Maintenant #88 – Sylva Fischerová
As the monumental literary figures of the velvet revolution have passed their profundity and vibrancy onto a new generation of poets and writers, the Czech Republic has faced a shift in its poetic register, as the country has in its fundamental politik. So a return to the author has taken place, and straddling the two great contrasting generations and experiences of the Czech Republic as perhaps few others could, Sylva Fischerová, poet, author, teacher, has become the representative of the very best of her times – a poet whose wit, whose wisdom, whose incisiveness has brought her devotees across the world and across languages. In the 88th edition of Maintenant we welcome the lauded Sylva Fischerová.
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-88-sylva-fischerova/
Accompanying the interview is six poems, translated by Sylva and Stuart Friebert
New work at Depart

Lots of new work appearing all the time at Richard Barrett and Simon Howard’s Depart, an offshoot from their Department publishing project. Writers with work online included Ollie Evans (see in’n’on above) , Andrew Spragg and Jaime Birch.
Tony Lopez: a preview
Tony Lopez will be reading at the next Other Room on Thursday 19th April. For a flavour of his work, check his own site, his blog and his page at Shearsman Books, where you can find information about and samples from his two most recent books, Only More So and False Memory. The photograph above is of More and More, part of the Bury Art Museum collection and was taken by Julia Grime.
Tony will be reading with Becky Cremin and Elena Rivera. Previews of both to follow in the coming weeks.
Lines of Thought
- James Wilkes – A critical talk on Adrian Stokes, landscape & poetry
- Andrew Duncan – A poetry reading
Thurs March 22nd, £5/£4 conc, 7.00pm
Parasol Unit, 14 Wharf Road, London, N1 7RW
For more info: https://sites.google.com/site/intercapillary/
ENVIRONMENTAL UTTERANCE – A Performative Conference
University College Falmouth invites submissions for ENVIRONMENTAL UTTERANCE – A Performative Conference – Sat 1 to Sun 2 September 2012. Submission Deadline: Saturday 31 March 2012. Across disciplines academics and artists are researching and creating practices that are highly contextual (determined by the environment in which they are located), exploring ways of articulating specific environments, spaces or places. This conference examines a specific problematic that attends the dissemination of this work: how to engage with ‘being there’ when ‘there’ is not here? For more information, see the programme.
Innovation in Fiction
New magazine Innovation in Fiction is looking for the following for its debut issue:
- short fiction of an experimental or innovative nature
- reviews of innovative or experimental fiction
- old and new essays on experimental writers, innovative fiction, forms and movements
Email adrian.slatcher@gmail.com
Writing and the Small Press – conference programme
The programme for the Writing and the Small Press Conference at Salford University on Saturday 31st March is now available. This conference aims to bring together publishers, writers and academics to discuss the influence of the small presses on creative practice and to consider their broader role in cultural production. In addition, there will be practical sessions on how to publish with a small press and opportunities for publishers to showcase their books.
Two Juxtavoices events
Juxtavoices is a large antichoir which includes many familiar faces from Sheffield’s leftfield music, poetry and visual arts scene. Although the group performs structured scores, no fixed pitches are ever notated, and the group uses improvisation to shape the detail of the scores as the music progresses. Both trained and untrained voices are included. As well as playing normal concerts, the group is to be found in various unexpected public places and at poetry / text events. A Discus CD is planned for 2012. Always on the look out for new members.
Upcoming events include:
- 17 Mar, Bluecoat, Liverpool
- Mar 24th, Central Library, Sheffield
The Other Room 4th birthday – Lopez, Cremin, Claire, Rivera
Our 4th birthday takes place with one stonking event on Thursday 19th April, 2012, 7 pm. Aside from the 3 fabulous performances on the night, other highlights will include a video from sound poet Paula Claire, the launch of The Other Room anthology 2011-12 and jelly and ice cream (or something like that).
The event as ever is free entry and is at our temporary home, The Deaf Institute in the Basement bar (arrive early to get a seat). The Deaf Institute is located in central Manchester, just off Oxford Road.
