Bloomsday launch of Dedalus, a new novel by Chris McCabe, published by Hennigham Family Press. FREE entry. 5pm – 7pm. Saturday 16th June 2018. Lock-keeper’s Cottage Graduate Centre (nr. Mile End Lock), Queen Mary University of London, London
E1 4PD. Nearest Tube Mile End. More details, including how to pre-order the book, here.
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.
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.
Camilla Nelson will perform alongside Vicky Sparrow, 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 a performance by Camilla and also one of the four posters for the night below that, which shows our readers over the years:
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.”
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
Veer Books will be holding a launch reading on Monday, March 26th 2018, 7:30-9:00pm, at Birkbeck College, in association with the CPRC Birkbeck (note the new date).
We’ll be launching some new Veer publications, with readings by the authors:
* Paul Buck – RECOLLECTION AND MISUNDERSTANDING
* Verity Spott – We Will Bury You
* Calum Hazell – TENDS
* Haley Jenkins – Nekorb (TBC)
Venue: Keynes Library, School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, Birkbeck College, London
Time: 7:30-9:00pm
Free and All Welcome. Wine and drinks provided.
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.
Another big night in the not too distant future from James Davies’ publishing house if p then q. Wang it in your diary.
Early notice of this event which is organised by The Other Room’s James Davies, current Poet in Residence at the university. The day will feature a number of amazing poets. Get the date in your head now! Guildford is just 30 minutes from London Waterloo. More on where and how to buy tickets soon but should be around £5.
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
Our next event takes place on December 6th at The Castle Hotel, 7pm and is free as ever – hope to see you there. It features Sharon Kivland, Redell Olsen and David Steans. Here’s a little preview of Sharon Kivland:
Find out more about Sharon HERE
Issue Two of Colin Herd’s lively new online magazine available at this LINK and featuring:
The book of Matthew
Music and film by Larry Goves/Text by Matthew Welton
The wind around the orange-tree
brings on the smell
of nutskins mixed with whisky
mixed with lemons or rain…
From The book of Matthew; Matthew Welton, Carcanet, 2003
A piece for instruments and projected text using extracts Matthew Welton’s The book of Matthew; a collection of thirty-nine hauntingly beautiful poem variations arranged according to Roget’s Thesaurus.
Tithonus, Drunk
Music by Laurie Tompkins/Text by Sam Quill
Tithonus, drunk is a short soap about life on the sauce for four instrumentalists, electronics, and projected drinker.
House of Bedlam:
Kathryn Williams flutes
Harry Fausing-Smith & Carl Raven saxophones
Tom McKinney guitars
Steph Tress cello
Laurie Tompkins projected drinker
Larry Goves director
Free admission, no ticket required
Via Richard Parker…
This year Sharon Borthwick’s done our advent calendar! The Borthwick Riot Calendar contains all sorts of incendiary material, 25 poems, a colour collage and lots of Xmas cheer – it’s also definitely NSFW. £5 and P&P, it’s on the website now: www.craterpress.co.uk Copies will be sent out about the middle of November – orders from outside of the UK may not receive their copies before December/advent.
Also, there’ll be an Cratery Xmas party on the 1st of December at The Field, 385 New Cross Road, London, where we’ll celebrate Sharon’s advent intervention and yuletide cheer. Sharon will read, there’ll be an Xmas performance from the Ninnies and there’ll be a bunch of other stuff too.
Merry advent one and all!
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
16pp, A4, card cover, hand assembled with cord binding, presented in clear archival sleeve. Out now on Enjoy Your Homes Press.
Out now – LINK
‘pickles & jams’ is out now from the excellent BlazeVOX [books]. Beautifully designed, it contains 99 lyrics and is shipping now. You can order direct through BlazeVOX: http://www.blazevox.org/…/pickles-and-jams-by-cris-cheek-4…/. A clutch of responses to the work are on the BlazeVOX page to wet your appetite.
otherroom.org 