THE OTHER ROOM
Experimental poetry in ManchesterArchive for June, 2009
Treading water
TREADING WATER – a perambulatory poem in Otterspool Park, Liverpool: July 12 2009 1pm
This poem-performance has been commissioned by Gaia Project and Living at the Edge for HIGH TIDE - an Environment Agency-funded project which is bringing together ten UK based multi-media artists to interpret and explore the theme high tide, in collaboration with Dr Jason Kirby (Liverpool John Moores University) and Prof Philip Woodworth adviser to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, Liverpool).
Treading Water will explore the prehistory, geology, human and natural history of Otterspool Park in order to imagine distant times, images and stories. Staged as a series of posts throughout the park, the piece will unfold as a poem sequence accompanied by dramatic and visual interventions.
Otterspool’s history, like Liverpool , has been shaped by water. Its stream was formed by melting glaciers 18,000 years ago which carved a path through red sandstone: the remains of ancient sand dunes. Known as Otirpul in medieval times it was originally a tidal creek, which may have been a Viking landing stage in the tenth century, and was famed for the quality of its fishing and abundance of otters. Later on the creek was used to drive watermills and until the 1930s an old fisherman’s cottage still stood on the banks of the Mersey. The astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks (1618-1641) was born and died here in the now demolished Jericho Lodge. He was a major figure in early British Astronomy and the first person to correctly predict and observe the transit of Venus across the Sun. He later began making the first ever tidal measurements to assist his study of the moon’s orbit.
The poem will attempt to come to terms with Horrocks’ achievements and consider their relevance to our contemporary view of nature. Creating this imaginative space will crucially enable a confrontation with the future of the park, and, by extension, the future of Liverpool and beyond in the context of climate change.
Check out the High Tide wiki at:
http://high-tide.wetpaint.com/
Otterspool Park on Google Maps:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=otterspool%20park%20liverpool&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl
Some Tina Darragh Sound Files
Five recordings from Tina Darragh’s reading at the University of Maine New Writing series in January 2007.
P. Inman at Bury Text Festival
P. Inman will do a set on 30th June. This is a lunchtime reading – contact Bury for exact time. The set will be different from the The Other Room on July 1st. Get to both if you can for a chance to see one of the true greats of contemporary poetry.
Bad Flarf Vs Bad Poems
Stan Apps reads some bad ass stuff in Poetry Magazine
Is this about flarf or is it about bad poetry? – you decide.
“I am fascinated by the latest issue of Poetry Magazine, which I picked up because I knew it included some Flarf poems, Conceptual Writing, and related materials. I was excited to get it, among other reasons, because it could be bought at Barnes & Nobles in Tampa FL, for cash. Imagine, buying poetry with an internet connection and a credit card!”
read more at this Link
WAR AND PEACE 4: VISION AND TEXT
Judith Goldman and Leslie Scalapino, Eds.
Devoted to collaborations between visual works and poetry, includes collaborative works of Charles Bernstein with Susan Bee, Amy Evans McClure with Michael McClure, Kiki Smith with Leslie Scalapino, Denise Newman with Gigi Janchang, a film on paper by Lyn Hejinian, Alan Halsey’s visual texts, Simone Fattal, and Petah Coyne. Judith Goldman interviews Marjorie Welish, Lauren Shufran interviews Jean Boully, Leslie Scalapino interviews Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. Also included are E. Tracy Grinnell’s homophonic translations of Claude Cahun’s “Helene la rebelle” and poems by Fanny Howe, Thom Donovan, and others.
Cover by Susan Bee.
Absolute Elsewhere
Absolute Elsewhere is a collaborative mixed media project by Joy As Tiresome Vandalism (poet and The Other Room co-organiser James Davies and photographer Simon Taylor). The project is updated monthly in text or image form. The lastest instalment, a photograph by Simon Taylor, is online now.
