Held on September 2nd 2012 in Sofia, Bulgaria, the culmination of the Sofia Poetics festival saw a reading with both international and local poets presenting their work. The readers included Other Room reader SJ Fowler, film above.
The Salt Companion to Charles Bernstein
The Salt Companion to Charles Bernstein presents scholarship on one of the U.S.’s best living innovative poets. Scholars explore major themes in his work, and poets present pieces inspired by his poetry. The book is intended for both scholars looking for informed critical insight into Bernstein’s work as well as for students to examine his work.
The scholarship covers many of his major pieces and genres, like sound, stage, and poetry. The authors write about his main themes and influences and give insight into some of the major poetry ideas currently being debated in the U.S., such as the nature and future of experimental poetry, the influences on contemporary poetry, the politics of poetry, and wide variety of techniques currently being used.
This book is valuable to individuals interested in poetry and libraries trying to stay abreast of the most important recent literary criticism/currents.
More at the Salt site.
Theatre of Objects: a dialogue with Seekers of Lice
Seekers of Lice will perform at the Other Room in December. You can read this dialogue with VerySmallKitchen, who are publishing a collection of sol plays in November, at the VSK site.
Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot
CATECHISM: POEMS FOR PUSSY RIOT, edited by Mark Burnhope, Sarah Crewe & Sophie Mayer, is out now on PEN. ePUB, Kindle and PDF versions are available here. The book is distributed on the ‘Pay What You Think It’s Worth’ model popularised by Radiohead and others. £5 is recommended, but any amount is welcome. All revenue will go to the Pussy Riot Legal fund, and the English PEN Writers at Risk Programme.
BlazeVox Fall 2012
Accidentally on Purpose
Strategies for Approaching Repeating Problems
Emma Cocker & Rachel Lois Clapham, Fatima Hellberg, Gil Leung, Andrew McGettigan, Francesco Pedraglio, David Raymond Conroy, Alex Vasudevan
Forming part of Accidentally on Purpose curated by Candice Jacobs and Fay Nicolson and produced in collaboration with QUAD
www.accidentalpurpose.net
6 October 2012, 11am – 5pm
The Box, QUAD, Market Place, Derby, DE1 3AS
Strategies for approaching repeating problems presents a series of performances, presentations and talks around the ideas explored in the Accidentally on Purpose exhibition at QUAD, connecting the exhibition to wider contemporary issues in cultural production and discourse.
From difficulties inherent in language and communication to the way artists and writers position themselves in relation to wider social issues, such as education and the public sphere, this event will identify an array of current or ever-present difficulties, discuss their perception from different positions and consider whether notions of progress or return are clichés or inevitable fates.
More at Rachel Lois Clapham’s blog.
Paula Claire: THREE POEMS FOR SUU
Book format: 19 pages text; 8 colour illustrations. In acetate cover with slide binder. £15 plus £2.50 p & p. E-mail order to: info@paulaclaire.com
Alloa Poetry Jamboree
The very first Alloa Poetry Jamboree is confirmed as a going concern, running 2 – 4 November, and featuring Tom Leonard, Lila Matsumoto, Peter Manson, Drew Milne, Bill Herbert, Andrew Duncan, Jim Ferguson, Donny O’Rourke, Kathleen Jamie, Dorothy Alexander, nick-e melville, David Kinloch, Samantha Walton, Frank Kuppner, Gerry Loose and Jennifer Williams.
Department: new books
cut out by Andy Spragg and Trace Agents by Rhys Trimble available now at the Department site.
Antony Rowland, Alec Newman And Scott Thurston in Salford
Antony Rowland will be launching his new poetry collection I AM A MAGENTA STICK in the Snug of The King’s Arms in Salford on Thursday September 27th (6.30pm), with readings by Alec Newman and Scott Thurston.
if p then q videos from September readings in London
Videos below from if p then q’s recent night in London with guest appearances from Michael Basinski and Jennifer Pike Cobbing. Look out for Jennifer Pike Cobbing in particular who read some of The ABC in Sound which will be read by an ensemble at the next Other Room, just under a month away.
