will receive copies. The Hope is that the poem will be found suitable for academic use as it deals with the dangers of pathological sick pedo-philiac relations. Distribution also via News Groups on Internet and various BBS. Newspapers may publish the poem. Argo Spier, born in Williston in South Africa, has published 8 major digitally collections of poems dealing with trust in relationships. Concepts such as 'Wallpaper Poetry' and 'Necro Poetica' are essential elements of his work and style. His latest publications are 'A Lovers Sundae Sarum' and 'Zinzli Came Home Albi'.

3. Introduction to carrillion

Who, when visiting Canterbury and flying on imagination's wings back to 1170, to the murder of Thomas Becket in this heavenly place, would not feel a surge of emotion. Faced with the stones of history, the mark of its continuity, one could not but associate the painting, Halbed's The Little Girl at the Door, in the Royal Art Gallery, with the world as it is today. As a visitor from Belgium, amidst the anticipatory rush of winter festivities, one had toreflect on those present-day girls, at yet another door, locked within doors, Julie, Melissa, Ann and Efie and their sisters in suffering and death. History and beauty, the solitary figure in Halbed's painting, isolated from the bustling world by her misery; the cold, watching stones, a continuity in the human condition - two parallel lines that sometimes meet, in a ghastly deed or a moment's reflection.

'I dedicate the poem 'Free Carillion' to the little women to-be who were abducted, raped, murdered and buried in the backwardness of hidden houses on the soil of the fair Kingdom of Belgium in the terrible years of 1995-1996. My appreciation is for the Royal Art Gallery, Canterbury, where the painting The Little Girl at the Door by Harriet Halbed (1850-1933) found its proper immortal place'. - Argo Spier.'...Poetry! You wanted to know what poetry is! The essence of it is! How can I explain: A poet is not conserned with this. His intrest lies somewhere else. Poems are signs, insider material, or at least, deconstructive insider palpations of words. They are constructed out of things that are resilient, interchangeable and descantable and dynamic in temperament. There is movement, transition, division and inclination in poetry. The thingness of words, the things poetry are contrived and structured from, is thewhere/what-it-is-all-about in poetry.'

4. Slender strain - publisher's note
ref. the Madrid cowardly train bombings

[Reference notes accompany the poetic additions inside the text of Slender Strain to their respective authors.]

Slender Strain started off as a facilitator's attempt to generate creative writing at the cyber community Salty Dreams' Lounge. The thread posted was Poet needed to get in the car with me and comment and posted in February 2004. The first suggested title for Slender Strain was Responsible Young Driver. But as the story proceeded title change proved inevitable. First it became A!hora - Ourania's Drive. And then to Ourania's Drive And towards the end of the creative process it was changed again City Looking and a sub-title was added, Inside the Grid of a Writer's mind. In the 13th draft the title was changed yet again and became Slender Strain. The story was completed on the 11th of March 2004, the day extremists planted 13 bombs in Madrid, Spain killing 203 people, maiming and wounding 1200 others. The story of Slender Strain carries many references to Spain (and also to Catalan) and since Ourania really is of Mediterranean origin in the story, she usually answers the driver with a 'Si, of course!' This horrible cowardice in Spain came as a shock, both to the author and to the participants in the story. There was a hesitation, deciding whether to postpone the completion of the story as a form of solidarity with the victims, innocent mothers, children and working fathers. Since however the story of Slender Strain started off with a quote appealing to poetic nations and seekers of beauty the decision was quickly made. Beauty should reign over destruction. Terror shall not lead deprivation. Writing and the working with myths elevates culture to higher levels and prevails over indiscriminant, callous murder, especially when this murder is committed under the vague name of political aims or an idolized and pathetic god. Draft 12, the final draft before copy read, was completed the same day and the author commenced with drafts 13, 14 and 15.

Lastly, use was made of background material provided in Alone in all her sex (Vintage) by Marina Warner, Visiting Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge. The author recommends the reading of it. -Ed., March 2004.
'...Like Byron, the traveller believes that 'there are words that are things', but unlike Byron, who 'has not found any yet', he forces words into things'.

5. Patmos interview - writers past and present

First I called them Patmos Poems then just 'Sea Poems', but now, with the heading 'Heaps of Cream', they are included in the poetic sequences collected under the title 'Blue Sweet' and form an introduction to it.

