Frances Presley will perform at the next Other Room on Wednesday, 5th February, 7 PM start, free entry. The clip above is of Frances reading at Xing the Line in July 2012. For more information about her work, try her author page at Shearsman, or this interview with Matilde Christensen. The other readers are Gavin Selerie and Chris Stephenson, with a preview of Chris to follow soon.

Bio.

Frances Presley was born in Derbyshire, grew up in Lincolnshire and Somerset, and lives in London. She studied literature at the universities of East Anglia and Sussex, writing dissertations on Pound, Apollinaire, and Bonnefoy. She worked as a library and information specialist, in community development and anti-racism, and at the Poetry Library. Publications of poems and prose include The Sex of Art (North and South, 1988), Hula Hoop (Other Press, 1993), and Linocut (Oasis, 1997). She collaborated with Irma Irsara on a project about the fashion trade, Automatic Cross Stitch (Other Press, 2000); and with Elizabeth James in an email text and performance, Neither the One nor the Other (Form Books, 1999). Somerset Letters (Oasis, 2002), with drawings by Ian Robinson, explored community and landscape. The title sequence of Paravane: new and selected poems, 1996-2003 (Salt, 2004) was a response to 9/11/2001, and the IRA bombsites in London. Myne: new and selected poems and prose, 1976-2005, (Shearsman, 2006) takes its title from the old name for Minehead in Somerset. Lines of Sight (Shearsman, 2009) features Neolithic stone sites on Exmoor, and is part of a collaboration with Tilla Brading, Stone settings (Odyssey, 2010). Her latest book is An Alphabet for Alina (Five Seasons, 2012), a collaboration with artist Peterjon Skelt. Presley has written various essays and reviews, especially on innovative British women poets. She has co-translated the work of two Norwegian poets, Hanne Bramness and Lars Amund Vaage. Her work is included in the anthologies Infinite Difference (Shearsman, 2010), and Ground Aslant: radical landscape poetry (Shearsman, 2011). She has also contributed to a collection of poetic autobiographies, Cusp (Shearsman, 2012).