Rewriting Conrad: Conradian Crosscurrents in Conceptual Writing

In this essay, I begin with the contemporary British novelist, Iain Sinclair, and the contemporary London-based visual artist, Sarah Jacobs, responding to and rewriting Conrad's works. The main focus of the essay, however, is recent works by three poets who, in different ways, address the task of rewriting Con-rad. Appropriation in relation to literary production has a long history. More recently, with Conceptual Writing (in the work of Kenneth Goldsmith, Robert Fitterman and Vanessa Place) appropriation has become an integral (but also controversial) poetic practice. This essay focuses on Rod Mengham's video poems based on Heart of Darkness and "Amy Foster"; Yedda Morrison's treated text version of Heart of Darkness, creating a new work by the process of erasure; and Peter Jaeger's The Shadow Line with its reframing and reconfiguring of Conrad's text. The essay concludes with a brief account of a recent collection of poems by various hands, all of which treat, revise, and respond to works by Conrad. Conrad's insistence on le mot juste, his attention to concrete detail, and his fine ear for the cadences of English prose have created texts that have proved attractive to (and productive resources for) contemporary poets.