I am however not the first and only writer to have had these colour experiences on the island. In the first century after Christ, St. John, that great storyteller and father figure to many Europeans and orthodox believers around the world, already incorporated colour metaphors into his literature. In his Apocalypse, Chapter 21:19-20, which was written on the island during his banishment there, he used the metaphor of gemstones to describe the colours he experienced on Patmos: jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolyte, beryl, topaz, chrysoprasus, facinth and amethyst. The colours do look like that on Patmos! He just wrote down what he saw. My Heaps of Cream was also simply a 'writing down' of the colour-experience. I couldn't have written it anywhere else in the world either. … But, talking of St. John's literature, my work is of course not in the least to be compared with the power and authority of his. There's only the 'Patmos connection' that creates any link between us. Whereas St. John reached out with his metaphors to reach every human soul on earth, I merely answered my own, and the 'mechanical droning' of colour as it 'drilled' itself into my soul. St. John's work is of such an unbelievably high quality and purity … oh, you should read it on Patmos when you are there! It's Greek and it's much more… as is the island!'

'...Whereas St. John reached out with his metaphors to reach every human soul on earth, I merely answered my own, and the 'mechanical droning' of colour as it 'drilled' itself into my soul. St. John's work is of such an unbelievably high quality and purity … oh, you should read it on Patmos when you are there! It's Greek and it's much more… as is the island!' '...the colours he experienced on Patmos: jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolyte, beryl, topaz, chrysoprasus, facinth and amethyst...'.
'...As with most of the Argo Spier projects it stressed the dialectical relationship between hearing and seeing, voice and sight, utterance and visual expression and exploits both media'

6. machines of art - living-in-a-story

From the Argo Spier Prague Interview 1997is. His intrest lies somewhere else'
'If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm meknow that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.' - Emily Dickinson
'Poems are signs, insider material, or at least, deconstructive insider palpations of words. They are constructed out of things that are resilient, interchangeable and descantable and dynamic in temperament. There is movement, transition, division and inclination in poetry. The thingness of words, the things poetry are contrived and structured from, is the where/what-it-is-all-about in poetry. It may sound presumptuous, but, poetry IS this very something which is asked about when the query touches on essentiality. Essence. Formulations and admixtures such as: 'What, Is, The, Essence, Of and Poetry' prove the point: the thingness. Six things (words) are structured in a convincing fabrication. Syntactic rhythm and semantic weight bestow definition, significance and message. A poem, any poem, always enlarges the question of what poetry is. It adds to the historical questioning memoire. 'Poetry, Is, Always, An, Art-historical, Quest, Into, Some, Dark and Region'. The search for essence is convoluted, perplexing and intricate. It is a quest into illogical ambiguity.

