Sept 2013, 978-1-874400-63-9, 134pp, price £9.50
Sept 2013, 978-1-874400-64-6, 148pp, price £9.50
2 new Reality Street books
Streak Artefacts – Tom Jenks
A 100 poem sequence with intermittent visuals, out now from Department Press.
A Poet’s Response: S.J. Fowler
“The poet and wrestler S.J. Fowler considers here the ‘kernel of realism’ in Wrestlers and the relationship of Gaudier-Brzeska’s sculptures to the poetry of Ezra Pound. Included is a suite of ten poems Fowler wrote in 2012, which were inspired by, and dedicated to, the original relief and its nine casts.”
More at the Tate Gallery Site.
12 or 20 (small press) questions with Nikolai Duffy on Like This Press
I’ve “…been really interested in the physicality of books and book production for a while, an interest that was piqued in particular when I visited the Tyopgraphy Museum in London several years ago. I think it’s more established now but it was an old, ramshackle place then, hard to find, largely unorganised, with boxes of type lying out on every surface. It was a place in which to lose yourself.” Nikolai Duffy talks about Like This Press on Rob Mclennan’s blog.
WFN
The next meeting of the writers’ group will be on Saturday, August 24th at Terrace bar, Edge Street, Northern Quarter, Manchester, 2 – 4 pm. Bring a poem of your own and poem by someone else you like. Bring copies if possible.
Charmless and Interesting: What Conceptual Poetry Lacks and What It’s Got
“This is a moment, then, for an assessment of the virtues and vices of conceptual poetry. What does conceptual poetry lack, compared to other poetries, and what does it have to offer? Any brief answer will, of course, be too general, but we can begin to sketch things out with reference to two aesthetic categories: the charming and the interesting. Whatever else conceptualism has got going for it, it lacks—at least in its pure form—the former. And whether one likes conceptualism or not, anyone who has engaged with it has found that it has, wonderfully or frustratingly, got plenty of the latter.”
More by Robert Archambeau at Harriet.
Alison Gibb – Silent Diagrams
Silent Diagrams is a series of pencil drawing over a single poem. The drawings document my process of visualizing poetic activity to create diagrams, which illustrate and generates spaces for live performance. The diagrams were originated during the development of Thus in the crossing, a poetic dance performance in collaboration with choreographer Elaine Thomas. Out now on Knives, Forks and Spoons.
Charlie Says: Philip Davenport
Set in late-1960s Los Angeles, Charlie Says retells an apocryphal story: that cult leader Charles Manson auditioned for the pop TV show The Monkees. In this novel, he gets the part.
Davenport’s work often moves between ‘low’ and high’ literatures – converting porn, missing person adverts, war journalism into poetry. He has recently edited the poetry/text art anthology THE DARK WOULD (Richard Long, Tacita Dean, Ron Silliman, Jenny Holzer et al). Charlie Says adopts the skin of a pulp thriller while eroding the content.
The book spills from its traditional boundaries to include material hidden on the internet and a forthcoming twitter feed.
Davenport: “The Manson/Monkees mashup resonated with me – the juxtaposition of an idea of innocence with extreme violence. I started reading around the subject, watching documentaries about Manson and the late 1960s in West Coast America. The wildness of Manson’s speech caught my ear, the biblical cadence and his traces of hillbilly. One night I started writing him and the voice came clean and clear, like a whisper down a phone line. I called him Charlie X and let him loose to play in the Los Angeles of my imagination, the place I used to escape to via TV. Ironically, the more I wrote the more LA was inflected with Belfast, the place I grew up near. It is always burning and graffitied, prowled by young soldiers and by skinny old men, the shop signs are hand-painted and the Coca Cola ads are from the 1950s and everywhere is unease. This is the world that Charlie recounts and it’s where he hunts, looking for opportunities and weakness.”
