THE OTHER ROOM
Experimental poetry in ManchesterArchive for March, 2011
Station Stories
THE EXPERIENCE
Station Stories is a unique site specific live literature promenade event using digital technology and live improvised electronic sound. From platform to platform, café to café and shop to shop, six writers take you on a tour of Piccadilly station and read specially commissioned stories inspired by the station and the people who use it and work there. It’s a unique live literature promenade performance featuring live improvised sounds using samples of ambient station noises as they happen.
Station Stories will explore the day-to-day life of the station – its platforms, its workers, the journeys people take, the waiting, the encounters, the thrill, the loneliness, the joy. It will express the peculiar, unique qualities of this marginal, in-between world, where anything can happen and often does.
HOW IT WORKS
Audiences are linked to the writer’s microphones by headsets using wireless technology, making the event unobtrusive and ensuring the audience hear every single word, whilst still experiencing the live ambience of the location. A musician accompanies the writers and improvises music using sampled live sounds from the station, manipulating these sounds and playing them into the audience’s headsets between and underneath the text. The writers interact with passing members of the public who may be unaware that a performance is taking place.
More.
Talk: Dada 1916-2016
Marc Dachy, Director of the DADA Archive in Paris will talk about Kurt Schwitters and DADA. Though it only lasted a decade from 1915, the outpourings of Dada – art, collages, plays – remain the stuff of the avant-garde, from Schwitters’s sound poems to Duchamp’s urinal. Marc Dachy will re-trace the events that lead to Schwitters departure from the movement and then focus on what might distinguish between a DADA and MERZ attitude in art. Followed by a panel discussion
FREE
8th April, International Burgess Centre (as part of Merzman ongoing exhibitions and events)
LINK
Preview of The Other Room 3rd Birthday reader, April 6th, Derek Henderson
Preview of The Other Room 3rd birthday, April 6th reader Derek Henderson. Derek Henderson will be reading from Salt Lake City via live stream. Next week of course is The Other Room.
Poems
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Analysis
Maintenant #55: Scott Thurston
Just as the radical continental poetic methodologies of the 20th century have left an indelible impact on contemporary British poetry, so, it seems, has the model of the poet as a thinker and teacher. Scott Thurston is a central facet in the recent resurgent brilliance of North Western British poetry in and around Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester. His is an innovative poetic defined by its care, intricacy and sophistication, and his reputation as a seminal and urbane poet over the last few decades has established him as a vital part of the UK’s poetry scene. In a comprehensive and generous interview he discusses his role as a poet, a teacher, his experience of European poetics and his beginnings in innovative poetry.
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-55-scott-thurston
Accompanying the interview are four of Scott’s poems from the work, Sustainability.
The Poetry and Poetics Research Group at Edge Hill
Thursday 31st March at 6.30 (till 8.00) in E21 at Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire L39 4QP
The OULIPO writers have been fascinating readers for many years now, whether through the novels of Italo Calvino or the masterpieces of Raymond Queneau, the teasing novels of George Perec or the poems of Jacques Roubaud. Experimenting with constraints (‘Write a novel without using the letter e’ or replace every noun with the seventh word after it in the dictionary’, through to complex mathematical systems) they have been slowly changing the way much mainstream writing is written. The results are often hugely funny.
The main practitioners are French and it is appropriate that the best British writer to follow this school is also one of its most adept translators into English. Now Philip Terry will be visiting Edge Hill for the first time to talk about his versions of Shakespeare’s sonnets. This hallowed work of literature is ransacked and re-written before our eyes. Come and see Philip read from, and talk about the work.
Philip Terry was born in Belfast in 1962. He has taught at the universities of Caen, Plymouth and Essex, where he is currently Director of Creative Writing. His fiction, poetry and translations have been widely published in journals in Britain and America. His books include the celebrated anthology of short stories Ovid Metamorphosed (Vintage, 2000), Fables of Aesop (Gilliland Press, 2006) and the poetry collection Oulipoems (Ahadada, 2006). In 2008 Carcanet published his acclaimed translation of Raymond Queneau’s Elementary Morality. His latest Carcanet collection Shakespeare’s Sonnets was published in 2010.
Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a Smirnoff ad?
