Just two days to our special one-off event, celebrating Robert Sheppard’s European Union of Imaginary Authors project, 23rd August at 7PM, The Castle Hotel, Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LE. Patricia Farrell, seen above with Nathan Walker, will be astrally projecting Bulgarian poet Ivaylo Dimitrov, with other performers including Allen Fisher, Alan Baker and Joanne Ashcroft. Free entry, as always with the Other Room.
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Allen Fisher – a preview
Our next event (on 23rd August) is a one-off special, celebrating Robert Sheppard’s European Union of Imaginary Authors project. Amongst those performing will be Allen Fisher, helping to ventriloquise Finnish poet Minna Kärkkäinen. Above is Allen’s performance for us at the Other Room in 2014. 7 PM start for this event and free, as always.
MJ Weller – intermittent vol.1 no.1
New from Other Room reader M.J. Weller, here.
pickles & jams by cris cheek
‘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.
$4 postage for buyers in the UK and EU . . . making the book worth the price of postage alone. Book and postage for a round $20.
Manchester Street Poem by Underworld and the homeless
Conceived by Karl Hyde and Rick Smith from Underworld, Manchester Street Poem will spotlight the stories of those who find themselves homeless in the city – in a work where the catch-all term ‘homeless’ will give way to individuality, identity and integrity.
Manchester Street Poem will bring to life the stories of people who are homeless in Manchester. The work is both fleeting performance and compelling installation: as Hyde covers the walls of the venue with words and phrases drawn from the streets, the space will fill with a powerful soundtrack built on snatches and fragments recorded by Smith all over the city.
Co-created by Underworld and individuals with personal experience of homelessness, Manchester Street Poem will proudly broadcast the voices of those who so often go unheard and ignored.
UNFEAR 68-70 Oldham St, Manchester M4 1LE
Thur 6 – Fri 14 July, 10am – 6pm
Live broadcast at – LINK
Peter Philpott – Wound Scar Memories
Three poetic sequences, starting from Petrarch’s Sonnets placed in Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, August 2015, travelling through interior language spaces, into some mental version of the Dark Ages in Bishops Stortford, town of tunnels. Then there’s some prose, in case the political implications of a time of migration, cultural re-creation and elite formation are not clear enough. It’s also funny, inventive and moving.
LINK to a sample
£6 – LINK to purchase
A launch also takes place at the next Contraband Poetry Night, The Crown Tavern, 43 Clerkenwell Green, EC1R 0EG, July 4, 7 o’clock onwards – with also (or even better!) Antony John, Sogol Sur and Clive Gresswell.
The No Breath – John Goodby
“I think these are my favourite poems of [John Goodby’s]. They have some kind of indefinable charge. It’s like being in a calm dark room with little slots and windowlets opening just briefly onto brilliantly lit spaces out there and all over and then closing again before you can get a really good look. What you carry away is a sort of richly coloured composite many-layered image which seems to add up to something suggestive of the archaeological remains of what was once at various points in time and space something resembling a unified human emotional consciousness. I find them exciting.” – Lyndon Davies.
More here.
Gramophone Raygun 7
Everyman Bistro, Hope Street, Liverpool City Centre, 29 June, 8pm, £3.
Gramophone Ray Gun is a ‘live’ series of events celebrating experimental approaches to writing, poetry and music. Alternating between the page, performance, sound and text, Gramophone Ray Gun is a regular ‘live’ platform commissioned by The Dock Road Press.
The seventh event includes a special set from the renowned sound artist Philip Jeck as well as poetic readings from Joanne Ashcroft, Jazz Linklater and Bill Bulloch, each punked up on esoteric language and strange magic. As per usual, the evening will unfold to a crepuscular soundscape of unearthly samples and music excavated from a U.F.O crash site in Formby.
Zarf reading – Jow Walton and Claire Potter
The Other Room Tonight – Clark & Welton
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
THE SONNET IN – AND OUT OF – TRANSLATION 19TH-21ST CENTURIES
Matthew Welton – A Preview
Matthew Welton will read with Thomas A. Clark at our next event on June 14th at The Castle Hotel, Manchester. More details HERE
It always felt like my interest in poetry came second to my interest in language. I’m fascinated by the potential there is in language to do all kind of things that no one’s thought of yet. If poetry is the word we use for what happens when we put words together in surprising ways, then I’m okay with the things I write being called poems – I guess that’s why I read poems – but I’m not interested in approaching things as if there’s some indisputable border between what’s poetry and what isn’t, or taking the view that there is only one particular tradition out of which the poems being written now can come.
from an interview with Sam Riviere in The Quietus. More HERE
From the vaults – Peter Hughes
Two Masters
John Levy’s “Visits with Robert Lax in Greece (1984 & 1985)” and David Miller’s “Cid Corman and Origin: A Personal Account” richly illustrated with photographs of Lax and Corman.
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
Reality Street sale
Reduced prices on all books
Reality Street is no longer publishing new books but will keep nearly 50 backlist titles in print for the foreseeable future.
All prices have been cut, and books can be dispatched anywhere in the world at reasonable p&p rates. View information for all titles and order online easily at the Reality Street website.
Please visit http://www.realitystreet.co.uk
Stephen Emmerson’s Poetry Wholes Second Edition out now from if p then q
Poet Stephen Emmerson has worked with if p then q to create the incredible Poetry Wholes, Second Edition. The Poetry Wholes are made of high quality mdf and come housed in a box with a set of instructions. Each Poetry Wholes contains 5 templates which you can use to make instantaneous poetry in a range of styles. Choose from the following:
- Minimalism
- The Sonnet
- ‘Vito Acconci’
- The Ballad
- The ‘Slash’
Unlimited edition. LINK to purchase.
otherroom.org 