Author Biography
Philip Davenport has worked as a poet, journalist, copywriter and dishwasher. His first book Imaginary Missing People was published by experimental UK publisher Writers’ Forum in 1999. His short story collection All About Evil was The Big Issue magazine Book of the Week.Charlie Says is his debut novel. He has recently edited THE DARK WOULD language art anthology (2013).Transmission Print
A British small press that promotes and develops work by writers who dismantle the humdrum, often by embracing outsider viewpoints and language. Charlie Says continues this project: the novel breaks language and narrative conventions whilst holding to an overarching story shape. Davenport plays with the idea that the psychopath, like the private detective in previous eras, has become the shaman or seer through whose sensibilities we re-see our own world. This is a dark fable set in the Hollywood sunlight, alternately violent, sweet, comedic. For more information, author interviews, and full list of titles, go to our website http://www.transmissionprint.com
A British small press that promotes and develops work by writers who dismantle the humdrum, often by embracing outsider viewpoints and language. Charlie Says continues this project: the novel breaks language and narrative conventions whilst holding to an overarching story shape. Davenport plays with the idea that the psychopath, like the private detective in previous eras, has become the shaman or seer through whose sensibilities we re-see our own world. This is a dark fable set in the Hollywood sunlight, alternately violent, sweet, comedic. For more information, author interviews, and full list of titles, go to our website http://www.transmissionprint.com
Steven Waling: On Conceptualism and stuff
“I’m not, I’ll freely admit, the world’s biggest fan of conceptual poetry; but I’ve recently been rather amused by the hoo-ha about in American literary magazines and blogs of late. It’s accused of being all concept and no affect: all head and no heart if you like. Which strikes me as odd because those poets conceptual poets I do like, Caroline Bergvall and Christian Bok, don’t strike me that way at all. I haven’t read much of Kenneth Goldsmith either, but he strikes me as a profoundly comic writer as much as he’s anything else.” More from Steven Waling at BrandosHat.
The Figment Project
To honour the anniversary of Warhol’s birthday, August 6, 2013 The Andy Warhol Museum and EarthCam launched a collaborative project titled Figment, a live feed of Warhol’s gravesite. This live feed, viewable 24 hours a day, seven days a week worldwide is available here.
Jo Langton: a preview
Jo Langton will perform at the next Other Room on Thursday, 15th August at The Castle Hotel, 66 Oldham St., Manchester, M4 1LE. 7pm start, admission free. The film above shows Jo performing with Sarah Crewe at SJ Fowler’s Enemies event in Manchester earlier this year. You can also read some poems at Ofi Press, watch her perform at the DEPT/zimZalla event in 2012, or watch another performance with Sarah Crewe at the Manchester Poets for Pussy Riot event.
The other readers are Harry Gilonis and Elizabeth James.
Jo Langton is the author of ZimZalla object #015, PoeTea, consisting of handmade bags with text instead of tea. Her work has appeared in Department, 3.A.M, Otoliths, and Catechism: Poems For Pussy Riot. She also sub-edited and appeared in The Dark Would language art anthology, and has a MA in Experimental Writing from the University of Salford. Fill the Silence was published by erbacce press in 2011. She might have a cheeky chapbook before autumn, providing koi carp and terror cats don’t steal her soul along the way.
Elizabeth James: a preview
Elizabeth James will perform at the next Other Room on Thursday, 15th August at The Castle Hotel, 66 Oldham St., Manchester, M4 1LE. 7pm start, admission free. Visit her site for more information, including some links to poems. The other readers are Harry Gilonis and Jo Langton. A preview of Jo will appear tomorrow.
Elizabeth James is one of the dodgy tribe of librarian-poets. She has had poems published in magazines, small press pamphlets / chapbooks, on the web, and once as a CD sleeve note. She has often worked collaboratively with other poets including Frances Presley (‘Neither the One Nor the Other’ published by Form Books] and Peter Manson (Two Renga’, published in a Reality Street ‘Four Pack’); with Jane Draycott she made a series of audio works combining poetry and other material, for independent and BBC radio; at the turn of the millennium too she experimented briefly with electronic poetry, including an early hypertext collaboration with Miekal And, still online. Her solo chapbook, ‘Base to Carry’ was published by Barque Press. A selection of work can be heard on the Archive of the Now. Has done other kinds of writing, including occasional art criticism and essays, and has a career as a librarian and curator at the National Art Library, a public research and reference library within the Victoria & Albert Museum.
The Claudius App V
The issue includes fast poems by Christina Chalmers, Miles Champion, Jean Day,
William Fuller, Drew Gardner, Jeff Grunthaner,
Simon Jarvis, Purdey Kreiden, Frances Kruk,
Connie Scozzaro, Josh Stanley, and Dana Ward,
as well as a fiery splash by Ian Hatcher and Jacqueline Rigaut.
With negative reviews by Charleski Barrinsky (trans. Kentinski Johansky) on Soviet Conceptualism,
Kevin Cassem on Triple Canopy,
Emily Dorman on VanessaPlace Inc.,
Jaleh Mansoor on the Man-Child,
Georges Perec (trans. Rob Halpern) on the nouveau roman,
Giulio Pertile on John Ashbery,
Sarah Nicole Prickett on Rap Genius,
Erik Satie (trans. Jacqueline Rigaut) on critics,
and Oki Sogumi on boys,
as well as a dialogue between Joshua Clover and Keston Sutherland on poetry and revolution.
