Latest issue of the superb online magazine featuring poetry and reviews:
Library
Midamble by Peter Jaeger out now from if p then q
Peter Jaeger’s stunning new book, Midamble, is out priced at the snip of £12.
420 pp
£12.00
LINK to purchase and sample pages
About the book
Midamble is a long poem that concerns Peter Jaeger’s interest in walking practice; in particular his travels on a variety of pilgrimage routes. A prose poem, it comprises two bands of text: the top level is a list of walking experiences whilst the bottom re-appropriates materials from comparative religion texts. Midamble is a poem that is clearer than crystal, and possesses a musical quality that is comparable to seminal and contemporary minimalist music.
The poem also has a life in durational performance. When read live Midamble demonstrates its consistency as well as its diversity. In such performances listeners are invited into a collective experience in which they can engage with ideas for as little as a moment or as long as several hours. Indeed, perhaps its most enduring feature is its quality of having no fixed entry or exit point.
About the author
Peter Jaeger is a Canadian poet, literary critic and text-based artist now living in the UK. His recent publications include John Cage and Buddhist Ecopoetics (Bloomsbury 2013) and 5404 (University of London Veer Press 2014). He has also published A Field Guide to Lost Things with if p then q. Jaeger is Professor of Poetics at Roehampton University in London.
Murmur #3 – Reading Series
MURMUR #3
Reading Series
Sunday 8th April / 7pm / Free
Common, Manchester
Featuring…
Sophie Jung
Lila Matsumoto
Bryony Bates
Edwin Stevens
+ Aldous RH/Secret Admirer DJs
Readers:
SOPHIE JUNG – Sophie Jung (b. 1982 Luxembourg) is a performance artist based in London and Basel. She was educated at Amterdam’s Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Goldsmiths College.Her writing has been published at Fiktion.cc, HOTEL and The White Review (forthcoming). In 2016, she won the Swiss Art Award.
Selected solo exhibitions include: ‘It’s Not What It Looks Like’ at Sophie Tappeiner, Vienna (2017); ‘Producing my Credentials’ at Kunstraum, London (2017); ‘Death Warmed Up’ at Liste Performance Project, Basel (2017).
Frieze says: “[Sophie Jung] has perfected a tone that constantly veers between jokey and serious, aloof and ever-present, creating an unsteady experience of listening and viewing that somehow feels incredibly intimate. Whether she speaks about politics or animal life, whether she talks about the probable or the fantastic, you want to believe what Jung says.”
LILA MATSUMOTO was born in Japan, grew up in the US and currently teaches poetry at the University of Nottingham. Lila co-runs Front Horse, a magazine and performance night of poetry, music, and art, and convenes the Nottingham Poetry Exchange. Urn and Drum, her first poetry collection, is published by Shearsman Books in 2018.
Rachael Allen says: “The world within Urn & Drum is a cornucopia of shapes, colours, and objects, fashioned almost as a gleeful, surreal picture-book; a playful naivety that leads to serious questions of what it means to exist and feel in the world. Through linguistic dexterity and play, [these poems] exclaim heartbreak and test the limits of language in a single line.”
BRYONY BATES is a writer and performer based in Manchester. Her work has been published in Adjacent Pineapple, Ladybeard Magazine and Spoke: A New Queer Anthology from Dog Horn Press. Her debut solo pamphlet, States, was published by Enjoy Your Homes Press in 2017. As a performer, her theatrical credits with Contact Young Company include There Is A Light: Brightlight, 15 Minutes, and She Bangs the Drums.
Zarf Magazine says: “It feels like […] bleakly hard work.”
Bryony Bates says: “Angry sex poetry and flippant bullshit.”
EDWIN STEVENS is from Llanfairfechan, North Wales but now he lives in Glasgow, Scotland. He writes songs and stories. www.liveslowdeath.com
Jessica Higgins says: “I’ve seen this man tattoo his own chest and spill his spirit wildly across a room and no that’s not a euphemism.”
Preview of Vicky Sparrow for the Other Room 10th birthday
Vicky Sparrow will perform alongside Camilla Nelson, Amy De’Ath & Pascal O’Loughlin on 18th April, 7pm at the Other Room. Free entry as ever. It’s our tenth birthday! Here’s part of one of Vicky’s poems and also one of the four posters for the night below that, which shows our readers over the years:
from Big C little c
Test the cold waters of Common Sense
you old pro
your fingertips touch the image
lilac blue stones beneath the skin
and the reeling fishes
who would dance in the shallows were it not for
the looming bulk above
that’s you
compassionate reflection of your losses
losses for all in this blue
seeping cold in your core
a staircase for the fish
your ribs
your sea coloured flag
the dead
The Advance of the Avant-garde
In the 1960s a group of writers set about shaking up the polite conventions of the British realist tradition through a whole range of experimental approaches.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09tybwl
Chris McCabe – The Nevermore: In Search of the Lost Poets of Abney Park
The Nevermore:
In Search of the Lost Poets
of Abney Park
Wednesday 21st March 7.30pm
To celebrate World Poetry Day, Poet and writer Chris McCabe turns the focus of his ongoing project about the Magnificent Seven cemeteries to the natural non-conformist landscape for poets: Abney Park Cemetery. Author of In the Catacombs: A Summer Among the Dead Poets of West Norwood Cemetery and Cenotaph South: Mapping the Lost Poets of Nunhead CemeteryMcCabe will present accounts of the dead and read a mix of poems from the poets he’s discovered along his journey so far, including those buried in Abney Park. You’ll hear about the poet-couple George Linnaeus Banks and Isabella Varley Banks and Emily Bowes, whose final words were “I shall walk with him in white”. The event will end with a Q and A and a chance to buy McCabe’s cemetery books.
