Month: April 2011

Bad Press: subjectivity liberated from the imperatives of purposive activity!

~ theotherroom ~ Leave a comment

Poems, 4 Poets: Marianne Morris, Luke Roberts, Sophie Robinson, Josh Stanley.
£2.50 + £1 p&p / / $7.

Four poems/poets in one cultural transmission. All poems feature identifiable subjects, thereby furnishing the reader with that distinctly cozy-by-the-fire hint of the middle-brow, whilst maintaining all the feigned legitimacy of dialogue with poetic history that one would expect from a Bad Press publication. What the hell more do you want. CALL THE DOCTOR!

Visit the Bad Press site for more information.

Wonder Rooms

~ theotherroom ~ Leave a comment

@ Bury Art Gallery
Preview: 30th April 2011 / 11.00am
30th April – 2nd July 2011

The history of the word as image, the visual poem, stretches back to ancient times, but in the last hundred years has been punctuated by seminal moments allied to breakthroughs across artforms, such as Constructivism, Dada, Fluxus. In the 21st Century the availability and ease of new technologies for design and production of visual poems has created a global practice. An almost infinite variety of forms and procedures from 3-dimensional constructions, classical shaped poems, hand-written, concrete, graphic, and digital, poets reinvent the alphabet and the language in the visual.

In surveying the best in contemporary practice from around the world the exhibition also poses two questions: does the global phenomenon of visual poetry represent a new artistic language? Or is this international practice a dialogue between differing national styles or ‘dialects’?

Artists confirmed:  Alan Halsey, Stephen Nelson, Helen White, Amaranth Borsuk, John MAlan Halsey, Stephen Nelson, Helen White, Amaranth Borsuk, John Moore Williams, Karri Kokko, Matt Dalby, Andrew Topel, Christian Bök, Grzegorz Wróblewski, Marco Giovenale, Márton Koppány, Geof Huth, Nico Vassilakis, Derek Beaulieu, Satu Kaikkonen, Aysegül Tözeren, Steve Dalachinsky, Mike Cannell, Eric M. Zboya, Stephen Butler, Alexander Jorgensen, Zeynep Cansu Baseren, Sheila Murphy and many more…

The picture shows the installation of Andrew Topel’s zimZalla object Blueprints. Read more about Wonder Rooms and The Text Festival here.

the modernist magazine

~ theotherroom ~ Leave a comment

From the manchester modernist society:

the modernist magazine is a quarterly magazine published for the North West of England by the manchester modernist society, a not for profit organisation dedicated to championing architecture of the twentieth century.

The writing of our launch issue is well under way and will be hitting the news stands in June. Get your copy delivered straight onto your door mat by subscribing on-line. With free postage and a chance to win some lovely books, why wouldn’t you? If you subscribe before the end of April, you have a chance of winning the fabulous Facismo Abbandonato or the gorgeous CCCP. Check out the modernist website and keep your eyes peeled for our launch event at CUBE Gallery as part of Architecture Festival NW.

Annual subscription £15 (inc postage)
Individual issue £3.75 (plus postage)

Text Festival 2011 begins this Saturday

~ theotherroom ~ Leave a comment

The Text Festival weekend launches in Bury on Saturday morning – details of the exhibitions attached – opening performances by

11.00 am Marco Giovenale (from Italy)

11.20 Helen White and Moniek Darge (from Belgium)

11.45 Márton Koppány (from Hungary)

Sarah Sanders will do a spontaneous performance sometime in the morning (when the moment is right)

Helmut Lemke and Hans Specht will perform a durational conversational artwork from about 11.15 am for 4 hours.

LINK to rest of programme

Christian Bök – The Xenotext

~ theotherroom ~ Leave a comment

“Many artists seek to attain immortality through their art, but few would expect their work to outlast the human race and live on for billions of years. As Canadian poet Christian Bök has realised, it all comes down to the durability of your materials. Bök has written a poem, “The Xenotext”, which he is inserting into the DNA of a particularly resilient form of bacteria, Deinococcus radiodurans. This extremophile bacterium can survive exposure to cold, dehydration, acid and vacuums, meaning it could live on in outer space should the Earth cease to exist.”

More about Bök’s Text Festival project in The Observer, here.

Maintenant #58: Nikola Madzirov

~ theotherroom ~ Leave a comment

The birth of a major European poet is often heralded long after the fact by his or her emergence into the American poetic consciousness. The rapturous reception that has awaited Nikola Madzirov as he has travelled the US has only served to confirm what many already knew – Macedonia has produced a poet whose significance is undeniable, and whose gift is indelible. Nikola Madzirov is a poet who can look eye to eye with the great figures of the 20th century, he is one of our generations luminaries. His poetry is deft, sure and canny, he wields a wry and wise and often elusive aesthetic and while Peter Boyle has rightly traced his line back to Vasko Popa, Milosz, Herbert & Zagajewski, his voice is absolutely his own, absolutely of this generation. It is apt to leave the final words on Madzirov to Adam Zagajewski himself – “Madzirov’s poems are like Expressionist paintings: filled with thick, energetic streaks they seem to emerge from the imagination and to return to it right away, like night animals caught in the headlights of a car. “We are the remnants of another age” — Nikola Madzirov succeeds in convincing us.” For the 58th edition of Maintenant, we are very pleased to welcome our first Macedonian poet.