Lucy Harvest Clarke
Philip Terry
Michael Basinski
Tom Jenks
Tim Atkins
Holly Pester
Jennifer Pike Cobbing
Villainelle
Wednesday 26th September, 7.30 at Bier, 52 Lark Lane, Liverpool, L17 8UU.
Poetry readings:
- Robert Sheppard
- Tom Jenks
- Scott Thurston
- Andy Brown
From Liverpool with love
Manchester Poets for Pussy Riot – films
Other Room readers Tim Allen, Richard Barrett, Philip Davenport and Steven Waling all read at this event. View their performances below. You can find the rest of the films here.
THE LAST WARD by STEPHEN EMMERSON
The Last Ward is a series of 6 A3 posters and a 6 track CD. Each track title corresponds with one of the visual poem titles. They should be considered part of the same poem, working symbiotically rather than responding to one another.
1. polygun
2. speech is written in capitals
3. time runs backwards as well as forwards and will one day meet
4. pylons
5. voices in radiator falling through sink
6. you are not a concept i am familiar with
Read more about it and buy a copy here.
Xing the Line
Emma Bennett, matt martin & Richard Price
Thursday, 27 September 2012, 19:30.
The Apple Tree, London WC1X 2AE.
Information as material – new site
Information as material was established by the English artist Simon Morris in 2002. Based in York (UK), iam operates as an independent imprint that publishes work by artists who use extant material — selecting it and reframing it to generate new meanings — and who, in doing so, disrupt the existing order of things.
Ira Lightman: I, Love Poetry
David Berridge: Turf
Out now from Nikolai Duffy’s Like This press, TURF explores relations of poets and natural history, both in the field and amongst books. Three handbooks – A Pedagogy of Grasses, Understanding Glaciers, and Bird Song for Dogs – provide basic orientation and identification skills, whilst notebooks and memos offer histories of Anglo-American poetry in which the geographer Carl Sauer and botanists Agnes Arber and Edgar Anderson are fellow travelers with poets including Charles Olson, Jonathan Williams and Lorine Niedecker. Throughout, Dürer’s image of The Great Turf is found-icon for this book-in-a-box chorale “Of [SODS] of [SODS] [SODS].”
Each box is hand-stamped and comprises three A5 pamphlets, one A6 essay and one A6 series of notes, together with a postcard of Albrecht Dürer’s 1503 drawing, ‘Great Turf.’ Each item is hand-torn and hand-torn and printed on heavyweight vellum-laid cream paper; each individual cover is hand-stamped.
Read a sample here
hand-bound, with hand-torn pages and hand-printed covers
card backs and paper
140pp
September 2012
Copies can be purchased here. Free postage and packing on all orders.
David Berridge is a writer based in London. He curates VerySmallKitchen (http://verysmallkitchen.com/) and was recently writer in residence at X Marks the Bökship, where he researched the use of scripts and scenography in contemporary art writing. He is the author of Lemonade (LemonMelon), P.Z.T.C (Knives Forks and Spoons Press), BLACK GARDENS (The Red Ceilings Press) and The Moth is Moth This Money Night Moth (Knives Forks and Spoons Press).
Click here to watch an interview with David by The Other Room.
Based in Manchester, Like This is an independent press committed to publishing high quality and beautifully designed books that do things just a little bit differently. Currently we specialise in publishing handmade pamphlets and limited edition books-in-boxes. More information about the press can be found here.
WF(N)
The next meeting will take place on Saturday 29th September at MadLab in Manchester.
“WFW(N) is an opportunity for innovative/experimental poets to present their work for feedback in a mutually supportive atmosphere. Ideally, please bring along copies of the work you intend to read for the other group members. Anyone who wants to come along but doesn’t want to read is also very welcome.”
otherroom.org 