Month: June 2011

Poetry Connections featuring K. Satchidanandan

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Friday 1st July, 6.30 pm
International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester. Free. Drinks and Indian nibbles will be served

A cross-continental poetry performance blending languages and movement will be showcased for the first time in the UK. W.N. Herbert and Zoe Skoulding will welcome Bengali poet Sampurna Chattarji, the radical and outspoken Tamil activist-poet Meena Kandasamy, poet and editor Robin Ngangom from the very north east corner of India and Swiss German-language poet and rapper Raphael Urweider. They are also joined by the legendary Kerala poet K. Satchidanandan, one of the stars of Malayalam poetry, who will read in the first part of this double bill.

The Other Room this autumn

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The date and line-up for our autumn reading are now confirmed. It will be on Wednesday 26th October and the readers will be Jennifer Cooke, Colin Herd and SJ Fowler. Between now and then, we have Chris Goode, Jonny Liron and Tamarin Norwood on 20th July and David Berridge, Rachel Lois Clapham and Phil Terry on 24th August. All three events take place at our usual venue, The Old Abbey Inn on Manchester Science Park.

New Craters; Guthrie / Atkins

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The new Crater, the 13th, is Elizabeth Guthrie’s X Portraits; 10 odd and unsettling lyrical non-lyric realizations of portraits of America and Britain.  Accurate representations of modern life!  Each copy includes an individual painted iteration by E.G. reminiscent of 3 stoppages etalon‘s dropped string measure; they all include a wood block by Dirk E. Lee and are letterpressed, handbound &c.  Requires paperknife.  £7 + p&p.  Tim Atkins on Guthrie: ‘Elizabeth Guthrie’s poems – thoughtful, unusual, tender & (of course) tough – do far more interesting acrobatics than so so many of the more – shall we say? – pumped up ones. It is a joy to see her appearing in this latest Crater. Who can say no to it?’
Also: in honour of the impending London Ezra Pound conference, Tim Atkins offers 3 Ezra Pound themed Pet Soundz, available on a poetry-poster with a nice blue rendition of Pound by Gaudier-Brzeska on the other side.  £3 + p&p, available in unfolded or (cheaper) folded format. Guthrie on Atkins: ‘With Tim Atkins’ poetry, it is all where you find (you have found) he has found and placed the voice. It is all vivid joy and sorrow, distinct again and again in its rolling locale, within its expansive palate contemporary and timeless, completely unleashed and discerning as it turns its attention into forms of each and any place of our worlds.’

See www.craterpress.co.uk

AVENIR – Julius Kalamarz

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zimZalla object 009, AVENIR by Julius Kalamarz, is now available.

AVENIR is a series of synesthetic (grapheme → color) interpretations of color fields. The interpretations, and their corresponding colors, are presented on 24 cards housed within a box. The monochromes of Yves Klein inspired the concept, while the Event Scores of George Brecht inspired its presentation.

Click here to find out more, view a sample or buy a set.

PS putsch

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Is there anything so vicious as a fight in the literary world? The Poetry Society has just lost its director Judith Palmer, who resigned after what has been termed “an internal coup”, and the financial officer Paul Ranford has also departed, leaving no one to sign the cheques.According to sources, it is because Fiona Sampson, editor of the Poetry Review, the magazine overseen by the Society, had asked for autonomy from the director, and has been pushing the focus of the society from education to promoting high-profile poets. Sampson has also persuaded some members of the board, including Alan Jenkins, to back her. Palmer reluctantly handed in her resignation two week ago, with Ranford following shortly afterwards. The Poetry Society was founded in 1909 by Lady Margaret Sackville and the magazine has counted Dame Muriel Spark and Sir  Andrew Motion among  its editors. It also runs the Poetry Café in Covent Garden and the National Poetry competition (winners have included Helen Dunmore and Ruth Padel). There have been howls of protests from members who suggest that promoting well-known poets departs from the Poetry Society’s stated mission “to advance public education in the study, enjoyment and use of poetry”. The society gets around £260,000 from Arts Council England, due to rise to £360,000 next year, for “the welfare of poets and poetry”. The Poetry Society confirmed that both Palmer and Ranford have left, but would not comment further. “There is likely to be an extraordinary general meeting of members to try to resolve issues,” says one member, who declines to be named. “Many of us feel a necessary step would be the resignation of the board and the editor who prompted much of this dire situation.”

