Month: June 2013

‘flick invicta’ by Sarah Crewe

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Sarah Crewe’s poems are deliberately resistant. flick/invicta raises the question: does a poetry which comes from outside, or which challenges, dominant ideology also need to come outside of normal syntax, to exceed normal registers? Does poetry need to challenge our modes of interpretation before it challenges anything else? Some of the poems in the pamphlet become so obfuscated as to resemble catalogues of private obsessions, and seem like the “secret code” mentioned in ‘bridge’. Others are, in context, remarkably conventional. But the best are hair-raising and subversive, breaking language up to “bring the vowels back” and “prise consonants/apart”.

Other Room reader Sarah Crewe’s flick/invicta reviewed by Charles Whalley at Sabotage.

HOW QUEUES WORK live event #1

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Writing the queue. The queue as constraint upon poetic practice. The inhabiting of a public space for a predetermined length of time and writing in that public space. Considering: queuing as class occupation. Queuing as primary means by which the city is experienced. The redundancy of psychogeography? The development and rules of the queue. The queue as useful autobiographical metaphor?

As the next stage of his ongoing HOW QUEUES WORK project on Saturday 20th July Richard Barrett will occupy a place in the bus queue at the stop outside the Palace Hotel, opposite Cornerhouse, Manchester for exactly one hour between the times 14.30 and 15.30. During that time he will produce a text responding to the experience of queuing taking in the sights and sounds of the city available to him from his place in the queue and considering each of the points listed in the above paragraph. At 15.30 Richard will board the number 42 bus and leave.

Guiding text of this event will be Michel de Certeau’s the Practice of Everyday Life.

To take part – turn up.

Enemies: visual art & avant-garde poetry

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The next installment of the Enemies Project will be a two week exhibition of visual art & avant-garde poetry in collaboration at the Hardy Tree gallery (119 Pancras Road, London, NW1 1UN http://hardytreegallery.com) July 6th to 20th 2013, with the space open for viewing 12-6pm July 7th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 18th, 19th, 20th, and featuring seven events over the fortnight.

Iain Sinclair and Ragnhildur Johanns have produced a triptych meditation on Eyjafjallajökull, the Icelandic volanic eruption finding form as a series of wall hung book sculptures – paper forms which appear to be a frozen moment of evolution between the book and the image, crossing Islands north, south and skyward.
David Kelly and Dylan Nyoukis have drawn together the dangling threads of modernist collage and guttural sound art to fashion a hyper cassette tape mural accompanied by super8 scratch screenings and original sonic dabblings.
Ben Morris & Marcus Slease have realised the aberrant underbelly of the gentle metropolis dirge in an acoustamatic tin tin of the city, bringing the offbeat poetics and grinding sonic beauty of London into three dimensions, falling off a wall.
Thomas Duggan and SJ Fowler print a poem in silk – silk fibroin, entirely biocompatible and biodegradable and programmed to disappear, when required, without leaving any trace – 3D poetry in a revolutionary new material developed using the very latest design technology, that has the potential to realise new environmentally sustainable modes of substance – material never seen in public before.
The exhibition is the backbone of our summer programme – four wholly original works of visual art born of radical collaborative practise where six months of exchange comes to fruition in the unique Hardy Tree gallery in St Pancras. The exhibition, and all events, are free of charge and intended as an opportunity for artists, poets and anyone with interest in the field to meet and share ideas along with the work. During this groundbreaking exhibition seven events, innovative in medium and form, will hope to shine a light on the most dynamic and creative poets and artists active in the contemporary London scene.
July Saturday 6th – Exhibition opening night:
performances from Dylan Nyoukis & David Kelly, Ben Morris & Marcus Slease, SJ Fowler, Iain Sinclair & Ragnhildur Johanns.
July Monday 8th – Voice art
Celebrating the non-lingual in poetry / avant garde music / sound art, sonic landscapes without technological assistance, experimentation in unpure human sound – performances from Ben Morris. Dylan Nyoukis. Holly Pester. SJ Fowler. Emma Bennett & more.
July Thursday 11th – Mini-lecture Poetics
Short, informal, aberrant talks given by contemporary British experimental poets – Peter Jaeger on John Cage & Buddhism, Philip Terry on poetry novels & the Bayeux Tapestry, Tim Atkins on London poetry in the 90s, Marcus Slease on travelling poetics & more
July Saturday 13th – ‘Dear world & everyone in it’
Readings from the groundbreaking anthology, published by Bloodaxe and edited Nathan Hamilton, featuring Fabian MacPherson, Ahren Warner, Stephen Emmerson, Amy Evans, Becky Cremin, Andy Spragg & more.
July Monday 15th – The Contemporary Poetics Research Centre
A rare academic entity, the CPRC, based in Birkbeck College, University of London is a hub for avant garde poets featuring Dan O’Donnell, Ollie Evans, Mendoza, Dan Eltingham, Albert Pellicer, James Wilkes, Vicky Sparrow, Mark Jackson & more
 