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-58-nikola-madzirov/

Accompanying the interview are five of Nikola’s poems, translated translated by Peggy and Graham W. Reid, Magdalena Horvat and Adam Reed taken from the book

Remnants of Another Age published by BOA Editions

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/five-poems-nikola-madzirov/

Some more of Nikola’s poems have recently appeared in the latest issues of “American Poetry Review” and “The Wolf” poetry magazine, and the poem “After Us” was just announced as a poem of a day in US by the Academy of American Poets – poets.org:


http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22185?utm_source=poemaday_041811&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=content&utm_term=poemaday_smith_related

James Davies and David Gaffney book launches

~ theotherroom ~ Leave a comment

An invitation to celebrate the launches of

David Gaffney’s The Half-Life of Songs published by Salt (www.saltpublishing.com/books/smf/1844712923.htm)

and

James Davies’ Plants published by Reality Street (www.realitystreet.co.uk)

May 10th, 6.30pm
The International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Cambridge Street, Manchester
This is a FREE event

David Gaffney lives in Manchester and Durham. He is the author of Sawn Off Tales (2006), Aromabingo (2007), Never Never (2008), Buildings Crying Out, a story using lost cat posters (Lancaster litfest 2009), 23 Stops To Hull a set of stories about every junction on the M62 (Humber Mouth festival 2009) Sawn off opera a set of operas with composer Ailis Ni Riain (Radio Three, RNCM, Liverpool philharmonic and tete a tete festival London 2010 ) Destroy PowerPoint, stories in PowerPoint format for Edinburgh festival 2009, the Poole Confessions stories told in a mobile confessional box (Poole Literature festival 2010) and he has written articles for the Guardian, Sunday Times, Financial Times and Prospect magazine. His new collection of short stories, The Half-Life of Songs, is out now, and look out for his current project, Station Stories, in which six writer linked to the audience with wireless headphones, perform short stories in Manchester Piccadilly railway station. See http://www.davidgaffney.org for more.

James Davies is the author of Plants (Reality Street), The Manual Handling Process (Beard of Bees) and Acronyms (onedit); with Simon Taylor, as Joy as Tiresome Vandalism, aRb (if p then q) and Absolute Elsewhere (Knives Forks and Spoons). He edits if p then q (www.ifpthenq.co.uk) and is one of the organisers of The Other Room poetry night and website (www.theotherroom.org)

Travis MacDonald Bar/Koans

~ theotherroom ~ Leave a comment

Erg, the publisher of Cricket Online Review, is pleased to announce the release of Travis Macdonald’s BAR/koans—a clever, modern homage to the Buddhist intellect. In BAR/koans, Macdonald’s thoughtful musings (i.e., modern koans) are equaled by the brilliantly kinetic design of John Moore Williams. BAR/koans is available in PDF for free from Erg’s website.

LINK

Matt Dalby reviews The Language Moment

~ theotherroom ~ Leave a comment

“The Language Moment started in a more sombre and insurrectionary mood than might have been expected. And it felt like different time-periods collided.

There was the bad news that day that after 28 years the greenroom will close at the end of May. Add this to Castlefield Gallery’s loss of Arts Council funding and artists might very well feel besieged.

It also seems perversely apt that a centre born during the previous Tory administration should end during another. Albeit in coalition with Lib Dems.”

More here.

Writers Forum North second meeting

~ theotherroom ~ Leave a comment

Saturday, May 7 · 2:00pm – 5:00pm

Victoria Family & Commercial Hotel

28 Great George Street, Leeds

WFW(N) is an opportunity for innovative/experimental poets to present their work for feedback in a mutually supportive atmosphere. Ideally, please bring along copies of the work you intend to read for the other group members. Anyone who wants to come along but doesn’t want to read is also very welcome.

More here.

Station Stories lightboxes

~ theotherroom ~ Leave a comment

The images accompanying the work of the six writer participating in Station Stories at Manchester Piccadilly station on 19th – 21st May are now on display in the lightboxes situatated on the Metrolink platform. Click the image above (accompanying Nicholas Royle’s The Lancashire Fusilier) to read more about the Station Stories project.

London Word Festival

~ theotherroom ~ Leave a comment

This started on 7th April and runs until 5th May with some interesting events still to come, including:

Tue 19 Apr
Man/Machine
Paul Granjon + FOUND + Ross Sutherland + Nikesh Shukla + Tamarin Norwood + MC Nathan Penlington
featuring Ladies of the Press
Richmix | 7.30pm | £8 adv/£10 door

Tue 3 May
Christian Bök
+ Luke Kennard
+ Maria Fusco
+ Ben Gwalchmai
+ MC Ross Sutherland

Vibe Live | 7.30pm | £6.50 adv/£8 doors

More here.