Thou art more shimmering, more full of zap;
Icy winds do freeze the Russian steppes,
And vodka’s high hath all too short a date:
Sometime too cold the eye of Yeltsin shines,
And oft is his bleached complexion dimmed;
And every drunk through drunkenness declines,
By cancer of the liver or septicaemia untrimmed:
But thy eternal glimmer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that zip thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou sup in his shade
When in immortal lines like these thou glowest:
So long as men can drink and take a piss,
So long lives thine in this.
See also his anthology of English language Oulipo-influenced work at http://ekleksographia.ahadadabooks.com/issuethree/
Sheffield Poetry Festival
Features Harriet Tarlo, Geraldine Monk, Peter Riley, Kevin Colcoran and more.
Various venues, 26th March-8th April
Hay Jam
Run by volunteers on a shoestring, the Hay Poetry Jamboree is one of the most open-spirited, inquisitive and intimate of all the small poetry/arts festivals. It seeks above all to provide a performing space for those poetries which tend to be ignored by the big literary festivals – poetries which operate outside the margins of the mainstream. But the Jamboree is determinedly anti-doctrinaire – it showcases not only the very best radically innovative work, but welcomes writers of quality from any context, who are attempting new things, making interesting connections. The Jamboree is unique and it needs your support.
Become a Friend of the Jamboree, and simultaneously advertise your wares, your books, your business, your projects, your thoughts or simply yourself, on the Jamboree webpage, (or not, if you’d prefer) by sending us a cheque for either ten, fifteen or twenty pounds, according to the following scheme:
£10 to have your name listed on the Jamboree web-page, with up to 30 words of biography/bibliography (or any other kind of textual utterance). £15 for a textual entry of up to 60 words on the web-page. Plus, choose a free cd from any one of nine performances from the previous two Jamborees: namely, Peter Finch, Boiled String, Wendy Mulford, John James, Chris Torrance, David Greenslade, Childe Roland, Geraldine Monk, Alan Halsey, Elisabeth Bletsoe, Robert Minhinnick.
£20 for a paragraph of up to 200 words on the web-page with web-links, logos, graphics where possible, plus the option of a choice of free cd from the above list.
By becoming a Friend of the Poetry Jamboree you can now get a reduction of
25% on a one-year four-edition subscription to the amazing POETRY WALES
- £15 only! Email goodbard@yahoo.co.uk for a subscription form.
Send cheques made out to Glasfryn Seminars, to Lyndon Davies, Glasfryn, Llangattock, Nr Crickhowell, Powys, NP8 1PH with letter listing your name, address and choice of cd where applicable.
Send details for inclusion on webpage to goodbard@yahoo.co.uk
Preview of The Other Room 3rd Birthday reader, April 6th, Ken Edwards
Preview of 6th April, The Other Room 3rd birthday reader, Ken Edwards. Next week Derek Henderson.
Blog
Recent work
Interview
Rewriting Freud iOS app
Rewriting Freud has just been made as an iOS Universal app and is now for sale on the iTunes App Store.
This is the next incarnation of the conceptual artwork Re-Writing Freud by Simon Morris.
ABOUT THE WORK
For the book work, Re-Writing Freud the artist Simon Morris has re-written Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. A computer programme (designed by Christine Morris) randomly selects words, one at a time from Freud’s 222,704 word text and begins to reconstruct the entire book, word by word, making a new book with the same words, every time the programme is re-started. This book is one instantiation of that process, scrupulously typeset according to the dimensions, fonts, chapter divisions and paragraph lengths of the 1976 Penguin paperback edition of Freud’s work, and printed on equivalent paper stocks.
Morris unleashes a virus. He puts a contagious process to work, intervening in Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, rupturing it and returning it to us in a new order. By subjecting Freud’s words to a random re-distribution, meaning is turned into non-meaning and the spectator is put to work to make sense of the new poetic juxtapositions. The world of dreams is subject to the laws of the irrational and Re-Writing Freud gives the spectator the chance to view Freud’s text in its primal state. This fine production was printed by Imschoot, Ghent, in an edition of 1000, and given their blue stamp of approval. With a conceptualist formalism, Morris’ version of Freud’s text follows the typographic layout found in the edition of Freud’s work owned by his long-term collaborator, the psychoanalyst Dr. Howard Britton, whose worn book cover and ‘Big Daddy’ sticker from a Sugar Puffs cereal packet sets the tone for Morris’ appropriation.