7. L.A. #andwerve interview

A: Speaking of ideas of "self" and identity, what's with your name? Is it Belgian, or what
S: My ‘philosophy’ or even my ‘name’ is totally irrelevant. In fact my name is not my name at all. And the picture you see of me, well that’s me a year ago but it’s a blurred jpg and also made up out of zeros and ones and isn’t me. It is a time-framed historical moment captured in the ‘working’ life of a normal poet. It was taken in a restaurant somewhere in Catalonia about a year ago. People seem to recognise me from it. I like the vagueness in it though, that just out-of-focus ness. It blurs. And the name Argo Spier? It’s a concept. It is formed from 2 separate words, namely the original Greek word that has the connotation of ‘vessel’ and which in the Argonautica Myth has the deeper meaning of a ‘speaking vessel’. And then there’s the word ‘muscle’. ‘Spier’ is Dutch for a muscle. So Argo Spier basically means ‘Speaking vessel with a muscle’ and that’s what I had wanted to be. It's perfect for developing the idea of a biological apparatus that makes sounds, which is mydefinition of the Modern Poet.
A: [Laughs] It is impossible to be bored of you, I think, even if I don't quite understand everything you are saying. Now, this "biological apparatus" that seems central to your understanding of the poet's place in society. How does this biological apparatus differ from whatwould conventionally be conceived of as a "poet"?
S: To expand a little on the concept of the biological poet apparatus - ‘Biological’ doesn’t merely include the physical attributes of the individual; it also refers to the feeling part that has developed in the Hominid, the Homo sapiens since the Pleistocene. That part that people have mistaken as the last and final evolutionary step. But natural selection doesn’t work like that. It goes on and on. We are now incorporating computers into the development. And I am now not referring to the work of Darwin, The Origin of Species, or the work of George Elliot (Mary-Ann), but to the concepts of Teillard de Chardin. And apparatus? The ‘apparatus’ refers to something like a plug-and-play component docketed to a computer. The Modern Poet has surpassed paper and anthologies. He now scrolls his texts on screens. Oh, the poor publishers! Some are still locked into medieval levels of thought, thinking poetry can be sold and monies can be made from it. But this is another ambiguity in the long haul of Literature. The modern poet is merged with, and dependent on, the noughts and digital vertical strokes representing the numbers for 'off' and 'on.' As a biological-poet-apparatus he is a plug-and-player and he enters the collective thought of the Internet the moment he starts his computer. Now he becomes an organic live-thought entity and machine-like. And this process of ‘entering’ opens the hunt for a bigger body or another similar organic unit to merge with. He is a Cyprinid man-apparatus. A hand looking for a body to hang and work from. The poet, priest of old, the scribe; has hanged into tool and has become part of the collective unconscious of Cyber Virtuality. And there’s that tendency to enlarge and form a corporate in order to self-replicate digitally. And as he speaks in the vastness of the Cyber Intelligence the poet is a vessel for himself and for others that speak through him. In the Greek Myth, the search for the Golden Fleece was through the workings of the Argonauts, the speaking muscled vessels. In Cyber it's merely the imitation that counts. The tool.
A: My God, I think my head is spinning. So, I take it that the "new poet," this "biological apparatus," has his dwelling in Cyberspace (if we can, in fact, talk about this location in the physical terms used to described architecture). Tell me a little about the Cyberlair of the biological apparatus.
S: The real thing, and/or scene, is now the organic biological apparatus. The hype of the Cyborg is dead but the reality of the new communicative biological apparatus is here. And it’s a collective thing. And to refer to the Argoboat, it is Cyber culture sec that the new poet-scribe has become. We cannot do without it anymore but note that the concept ‘collective’ has several connotations that works on various levels. Firstly there is the flat reference of collective that has to do with being in a group. But then not a group as defined by an association of groupie insiders, something like the collectives of the 60ties or with their pseudo Neo Marxism. The second level of meaning derives from archetypical development of symbols. Here there is no goal and nothing is on the agenda re achievement. Except maybe communication through the exposure of the self as an ersatz. But I’m not going into this. This is too heavy and requires the live-literature processes of real-time to access.£
A: That's ok, [laughs]. I'm sure our readers will understand. At least tell us a little bit, though, about the Argoboat cyber myth.
S: The Argoboat-with-its-biological-apparatuses is pure and merely a fresh interpretation of the global egoistic trait of self-interest. The self-interest of the individual in exposing himself. And it is designed in such a way that the group of poets selected, the collective, benefits by every hit the site registers. It's the poet’s self-interest to have his work exposed that generates the collective unconscious. Again, here we touch on the second level of the value of collectivism. On the boat we don’t even know each other’s locality. We just share central space. The poet-apparatus Argo Spier provides the space and does all the work. And the poetry onboard hasn’t got a ‘line,’ and doesn’t want to steer towards any statement at all. It's just there. And this works extremely well. It works so well that even you have searched me out to get an interview from me! I haven’t ‘seen’ you before but you are an apparatus too and are looking at a possible merge with me. The boat, the myth, is merely that what one takes out of it, as in myths the working procedure always is. You see in it what you see in it. The more the poets belonging to it use it for their own individual interest, the more the biological apparatus profits from it and becomes entity. Now the hand grows into an arm. Collective bodily apparatus' are the key units that form the cyber body of the collective unconscious and save the archetypical sources of civilization. Now that’s a steep statement, isn’t it? The point is that nobody can today a) stop this development and b) nobody can destroyit once it has formed its limbs and metamorphosed into a greater biological apparatus. The hand and arm want a shoulder and a torso. When will it grow its full body?

How will the head look? Interesting questions though, no?

8. sampel four - closets and drawers

wallpaper poetry and the resurrection of 'old cold' words
colour pages project
avk paintings and graphic art
storytelling poetic sequences

Argo Spier has worked together with the graphic artist AVK on a series of happenings. The colour Pages Projects was held in Ghent, Belgium in 1997 till 2000 and was an attempt to combine 'word' and 'picture', 'ear' and 'eye' in the dialectical relationship between 'hearing' and 'seeing', 'voice' and 'sight'. It combined 'utterance' and 'visual expression' and as 'a thing on its own' was creative expression tout court. As with most of the Argo Spier projects it stressed the dialectical relationship between hearing and seeing, voice and sight, utterance and visual expression and exploits both media.
visit the avk art galleries