To be held inside Abney Park’s chapel.
Please arrive at the main gates on Stoke newington High St between 7 & 7.20pm
18yrs and over.
Tickets: Full £12 / Conc £10
Book here
info@abneypark.org
020 7275 7557
www.abneypark.org
Simon Taylor – Prospectus
if p then q is very pleased to announce the publication of Prospectus by Simon Taylor.
Part Cindy Sherman part HR, Prospectus is a beautiful square format book which consists of a selection of colour photographs and descriptive texts for that all important ‘about me’ page.
Simon Taylor is one half of Joy as Tiresome Vandalism whose works are the books aRb and Absolute Elsewhere and the card game What’s the Best? He has also designed book covers for if p then q and posters for The Other Room poetry series. A sketchbook of his work and images from Prospectus can be found at Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/discomoobs/
You can buy at the if p then q website – LINK
Iain Sinclair, Allen Fisher, Brian Catling, Alan Moore – Xing the Line
FUTURE EXILES RETURN TO A LAST LONDON
Iain Sinclair, Allen Fisher, Brian Catling, Alan Moore
7pm, Wednesday, 13th September
a Crossing the Line event
venue: Iklectik
‘Old Paradise Yard ‘ 20 Carlisle Ln, Royal Street corner, Archbishop’s park,
London SE1 7LG
Peter Barlow’s Cigarette 23 – O’Sullivan, Thorogood, Williams, Matsumoto
Peter Barlow’s Cigarette #23 – ft. Lila Matsumoto, Maggie O’Sullivan, Luke Thorogood, Chrissy Williams
~~~
An afternoon of alternative poetries
Saturday, June 24, 4.00 – 6.00, Waterstones, Deansgate
Free entry, free wine
~~~
LILA MATSUMOTO ~
’s publications include Soft Troika (If a Leaf Falls Press) and Allegories from my Kitchen (Sad Press). Lila’s poetry and criticism have been published in a variety of journals and anthologies including Jacket2, Tripwire, Zarf, and Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry. She has performed at places such as SoundEye Festival and Little Sparta garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay. Lila teaches creative writing at the University of Nottingham, where she she convenes the Nottingham Poetry Series:https://nottinghampoetryseries.wordpress.com/
MAGGIE O’SULLIVAN ~
‘s page at Pennsound (http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/OSullivan.php) is a primary resource for online recordings of her readings/performances. Her website is www.maggieosullivan.co.uk
LUKE THOROGOOD ~
writes about and through the ‘other’, using created characters to explore voice and form. He previously edited Three and a half point 9, and is currently the artwork editor for the Black Market Review. He is completing a masters in Creative Writing at Edge Hill, focusing on writing as created poets. He writes and creates for, along with a group of other writers, part of The Pollyverse, a multimedia extended story world around the adventures of Polly St. Irene.
CHRISSY WILLIAMS ~
is a poet and editor living in London. She has published various poetry pamphlets and her first full collection BEAR has just been published by Bloodaxe. She is director of the annual Free Verse: Poetry Book Fair and currently works as editor on the bestselling comic The Wicked + The Divine. twitter.com/chrissywilliams
From the vaults – Lila Matsumoto
11th February 2015
Thomas A. Clark: A Preview
The poetry of Thomas A. Clark has been consistently attentive to form and to the experience of walking in the landscape, returning again and again to the lonely terrain of the Highlands and Islands.
Thomas A. Clark will read with Matthew Welton at our next event on June 14th at The Castle Hotel, Manchester. More details HERE
Here are two examples of his work:
Quiet
from coire fhionn lochan
lapping of the little waves
breaking of the little waves
spreading of the little waves
idling of the little waves
breaking of the little waves
spreading of the little waves
idling of the little waves
Read more HERE
New pamphlets by Mark Leahy & James Davies from Dock Road Press
Subject to Gesture by Mark Leahy (Featuring Benjamin D. Duvall) & Changing Piece – An Epic Saga Against the Odds by James Davies are out now from Dock Road Press priced at £3 each.
Gramophone Raygun 6 – Mark Leahy & Benjamin D. Duvall, Patricia Farrell, James Davies
Gramophone Raygun number 6
A night of experimental poetry and sonic art with performances from Mark Leahy/Benjamin D. Duvall, Patricia Farrell and James Davies.
Thursday, April 27 at 8 PM – 11 PM
Everyman Bistro, Liverpool
LINK to Facebook page
Amy McCauley recording at The Other Room – February 2017
Craig Dworkin at the ICA
Craig Dworkin talks about his critical work, No Medium at the ICA.
