THE OTHER ROOM
Experimental poetry in ManchesterArchive for Tom Jenks
In White Writing: Alan Halsey
In White Writing is a narrative visual poem or graphic novella or both. A record in either case of a life lived on paper, the writing-dust of 2007-10 retrieved, collaged and drawn over, drawn back on itself in a wholesale reversal or revaluation of print values, white text and images showing up and out of a solid and dreamless black ground. More at West House Books.
a joyful summit of old savages – films
Plenty to read and watch at 3AM Magazine’s page for this event in London on 18th April, including this film of Tom Raworth.
Xing the Line
John Havelda & Philip Terry — 2 May at 19:30 at The Apple Tree, Mount Pleasant, London WC1X 0AE. John will be reading from recent work published in Open Letter as well as older material. Philip will be reading from his new if p then q publication, Advanced Immorality.
New Knives Forks and Spoons site
Straight out of Alec Newman’s Newton-le-Willows command bunker and online, here.
Maintenant #92 – Jeff Hilson
Now more than ever, if there exists a measure of what one could call a national character, indelible and prescriptive, it seems unlikely it can be held in the terms we seem to utilize. The limited, faded suggestions of temperament, appearance and culture are increasingly fraught. The valuable misnomer that the poetic in poetry is that which is lost in translation is a fair indication of how national character is found in the lack of a culture’s culture. I can only truly speak of England and Englishness, and what I deem to be its immovable quality, both its worst and it’s best feature – an unpretentious melancholy, a moaning disposition laced with satire, a call to arms without action, a sadness that has not the melodrama to make it public, a desire for privacy, a wit and observational keen which is razor sharp and practically dull. When an artist can build this ungraspable quality into the very fabric of their work, you know they can only have done so without preparation or motive. Jeff Hilson, as a master of this vernacular, stands as one of the most singular and gifted poets of his generation. Hilson’s use of distinctive vocabulary, a lexicon of the banal, utilises a finesse that pales the false poetic posturing of those working in circles created by perceptions of what has come before and held as the established “tone” of English poetry. He is the creator of poetic vignettes, an imagery not of the surreal but of the proto-mundane, couched in the wry, unpretentious drawl of a fogged civil servant, tired but not fatigued, worn but not broken. Hilson elevates the speech of the lived life, accelerates it, never seeking out absurdity, rather that would be too much agency for the singular voice purveying lines of observation and reflection. His poetic is not one of alarm, not one of lamentation – it is poetry of urbanity. Hilson’s mode is to shed light on the ever present – what we seem not to have noticed in its readiness, the pitted corners of language which are fundamentally drole and bloodless. Hilson exposes too the churlishness of the poet who takes no time to examine their own position, the ego behind the pen. His honesty, his lyrical inventiveness, his affected bleakness produces a strong sensation in its readers / listeners because of its central truth. It is then a poetry that is necessary because the poet does not profess its necessity. Only the reluctant can offer the objective truth that poetry must evolve, that it must be allowed to warp and break and rejoin in order to be in anyway new, and in being new, represent a culture that is truly contemporary. And even then, only within a form of an apology. Against Hilson’s work the concept of the poetic soul, the poetic pretension, is exposed as a welcome fraud. The melodrama of poetry is refuted and we are left instead with a very English sagacity of intellect and poise. In an attempt to utilise the Maintenant series to present poets to Europe, as well as from Europe, we present, for our 92nd issue, one of most remarkable poets of his generation, Jeff Hilson.
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-92-jeff-hilson/
Accompanying the interview is Jeff’s seven part poem Rinker, generously given over to the Maintenant series.
Enchanted Labyrinth
On Tuesday 1st May, Peter Philpott and Matt Martin will be reading at the Enchanted Labyrinth event series in Bishops Stortford, as part of the Stortfest music festival. The evening also features live music from Anna Scott, Bella Chipperfield, Lorna Blishen and Nick Crofts, plus an exhibition of visual art.
Venue: Coffee Corner, 49–53 South Street, Bishops Stortford CM23 3AG. Tickets are £15 and include a sumptuous two course meal. Advance booking is recommended, as space is limited - please ring Coffee Corner on (01279) 311072 to reserve a table. Starts 7.15pm.
- Full programme for Stortfest 2012: http://www.stortfordmusicfestival.org.uk
- Directions to Coffee Corner: http://coffeecorneronline.co.uk/#/contact/4557603747
Francesca Lisette: Teens
The poems that appear in Francesca Lisette’s Teens were written between 2007 and 2010. Teens is deeply influenced by the intellectual climate and sea-charged air of Brighton, where Lisette lived whilst studying at the University of Sussex for five years. Approximating feminist phenomenology through a syntax of borrowed and misheard phrases; saturated with code-language, its philosophical outlook pre-savaged by the Frankfurt School & Situationism; this work traces a geography of body and spirit encountering battles both within & outside itself. At the centre of this collection is “Casebook”, straddling the boundaries between performance text, prose poem and lyric. Lisette’s first collection is reprinted in full alongside poems addressing the student protests of late 2010, and previously unpublished poems. Available now from Mountain Press.
zimZalla object 014
zimZalla object 014 is A never ending poem read with dice that goes on to explore the possibilities of human intervention within the context & illusion of chance by Stephen Emmerson. This is a fully playable board game which generates multiple aleatory readings of poem text fragments. These readings are created by dice rolls and disrupted by disaster cards. The set also includes a single player version of the game. In total, the game box contains a full colour fabric board, three game counters, a six-sided die, a twelve-sided die, thirty-six poem cards, twelve disaster cards and a single player text booklet. Available now for £5 including postage and packaging. More at the zimZalla site.
WFN
Via Gareth Twose:
“Writer’s Forum North is back in business running a Poetry Writing Workshop on Saturday, May 26th. Anyone welcome.
If possible we would like people to bring two things: a poem or poems of their own; & a poem (not their own) they either really love or hate.
As usual will be trying to offer constructive feedback and a few laughs. It would really help if everyone could bring multiple photocopies of their poems, so everyone in the group can read them.
The session will run from 2-4pm . And it’s in top floor at Madlab, Edge Street, in the Northern Quarter.”
New from VerySmallKitchen
The latest VSK Chapbook is LEAVES by SJ Fowler. Read more here. You can also find a new visual collage sequence by SJ Fowler at otoliths.
The Other Room Anthology 4 – out now
The Other Room Anthology 2011/12 features work from Tim Allen, David Berridge, Andrea Brady, Rachel Lois Clapham & Stephen Perry, Jennifer Cooke, Ken Edwards, Carrie Etter, Alec Finlay, SJ Fowler, Chris Goode, Phil Hall, Alan Halsey, Derek Henderson, Colin Herd, Karen Mac Cormack, Steve McCaffery, nick-e melville, Geraldine Monk, Tamarin Norwood, Vanessa Place and Philip Terry. Click HERE to buy a copy for £6.75 including postage within the UK or HERE to buy a copy for £8 including postage anywhere else.
New ebook from The Red Ceilings
Circle/Line, Alexander Allison.
The Red Ceilings has also announced that at is now open to submissions again.
Beard of Bees
Much of interest to be found in Eric Elshtain’s frequently active e-imprint Beard of Bees, all PDF and all free. The latest release is Mark Cunningham’s Regularly Scheduled.
Paula Claire
Paula Claire read remotely for The Other Room on 19th April. This is the film she sent. Click on the bottom right of the player to view the film on a larger screen.
Stride Magazine
Lots of interesting stuff to read at Rupert Loydell’s Stride, including his interview with Robert Sheppard and new work by Tim Allen, Steve Waling and Alec Newman.
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.