MAP HERE
LINK TO DEAF INSTITUTE
Previews of all our performers will follow shortly. You can book a ticket via Eventbrite. This will let us know you are coming and put you on our mailing list. Eventbrite will also give you updates and reminders relating to this event.
We hope to see you there.
The Blue Bus: 20th March
The Blue Bus is pleased to present a poetry event featuring Ken Edwards and John Gibbens, with music by Ken White and David Miller, on Tuesday 20th March, from 7.30 at The Lamb (in the upstairs room), 94 Lamb’s Conduit Street, London WC1. This is the sixty-first event in THE BLUE BUS series. Admissions: £5 / £3 (concessions).
Ken Edwards’ books include the poetry collections Good Science (Roof Books, 1992), eight + six (Reality Street, 2003), No Public Language: Selected Poems 1975-95 (Shearsman Books, 2006), Bird Migration in the 21st Century (Spectacular Diseases, 2006), Songbook (Shearsman Books, 2009), the novel Futures (Reality Street, 1998) and the prose works Nostalgia for Unknown Cities (Reality Street, 2007) and Bardo (Knives Forks & Spoons Press, 2011). A book of short narratives, Down With Beauty, awaits publication. He has been editor/publisher of the small press Reality Street since 1993. He lives in Hastings, where he plays bass guitar and sings with The Moors, a band he co-founded with Elaine Edwards.
David Miller was born in Melbourne (Australia) in 1950, and has lived in London since 1972. His more recent publications include The Waters of Marah (Shearsman Books, 2005), The Dorothy and Benno Stories (Reality Street Editions, 2005), and In the Shop of Nothing: New and Selected Poems (Harbor Mountain Press, 2007). Spiritual Letters (Series 1-5) appeared from Chax Press in Tucson in 2011, and a double CD recording of David Miller reading this same work should be out from LARYNX (London) in time for this event. Black, Grey and White: A Book of Visual Sonnets came out from Veer Books in late 2011. He is a clarinettist who has performed solo, in duets with Ken White and others, and in The Mind Shop, and he is a member of the Frog Peak Music collective.
Ken White is a jazz guitarist from Melbourne, Australia, who has performed widely in his native country, as well as in London with David Miller, and has recorded with the vocalists Suzie Dickinson and Patsy O’Neill. He has composed and recorded music for independent films. He is also a painter, who has had many exhibitions in Australia. Kater Murr’s Press published his Drawings for Music in 2005.
John Gibbens was born in the Wirral and grew up in West Germany and West Cumbria. He’s lived in London since 1978, and currently earns his bread on ‘Fleet Street’. He won the Eric Gregory Award at the age of 21. Collected Poems appeared from Touched Press in 2000. In 2005, the title poem of the Touched Press pamphlet Sand of the Thames won the Southwark Poet of the Year competition. A narrative poem, Orpheus Ascending, set in an alternative Britain of social inequity, repression and violent disorder, appeared from Smokestack Books in March 2012 (available from Amazon.co.uk). The Nightingale’s Code, his acclaimed “poetic study of Bob Dylan” was published by Touched in October 2001. Covenant, a set of one-act plays which he also acted in, was produced at the Finborough Theatre in London in 1989 (with Francesca Howell, movement directed by Rosemary Lee, stage deisgn by Emma Withers). He formed The Children with Armorel Weston in the early Nineties and their first CD, Play, was released in 1999. There have been six further albums, the latest being In Memory of Grace (2011). He also plays with and the poet and clarinettist David Miller (and Armorel Weston) in The Mind Shop.
We also hope to launch two CD recordings from LARYNX at this event: Poems by Christopher Gutkind and Spiritual Letters (Series 1-5) by David Miller. There will be a brief reading by David Miller.
Forthcoming events will include Eléna Rivera, Scott Thurston and Melissa Buckheit (17th April), Marcus Slease, Lesley McKenna and Fran Lock (15th May) and D S Marriott and Robert Sheppard (19th June).
So Anyway
Soanyway is a magazine project initiated by Derek Horton and Lisa Stansbie.
Soanyway is a repository for words, pictures and sound that tell stories.
