The third issue of the B.S. Johnson Journal: ‘The issue with the truth’, featuring essays, interviews, peer-reviewed academic papers and creative pieces inspired by the British writer, with contributions from Andrew Robert Hodgson, Ed Sibley, Scott Manley Hadley, Philip Tew, Joanna Norledge, Jeremy Page, Alaska James, Richard Berry, Philip Terry, James Davies, Sue Birchenough, Ali Znaidi, Tim Chapman, Jim Goar, James Riley, Ruth Clemens, Kate Connolly, Joseph Darlington and Andy Miller
Gramophone Ray Gun is a ‘live’ series of events celebrating experimental approaches to writing and performance, encouraging informal innovation, poetic deviance and risk. Alternating between the page, performance, language and text, Gramophone Ray Gun is a regular platform commissioned by The Dock Road Press. Invited readers for our fifth event include Tim Bromage, Rachel Sills and Tim Allen each punked up on strange magic and bizarre punk rituals. As usual, the evening will unfold to a crepuscular soundscape of unearthly samples and music excavated from a U.F.O crash site in Crosby.
Thursday, February 23 at 8 PM – 11 PM, Everyman Bistro, Liverpool
Amy McCauley will perform at the next Other Room on Tuesday 21st February at The Castle Hotel, 66 Oldham Street, Manchester M4 1LE. 7 PM start, free entry as always. The other performers are Steven Hitchins and Bryony Bates.
Amy McCauley lives in Manchester. Her current projects include: a book of poetry which re-imagines the Oedipus myth (Oedipa), a book of essays on language, violence and desire (Propositions) and a book of dialogues about Joan of Arc (CaNToS of JoaN). Amy works as poetry editor for New Welsh Review and is the recipient of a 2016 Northern Writers’ Award for poetry. She occasionally writes under the pseudonym ‘Kathy Groan.’ You can find out more about her work at http://mccauliana.weebly.com/, plus at Junction Box and the Stockholm Review.
PPS READING # 2: *STUART CALTON ~~ CAITLÍN DOHERTY ~~ JOHN DE WITT ~~ IMOGEN CASSELS (Cambridge, 10th Feb 2017)
The second reading in the Poetry Performance Series (PPS) features two visiting poets – Stuart Calton, from Manchester, and John De Witt, from Paris – alongside Cambridge’s Imogen Cassels and Caitlín Doherty. There will also be a book table. Please feel free to circulate info to those who might be interested.
~~~
STUART CALTON
Stuart Calton is the author of the following books: Blepharospasms (2016), Live at Late Dilated Ileum (2015), The Torn Instructions for No Trebuchet (2013), Three Reveries (2010), The Corn Mother (2006), The Bench Graft (2004), United Snap Up (2004), and Sheep Walk Cut (2003). As a musician, he is the incomparable dictophonist TFH Drenching. His book Wimpy and André has just been released from MATERIALS press and will be on-sale on the night. A poem in ten sections, setting forth the interrelations between protagonists Wimpy, Climpy, Sandy and André, in a potentially infinite selection of mixed scenarios. Amongst other sounds, the poem includes the sounds of a car alarm, the thin barking of a radically rationalised trick poultice, a shout, a voice, silence, static, galloping and The Lark Ascending played triple-speed nine octaves up like rain on a steel bin-lid over a rave synth line.
“Just too big. Firstly way too big. And then just right.”
~~~
CAITLÍN DOHERTY
Caitlín Doherty is the author of O (Foule Press, 2012) and Satellites (Tipped Press, 2012).
About the latter, China Miéville has written in the Guardian:
“Doherty, an outstanding young poet, uses our orbital trash, the bric-a-brac of communication tech and a deflating space race as a hook for her interrogations. Even a familiar notion is reinvigorated: the pathos of the first dog in space is not a subject previously untouched, but in her eulogy to Laika, Doherty marries cool rigour and generosity without sentimentality, and if you can get to the end without tearing up you’re stronger than I.”