opera lodge cafe
raam
haiku

9. RAAm, the explosion of modern human sound and the quest for meaning, communication and expression, was part of the Colour Pages project realised by ARGO SPIER and AVK in Ghent, Belgium. Colour Pages was commenced and presented to the public for the first time in 1996 and uses multi-media expression in the search for 'human feelings'. It was repeated in 1997 in Mechelen, Belgium at the International and European South Africa Fair and served as the basis for several throughout Europe.
It is a frail attempt, taking a small step in the direction of combining 'word' and 'picture', 'ear' and 'eye' and stresses the dialectical relationship between 'hearing' and 'seeing', 'voice' and 'sight', 'utterance' and 'visual expression'. download full copy Raam. ARGO SPIER describes in RAAm, with the use of ersatz haiku models, the physical journey of a lonely astronaut into Deep Space. He is a rather pathetic and self-willed extra-terrestrial being imitating an earthman travelling from his 'base' in 'no location' to the 'strange worlds of the stars'. On his way the lonely astronaut discovers the Earth and, like an Adam, he does his duty by naming the things he sees giving naïve meaning to existence and the fact of own being among the the 'things' he encounters. Like Byron, the traveller believes that 'there are words that are things', but unlike Byron, who 'has not found any yet', he forces words into things.

10. Press release general
wallpaper poetry storytelling

'The Art Editor of Argospier invites you to report on the work of the South African writer Argo Spier and AVK the Belgian graphic artist and lecturer at St Luke’s Art College in Ghent in Belgium. Collaboration between the two artists has in the past lead to various well recieved projects in Belgium and outside it, in its neighbouring countries. Art happenings such as 'Colour Pages,' 'RAAm,' 'Municipal Paint Opera Lodge Cafe' and 'Adieu Afric' are on their curriculum as well.
Download 'Green Muse Trying' FREE
A limited number of copies of ARGO SPIER's new book, 'Green Muse Trying' are published and will be distributed FREE of any charge in a number of European countries and South Africa and England. An interview with ARGO SPIER, born in Williston in the Great Karoo in South Africa, can also be arranged, in person or via video conferencing. As a pupil of N.P. van Wyk-Louw, ARGO SPIER's 'Wallpaper storytelling' style of writing is a continuation of the style of the 1920s writer Herman Charles Bosman, author of among others, 'Mafeking Road'.

C. GENRE

1. secret body
'... honest, sincere and touching, but naughty and daring too, tender relations and libidinous desires ... a story stangely told, with a multitude of recuring themes neatly developed in both poetry and prose ... irony verging on pathos. In essence, the human condition in all its hilarity and typicality, a constant source-searching art-historical drive ... naked and fresh'
The secret body of poetry Wallpaper poetry and the kind Argo Spier communicates with - is poetry that comes into being with the use of recombined words and through the endless generation of words, images and themes. It comes from everyday words, sentences, verses, from existing literature and from sophistic rhetoric, philosophy and poems themselves. Necro Poetica is the 'horrific act' of doing it! A poet's meddling with existing literature... Dramatic and clever punchlines and carefully placed hints push the story along as it slowly reveals its true driving force : the creation of poetry with recombined words and an endless generation of words, images, themes and stories. Words are taken from everyday sentences and existing literature, and novel pieces of poems and complete poems are compiled" - LWCFSD Poetic Society

2. word combinations
Argo Spier's work combine 'word' and 'picture', 'ear' and 'eye' in the dialectical relationship between 'hearing' and 'seeing', 'voice' and 'sight'. It combines the 'utterances of the poetic mind' with the 'visual expression of the artistic soul' and is a frail attempt to be 'a thing on its own' seeking the secret body of poetry tout court. He 'commits' wallpaper poetry and Necro poetica and he 'resurrects' words.

3. dramatic dialogue
The mixing philosophical utterances with poetry, poetry with story telling and dramatic dialogue with ordinary expression, and is 'fast-scrolling' and 'easy-read' endless generation of words, images and themes.

4. scroling wallpaper poetic storytelling
Argo Spier uses the fast scroling wallpaper poetic storytelling technique for his deconstructive soul searching stories which almost always burns down to art-historical debates concerning the essence of writing itself. In the process 'Necro Poetica', the horrific act of a poet's meddling with existing literature and trying to resurrect words words 'old and cold', 'used and spoken' and 'abused' emerges and the whole turns into wallpaper poetry which irrevokably now becomes the art of 'not respecting' any of acknowledged genres of literature. He mixes philosophical utterances interminged with poetry, poetry with storytelling and dramatic dialogue with ordinary expression. Argo Spier's work combine 'word' and 'picture', 'ear' and 'eye' in the dialectical relationship between 'hearing' and 'seeing', 'voice' and 'sight'. It combines the 'utterances of the poetic mind' with the 'visual expression of the artistic soul' and is a frail attempt to be 'a thing on its own' seeking the secret body of poetry tout court. He 'commits' wallpaper poetry and Necro poetica and he 'resurrects' words.