CHECK IT OUT – http://www.soanyway.org.uk
Writing and the Small Press – Conference
- Date: 31st March 2012
- Time: 9.00am – 5.00pm
- Venue: The Old Fire Station, The Crescent, Salford
This conference aims to bring together publishers, writers and academics to discuss the influence of the small presses on creative practice and to consider their broader role in cultural production. In addition, there will be practical sessions on how to publish with a small press and opportunities for publishers to showcase their books.
Confirmed speakers include the novelist Elizabeth Baines, poet Robert Sheppard and Alec Newman of The Knives Forks and Spoons Press. Manchester publisher The Red Telephone will also be in attendance.
More at the Salford University site.
Ron Silliman at The Kelly Writers House and live webcast
Painted Spoken, issue 22
A lo-fi PDF of Painted, spoken 22 is now up at www.hydrohotel.net/mags
Chris McCabe, Dorothy Lawrenson, Gerry Loose, Peter McCarey, and James Mc Laughlin; Richard Price on Neo-Benshi at PolyPly; R J Ford remembers the first hours of Occupy London Stock Exchange; two group works by Vahni Capildeo, Giles Goodland, Jeff Hilson, Francesca Lisette, Richard Price, and Simon Smith. Plus reviews, musicall and poeticall.
Shadowtrain, carriage 38
New issue out now featuring:
- Rupert M Loydell
- Nikolai Duffy
- Marion McCready
- Claire Crowther
- Stephen Nelson
- Yu-Han Chao
- Jon Plunkett
- Martin Stannard
- James Davies
Maintenant #87 – Eugene Ostashevsky
An irrepressible poet and thinker, the work of Eugene Ostashevsky has been a dynamic presence in the New York poetry scene for some years. Born in Leningrad and emigrating while still a child, like so many who have left their homeland, alongside the ebullience and humour of his own poetry, Ostashevsky has been a tireless translator and advocate of Russian poetry, most specifically the OBERIU group, whose radical experimentation was led by the near mythological Daniil Kharms. Teaching at New York University, the energy and vibrancy, and intellectually buoyancy, of Ostashevsky places him as an invaluable link to both the Russian past, and future, in poetics. He reads in London for the first time on March 8th 2012 at Pushkin house, and celebrating that event we are pleased to welcome him as the 87th respondent of the Maintenant series.
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-87-eugene-ostashevsky/
Accompanying the interview is an excerpt from the The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi, a work-in-progress about the relationship between a pirate and a parrot.
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-pirate-who-does-not-know-the-value-of-pi/
Poetry Reading – Denise Riley
Tapestry Room, Firth Hall, Western Bank, Sheffield . 7pm Thursday 15th March 2012.
Denise Riley (born 1948, Carlisle) is an English poet and philosopher who began to be published in the 1970s. Her poetry is remarkable for its paradoxical interrogation of selfhood within the lyric mode. Her critical writings on motherhood, women in history, identity, and philosophy of language, are recognised as an important contribution to Feminism and Contemporary Philosophy. She was, until recently, Professor of Literature with Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and is currently A. D. White Professor at Cornell University. She was formerly Writer in Residence at Tate Gallery London, and has held fellowships at Brown University and at Birkbeck, University of London.
More info: A.Piette@sheffield.ac.uk
Hi Zero! #TWELVE
Hi Zero TWELVE, with Poetry Readings From:
- JOSH STANLEY
- TIMOTHY THORNTON
- VERITY SPOTT
All upstairs at The Hope, on Queen’s Road, Brighton; doors open at 7:30, £4 will purchase entry. Music from a stereo.
Hay Poetry Jamboree 2012
This year’s programme has been announced and features:
THURSDAY JUNE 7TH
Andrea Brady and John Powell Ward.
FRIDAY JUNE 8th
Jeremy Hilton, Waterloo Press, Steven Hitchins,bCaroline Goodwin, Harry Gilonis, Laurie Duggan, Philip Terry, Andrew Duncan, Harriet Tarlo and Peter Larkin.
SATURDAY JUNE 9th
David Greenslade, Keith Hackwood, Nerys Williams, Tim Atkins, Sophie Robinson, Jeff Hilson, Ulli Freer and Tony Lopez.
More details at Lyndon Davies’ site.