Doherty is also the poetry editor of the journal Salvage, and her new book, Our Party, is forthcoming from Critical Documents.
“could you plan on my improvement
could it be wagered thus
a silk drape and a massage of the air
a yankee candle and the Tory grandee
unlabouring harmony
ah”
~~~
JOHN DE WITT
John DeWitt was born in Mexico City, later moved to Nashville, and now lives in Paris. He is the author of Ends (Tipped Press, 2011), and Visceral Apocrypha (Shit Valley, 2013) and co-wrote, with Rosa Van Hensbergen, as Bill Ding, Buildings (Tipped Press, 2012).
“Nevermind spirits, it was motherfucker(!)
Motherfucker how could you have me at the end of my legs
He shook his fist at the chairs, at the light, maybe even at the flowers in the garden
as motherfucker has such a small mouth for the world
and such a ponytail floating in the wind”
~~~
IMOGEN CASSELS
Imogen Cassels is from Sheffield and reads English at Cambridge. She was a Young Poet on the Underground in 2015, and in 2016 was a winner of the Poetry Business New Poets Prize. Her poems have appeared in Blackbox Manifold, The Literateur, Ambit, and the LondonMagazine.
“Somewhere they are watching rockets bombing
with fireless grace. Somewhere we end up
fucking in our sleep, and are disturbed by waking.”
~~~
Friday 10th February [2017], 7.30pm.
Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio, English Faculty Building, Cambridge.
Email David Grundy (dmg37@cam.ac.uk <mailto:dmg37@cam.ac.uk>), Rosa Van Hensbergen (rv252@cam.ac.uk <mailto:rv252@cam.ac.uk>) or Janani Ambikapathy (ja555@cam.ac.uk <mailto:ja555@cam.ac.uk>) for further details.
Peter Barlow’s Cigarette #20 – ft. Sarah Crewe, Rhys Trimble, Tom Crompton
~~~
An afternoon of alternative poetries
4.00 – 6.00 Waterstones Deansgate
Free entry
Refreshments provided
~~~
SARAH CREWE ~
is a working class feminist from the Port of Liverpool. Her work has appeared in Poetry Wales, Tears In The Fence, Litmus, The Wolf, Molly Bloom, Datableed and is forthcoming in para.text. Her latest chapbook, echolalia, is available from Litmus Publishing. She collaborates frequently with Sophie Mayer and her work can be heard at the Archive of the Now website. She is studying for a MRes in Poetry at the University of Kent.
RHYS TRIMBLE ~
is a Bilingual poet / performer based in Bethesda, North Wales originally from Pontneddfechan. An experienced performer/improvisor interested in medieval welsh language & bilingual poetry, music/poetry, collaborations, digital-art and avant garde writing practices. Recent work includes performances at Dinefwr Festival (click here to see it), Blinc Digital Arts festival, and Eisteddfod 2012 (click here to see it), Aberystwyth Drwm as a member of prosiect Datgeiniaeth – Datgan cerddi penpastwn with Twm Morys, Gareth Sion and Peter Greenhill (http://stiwdiogwellt.com/album/awdl-i-ddewi). Editor of Ctrl+Alt+Del. Ezine and studying for a ‘psychomythogeographical’ PhD in creative writing.
TOM CROMPTOM ~
lives and works near Preston Lancashire. Recent work can be found at The Literateur and forthcoming through The New Fire Tree Press
The 4th tape of poet James Davies making and describing his work ‘Yellow Lines Drawn on Sheets of A4 Paper and then Placed in a Box’
P E D I C U R E
a new book of poems by Tom Betteridge
published by Sine Wave Peak
January 2017
Bryony Bates will perform at the next Other Room on Tuesday 21st February at The Castle Hotel, 66 Oldham Street, Manchester M4 1LE. 7 PM start, free entry as always. The other performers are Steven Hitchins and Amy McCauley.
