equus press

equus press was established in 2011 between Paris, London & Prague with the objective of publishing new writing that is innovative & conscious of being doubly marginalised: outside the literary establishment defined by the Anglo-American publishing industry, & outside the confines of nationalism, pursuing a broadly cosmopolitan “agenda”; what has come to be termed “translocal” writing. The press is launching its next two novels, The News Clown by Thor Garcia and Breakfast at Midnight by Louis Armand at a series of events in London and Manchester:

  • FRIDAY 13 APRIL, 7-9pm @ Rich Mix, 35 – 47 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA..
  • SATURDAY 14 APRIL, 6.30-8.30pm @ The Anthony Burgess Foundation, The Engine House, Chorlton Mill, 3 Cambridge Street, Manchester M1 5BY.
  • SUNDAY 15 APRIL, 7.30-9.30pm @ The Castle Hotel, 66 Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LE.
  • MONDAY 16 APRIL, 7-9 pm @ The Phoenix Artists Club, 1 Phoenix Street, London, WC2H 8BU.

More at the equus press site.

The Debris Field

14 Apr 19:30 Blue Room, The South Bank Centre, London. The Debris Field is a new multi-media production written and performed by poets Simon Barraclough, Isobel Dixon and Chris McCabe. The evocative poetic text is accompanied by original music from Oli Barrett of Bleeding Heart Narrative, and film by Jack Wake-Walker. The poets will take you on a resonant tour of the cultural debris of this iconic event, exploring ideas of luxury and labour; courage and folly; life and loss; and human ambition in the face of nature’s power. A key historic event explored with striking poetic, musical and visual impact.

 

The death of conceptualism?

“Conceptualism is probably over now, even in its newest iterations. The generative energy has gone out of procedural work and gestures of appropriation, retranslation, transcribing, and other methods of production that take an idea as a point of departure and carry out its terms to whatever affectless effect can be realized.” Johanna Drucker.

“Johanna Drucker has suggested that Conceptual Literature has begun to enter the twilight of its eminence, on the verge of becoming yet another one of the exhausted movements in the history of the avant-garde. While I am happy to see Conceptual Literature discussed within the context of its historical precedents (even if only to suggest that such writing has merely rehashed the techniques of its more noteworthy precursors), I feel that Drucker might be underemphasizing the degree to which her own observations about the “death” of Conceptual Literature might be recycling historical complaints, no less “unoriginal,” no less “uncreative,” in their obituaries, which declare the death of a genre, long before its generative potentials have been fully explored or fully absorbed….” Christian Bök.

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.

BLUE BUS Reading 62: Elena Rivera, Scott Thurston and Melissa Buckheit

The Blue Bus is pleased to present a poetry event featuring Melissa Buckheit, Eléna Rivera, Scott Thurston, on Tuesday 17th April, from 7.30 at The Lamb (in the upstairs room), 94 Lamb’s Conduit Street, London WC1. This is the sixty-second event in THE BLUE BUS series. Admissions: £5 / £3 (concessions). For future events in the series, please scroll down to the end of this message. Forthcoming events will include Marcus Slease, Lesley McKenna and Fran Lock (15th May), D S Marriott, Sarah Kelly and Robert Sheppard (19th June), and John Muckle and tba (17th July).

Melissa Buckheit is a poet, dancer, photographer, English Professor and Bodywork Therapist. She is the author of Noctilucent (Shearsman Books, 2012), Arc, a chapbook, (The Drunken Boat, 2007), and her poems, translations, photography, interviews and reviews have appeared in nth position, Blue Fifth Review, The Drunken Boat, Sinister Wisdom, Cutthroat, Bombay Gin, Pirene’s Fountain, A Trunk of Delirium, Spiral Orb, Shearsman Magazine, and Sonora Review. She translates the poet Ioulita Iliopoulou from Modern Greek, and her poetry has also been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. She holds an M.F.A. from Naropa University and a B.A. from Brandeis University. She has taught at University of Arizona, Pima College and SUVA. Melissa is the curator of Edge, a monthly reading series for emerging and younger writers at Casa Libre en la Solana in Tucson, AZ.

Scott Thurston lectures at the University of Salford where he runs a Masters in Innovative and Experimental Creative Writing. He co-runs The Other Room reading series in Manchester, edits The Radiator, a little magazine of poetics, and co-edits The Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry with Robert Sheppard. He is the author of Hold, Momentum, Internal Rhyme, and Of Being Circular.

Eléna Rivera was born in Mexico City and spent her childhood in Paris, France. She is the author of Remembrance of Things Plastic (LRL-e Editions, 2010), Mistakes, Accidents and the Want of Liberty (Barque Press, 2006), The Perforated Map (Shearsman) and translator of Secret of Breath (Burning Deck Press, 2008) poems by Isabelle Baladine Howald. She won the 2010 Robert Fagles prize for her translation of The Rest of the Voyage by Bernard Noël, which will be published by Graywolf Press in November 2011. She was also awarded a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Translation, and a 2009 Fundacíon Valparaíso Poetry Residency in Mojácar, Spain.

More here.

Eléna Rivera: a preview

Eléna Rivera will read at the next Other Room on Thursday 19th April. For a comprehensive overview of her work, visit her own site and her author page at Shearsman, including details of her most recent collection The Perforated Map. You can also find examples of her work at Little Red Leaves 4 and Sky Press.

Please note that this event is on a different day (Thursday) to our usual day (Wednesday) and is also at a different venue: the Basement Bar of the Deaf Institute just off Oxford Road, Manchester.

The other two readers will be Becky Cremin and Tony Lopez. There will also be a video performance by Paula Claire.