Projects

Midamble by Peter Jaeger out now from if p then q

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Peter Jaeger’s stunning new book, Midamble, is out  priced at the snip of £12.

midamble-photo
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.

 

Surrey Poetry Festival 2018

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Full line-up now confirmed…

Clémentine Bedos is a multidisciplinary artist whose recent shows include a solo exhibition at the Constance Howard Gallery, London ‘Contagious Hystories’. Currently exploring themes of identity, binaries and the Other. https://www.clementinebedos.com/

Emma Bennett’s recent performances include durational piano pieces, an exploration of pining for soft things, and interpreting the words of birdsong. https://emmabennettperformance.wordpress.com/

Emma Cocker is a writer-artist whose work explores the slippage between writing on page, to performance in time, between still and moving image, between individual and collective action. http://not-yet-there.blogspot.co.uk/

Rebecca Cremin draws on traditions of live art, Fluxus, performance writing and site-specific work using language as an object to expose, to investigate, to locate. http://www.veerbooks.com/Rebecca-Cremin-LAY-D

Amy Cutler is a multi-disciplinary practitioner with a special interest in geohumanities – the engagement between geography and arts/humanities. https://amycutler.net/

Tina Darragh is one of the original members of the Language group of poets. Her work explores class, race and ecology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Darragh

Rob Holloway is currently exploring sonnets and prose poems, and has been a DJ on Resonance FM. https://vimeo.com/9383523

P. Inman is associated with language and minimalist poetry. His work has been described as ‘thick with meanings that never quite complete themselves; full of social ironies and a sly and biting humor’ http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/inman/

Peter Jaeger will perform a durational version of his latest book Midamble, on the lawn at G Live. The book concerns his recently completed walk on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG1EUZusDTY

Sharon Kivland is an artist who has recently been called a poet, five times, to her surprise. Her work considers what is put at stake by art, politics, and psychoanalysis.  http://www.sharonkivland.com/

Lila Matsumoto’s poetry explores dailyness through allegory and literalness. http://www.shearsman.com/browse-poetry-books-by-author-Lila-Matsumoto

Tom Jenks is often verbivocovisual and always hilarious. https://www.zshboo.org/

Philip Terry uses Oulipian methods and translation to examine the crimes of bureaucracy and management. http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847772206

Scott Thurston’s current work responds to ongoing encounters with various dance and movement practices including Five Rhythms, Movement Medicine and Open Floor work. http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Thurston.php

Students from The University of Surrey have been exploring a range of poetic strategies during the workshop series Making Things Happen including the use of diaries, minimalism, Oulipo and collaboration.

Tickets go on sale April 4th – available from G-Live.

Running order TBC.

There will be a wine and cheese reception at 5pm.

An evening soiree takes place at 6.30, with the Poetry Festival joining The New Writer’s Festival (also taking place at G Live) and features a variety of readers including Tom Jenks.

Surrey Poetry Festival year 8 V2

Preview of Vicky Sparrow for the Other Room 10th birthday

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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

MORE

Slide3

New Hix Eros review

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Hix Eros: Poetry Review is published jointly by Sad Press and Hi Zero.

The latest issue is #8, published in March 2018, covering work by Sean Bonney, Lisa Robertson, Linda Kemp, Lila Matsumoto, Jennifer Pike Cobbing, Mike Saunders, Holly Pester et al., Sarah Hayden, Nicky Melville, Sophie Mayer, Calum Gardner, Juha Virtanen, Jèssica Pujol, Millie Guille, Sophie Seita, Caitlín Doherty, Corina Copp, Eleanor Perry, Daisy Lafarge, Vala Thorrods, JH Prynne, Colin Herd, and Peter Manson.

LINK

Chris McCabe – The Nevermore: In Search of the Lost Poets of Abney Park

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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

Summer Poetry School course with James Davies

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Archiving Your Self Yourself: Quantified Self Studio

At a time in which we are archived by others, often through digital means, it seems more and more important to attempt to define ourselves – on our own terms – as individuals and as members of a diverse range of groups. Written attentively, poetry that archives the self is subversive and can present radically different narratives to those purported by digital and mass media. By using methods such as diaries and collation of information one can conduct a close examination of the self as it stands, now and then, to see how it fits into the bigger picture.

Read more about this short online course HERE

Contraband Live – David Miller’s Spiritual Letters

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CONTRABAND LIVE – February 27th 2018

Contraband Live Launch of David Miller’s ‘Spiritual Letters’!!

With readings from Spiritual Letters by David Miller, April Fredrick, Steve Torrance and Matt Martin.

There will be more poetry and performance from Fran Lock, Michael Zand and Karen Sandhu.

A very exciting event!

Entry to the event is free and food is available from the venue.

Contraband Books and publications by other publishers will be on sale at our book stall. We look forward to seeing you there!

Monday 730-11pm | The Crown Tavern, 43 Clerkenwell Green, EC1R 0EG

 

Animal Waste

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Animal Waste : The second of a set of five cinema-poetic collaborations with the artist-filmmaker Joshua Alexander.