Bryony Bates lives in Manchester and mostly writes poetry. She was 2014/15 Writer in Residence for Archives+ at Manchester Central Library, and has been published in Sure Hope, Ladybeard Magazine, and Spoke: A New Queer Anthology from Dog Horn Press. She is a member of the writing collective Young Enigma, as well as Contact Theatre’s Young Company.
The new ebook from Argotist Ebooks is “The O and The Owl” by Leanne Bridgewater
Description:
An eco-sound-poem in 50 parts
“The O and The Owl” is about a play on letter ‘o’ and the ‘owl’ as a word, phonically, but also metaphorically: environment; animal instinct; nature. We have become so dependent on having to know what everything means, we ask it too much. The O and The Owl – what does it mean? It has no formal meaning but it asks you ‘what do you think / what do you see / do you see the play on word / do you see the oblong rhythm / do you see the hidden politics / do you feel tongue-twisted / do you see the micro-meanings instead of ‘what is the true meaning of this?’ – Language’s seatbelt has become unfastened, landing face-down in earth where the tongue licks and sniffs at it in a playful manner – and then the owl comes!
Available as a free ebook here:
http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/THE%20O%20AND%20THE%20OWL.pdf
Full Argotist Ebooks catalogue here:
April 2014
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GIZEM OKULU– TOO SLICED FOR LANDING
Published January 2017
=======================================
Gizem Okulu’s first book is a sequence of 31 poems which, in broken and extended lines, explore the terrifying possibility of lack of speech, of blocked communication: a poetry written between languages and countries which both bridges and attests to the gap, the chasm that “opens / up / isolated / and / frightened”. These are poems haunted by political catastrophe: poems about wandering, fleeing, fogs and rivers, conditions of exile and danger, marked at times by flashes of biting humour and throughout by intense commitment.
“I do not belong here nor there I say but here I want to make you a house from the memories of every woman you ever had before like the resistance of senses meeting for one last time in the mirror we slept between the rivers and smokes in earthquake lights all day and night in the cities against the sun.”
Gizem Okulu is a poet who has published poems in Datableed, Intercapillary Space, &c. and is studying for a Ph.D at Royal Holloway. She lives in London.
38 pp, card covers (red), side stapled.
Errata. [11] For ‘Anotolia’ read ‘Anatolia’.
[29] For ‘women’ read ‘woman’.
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STUART CALTON – WIMPY AND ANDRÉ
Published January 2017
===================================
A poem in ten sections, setting forth the interrelations between protagonists Wimpy, Climpy, Sandy and André, in a potentially infinite selection of mixed scenarios. Amongst other sounds, the poem includes the sounds of a car alarm, the thin barking of a radically rationalised trick poultice, a shout, a voice, silence, static, galloping and The Lark Ascending played triple-speed nine octaves up like rain on a steel bin-lid over a rave synth line. You need to read it.
“Just too big. Firstly way too big. And then just right.”
Stuart Calton is the author of the following books: Blepharospasms (2016), Live at Late Dilated Ileum (2015), The Torn Instructions for No Trebuchet (2013), Three Reveries (2010), The Corn Mother (2006), The Bench Graft (2004), United Snap Up (2004), and Sheep Walk Cut (2003). As a musician, he is the incomparable dictophonist TFH Drenching.
34 pp, card covers (pink), side-stapled.
Listen! to Stuart reading a footnote to the book (“In the air above the abyss…” — The First Manifesto of Inter-Subjective Bureaucratic Pointillism, an unintegrated footnote to Wimpy & André (Calton, S. (2016). Wimpy & André. Cambridge: Materials Press). Your foot.): HERE.
Read! a review of Live at Late Dilated Ileum: HERE.