From the London Evening Standard

arthur+martha: BLOOM

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Via Philip Davenport:

The current arthur+martha project in Four Acre, St Helens has been short-listed for the national Bloom Awards. The Bloom Awards are for excellence and innovation in improving the quality of life, dignity and well-being of older people receiving care and support. We would really value your support. To register and to cast your vote on the various projects in the awards please follow this link http://lemosandcrane.co.uk/home/index.php?id=213425 and look for St Helen’s Council- Arts Service: Art of the Unexpected. Voting closes 24th June (5pm)

Poems about succumbing to temptation iced onto cakes, childhood memories painted onto plates, or poverty stitched onto tablecloths, bunting that questions etiquette, fading memories written on doilies, ‘sugar’ graffiti that evokes long gone childhoods, hardship and friendship. We have been invited older people in the an economically-deprived area to make a mix of poetry and art, celebrating their lives and visions. We’re trying to reach those who might not normally join in with art activities, by taking our workshops to the local Bingo night, housebound people’s homes, the doctors surgery, Tescos, a day centre for people diagnosed with dementia, a local library…

To read the latest about the project visit http://arthur-and-martha.blogspot.com/search/label/Four%20Acre%20St%20Helens

More photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthur-and-martha/

WFN July 2nd

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WFN 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.

Leeds’ only poetry workshop with the focus on work that doesn’t fit in the mainstream. Avant-garde techniques, humour and innovative use of language are all things that we like very much. We like work which has something to say about contemporary life yet shows an awareness of tradition.

Format of workshops will be poets reading from their work and receiving constructive feedback. It would be best if people could bring along copies of their work for the other group members to follow. It won’t be a problem if that isn’t possible though.

Anyone who wants to come along just to listen is very welcome.

For more info please email Stephen Emmerson on

stephen.emmerson@gmail.com

or

Richard Barrrett on

barrett.richard1@googlemail.com

This event will take place at the Victoria Family & Commercial Hotel

28 Great George St, Leeds LS1 3DL

More here.

Re-Covering | Curated by Mike Chavez-Dawson

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David Shrigley, Billy Childish, Harry Hill, Magda Archer, Robert Casselton Clark, Laurence Lane, Mike Chavez-Dawson, Jane Chavez-Dawson, Monica Biagioli, Brian Reed, Lisa Slominski, Mr&Mrs, Andrew Bracey, Lee Machell, Paul Cordwell, Richard Healy, Nick Jordan, John Hyatt, Naomi Kashiwagi, Bren O’Callaghan & Mandy Tolley, Paul Stanley, Kai-Oi Jay Yung, David Alker, Ben Cove, Stratton Barrett & Peter Wankowicz, Cecilia Wee, Jake Geczy, Roisin Byrne, Christine Wong Yap, Ludovica Gioscia, Julie Hammonds & Kit Hammonds, Jason Minsky, Mark Haig & Sarah Perks, Ed Barton, Daniel Staincliffe, Margaret Cahill, Contents May Vary, Elizabeth Leeke, The Centre of Attention, Steve Hawley, Lee Campbell, Len Horsey, David Gledhill, The Confraternity of Neoflagellants & BABEL Working Group, Nicola Dale, Franz Otto Novotny.

Curated by Mike Chavez-Dawson, Re-Covering is an exhibition of works by 40 local and international artists who redesign the cover of an influential book onto a reclaimed piece of oak from school libraries. Displayed on an installation of shelves, the works are standard paperback size (110mm x 178mm x 15mm). Works in Re-Covering include: Travels in Hyper Reality [Umberto Eco]; Simulacra and Simulation [Jean Baudrillard]; The Waves [Virginia Woolf]; The Adventures of the Wishing-Chair [Enid Blyton]; The Shock of Medievalism [Kathleen Biddick]; The End of History and the Last Man [Francis Fukuyama]; and Journey to the Centre of the Earth [Jules Verne].

To coincide with Re-Covering is The Reading, a multiple writers’ residency initiated by the artist/writer Jane Chavez-Dawson. Produced by Mike Chavez-Dawson in collaboration with Jake Geczy and Matthew Pendergast, The Reading will develop throughout Re-Covering, with up to 70 writers working in Untitled Gallery in either 2.5 or 3 hour slots. Each writer produces a text to be projected onto the back wall of Untitled Gallery. All writers share the same brief: They must use the final paragraph of the previous writer’s work, and may use as stimuli the ambience of the gallery, the exhibition’s content, the stream of visitors and the knowledge that their writing is displayed in real-time.

