{"id":{"repo_id":"cambridge","oai_identifier":"oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/392080"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/cambridge/oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/392080","repository":{"repo_id":"cambridge","name":"Cambridge University","base_url":"https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Counter-sites in 1980s New York Poetry-Videos","abstract":"This thesis makes two principal claims. Firstly, that a specific subgenre of US poetry-videos emerged in New York City during the period 1982-1989, primarily influenced by the rise of MTV and the increased accessibility of home-video making technology in the 1980s, and secondly, that these videos (re)deployed space in order to visualise alternative ways of thinking about particular social issues through the creation of ‘counter-sites.’ This thesis traces the journey from page to screen of a selection of poetry-videos from four key New York poets of the 1980s – Ntozake Shange, Anne Waldman, Allen Ginsberg and Bob Holman – and the creation of their onscreen social protests. Developing alongside the first music videos from 1981 and utilising contemporary video technology, I argue that the poetry-videos in this thesis form a distinct grouping which distinguishes them from previous poetry films and video poems because they: i) feature the poets’ bodies on screen, performing their own work (sometimes in collaboration with others) and; ii) are fictional (as opposed to documentary) works, which allow the poet to experiment with visual technology from an artistic perspective. This thesis considers the different ways in which key poetry-videos of the 1980s harness heterotopian spaces to reimagine contemporary social issues. Each of the poets in this thesis engage with a different social issue, from racial to environmental justice, and harness various aspects of the spatial potential of video and its relation to the body on screen. The framework of the ‘counter-site’ is derived from Michel Foucault’s ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias’ (1967). Foucault uses the term counter-site in outlining his concept of heterotopias, in which ‘all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.’ This thesis explores the counter-site as a mobilised heterotopia, combining the reflective potential of the heterotopia with a call to action or an alternative solution. Chapter One considers the 1982 adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls, arguing that Shange uses the heterotopian spaces of the mirror and the garden to reframe Black womanhood as valuable. In Chapter Two, I consider Anne Waldman’s poetry-video, ‘Uh-Oh, Plutonium!’, in which she juxtaposes (monstrous) utopian space with the heterotopian space of the cemetery in order to counter the environmental issue of plutonium pollution. Chapter Three considers the way in which Allen Ginsberg creates a counter-archive in his poetry-videos, ‘Father Death Blues’ and ‘In My Kitchen In New York’, in order to rebut gentrification, reinscribing the sites of both the historical Ellis Island and Ginsberg’s own New York City apartment as reflective, museum spaces. Chapter Four considers two poetry-videos by Bob Holman, ‘Rapp it Up’ and ‘We Interrupt this Program’, which engage with the heterotopian spaces of the fairground and the television screen itself to replace technological communication with the embodied language of hip-hop. Considering these videos in terms of counter-sites unearths new ways of reading these key countercultural poets, expanding scholarly understanding of the New York City poetry scene of the 1980s.","abstract_html":"This thesis makes two principal claims. Firstly, that a specific subgenre of US poetry-videos emerged in New York City during the period 1982-1989, primarily influenced by the rise of MTV and the increased accessibility of home-video making technology in the 1980s, and secondly, that these videos (re)deployed space in order to visualise alternative ways of thinking about particular social issues through the creation of ‘counter-sites.’ This thesis traces the journey from page to screen of a selection of poetry-videos from four key New York poets of the 1980s – Ntozake Shange, Anne Waldman, Allen Ginsberg and Bob Holman – and the creation of their onscreen social protests. Developing alongside the first music videos from 1981 and utilising contemporary video technology, I argue that the poetry-videos in this thesis form a distinct grouping which distinguishes them from previous poetry films and video poems because they: i) feature the poets’ bodies on screen, performing their own work (sometimes in collaboration with others) and; ii) are fictional (as opposed to documentary) works, which allow the poet to experiment with visual technology from an artistic perspective. This thesis considers the different ways in which key poetry-videos of the 1980s harness heterotopian spaces to reimagine contemporary social issues. Each of the poets in this thesis engage with a different social issue, from racial to environmental justice, and harness various aspects of the spatial potential of video and its relation to the body on screen. The framework of the ‘counter-site’ is derived from Michel Foucault’s ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias’ (1967). Foucault uses the term counter-site in outlining his concept of heterotopias, in which ‘all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.’ This thesis explores the counter-site as a mobilised heterotopia, combining the reflective potential of the heterotopia with a call to action or an alternative solution. Chapter One considers the 1982 adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls, arguing that Shange uses the heterotopian spaces of the mirror and the garden to reframe Black womanhood as valuable. In Chapter Two, I consider Anne Waldman’s poetry-video, ‘Uh-Oh, Plutonium!’, in which she juxtaposes (monstrous) utopian space with the heterotopian space of the cemetery in order to counter the environmental issue of plutonium pollution. Chapter Three considers the way in which Allen Ginsberg creates a counter-archive in his poetry-videos, ‘Father Death Blues’ and ‘In My Kitchen In New York’, in order to rebut gentrification, reinscribing the sites of both the historical Ellis Island and Ginsberg’s own New York City apartment as reflective, museum spaces. Chapter Four considers two poetry-videos by Bob Holman, ‘Rapp it Up’ and ‘We Interrupt this Program’, which engage with the heterotopian spaces of the fairground and the television screen itself to replace technological communication with the embodied language of hip-hop. Considering these videos in terms of counter-sites unearths new ways of reading these key countercultural poets, expanding scholarly understanding of the New York City poetry scene of the 1980s.