“With Re-Writing Freud, judgments about sense no longer themselves make any sense. The reader who responds to this book by complaining that it is nonsensical is neither right nor wrong, but asking the wrong question, posing an impossible problem in response this book’s insistent imaginary solution.” – Professor Craig Dworkin, University of Utah, from the Introduction to Re-Writing Freud, ‘Grammar Degree Zero’
Read more about the project at the Information as Material site.
Streetcake 16
Out now, featuring:
- Flora Blake
- Richard Barrett
- Sarah Bradsell
- Sophie Clarke
- Sarah Cuquemelle
- Jim Sheehan
Read it here.
Maintentant 53 and 54
A poet of international significance, the remarkable life and poetic career of Yuri Andrukhovych could be the source material for a film, or a good book (as it is, in a manner of speaking). After serving in the Red Army, he was a founding member of arguably the most important experimental literary group in the history of the Ukraine, the Bu-Ba-Bu (the group’s name stands for бурлеск, балаган, буфонада – ‘burlesque, side-show, buffoonery’), before taking his mantle as one of the most important political-literary figures in his home nation and a significant presence during the 2004 /2005 Orange revolution. His is an utterly distinctive idiom, both in his poetry and his widely acclaimed novels – some of the most bombastic, vital and memorable being produced in Europe at large. He stands firmly in the great European tradition of parody, satire and criticism and we are honoured to welcome our 53rd Maintenant subject, winner of the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding, Yuri Andrukhovych.
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-53-yuri-andrukhovych/
Accompanying the interview are six of Yuri’s poems.
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/six-poems-yuri-andrukhovych/
***
It would be a reduction to call Tomica Bajsić a war poet. It is true that his poetry is a voice of record, and undoubtedly, his former profession as a special forces soldier during the most tumultuous days of his nations recent history have shaped him and his work in general. However, Tomica inhabits a wider archetype, of which his war experiences are just one element of a much grander ideal. He is a poet of exploration, of challenge. He is a poet who makes his primary medium a full and unrelenting exaltation of experience, and his poetry follows from this worldview. In a generous interview, Tomica Bajsić, for the 54th edition of Maintenant, discusses his unique life and poetry.
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-54-tomica-bajsic/
Accompanying the interview are seven of Tomica’s poems.
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/tomica-bajsic-seven-poems/
***
3am magazine & the Maintenant series presents in conjunction with Europe house presents
Nauja Poezija: Young Lithuanian & British poets in collaboration
April Friday 8th – 7pm – Entrance free to all (32 Smith Square, London SW1P)
We welcome three of Lithuania’s finest young poets to London with a reception at Europe House and an exchange of poetry from some of the finest native poets the city has to offer. Alongside Donatas Petrošius, Gabriele Labanauskaite and Tomas S. Butkus, a half dozen resident poets, featuring Agnes Lehoczky, Jeff Hilson, Jon Shaw, Tim Atkins, Kate Kililea and more will read short excerpts from their work.
SOUS LES PAVÉS
Featuring:
- Susan Briante
- Sommer Browning
- Lara Buckerton
- Collective Anon
- Elliot Colla
- Linh Dinh
- David Hadbawnik
- j/j hastain
- Danny Hayward
- Justin Katko
- Frances Kruk
- Francesca Lisette
- Pocahontis Mildew
- Goat Far DT
- Jay James May
- Debrah Morkun
- Richard Owens
- Keston Sutherland
- Tomas Weber
More here.
Bob Cobbing on Radio 4
Make Perhaps This Out Sense Of Can You
Sun 20 Mar 2011; 16:30; BBC Radio 4 (FM only)
Sat 26 Mar 2011; 23:30; BBC Radio 4
Bob Cobbing’s playful experiments with sound and text have inspired a generation of poets, artists and composers. A writer whose work skittered between literature and music, poetry and artwork – he is, perhaps, best remembered for his extraordinary poetry readings. With his operatic, resonant voice he would boom, howl, chant and whisper leaving his audience enchanted and enraged in equal measures.
In this programme we delve into the work of Bob Cobbing – exploring his influence on the publishing world, his role in one of the most turbulent periods at the Poetry Society and the visual poem that outraged Margaret Thatcher.