5. storytelling sequences
Argo Spier's Wallpaper storytelling sequences are complete stories and consist more than often of 800 or more pages of poems linked to one another by theme, word suggestion or rhythm. What poems are and are not, and where and when they start and/or when and where they end, is a question Argo Spier is fully aware of when he writes and exploits the reader's curiosity. What should be the norm? Where does one 'cut' a poem in half to continue on a second page and still have poetry? Should the norm be to select sequences that fit on a page or should it be to enlarge the page to encompass the whole sequence? This last suggestion is nonsense, since nobody is going to scroll down on-line the length of 8000 successive A4 pages! So it is a problem! And the question of what is more important, the message or the meaning? Isn't that a problem too? Which parts of Argo Spier's sequences should be presented and highlighted and which neglected? One just does not know what the right approach should be!

6. wallpaper poetry and necro poetica
Argo Spier uses the fast scroling wallpaper poetic storytelling technique for his deconstructive soul searching stories which almost always burns down to art-historical debates concerning the essence of writing itself. In the process 'Necro Poetica', the horrific act of a poet's meddling with existing literature and trying to resurrect words words 'old and cold', 'used and spoken' and 'abused' emerges and the whole turns into wallpaper poetry which irrevokably now becomes the art of 'not respecting' any of acknowledged genres of literature.

7. resurrection
When 'resurrecting' words Argo Spier uses carefully collected verses and phrases from existing literature and combine it with everyday utterances and philosophical references. The character is not important! The work is!What poems are and are not, and where and when they start and/or when and where they end, is a question Argo Spier is fully aware of when he writes and exploits the reader's curiosity.

8. necro poetica
Argo Spier works with 'words old and cold and used and spoken and abused. Necro poetica - the creation of poetry with recombined words and an endless generation of words, images, themes and stories - the 'horrific' acts of a poet's meddling with existing literature.
sampel four revised

Wallpaper poetry and Necro Poetic seances. Moving into the absurd with the printing out of Wini.ini files, exvoto texts and surreal platonic debate with the 'Masked Man of Sainte Margaritha'.

9. deconstruction
Hundreds of such deconstructive constructions clutter every single collection he has worked on. Mostly Argo Spier collects and selects the words he wants to use, or those that impresses him, by reading almost anything he can lay his hands on and listening to every kind of conversation within earshot. He then recombines these 'collected words' and 'phrases' and 'glues' them together, building surprisingly well-composed 'new stories'. There is also the constant luring into 'metaphysical discussion' and a hard-driven questioning of existing art-historical perspectives.

10. wallpaper poety
Argo Spier's oeuvre contains storytelling poetic sequences. There are multiple levels in his work and three, four, five stories interwoven into his poetic storytelling sequences. Some collections contain up to 800 A4 pages and all poems, columns and proza are interlinked. Terms such as Wallpaper poetry and Necro Poetica are suitable to discribe his work. When 'resurrecting' words Argo Spier uses carefully collected verses and phrases from existing literature and combine it with everyday utterances and philosophical references.

Blurbs & other storytelling poetic sequences by ARGO SPIER

Bogy Road - A multi-levelled search into the essence of 'Wallpaper Poetry' and glimpses of the power and darker sub-conscious side of 'Necro poetica'.
Sampel Four -'Wallpaper Poetry' and 'Necro poetic seances', moving into absurd with the printing out of Wini.ini files as poetry.
Mucus Gravel - A compilation of 'sea' and 'farmer' poems, hilarious 'Wallpaper Poetry' and beautiful songs.
Raam - The only work in his mother tongue, the Afrikaans language; a Kubrickian space narration with translations of poems into various languages.
Municipal Paint Opera Lodge Café - Containing 'The Blackwater Stories', 'Wallpaper Poetry' and dreams.
Santa Christiana D'Aro - 'Wallpaper Poetry' and a brilliant and beautiful story.
Belim Tower Road' - 'Wallpaper Poetry' containing perfect illustrations of 'Necro Poetica', the resurrection of words already 'said and cold' and the creation of fragile 'Vestalian sound poetry'.
On the beach of Ville St. Gillis Croix de Vie - Miscellaneous and uncompleted.
Page - Miscellaneous and uncompleted.
A Lover's Sundae Sarum - 'Fifteen Anniversary Love Poems'.
Douche and Addition - Beautiful poetry and columns.
Zinzli came home Albi - 'Fifteen Summer Poems from Chur'.
Seasons of Sarum - A collection of storytelling 'Poetic Sequences' and a deep drive into 'Sarum'.

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