15 MARCH
18:30 – 20:00
Join poet and author Professor Craig Dworkin looking at works that are blank, erased, clear, or silent. Examined closely, these ostensibly ‘contentless’ works of art, literature and music point to a new understanding of media and the limits of the artistic object. Dworkin argues that we should understand media not as blank, base things but as social events, and that there is no medium, understood in isolation, but only and always a plurality of media: interpretive activities taking place in socially inscribed space.
In partnership with Leeds Beckett University.
Tickets are £5 / £3 for #ICAMembers
More here – https://www.ica.art/whats-on/craig-dworkin-no-medium
Yellow Lines Drawn on Sheets of A4 Paper and then Placed in a Box – Episode 4
The 4th tape of poet James Davies making and describing his work ‘Yellow Lines Drawn on Sheets of A4 Paper and then Placed in a Box’
The O and the Owl by Leanne Bridgewater
The new ebook from Argotist Ebooks is “The O and The Owl” by Leanne Bridgewater
Description:
An eco-sound-poem in 50 parts
“The O and The Owl” is about a play on letter ‘o’ and the ‘owl’ as a word, phonically, but also metaphorically: environment; animal instinct; nature. We have become so dependent on having to know what everything means, we ask it too much. The O and The Owl – what does it mean? It has no formal meaning but it asks you ‘what do you think / what do you see / do you see the play on word / do you see the oblong rhythm / do you see the hidden politics / do you feel tongue-twisted / do you see the micro-meanings instead of ‘what is the true meaning of this?’ – Language’s seatbelt has become unfastened, landing face-down in earth where the tongue licks and sniffs at it in a playful manner – and then the owl comes!
Available as a free ebook here:
http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/THE%20O%20AND%20THE%20OWL.pdf
Full Argotist Ebooks catalogue here:
Veer Launch (Ashford, Cobbing, Harvey, Terry)
Dear All – notice of the upcoming Veer Launch at Iklectik.
Veer Launch (Ashford, Cobbing, Harvey, Terry)
Tuesday, 7th February@ Iklictik Art Lab, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London SE1 7LG, UK, 7pm.
With readings from David Ashford, launching SEDITION-MACHINES, and Philip Terry launching Bad Times.
We will also be launching the new Complete Poems by James Harvey, edited by David Miller, Keith Jebb and Antony John, who will read on the night, along with Matt Martin, and alongside recordings of James Harvey.
We will also be launching the new edition of Jennifer Pike Cobbing’s Computer Dances. As you’ll know Jennifer sadly passed away on December 11th last year, while the book was in preparation. We are very happy to be able to launch it nonetheless and to celebrate Jenny’s extraordinary work on the night. Reading and speaking on the night will be Adrian Clarke, Ulli Freer, William Rowe, Elizabeth James, cris cheek, montenegrofisher, Steve Willey and Becky Cremin.
EMMA COCKER TRANSMISSION LECTURE AND BOOK LAUNCH
TUESDAY 24 JANUARY
Join us on for an evening with Sheffield artist Emma Cocker.
From 4.30pm – 6pm, Emma will give a lecture about the wider context of her practice as a writer-artist, as part of the Transmission Lecture Series, a series of free art lectures produced by Site Gallery in collaboration with Sheffield Hallam University’s Fine Art Department.
Following the lecture at Sheffield Hallam University, join us at Site Gallery from 6pm for the launch of Emma’s first collection of writing – The Yes of the No (published by Site Gallery in 2016). Emma will read from the book at 7pm.
Existing in the space between imaginative proposition and a call to action, The Yes of the No is an assemblage of provocations, proposals and potential ways of operating — ranging from navigating the city and inhabiting the margins to errant acts of reading; from preparing for the unexpected to learning how to ‘not know’, from minor acts of singular sedition to collective expressions of an insurgent ‘we’.
Emma Cocker is a writer-artist based in Sheffield and Reader in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University. Cocker’s work often addresses the endeavour of creative labour, focusing on models of (art) practice and subjectivity that resist the pressure of a single, stable position by remaining wilfully unresolved. Her recent writing has been published in Failure (2010); Stillness in a Mobile World (2011); Drawing a Hypothesis: Figures of Thought (2011); Hyperdrawing: Beyond the Lines of Contemporary Art (2012); On Not Knowing: How Artists Think (2013); Reading/ Feeling (2013) and Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line (2017).
Robert Sheppard – Petrarch 3
Crater 36: January 2016 [sic]. Robert Sheppard, Petrarch 3. The Complete Petrarchs of our time and poetics are splendid, but what happens if you dig down and realise version after version of just one sonnet (Petrarch’s third), stuttering in repetition, re-staging it for voice and situation, from a Scouse dog at Christmas to Jimmy Savile beyond the grave; a twittersonnet or a lengthy semantic poetry translation; a French Symbolist version or a Middle English sonnet? Robert Sheppard’s pamphlet is what happens, leaving a performance of humour, excess, variation, and an uncanny undersong courtesy of Petrarch himself. Confusingly folded, full colour, £4 + p&p. Run of 200.
otherroom.org 