big ME: EXAMPLE(s)

Carol Batton: is a contemporary Manchester poet who distributes copies of her work from a carrier bag. She has given away over 100 000 poems. She is also active in Mad Pride.

William Burroughs: was a heroin user for much of his life. His cutup technique for processing text developed with Brion Gysin became an attempt to assassinate the word itself - or was it a knee-jerk to the hits of the conformist American society he grew up in?

Bob Cobbing printed many of the most influential poets of the 20th century on a photocopier in his back room. He developed his use of the copier into a means of expression, smudging, blurring, reshaping his own remarkable poems. Cobbing kept writing, publishing and performing until his death aged 82 – his is absolutely an example of successful ageing.

Larry Eigner: had cerebral palsy and most of his life was spent in a wheelchair. His condition affected his ability to type; he used this as a compositional element in his poem-making.

Jenny Holzer: is one of the leading international text artists, but her work might also

be looked at as poetic. Initially Holzer struggled to get her paintings into galleries, so she left them out on the streets of New York for people to see. She then began to make works that responded to the street signs and adverts that framed her work, subverting and commenting on her environment.

Hannah Weiner: started to see words in the air in 1970 – her poetry and writing document her clairvoyant experiences, giving her texts some kinship to the radical experiments of language poets.

William Carlos Willams divided his life between his busy medical career and his other life as a writer, particularly a poet. His gentleness combined with a keen accuracy, to make his writing some of the best-loved in the modernist canon.

Aaron Williamson is a contemporary British writer and performance artist who uses his profound deafness as the basis for much of his work and a tool for observing the world.