Revered and reviled – he has been a controversial figure at times. In this feature the writers Iain Sinclair, Peter Finch, Alan Brownjohn and Paula Claire, amongst others, reflect on the musicality of his work, how he challenged the conventional notion of poetry and the surprising controversy sound and visual poetry caused in the twentieth century.
More here.
Hay on Wye 3rd annual Jamboree
Advance notice of this splendid looking event.
THIRD HAY-ON-WYE POETRY JAMBOREE
JUNE 2nd – 4th 2011
Oriel Gallery of Contemporary Arts
Salem Chapel, Bell Bank, Hay on Wye
THURSDAY JUNE 2ND
6.30 – 7.30 pm: Festival Launch Reception
7.30 – 9.15 pm: Ralph Hawkins + Allen Fisher
FRI JUNE 3RD
11.00 – noon: Film and poetry: Colin Still
2.00 – 4.00 pm: Helen Lopez, John Freeman, Angela Gardner, Rhys Trimble, Paul Green
5.00 – 6.00 pm: Lecture: Robert Sheppard
7.30 – 9.15 pm: Carol Watts + Sean Bonney
SAT JUNE 4TH
11.00 – noon : Frances Presley, Glenn Storhaug
2.00 – 4.00 pm: Gavin Selerie, Tiffany Atkinson, David Annwn, Zoe Skoulding with Poetry Wales special bill.
7.30 – 9.15 pm: Kelvin Corcoran + Maggie O’Sullivan
9.30 – 10.30 pm: Grand Finale – Chicken of the Woods (bluegrass band, with dancing, drinking, and other enjoyable post-poetic shenanigans …)
Plus – All Saturday in Salem Chapel proper, Elysium Gallery in collaboration with
Hay Poetry Jamboree presents Bus Stop Cinema – a festival of short films.
ENTRANCE TO 7.30 EVENTS £5 (CONCESSIONS £3). ALL OTHER EVENTS FREE
The Other Room Itinerary rest of 2011
An exciting series of events already brewing. Advance notice for those of you booking your holidays to the south of France. All at The Old Abbey Inn, Manchester, 7pm start unless stated.
April 6th – Ken Edwards, Alec Finlay, Carrie Etter & Derek Henderson
June 7th – Steve McCaffery, Karen Mac Cormack, Geraldine Monk, Alan Halsey (THE OTHER ROOM IN ASSOCIATION WITH INFORMATION AS MATERIAL IN LEEDS – TIME AND VENUE TBC)
June 8th – Steve McCaffery & Karen Mac Cormack
July 20th – Chris Goode, Jonny Liron & Tamarin Norwood
August 24th – Phil Terry, Rachel Lois Clapham & David Berridge
Scott Thurston’s Internal Rhyme now archived at PENN Sound
Occassional Readings, Furzeacres on Dartmoor in Devon, UK, July 4, 2010
In this performance Scott Thurston reads the entirety of his book Internal Rhyme (Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2010). Divided into four sections, the book comprises a sequence of eighty poems in total, each constructed in four four-line stanzas which can be read in a vertical as well as in a horizontal direction. For this performance, Thurston experimented with reading two of the book’s sections in both directions. Taking the poems in groups of five, he used two approaches: firstly, reading all five in one direction and then returning to read the same five in the other direction and, secondly, reading each poem in one direction immediately followed by the other direction.
Internal Rhyme develops Thurston’s preoccupation with time and process as compositional elements, as seen in his previous book for Shearman, 2008’s Momentum. The subjects and themes are diverse and include poems responding to Blake, Klimt and Twombly alongside refigurings of the theoretical works of Alain Badiou.
Preview of The Other Room 3rd Birthday reader, April 6th, Carrie Etter
Preview of The 6th April, 3rd birthday party reader, Carrie Etter. Next week Ken Edwards:
Blog
Some poems
Blackbox Manifold 6
Including tributes to Edwin Morgan, and poetry by:
Niall Campbell
Joseph Donohue
Howie Good
Chris Hardy
Morgan Harlow
Carla Harryman
Christine Herzer
Ishion Hutchinson
Andy Jackson
Michael Leong
Rod Mengham
Mary Noonan
Frederick Pollack
David Prater
Rufo Quintavalle
Ron Silliman
Matthew Sweeney
Jon Thompson
John Welch
J T Welsch