Plus 30 audio recordings by the above contributors, videos by Elena Gomez and Lanny Jordan Jackson, and a game,Titanichat, by Cecilia Corrigan and Ian Hatcher.
Harry Gilonis – a preview
Harry Gilonis will read at the next Other Room on Thursday, 15th August at The Castle Hotel, 66 Oldham St., Manchester, M4 1LE. 7pm start, admission free. For a flavour of his work, try this clip of him reading at Xing the Line last year. You can also read his Remarks on Poetry and Violence at the Militant Poetics site, read 3 poems at the eleksographia site, or watch him perform with Tim Atkins at last year’s Camarade event.
Previews of the other readers, Elizabeth James and Jo Langton, will appear soon.
Harry Gilonis is a poet, editor, publisher, and writer on art, poetry and music. His last appearance in Manchester was in a debate at Manchester Metropolitan University, opposing the curious proposition that “art is art and everything else is everything else”; his last reading in Manchester was at a squat in Rusholme. His activity is often collaborative; he has co-published a renga written collectively with Tony Baker, from far away (Oasis Books) as well as several collaborations with visual artists. There are a couple of very small collaborations with Elizabeth James, one published in a recent issue of the Anglo-Catalan magazine Alba Londres. His most recent publications include a book of “faithless” Chinese translations, eye-blink (from London’s Veer Books), and a poem accompanying the solo CD, Whitstable Solos, by Evan Parker (Psi).
August 1, 2013: an anthology
“On July 1st I invited a number of poets whose work I admire to contribute one of their poems to what would be a one-off online publication to go “live” on August 1st. I also asked them to pass on the same invitation to a poet or poets they knew and admired. My plan was for the resulting collection of poems to be entirely chosen by the poets themselves, and for there to be threads of friendship and mutual admiration linking the work. I’ve done no editing or selecting. Poems arrived, and they are here to read.” – Martin Stannard.
Read it here.
Streetcake issue 30
Poetry from Craig C. Robinson, Seth Crook, Sergio Ortiz, Andrew Taylor, Michael D. Goscinski, and short fiction from Emily Newman, available on the Streetcake site,
Being Dumb – Kenneth Goldsmith
“I am a dumb writer, perhaps one of the dumbest that’s ever lived. Whenever I have an idea, I question myself whether it is sufficiently dumb. I ask myself, is it possible that this, in any way, could be considered smart? If the answer is no, I proceed. I don’t write anything new or original. I copy pre-existing texts and move information from one place to another. A child could do what I do, but wouldn’t dare to for fear of being called stupid.”
More at The Awl.
Peter Barlow’s Cigarette
Albion – Stephen Emmerson
The latest publication from Like This Press is Stephen Emmerson’s book-in-a-box, Albion.
Albion was generated at Inland Studios over 2 days in August during an installation organised by Stephen. Details of the original exhibition are available here: http://www.inlandstudios.co.uk/home/index.php?/projects/abion/
This installation was centred around the work of William Blake.
An 8 foot by 8 foot pentagram was placed on the floor with a typewriter at each of the 5 points. There were 5 visual poems derived from Blake’s writing, and a 30 minute soundtrack that was played on a loop. Participants were asked to channel Blake and let him write through them, but the event was also a way for the audiovisual landscape to be translated into text.
Each box contains:
1 x introduction in an envelope
4 x hand-ripped poster poems
6 x photos
1 x 6 track CD
44 x hand-torn loose leafed transcriptions
Boxes can be purchased for £9 direct from Like This Press: http://www.likethispress.co.uk/publications/stephenemmerson
Stephen Emmerson is the author ofTelegraphic Transcriptions (Dept Press),Poems found at the scene of a murder(Zimzalla), The Last Word (Very Small Kitchen), A never ending poem…(Zimzalla), Pharmacopoetics (An Apple Pie Edition), and No Ideas but in Things (Dark Windows Press). He lives in London. More information about Stephen is available on his website at: http://stephenemmerson.wordpress.com/.
Hix Eros I
A new poetry reviews zine, edited by the Jo(e)(w)s Lindsay and Luna, with reviews of Jennifer Cooke, Frances Kruk, Francesca Lisette, Stephen Nelson, Holly Pester, Posie Rider, Keston Sutherland, Gareth Twose, Mike Wallace-Hadrill and Rachel Warriner.
Download it here.
otherroom.org 