THE OTHER ROOM
Experimental poetry in ManchesterArchive for Publications
Maintenant #91 – Gunnar Harding
It is too easy, and often, it would seem, far too tempting for the assumption to be made that it is just longevity itself which accounts for the repute and esteem of certain figures in poetry, whose influence seems so fundamental and ubiquitous within a nation’s poetic culture. Yet Gunnar Harding, as much as many a near legendary poet, has influenced so many and built such an immense following precisely because of his remarkable ability to make his poetry one founded on renewal, on tone, on intricacy, on inhabitation – to strike the reader with an original voice no matter their generation and poetic taste, whether they read his first published book in 1967, or his last, a third volume of selected poems. For nearly fifty years Harding has been at the forefront of Scandinavian poetics, rising from the generation of so many great poets in the 1960’s, a former artist and jazz musician, his fluid, energetic, deeply intelligent poetry has been a consistent inspiration to his countrymen and many poets who do not have five decades of writing behind them. For the 91st edition of Maintenant, Gunnar Harding.
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-91-gunnar-harding/
Accompanying the interview are three of Gunnar’s poem, translated and generously given over to Maintenant by Roger Greenwald.
The BlazeVOX controversy
“A big controversy in the poetry world these days is the discussion surrounding Buffalo-based small press BlazeVOX [book]‘s (now discontinued) model of charging some authors a portion of the costs of publishing their poetry books ($250, as I gather). In the closing months of last year, the revelation of this practice inflamed passions in the generally staid world of independent literary publishing. The controversy just got an enormous boost with the recent decision of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) banning poets from listing books published by BlazeVOX on their grant applications.
Questions arise about the viability of poetry publishing in an age of narrow audiences and little financial reward, and about gate-keeping, quality control, editorial integrity and the technologies of dissemination.”
Read more, including the thoughts of Geoffrey Gatza, in this piece by Anis Shivani at The Huffington Post.
Wire: Sound Poetry Portal
This month’s issue of Wire magazine includes an article about sound poetry. Their website currently features a portal with links to Bob Cobbing, Henri Chopin and Michael McClure, shown here radicalising a lion.
The Claudius App III
The Claudius App, an online journal of negative reviews and poems, is now accepting submissions for its third issue, deadline June 5th. The second issue, an avant-post-Fordist labor product digitally congealed at www.theclaudiusapp.com, included work by or attributed to: Brian Ang, Sara Deniz Akant, Jerimee Bloemke, Feng Sun Chen, Patrick James Dunagan, Pierre Klossowski, Purdey Kreiden, Ben Lerner, Mark Levine, Anthony Madrid, Chris Martin, Jessica Marsh, Jeff Nagy, Tim Shaner, Josh Stanley, Jonty Tiplady, Cathy Wagner, Elisabeth Workman, and your dreams, with a splash by Ian Hatcher. Send fast poems, negative reviews, and letters with a self-addressed stamped brick for your manuscript’s eternal return, or query editors@theclaudiusapp.com for more information.
Land Diagrams
Land Diagrams is an ongoing series in which commissioned writers respond to the same visual encoding of landscape. See the website for info.
p.o.w. broadsheets
The artist Antonio Carvalho has just published the first in a series of poetry broadsides bases on Hansjorg Mayer’s futura editions from the 1960s. Writers include Peter Finch and Other Room reader Chris McCabe. p.o.w. broadsheets are available to buy from Studio Bookshop, Brighton, and can be bought via visa through email:studiobookshop@btconnect.com. They are £5 each or £25 for all 6 broadsheets.
West House Books
Steve McCaffery PANOPTICON. BookThug rev. edn. 2011. £15
Taking its inspiration from Jeremy Bentham’s ‘Panopticon Papers’, McCaffery’s Panopticon shatters all omnivision in a tour de force of formal innovation, theoretical comment and narrative critique. In Panopticon narrative stutters, repeats itself, sequence is deranged and complicated by a multimedia presence on the page of grids, film bands and acoustic channels. On its first appearance Charles Bernstein hailed the book as ‘perhaps the exemplary “antiabsorptive work” and William McPheron claimed it as “an extraordinary act of revolution and charity”. Out of print for more than twenty years, this new edition has been revised extensively and is accompanied by an afterword written by McCaffery himself.
OPEN LETTER 14.7, Fall 2011: Breakthrough Nostalgia: Reading Steve McCaffery Then and Now. Ed. Stephen Cain. 172pp. £10.50
W/ contributions by Geoffrey Hlibchuk, Stephen Voyce, Gregory Betts, Tim Conley, Jason Starnes, Alessandra Capperdoni, Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Matt Carrington, Lori Emerson, Andy Weaver, Christian Bök, Derek Beaulieu, Alan Halsey, Peter Jaeger + new poetry & prose by SMcC.