July Thursday 18th – P.O.W.
Edited by Antonio Carvalho, P.O.W. is a publishing project reigniting the great global tradition of concrete poetry. Readings from Chris McCabe, Chrissy Williams, Pascal O’Loughlin & more
July Saturday 20th – Closing night: a celebration of art writing
Brand new performances and artworks from Tom Jenks, Claire Potter, Patrick Coyle ,Tamarin Norwood & a host of collaborative performances from poets / artists involved in the Enemies project.
All events begin at 7.30pm and take place at the Hardy Tree gallery, situated just behind the British library. Please share the poster/s far and wide if possible.  Contact steven@sjfowlerpoetry.com for further details.

www.weareenemies.com supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Arts Council England.

Gareth Twose, Top Ten Tyres launch

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Town Hall Tavern
Manchester
July 6th, 8.30, FREE entry

Gareth Twose is a former journalist and organiser of Writers’ Forum North.  Recent work has appeared in publications including 3am, Depart, Litter, Assent, Ink, Sweat and Tears, & Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot.   He was co-organiser of the Manchester Poets for Pussy Riot event (2012). Top Ten Tyres is his debut collection. http://www.theredceilingspress.co.uk/

Rachel Sills lives in Manchester. She has had poems published in Stand magazine, and has a PhD on Frank O’Hara’s poetry.

Richard Barrett lives in Salford. His latest chapbooks The Shangri Las and 3 are forthcoming from, respectively, erbacce press and blartbooks.

I Think We Should Both Start Seeing Other Worlds

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New from Other Room reader Neil Addison.

I Think We Should Both Start Seeing Other Worlds: A Tranche Of Short Fictions Built To Order In The Name Of Rice & Beans

Sordid heteros, moon faced egotists, murderous fruit fights, promotional apes, and poetry testing kits. Also includes the truncated soap opera, Ruby Island (or what happens when an enclave of celebrities – including P Diddy, Dan Brown, David Hasselhoff, Jamiroquai, Martin Tyler, The Singer from Nickelback, The Singer from McFly, The Singer from Dollar, and the drummer from T’Pau – are forced to look the gift economy in the face (and believe me, dear readers, it sure isn’t pretty).

The Notecards

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seekers of lice writes and prints The Notecards.

Rebecca Cremin and Ryan Ormonde of press free press each receive a set of The Notecards from seekers of lice in the post.

Rebecca Cremin of press free press receives the metronome from seekers of lice in the post.

Ryan Ormonde of press free press receives the folding ruler from seekers of lice in the post.

Identical costumes are chosen.

The Notecards are performed in the Reading Room of Arnolfini in Bristol as part of ’4 Days’ and in association with VerySmallKitchen on 26/4/2013.

The Notecards wait to be performed again.

Lewis Freedman: a preview

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Lewis Freedman will perform at The Other Room on June 27th at The Castle Hotel, 66 Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LE. You can read about his work in this article by Jessica Fjeld at Divine Magnet, orread some poems at Smoking Glue Gun.

Lewis Freedman moved to Madison where he now resides and co-runs the ___________-Shaped reading series with Andy Gricevich, with whom he also edits and publishes chapbooks for cannot exist. Also, Lewis co-edits the publication of chapbooks with the multi-locatable collective, Agnes Fox Press. He is most recently the author of Hold the Blue the Orb, Baby (Well Greased) with two more texts forthcoming in 2013: non-symbolic non-symbolic non-symbolic (Minutes Books) and Solitude: The Complete Games (Troll Thread).

The other performers will be Sarah Crewe and cris cheek.

 

Other Room events rest of 2013

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Some dates for your diary for the rest of 2013 and many readers confirmed.

All events take place at The Castle Hotel, Manchester at 7pm

June 24th – cris cheek, Sarah Crewe, Lewis Freedman
August 15th – Jo Langton, Harry Gilonis and Elizabeth James
October 16th – The Dark Would, Manchester launch
December 4th – TBC