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Watt, Claire"],"institution":"University of Cambridge","degree_name":"Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)","degree_level":"Doctoral","degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":["Mullen, Lisa"],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2025,"date_issued":"2025-06-05","date_published":"2025-06-05","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:18Z","subjects":["American poetry","Poetry","Poetry Video"],"languages":["eng"],"rights":[],"rights_urls":["https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/16b4778e-7e1a-4ad2-a585-797b34d95809/download","http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved"],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.122935","outbound_label":"DOI","outbound_source":"dc:identifier.doi"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor.advisor","label":"Advisor","values":["Mullen, Lisa"]},{"key":"dc:contributor.sponsor","label":"Sponsor","values":["Weiner-Anspach Foundation Judith E. 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Firstly, that a specific subgenre of US poetry-videos emerged in New York City during the period 1982-1989, primarily influenced by the rise of MTV and the increased accessibility of home-video making technology in the 1980s, and secondly, that these videos (re)deployed space in order to visualise alternative ways of thinking about particular social issues through the creation of ‘counter-sites.’ This thesis traces the journey from page to screen of a selection of poetry-videos from four key New York poets of the 1980s – Ntozake Shange, Anne Waldman, Allen Ginsberg and Bob Holman – and the creation of their onscreen social protests. Developing alongside the first music videos from 1981 and utilising contemporary video technology, I argue that the poetry-videos in this thesis form a distinct grouping which distinguishes them from previous poetry films and video poems because they: i) feature the poets’ bodies on screen, performing their own work (sometimes in collaboration with others) and; ii) are fictional (as opposed to documentary) works, which allow the poet to experiment with visual technology from an artistic perspective. This thesis considers the different ways in which key poetry-videos of the 1980s harness heterotopian spaces to reimagine contemporary social issues. Each of the poets in this thesis engage with a different social issue, from racial to environmental justice, and harness various aspects of the spatial potential of video and its relation to the body on screen. The framework of the ‘counter-site’ is derived from Michel Foucault’s ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias’ (1967). Foucault uses the term counter-site in outlining his concept of heterotopias, in which ‘all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.’ This thesis explores the counter-site as a mobilised heterotopia, combining the reflective potential of the heterotopia with a call to action or an alternative solution. Chapter One considers the 1982 adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls, arguing that Shange uses the heterotopian spaces of the mirror and the garden to reframe Black womanhood as valuable. In Chapter Two, I consider Anne Waldman’s poetry-video, ‘Uh-Oh, Plutonium!’, in which she juxtaposes (monstrous) utopian space with the heterotopian space of the cemetery in order to counter the environmental issue of plutonium pollution. Chapter Three considers the way in which Allen Ginsberg creates a counter-archive in his poetry-videos, ‘Father Death Blues’ and ‘In My Kitchen In New York’, in order to rebut gentrification, reinscribing the sites of both the historical Ellis Island and Ginsberg’s own New York City apartment as reflective, museum spaces. Chapter Four considers two poetry-videos by Bob Holman, ‘Rapp it Up’ and ‘We Interrupt this Program’, which engage with the heterotopian spaces of the fairground and the television screen itself to replace technological communication with the embodied language of hip-hop. 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Developing alongside the first music videos from 1981 and utilising contemporary video technology, I argue that the poetry-videos in this thesis form a distinct grouping which distinguishes them from previous poetry films and video poems because they: i) feature the poets’ bodies on screen, performing their own work (sometimes in collaboration with others) and; ii) are fictional (as opposed to documentary) works, which allow the poet to experiment with visual technology from an artistic perspective. This thesis considers the different ways in which key poetry-videos of the 1980s harness heterotopian spaces to reimagine contemporary social issues. Each of the poets in this thesis engage with a different social issue, from racial to environmental justice, and harness various aspects of the spatial potential of video and its relation to the body on screen. The framework of the ‘counter-site’ is derived from Michel Foucault’s ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias’ (1967). Foucault uses the term counter-site in outlining his concept of heterotopias, in which ‘all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.’ This thesis explores the counter-site as a mobilised heterotopia, combining the reflective potential of the heterotopia with a call to action or an alternative solution. Chapter One considers the 1982 adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls, arguing that Shange uses the heterotopian spaces of the mirror and the garden to reframe Black womanhood as valuable. In Chapter Two, I consider Anne Waldman’s poetry-video, ‘Uh-Oh, Plutonium!’, in which she juxtaposes (monstrous) utopian space with the heterotopian space of the cemetery in order to counter the environmental issue of plutonium pollution. Chapter Three considers the way in which Allen Ginsberg creates a counter-archive in his poetry-videos, ‘Father Death Blues’ and ‘In My Kitchen In New York’, in order to rebut gentrification, reinscribing the sites of both the historical Ellis Island and Ginsberg’s own New York City apartment as reflective, museum spaces. Chapter Four considers two poetry-videos by Bob Holman, ‘Rapp it Up’ and ‘We Interrupt this Program’, which engage with the heterotopian spaces of the fairground and the television screen itself to replace technological communication with the embodied language of hip-hop. 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