Resources

Free Modern Poetry online course with Al Filreis

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“ModPo” is an entirely free, non-credit, online 10-week version of the 14-week course on modern and contemporary American poetry I’ve been teaching for thirty years, mostly here at Penn in Philadelphia, mostly here in the Kelly Writers House.
The course makes use of audio recordings of the poets reading the poems we discuss, as well as other materials and resources we’ve assembled through PennSound, Jacket2, PoemTalk and the programs of the Kelly Writers House over the years.
The course was offered last fall, with 36,000 people enrolled from 129 different countries. An overview of that experience, including links to reviews of and articles about the course, is available here:
As of today, we are taking enrollments for the second running of ModPo – starting Saturday, September 7, and finishing 10 weeks plus two days later, on Monday, November 18. One can enroll here:
– providing merely an email address and name (no other information is requested). As I say, it is entirely free and entirely open. (Entirely open: for instance, a number of people with disabilities took the course last time, with little to no difficulty; and people in remote places with slow and far-flung connections were still able to keep up; participants ranged from 15 to 95 years old; etc.)
A 20-minute video introduction to the course can be found on YouTube here: http://youtu.be/HsE6f0hbHwI .

Maintenant #95 – Ivan Hristov

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An instrumental figure at the core of 21st century Bulgarian poetics, Ivan Hristov’s poetics are as variable and layered as the modern history of the country itself. As an educator and organiser, Hristov has been the driving force behind the Sofia poetics festival, bringing poets from around Europe to witness and interact with a surging new generation of poets emerging from the city, and as a poet himself, his connection and fusion with English language poetry has produced a unique style and cadence within his output which has gained plaudits from across the continent and America. Another figure in European poetry who conceives of organisation as a responsibility alongside his own practise, we are pleased to introduce Ivan Hristov as the 95th respondent of the Maintenant series.

Accompanying the interview are three of Ivan’s poems, translated by Angela Rodel.

Ubu Roi, I Boris

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I Boris

Chris McCabe and Tom Jenks’ fourth collaboration is Ubu Roi, I Boris an adaptation of the 1951 Gaberbocchus edition of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi,  illustrated by Franciszka Themerson.  You can catch up with the text so far, featuring, amongst others, Dale Winton, Ant & Dec, Peter Mandleson and William Hague in a bespoke sausage suit at the website.

The collaboration is part of SJ Fowler’s Camarade project and will be performed in some shape or form at the next Camarade event on 9th February at the Rich Mix in London.

Scott Thurston On Clarinda Mac Low’s 40 Dancers do 40 Dances for the Dancers

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Stepping into the space of St Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery for the first time on Thursday September 13th 2012 for the first of three nights of performance, I realized that I had completely misconceived the production of this piece in my mind’s eye. The usual boundaries between audience and performers were not be drawn as tightly, nor the progression of linear time to be adhered to as stringently as I had expected. When I entered, the performance had already started, with dancers dispersed, improvising, along the risers around the perimeter of the room and moving among the audience. It was intriguing to watch the audience’s reactions to this—ranging from delighted participation to outright denial—and to sense how this intervention formed part of the meaning of the whole.

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