Allen Fisher PROPOSALS, 1-35. Poem-image-commentary. 76pp incl. 35 images in colour. Spanner 2010. £9.50
Allen Fisher STROLL & STRUT STEP. 16pp + 3 images in colour. Spanner 2004. £7.50
Post-free in UK. Payment by cheque or Paypal.
Orders to info@westhousebooks.co.uk
Nathan Thompson: The Visitor’s Guest
“Who is looking at, listening to and leaning on whom? And what is left of looking, listening and leaning in what is ironically referred to as the post ultimate glade? Thompson, with understated assertiveness, doesn’t answer these questions, but the poems in The Visitor’s Guest changed the way I had to walk around the block this morning. Thompson’s writing opens up a space with which I’m half familiar—perhaps it’s the sense of honesty which underlies his slanted lyrical stance— but which continues to surprise. Many of these poems engage with ‘love’, as a perception, as a verb, but to say so underestimates them. Visceral, tangential, with a genuine sense of belief / refusal to believe. You might think that you’ve arrived but, most of all, how interesting it is trying to get there.” —Lucy Burnett
More information at Shearsman.
Maintenant #88 – Sylva Fischerová
As the monumental literary figures of the velvet revolution have passed their profundity and vibrancy onto a new generation of poets and writers, the Czech Republic has faced a shift in its poetic register, as the country has in its fundamental politik. So a return to the author has taken place, and straddling the two great contrasting generations and experiences of the Czech Republic as perhaps few others could, Sylva Fischerová, poet, author, teacher, has become the representative of the very best of her times – a poet whose wit, whose wisdom, whose incisiveness has brought her devotees across the world and across languages. In the 88th edition of Maintenant we welcome the lauded Sylva Fischerová.
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-88-sylva-fischerova/
Accompanying the interview is six poems, translated by Sylva and Stuart Friebert
New work at Depart
Lots of new work appearing all the time at Richard Barrett and Simon Howard’s Depart, an offshoot from their Department publishing project. Writers with work online included Ollie Evans (see in’n'on above) , Andrew Spragg and Jaime Birch.
Innovation in Fiction
New magazine Innovation in Fiction is looking for the following for its debut issue:
- short fiction of an experimental or innovative nature
- reviews of innovative or experimental fiction
- old and new essays on experimental writers, innovative fiction, forms and movements
Email adrian.slatcher@gmail.com
So Anyway
Soanyway is a magazine project initiated by Derek Horton and Lisa Stansbie.
Soanyway is a repository for words, pictures and sound that tell stories.
CHECK IT OUT – www.soanyway.org.uk
Painted Spoken, issue 22
A lo-fi PDF of Painted, spoken 22 is now up at www.hydrohotel.net/mags
Chris McCabe, Dorothy Lawrenson, Gerry Loose, Peter McCarey, and James Mc Laughlin; Richard Price on Neo-Benshi at PolyPly; R J Ford remembers the first hours of Occupy London Stock Exchange; two group works by Vahni Capildeo, Giles Goodland, Jeff Hilson, Francesca Lisette, Richard Price, and Simon Smith. Plus reviews, musicall and poeticall.
Shadowtrain, carriage 38
New issue out now featuring:
- Rupert M Loydell
- Nikolai Duffy
- Marion McCready
- Claire Crowther
- Stephen Nelson
- Yu-Han Chao
- Jon Plunkett
- Martin Stannard
- James Davies
The English Intelligencer
“Certain Prose of ‘The English Intelligencer’ “ed. by Neil Pattison, Reitha Pattison, Luke Roberts
£6.50 / €8 / $12 | 216x138mm | 224pp
http://mountain-press.co.uk/tei.html
Selections from the correspondence, essays and ephemera circulated in the poetry worksheet ‘The English Intelligencer’ (1966-1968). Featuring previously unpublished and uncollected early prose works from writers including Andrew Crozier, John Hall, John James, Barry MacSweeney, J. H. Prynne, Peter Riley, John Temple, and many others.
Maintenant #86 – András Gerevich
Though his constitution as a poet is multi-lingual, multi-national, fundamentally cosmopolitan and reflexive, it is the definitive clarity in the work of András Gerevich which has marked him out as one of the most considerable and singular voices of his generation. From the remarkable Hungarian poetic tradition, which has continued to produce poets of individuality and conscience for hundreds of years and to this very day, Gerevich has defined himself as a resolute and powerful writer, poet and screenwriter. His work burrows into the cadences of speech, of reflection, of confession, speaking clearly from the first person, while without apology it maintains its affability of form in order to scale its ambition of content. In the 86th edition of the Maintenant series we present András Gerevich.
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-86-andras-gerevich/
Accompanying the interview are five poems, translated by George Szirtes, Christopher White and David Hill.
The Ofi Press Magazine
An online magazine of international poetry and fiction from Mexico City edited by Jack Little. Issue 14 out now.