Darragh and Inman – still time for questions
Our interviews with Tina Darragh and P.Inman will take place next week and we are still open to any questions you would like us to ask them. Questions submitted so far cover topics as diverse as politics, the nature of l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e and how to survive as experimenters and innovators in the 21st century. If you would like to add anything to the pot or just give the pot a big stir, get in touch with us at otherroomeditors@gmail.com.
Pig Fervour – available now
Pig Fervour, the second publication by Other Room reader Richard Barrett is available for order now from Harry Godwin;s Arthur Shilling Press.
Belladonna
Great US imprint with a long and interesting list of writers, including Other Room reader Caroline Bergvall and soon-to-be Other Room reader Tina Darragh.
Poetic speciation and diversification
“Or, Why I am Alarmed at the Role the Academic Environment is Playing in Contemporary British Innovative Poetry
I like using an analogy made by Andrew Duncan to explain the disparate heterogeneity of contemporary British poetry: the SciFi topos of centuries-long space-missions, venturing out from the home planet to reach different stars, and establishing their own separate lineages and cultures. These increasingly diverge from each other and become unable to intercommunicate.”
An interesting perspective from Peter Philpott.
Oystercatcher Press
New publications by David Kennedy and Peter Hughes from Oystercatcher Press.
P. Inman – some links
Here are some tasters for the forthcoming Other Room 9 reading:
Author page at PENN sound
Read Ocker at Craig Dworkin’s Eclipse
A Different Table Altogether – Conversation with Roger farr and Aaron Vidaver
Tina Darragh – some links
Here are some tasters for the forthcoming Other Room 9 reading:
On the corner to off the corner (seminal book free on Craig Dworkin’s Eclipse)
ctrl+alt+del #2
ctrl+alt+del #2, the free downloadable news sheet features work from:
Chris Torrance
David Annwn
Chris Brownsword
Dave Lewis
Vashti
Damian Sawyer
Rhys Trimble
Email Rhys Trimble at this link to get a copy and be added to his list.
Can Flarf Ever Be Taken Seriously?
Almost a decade after its creation, the experimental poetry movement Flarf—in which poets prowl the Internet using random word searches, e-mail the bizarre results to one another, then distill the newly found phrases into poems that are often as disturbing as they are hilarious—is showing signs of having cleared a spot among the ranks of legitimate art forms. Despite the group’s penchant for shocking content and outrageous titles (Sharon Mesmer’s “Annoying Diabetic Bitch,” for example, or Gary Sullivan’s “Grandmother’s Explosive Diarrhea”), many in the literary world are taking the poems seriously.
Via David Bircumshaw
Read more HERE
FULCRUM
“FULCRUM: An Annual of Poetry and Aesthetics, #6 (730 pages) features uncollected Samuel Beckett; unpublished Robert Frost and Octavio Paz; essays by Christopher Ricks, Marjorie Perloff, Eliot Weinberger and many others; a feature on “Poetry and Myth”; a debate between poets John Kinsella and Rosanna Warren; translations of Seferis, Vian, Quevedo; and a great deal more.”
Last ever Sundays at the Oto
June 21: Jeff Hilson + Ian McLachlan + Johan de Wit
3-5 pm, Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8 3DL £4 entry.
Expect rigorous, radical and really quite astonishing performances at this event, with a set from two of Britain’s most uncompromisingly experimental poets performing with a well-established multi‑instrumentalist improvising musician, himself with a strong connection with poetry.
THERE ARE FEW PEOPLE WHO PUT ON ANY CLOTHES (starring it)
“A prose work in 23 sections, mislaid for 35 years and then found in an attic, this is a classic Raworth text from the era of Logbook: fast, profound, knockabout, intense, tricky, brainy, daft, those were the days once again…”
A5, 28pp (price £4.50 including P&P)
Cheques to ‘Equipage’
c/o Rod Mengham, Jesus College, Cambridge, CB5 8BL
You can also buy via Salt Publishing.