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CHRISTINA CHALMERS – WILLINGNESS
Published January 2017
==================================
A collection of work written between 2013 and 2015, this is Christina Chalmers’ second book, and her first since Work Songs (2013). Divided into three sections, and containing poems such as ‘The International’, ‘The Arms Left Over’ and ‘Dragonfly Abattoir’.
“My German is
bad. My bed is a beautiful green lido. I drink
to municipal menthol. I grow more
sad.”
Christina Chalmers was born in Edinburgh, studied in Cambridge, lived in London, and has recently relocated to New York. Her poetry has been published widely in such on- and off-line venues as:Datableed, Materials, Sundial, and Rivet.
38pp, covers in gold paper, side stapled.
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NAOMI WEBER – VERY LONELY ANIMALS
Published November 2016
==================================
Naomi Weber’s lyric sequence Very Lonely Animals sprawls across its pages in slabs of delicate observation, working through the condition of innerness and outerness, fragmentation and totality. The locations of these poem are wide open, seas and coasts, rooms in which people nestle and seek protection, but from which they pereptually seem to be on the verge of leaving: the line ripens in sounds unfolding within and across the break, lulling or obscuring.
This is poetry that sings it own song, almost to itself, from just off-centre.
“This world we love and keep our love in keeps
Tearing our hands
The shreds around nails dragging behind
Looking around for gazes to meet
Digging bone to neighbourly flesh
God help me I am trying to be kind
But what other worlds have you given us
To serve, says a secret prayer”
Naomi Weber is a poet who has published poems in Datableed, No Money, &c. She has another new book forthcoming from Tim Thornton and Verity Spott’s The Winter Olympics Press.
14pp, card covers (purple), side-stapled.
Dear All – notice of the upcoming Veer Launch at Iklectik.
Most importantly, it’s now, at long last, optimised for smart phones and tablets, so it no longer looks rubbish on these devices.
We’ve also made an attempt to weed out errors, out-of-date links and other anomalies. Please take a look, and let us know if anything is still not quite right.
Finally, many prices have been brought down, so you may find a bargain or two here.
Please visit http://www.realitystreet.co.uk
Steven Hitchins will read along with Bryony Bates and Amy McCauley at our next event on Tuesday 21st February at the Castle Hotel, Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LE. Free entry, as always. 7 PM start.
Steven Hitchins’ books include Bitch Dust (Boiled String, 2012), Real Radio (ctrl+alt+del, 2014), The White City (Aquifer, 2015) and Translating the Coal Forests (Singing Apple, 2015). He runs the Literary Pocket Book small press publishing contemporary experimental writing in miniature origami editions. More about this here.
This clip is of Steven reading at North Wales International Poetry Festival.
Fiender: Swedish Enemies in London – Rich Mix : Saturday January 28th 2017
Free entry 7.30pm – 35-47 Bethnal Green Rd, London E1 6LA
www.theenemiesproject.com/fiender
Brand new collaborations of poetry and text for one night only, written by pairs of poets commissioned for this unique literary event. Visiting Swedish poets will present new works of avant-garde and literary poetry with their British counterparts alongside other ‘Camarade’ pairs especially for the evening.
Featuring: Aase Berg & SJ Fowler – Harry Man & Jonas Gren – Elis Burrau & Holly Corfield Carr – Kathryn Maris & Patrick Mackie – Fabian Peake & Jeff Hilson – Nick Murray & Joe Turrent – Prudence Chamberlain & Eley Williams – Hannah Lowe & Richard Scott – Annie Katchinska & Mark Waldron & more
Fiender: Swedish Enemies is multifaceted transnational collaborative poetry project engaging poets from both Sweden and the UK. Taking place in both nations across 2016 and 2017, Fiender is an ambitious, exploratory engagement with contemporary poets across Europe.
Curated by Harry Man and SJ Fowler, with curatorial assistance from Emanuel Holm and Madeleine Grive. Supported by Arts Council Sweden. www.theenemiesproject.com
otherroom.org 