‘In De vulgare eloquentia, Dante developed a poetics of the vernacular – the collectively accessible speech of the household and the street, distributed unilaterally rather than intentionally acquired via a disciplined pedagogy of grammar, and transformed in open bodily exchange, irrespective of social position, gender or rank. “The vernacular,” Dante says, “[is] the language which children gather from those around them when they first begin to articulate words; or more briefly, that which we learn without any rules at all by imitating our nurses.” A vernacular is not structured according to a valuing hierarchy or an administration of history; it is improvised in tandem with the rhythmic needs and movements of a present-tense yet tradition-informed body among other bodies, each specific. There is no general vernacular; it is intrinsically grammarless. Vernacular speech can only ever begin and can never achieve closure. Refusing spatial propriety, it crisscrosses institutions. In Dante’s definition, it is what’s spoken by women and children, thus it is the first, and natural language: “The whole world uses it through its diverse pronunciations and forms”.’ – from Thresholds: A Prosody of Citizenship

Lisa Roberston’s reflection of political subject formation, through poetry and vernacular forms, acts as a critical anchor for the ideas and experiments published in this new series, Dialecty.

Dialecty, conceived by Maria Fusco with The Common Guild, considers the uses of vernacular forms of speech and writing, exploring how dialect words, grammar and syntax challenge and improve traditional orthodoxies of critical writing.

Publication in December 2018 at a launch event celebrating the Dialecty series:

‘Sometimes Here Has No Walls’
Saturday 8 December 2018, 15:00 – 18:00
The Common Guild
21 Woodlands Terrace
Glasgow, G3 6DF

along with:
New Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
Harry Josephine Giles & Martin O’Leary
ISBN 978 1 906012 92 2
Skrubolz Garbillkore
Robert Herbert McClean
ISBN 978 1 906012 94 6
It Disappears In Blue and Red and Gold
Helen Nisbet
ISBN 978 1 906012 93 9
Enn Gramaten
Natasha Soobramanien & Luke Williams
ISBN 978 1 906012 95 3
Notes on Just Back from Los Angeles: A Portrait of Yvonne Rainer
Adam Pendleton
ISBN 978 1 906012 96 0