Animal Waste spreads itself over the lands of London which seem to have inspired a re-understanding of the city’s literary and psychological history, from Limehouse to Wapping, Rotherhithe to Ratcliff. Mutely nodding to this profound and now taken for granted reexamination of these once were slums, Animal Waste sets itself against the confident and touristic glean of that history, instead aligning itself with the suffering sediment of the actual past. Shot around Wellclose Sq and Hawksmoor’s St Anne’s, and hiding from the Thames, the film evokes Falk, Swedenborg, Linneaus in all their intelligent menace.

‘Manichean visions revive disputed and despoiled London ground. Poetry in light and stone’ Iain Sinclair

The animal films explore the particular, baffled and morbid character of English attitudes to mortality, along with the specific influence of place and conformity on the quintessentially English deferral of emotion and melodrama. The films aim to capture the ambiguous menace of an often accidentally humorous resolve, manner, apology and understatement so prevalent in the English character.

Supported by the Eurimages TEM grant and Arts Council England via The Enemies Project.

Lila Matsumoto

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URN AND DRUM IMAGE

A first collection by Lila Matsumoto, published by Shearsman, is touring near you very soon. All events are free –

❉ LONDON
Tuesday 13th February, 7.30pm
Reading with Ian Seed
Swedenborg Hall, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH
Map here
❉  EDINBURGH
Monday 19th February, 7pm
Reading with Colin Herd
Anatomy Lecture Theatre, Summerhall, Summerhall Place, Edinburgh EH9 1PL
Map here
❉ NOTTINGHAM
Thursday 1st March, 7pm
Reading with Vicky Sparrow
Five Leaves Bookshop, 14a Long Row, Nottingham NG1 2DH
Map here

Adjacent Pineapple Two

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Issue Two of Colin Herd’s lively new online magazine available at this LINK and featuring:

Robert Sheppard

  Dominic Hale

       Amy Gerstler

       Joey Frances

    Eva Ferry

Max Parnell

      Iain Britton

   Jonathan Coward

Maria Sledmere

Jordan Hayward

    Calum Rodger

Sally-Shakti Willow

 Tom Crompton

Loll Junggeburth

     Clive Gresswell

Nick Piombino

      Medbh  McGuckian   

Jazmine Linklater

Denise Bonetti      

William Fuller  

Sascha Aurora Akhtar

Sarah Bernstein    

Paula Claire         

Claire Potter            

Paul Hawkins   

Millie Earle-Wright

Rachel Grande      

Laura Tansley    

Nicola Thomas    

Mike Saunders    

   Jonty Tiplady 

A Theory of Minimalism by Marc Botha

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Marc Botha’s stunning book is out now.

botha

The explosion of minimalism into the worlds of visual arts, music and literature in the mid-to-late twentieth century presents one of the most radical and decisive revolutions in aesthetic history. Detested by some, embraced by others, minimalism’s influence was immediate, pervasive and lasting, significantly changing the way we hear music, see art and read literature.

In The Theory of Minimalism, Marc Botha offers the first general theory of minimalism, equally applicable to literature, the visual arts and music. He argues that minimalism establishes an aesthetic paradigm for rethinking realism in genuinely radical terms. In dialogue with thinkers from both the analytic and continental traditions – including Kant, Danto, Agamben, Badiou and Meillassoux – Botha develops a constellation of concepts which together encapsulate the transhistorcial and transdisciplinary reach of minimalism.

LINK

National Creative Writing Graduate Fair

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From Comma Press…

The National Creative Writing Graduate Fair takes place on the 3rd November in Manchester, a day dedicated to emerging creative writers, from poets, to short story writers, to novelists. 

The Fair is all about giving writers practical and up-to-date advice on how to live, work, and succeed as a writer. Over the course of the day, you will attend panel sessions, talks and workshops about topics like digital innovations in publishing, choosing the correct form for your idea, and book publicity. Moreover, writers are given the opportunity to meet with two agents, and have a pitching session where they can present their work for on-the-spot feedback. 

You don’t have to be a university graduate to attend the fair, nor do you have to have had anything published. All you need to do is prepare two verbal pitches, in 2 of 10 genres. We cater to writers working in everything from commercial fiction to short stories, from poetry to historical fiction.

The programme includes ‘Next Generation’ poet and novelist Luke Kennard (keynote speaker), Betty Trask Award winning Irenosen Okojie, Jhalak Prize winning Jacob Ross, Bookseller Start Up of the Week Bookollective and leading writer’s magazine Mslexia. 

Head to the Grad Fair website for the full programme and more information about the day. Tickets are £40, or £35 when booked in a group of five. If you are in receipt of means-tested benefits, or a single parent, you can apply for a reduced fee place for £20.

Bookings close on Wednesday 25th October, so don’t miss out on securing your place.

Simon Taylor – Prospectus

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if p then q is very pleased to announce the publication of Prospectus by Simon Taylor.

prospectus sample

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.

Prospectus front cover flattened

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

Adrian Slatcher: Interesting Drug #3

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Yoko Ono’s early 1970s albums have just been reissued on vinyl, so time for a reappraisal of this remarkable artist, musician and icon, including tracks from throughout her career and some associated Fluxus. In addition, we have obituarities for Sam Shephard, Peter Principle of Tuxedo Moon and Glenn Campbell, and focus on art exhibitions at Liverpool Tate, Henry Moore Institute and the Turner Contemporary, Margate. All in just over an hour with music from Ono, Beck, Kurt Schwitters, Patti Smith and others.

New episode of Adrian’s podcast, available here.