Month: February 2010

Simon Taylor’s responses to Scott Thurston’s Internal Rhyme

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In 2007, in the space of two weeks, Simon Taylor responded to Scott Thurston’s Matchbox N0. 9, Internal Rhyme, shooting around 12 films. These were then edited down to 150 negatives which became 150 unique gifts in  Matchbox No. 9.  Matchbox No.9 was just a sample of the collection Internal Rhyme which will be available in 2011 from Shearsman. Other parts of the poem have been published over the last couple of years in various magazines. The links below are to:

Matchbox No.9, Scott Thurston’s Internal Rhyme poems (Poetry Library digital archive)

Simon Taylor’s Photos set 1

Simon Taylor’s Photos set 2

Simon Taylor’s Photos set 3

Off the Shelf

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From Steve Willey

OFF THE SHELF

Monday 22 March 6 – 10:30 p.m.

OFF THE SHELF, is an event that involves musicians, poets, painters and film makers, it is structured around, and is in dialogue with, the Small Press and Little Magazine Collection at UCL. 

Over the next two weeks I am going to try and put together a short Ten Minute Film about Writers Forum and AND Magazine which will be shown at this event. 

I will be filming over an EIGHT-DAY period, from 3 – 10 March. I will be editing the film on the 11 March. I will be submitting the film on the 12 March for inclusion in the event on the 22 March. So a very tight turn around.

Please email me before the 3 march (swilley17[at]aol[dot]com) to let me know your availability between the 3-10 march (all the possible times you could be free) and i will endeavor to meet with as many people as I can within that time frame. To structure the film I propose to film short responses to the following topics (see below) from poets that have been involved/published in AND magazine and by Writers Forum. 

I  know that by working with such a short time frame the film will not be an authoritative or comprehensive record of the long and amazing projects that are Writers Forum Press and AND magazine but i hope the film will be a worthwhile document which will raise the profile of AND Magazine and Writers Forum Press and act as an introduction to these projects 

Some Topics to Stimulate Conversation (not necessarily to be followed):

  • How did you find out about AND Magazine and Writers Forum Press?
  • What was the first poem that you ever had published in AND?
  • What was the first work you had published by Writers Forum Press?
  • If you only had 20 words how would you describe AND Magazine and/or Writers Forum Press.
  • How has being involved with Writers Forum Press and/or AND Magazine effected your poetry, in aesthetic,  political or social terms?
  • To your mind, over the period you have been acquainted with AND Magazine, and/or Writers Forum Press,  what were the most significant social, aesthetic and/or political changes, that have both effected AND  Magazine and Writers Forum Press, and/or have been represented by And Magazine and the Press?
  • What is the most important question that I should have asked that I haven’t and what is the answer?
  • Can you now read a poem you like from either one of the And Magazines or from on of the Writers Forum  Publications?
  • How significant has the work of Bob Cobbing been to your practice as a poet?

PLEASE DISTRIBUTE THIS POST  TO ANYONE CONNECTED TO WRITERS FORUM OR AND, WHO YOU THINK MIGHT WANT TO BE INCLUDED IN THE FILM.

I AM BASED IN LONDON BUT CAN DRIVE TO FILM YOU (and i am willing to travel). HOWEVER, IF YOU HAVE ACCESS TO YOUR OWN FILMING EQUIPMENT AND/OR LIVE ABROAD, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO FILM YOUR OWN RESPONSES TO THE ABOVE TOPICS AND SEND ME THE FOOTAGE IN HIGH RESOLUTION QUICK TIME FORMAT BEFORE THE 10TH OF MARCH. YOU CAN EMAIL ME or ask me FOR MY POSTAL ADDRESS ON THE EMAIL INCLUDED IN THIS POST.

25th Feb. Sean Bonney at Edge Hill cancelled

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This event will not take place. Any tickets purchased will be refunded. But there will be two other events at Edge Hill:

3rd March 2010 Jenn Ashworth was born in 1982 in Preston, Lancashire and studied at Cambridge and Manchester. She’s worked as a barmaid, a waitress, a Samaritan and a cleaner and she currently lives with her daughter in Preston and runs a library inside a prison. She writes a blog here: www.jennashworth.blogspot.com and her first novel was published with Arcadia in May 2009: A Kind of Intimacy Rose Theatre. 7.30: £3.50

20th April : Open Poetry and Poetics meeting: Carrie Etter: 6-8.00, venue in Education Block: E22; free

On her anthology Infinite Difference and her own poetry. Carrie Etter is an American poet resident in England since 2001. Previously she lived in Normal, Illinois (until age 19) and southern California (from age 19 to 32). In the UK, her poems have appeared in, amongst others, New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales, Poetry Review, PN Review, Shearsman, Stand and TLS, while in the US her poems have appeared in magazines such as Aufgabe, Columbia, Court Green, The Iowa Review, The New Republic, Seneca Review. Her first collection, The Tethers, was published by Seren in June 2009, and her second, Divining for Starters, containing more experimental work, is due for publication by Shearsman Books in 2011. he is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing for Bath Spa University.