As a live projection, this piece is entitled Network Aesthetics – The Reading, a curatorial extension of Re-Covering and features a live feed from writers participating in The Reading writers’ residency. Network Aesthetics – The Reading presents “writing as performance” [Phelan] whilst furthering “multiple iterations” [Derrida] of an exploration into live text as a performance document. The physical networks drawn across the participating venues intend to mimic scattered pages of an unfolding “intertextual” [Kristeva] novel. A live projection of the writing in real-time is to be displayed in Untitled Gallery and across multiple screens in Manchester, including Cornerhouse, CUBE, Chinese Arts Centre, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery, and The Reading Room Collection, MMU Library.

Open Wednesday 12 – 7pm, Thursday – Saturday 12 – 6pm, Sunday 12 – 5pm

17 June – 31 July 2011

Maintenant #66: Valzhyna Mort

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The emigration of European poets to the United States appears a tradition in its own right, and a luminous one at that. The effect of Miłosz, Brodsky et al on American poetry resonates even today, perhaps even to the extent that a restrictive romanticism has emerged in the poetic consciousness of global poetics toward Eastern European poets in the US. Through the celebrated work of Valzhyna Mort that Eastern European influence continues, but abated in reconstituted voice utterly individual and unique. Winner of the Crystal of Vilenica poetry award, lauded on both sides of the continent, Mort is a resolute and dexterous presence in contemporary East coast American poetry circles. A native of Belarus, her poetry is remarkable for its elegance and fluidity, and its ability to maintain an idiom both utterly modern and somehow enduring. For the 66th edition of the Maintenantseries, Valzhyna Mort.

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-66-valzhyna-mort/

The Other Room 26 – 20th July

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A one month advance notification of our next event at The Old Abbey Inn on Manchester Science Park, featuring Chris Goode, Jonny Liron and Tamarin Norwood. Entry to The Other Room is always free, but you can RSVP us at http://theotherroom.eventbrite.com/ if you’d like to let us know that you are coming. There will, as always, be a book table loaded with publications from not only the readers themselves but also other magazines, books and objects from the north west’s ever expanding avant small publishing scene. Details of our three performers below. Previews of each performer will appear here over the next month.

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Chris Goode is a writer and experimental maker who has been described by the Guardian as “British theatre’s greatest maverick talent”. Recent projects include OPEN HOUSE for West Yorkshire Playhouse, KEEP BREATHING for London Word Festival, WHERE YOU STAND for Queer Up North, GLASS HOUSE for the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, WHO YOU ARE for Tate Modern, and KISS OF LIFE for Sydney Opera House. He was also a member of the international touring cast of Tim Crouch’s multi-award-winning play THE AUTHOR. As a poet he has published three chapbooks with Barque Press, and was featured in the Chicago Review British Poetry issue in 2007. He released THE HISTORY OF AIRPORTS: Selected texts for performance 1995-2009′ through his own Ganzfeld imprint, and has now edited an anthology of younger poets, ‘BETTER THAN LANGUAGE’, which will be published in July 2011. He has been blogging at Thompson’s Bank of Communicable Desire (http://beescope.blogspot.com) since 2006. Chris is an Artsadmin Associate Artist.

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Jonny Liron is an experimental writer and performer. His performances include: with Chris Goode: Hey Mathew (Theatre in the Mill, Bradford), King Pelican (Drum Theatre, Plymouth), Glass House (Deloitte Ignite ’09 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden) and, as associate artist, The Adventures of Wound Man and Shirley (Queer Up North / UK tour); and with Jeremy Hardingham: Recovery (Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio, Cambridge) and Experience Dante (siteresponsive, various Cambridge locations).

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Tamarin Norwood is an artist and writer. She has recently performed at Tate Britain, for the Maintenant poetry series and for the London Word Festival, and is completing an artist residency at the Chisenhale Gallery, London. Her first artist book “DO SOMETHING” was published by (U)LS in 2009. She has since published issues I-VI of art writing pamphlet “Text As” (Press, 2010) and her forthcoming book “was” will be published next year (LemonMelon Press). Recent critical and experimental texts on the blurring of art/life and words/things have appeared in activate Journal, a-n magazine, Cannon and for the Live Art Development Agency. In 2008 she co-founded art writing platform antepress with whom she has produced live and printed work for the ICA, Whitechapel Gallery, Art on the Underground and Resonance 104.4FM. She has taught art writing workshops at Central St Martins and has spoken on language and translation in her artwork at Spike Island, Cambridge University and SE8 Gallery. Tamarin holds first class degrees from Oxford University (2004) and Central Saint Martins (2007) in Linguistics & Medieval Italian and Fine Art respectively, and gained her MFA in Art Writing at Goldsmiths (2010). More at http://www.tamarinnorwood.co.uk