Diasporic Avant-Gardes draws into dialogue two differing traditions of poetic practice: the diasporic and the avant-garde. This interdisciplinary collection examines the unacknowledged affinities (and crucial differences) between avant-garde and diasporic formal strategies and social formations. The essays foreground the creation of experimental forms and investigate the specific contexts of cultural displacement and language use that inform their poetics.

Introduction; C.Noland & B.Watten Aimé Césaire and the Syntax of Influence; B.Edwards Alan Sondheim's Internet Diaspora; M.Damon Remediation and Diaspora: Kamau Brathwaite's Video-Style; C.Noland Re-opening a Poetics of Re-openings (a.k.a. 'Naked Strategic Partners'); R.Toscano On the Outskirts of Form: Cosmopoetics in the Shadow of NAFTA; M.Davidson Franco Luambo Makiadi's Universalism and Avant-Garde Particularity; B.Watten ah noh musik dat: Speech in the Discourse of Nationalism; M.McMorris On the Nomadic Circulation of Contemporary Poetics Between Europe, North America, and the Maghreb; P.Joris Diaspora and the Avant-Garde in Contemporary Black British Poetry; L.Ramey Something Nation: Radical Spaces of Performance in Linton Kwesi Johnson and Cris Cheek; C.Harryman From Spanglish to Glossolalia: Edwin Torres's Nuyo-Futurist Utopia; U.Noel From Bass Cathedral; N.Mackey From Vaduz [Performance Poem]; B.Heidsieck