The Theory of the Avant-Garde

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Notes from The Theory of the Avant Garde (1962) by Renato Poggioli. Mostly summaries of his ideas:

Avant-garde could simply mean new art

100% Marxists are anti the avant-garde

Marxists use term ‘bourgeois art’ rather than avant-garde to attack/negate the work

Term is ignored in English-American culture – no aggressive world wars

Term is Parisian and ingrained in French culture

The divorce of the two avant-gardes – political and aesthetic around 1880

Avant-garde is a new phenomenon

Avant garde movements spring out of enthusiasm

Avant-garde more interested in gestures than acts

Isn’t it traditional to want the new?

The avant-garde artist wants to be an individual in society but paradoxically wants society to change and take him in

The avant-garde acts and speaks like a child

The avant-garde is unpopular

Unpopularity thru non distribution

1) Package the avant-garde for a more populist audience
2) In pop culture the author is often ‘unknown’ to the public – see adverts/Youtube

Romanticism was more popular than avant-garde or classical art – cite fall of the aristocracy/rise of the working and middle classes

Voluntary and involuntary unpopularity

Romanticism direct link to avant-garde

Is there an avant-garde any more?

Romanticism was easily understood by the people as is Tate

N.B. romantic + avant-garde art are aristocratic movements existing in democratic times

Do nihilistic tendencies work deliberately against social relations?

The rush to become future movements

Fashion

There are two types of followers (audience) of the avant-garde
1) Those who accept it all
2) And those with an exclusive passion

The extreme left wants content and therefore denies the avant-garde

The followers of the avant-garde sees the joining of isolated individuals who come from different backgrounds – think Long Tail Theory

In a feeling of uselessness or estrangement here comes Americanisation. Term globalisation is misleading

The romantic artist resorts to self-mockery, hysteria & caricature

The artist wants material success in the age of capitalism. When he was in the court he was satisfied with creation.

The avant-garde is constantly conscious of writing its historical place

The avant-garde artist is always protesting socially tho not necessarily politically

Poggioli – “experimentalism aiming solely at novelty can end up sterile and false”

The avant-garde uses secret communication which even some of its followers don’t get.

Some of the pleasure is in not getting

I don’t get it
1) Sincere confession
2) Versus lament

Ignored not necessarily disliked

Avant-garde junk comes out the same as normal junk just with different labels and intentions

The labels and intentions are important – concrete versus abstract

Realism is a useless competition with no winners

Ours is an age of stylistic pluralism – watering down

The avant-garde’s analogies aren’t inverted

We now demand extreme liberty and extreme intensity of feeling

Leslie Scalapino – Floats Horse-Floats or Horse-Flows

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“Miners, polar bears, insurgents sweeping the desert in Toyota pickups, a detective on the trail of illegal fur traders, Venus Williams’ deconstructed forehand, wild horses, blooming chrysanthemums, tadpoles eating corpses in the Euphrates, and so much more – Leslie Scalapino’s FLOATS HORSE-FLOATS OR HORSE- FLOWS is a startlingly beautiful, politically engaged, poetic novel. Narrative moments arrive out of inchoate states – an alexia where unknown words create a future – and the reader is continually and unexpectedly moved by the buoyancy and breathtaking velocity of Leslie Scalapino’s language.”

More here.

Via Charles Bernstein.

Bill Griffiths launch tomorrow

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A reminder that Sean Bonney, Ken Edwards, Allen Fisher, Alan Halsey, Geraldine Monk & Maggie O’Sullivan will read the whole of “Cycles” to launch the first volume of Bill Griffiths’ Collected Poems.

It’s in Room Clore 203, Clore Management Centre, Birkbeck College (across the square facing the main entrance), London WC1, starting at 7.30pm.

Entrance free.

Via Ken Edwards

Plus-que-Parfait

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Plus-que Parfait is an evolving, open-ended text created by Emily Howard, Mark Cobley & Simon Howard. Emily is a musician & writer & the founder of Ensemble Youkali, Mark blogs at the red ceilings, Simon at walking in the ceiling. Mark & Simon have recent books from The Arthur Shilling Press. The three are not related, except where they are related; they do not live in the same place/space except when two of them do.

More here.

Via Harry Godwin

Subscribe to Arthur Shilling

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Harry Godwin’s estimable imprint is now offering an annual subscription for a highly economical £12. For this, you get at least 6 chapbooks, plus the option to buy more books the press publishes at a discount rate. As if this were not enough, you can even have your name listed on the site and a link to your own site or blog – a fine way to burnish your own poetic escutcheon. More details here.