Nine texts accompanied by eight illuminations. The texts, printed on high quality textured card, are discrete but kindred blocks, obliquely referenced and counterpointed by the illuminations, which are full colour collages, printed on transparencies. The texts and illuminations are in labelled envelopes, with these envelopes in turn housed inside a full colour outer envelope. More information, including how to buy, can be found at the zimZalla site.
Stephen Emmerson
Albion – 9th & 10th August @ Inland Studios, Camberwell
6pm – 9pm
A poem-installation
William Blake was a visionary English poet and artist who wrote, etched, and printed illuminated books. He despised organised religion, but claimed to see visions of angels and devils, and regularly spoke to the spirit of his dead brother.
Whilst living on Hercules Road in Lambeth he composed many of his prophetic works including ‘The Book of Urizen’,’The Four Zoas’, and ‘Europe: A Prophecy’.
He also set his poems to music, though there are no surviving notations.
Albion is a poem-installation based on psychogeographical information and psychic and paranormal investigations that explore Blake’s complex methods of composition and mythopoetics. It is also an attempt to reconnect with the political aspects of Blake’s work.
Albion is an invitation to help Blake complete a new poetic work. Participants can channel Blake using a pentagram and a series of typewriters, and by translating the audiovisual landscape into text.
Inland Studios
25a Camberwell Church Street
London
SE5 8TR
An important addition to the essential online archive sees eight of Maggie O’Sullivan’s early books now available for free reading and download:
Concerning Spheres, 1982
An Incomplete Natural History, 1984
Un-Assuming Personas, 1985
A Natural History in 3 Incomplete Parts, 1985
From the Handbook of That & Furriery, 1986
Divisions of Labour, 1986
States of Emergency, 1987
Unofficial Word, 1988
plus eXcLa (1993, written in collaboration with Bruce Andrews). The first eight titles are also available in black and white facsimile in Maggie’s book Body of Work (Reality Street, 2006).
Neil (Fraser) Addison’s first full collection, Stealth-Exile-Inventory is now available via gosubsist in printed and bound form. And also as a boxed set (as if the House of Lentheric fell to gift-wrapping aura with added value
in mind). Death, Ikea, Basquiat, etc.
David Gaffney will perform at August 14th 2012 The Other Room alongside Nathan Jones and Frank Kuppner. See the middle column of details of how to attend the event.
Below is an example of one of his flash fictions ALL MOD CONS.
Jake invented a prescription glass windscreen for his car so that he could drive without wearing his corrective lenses. He enjoyed the feeling of freedom – no plastic pads digging into his nose – and it had the added advantage that car thieves couldn’t drive the vehicle unless they happened to have the same degree of myopia.
Jennifer needed a lift. However, she soon began to complain. She couldn’t see, everything was blurred, and to stop herself being sick she had to stick her head out the window like a dog.
‘You idiot,’ she said to him when he dropped her off.
He wouldn’t ring her again. A permanent relationship would mean grinding the windscreen to suit two different people and he could imagine the arguments – it would be the self-cleaning bed-sheets saga all over again. He went to bed, turned up the shipping forecast and drifted to sleep.
Click HERE to visit his website
On Thursday 23 August, 8.30pm, Tony Lopez reads with Alan Gillis and Fiona Sampson at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Peppers Theatre, Charlotte Square Gardens, Edinburgh. Tel: 0845-373-5888 www.edbookfest.co.uk
Admission £10 / £8 (concessions).
Wednesday, August 15, 2012, 7:30pm. The Apple Tree, London WC1X.
New pamphlet out now from Nikolai Duffy’s Like This press:
“Comprising six sequences, tusitala of white lies is a meditative, fragile and frequently beautiful collection of poems. Concerned with delicacy of phrase as well as the space of the page, Iain’s poetry is about breath, and thought, and the way language maps the shape and rhythm of a life.”
Alec Newman’s juggernaut rolls on unchecked with new publications appearing regularly. Latest out of the infernal machine is Paul Sutton’s Cabin Fever.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012, 8:00pm.
Poetry Library, Level 5, Royal Festival Hall, South Bank Centre, London SE1 8XX
Veer Books will launch a new series of variously named publications featuring work by younger innovative writers, four at a time, called ‘VierSomes’ (or ‘4somes’ or ‘Quartets’ …)
This event will launch the series with readings from some of the featured authors:
Becky Cremin, Amy Evans, Edward Hardy, Danny Hayward, Frances Kruk, slmendoza, Nat Raha
Admission free but space is limited – to book a place guests must email specialedition@poetrylibrary.org.uk
A discussion with Peter Cole, Henry Steinberg, and Michelle Taransky, of two poems by Charles Reznikoff from the PennSound archive. Number 56 in the PoemTalk series.
Program notes and links to the PoemTalk discussion and recordings of the poems are available at Jacket2 and at the Poetry Foundation:
https://jacket2.org/content/poem-talk
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audioitem/3490
Spring/Summer 2012 Vol. 10 Issues I-II now online, including new work from Other Room readers Carrie Etter and Eléna Rivera, plus Scott Thurston.
New online magazine of poetics, reviews, vispo, art and essays, edited my James McLaughlin, Jo Langton and Alec Newman. Launching 1st August here.
Frank Kuppner will launch his latest book, The Same Life Twice along with Nathan Jones and David Gaffney on 14th August at The Other Room – details in the middle column. A preview of some work and review below. Click on the links:
Poem – A Continuity Problem
Reviews – At Carcanet author page
Jeff Hilson, From ORGAN MUSIC: AN ANTI-MASQUE NOT FOR DANCING, a new and ongoing narrative and non-narrative sequence (not) about the English organ adding obfuscation to an already obfusced instrument. Available now at the Crater Press site.
Seaside Special, a set of 31 literary postcards by Tom Jenks and Chris McCabe with an all star cast including John Betjeman, Allen Ginsberg and an unfeasibly large sausage, is now available for £10 plus £2.50 post and packaging in the UK and £5.00 post and packaging elsewhere. To view the project online and buy a set, go here. Just the thing for a donkey ride with a maiden aunt.
Wednesday, 25 July 2012, 19:30. Upstairs at the Ship and Mitre, Liverpool, Merseyside, L2 2JH.
The first of Holdfire’s poetry reading series. Readings from Eleanor Rees, Neil Addison, Evan Jones and Erin Fitzgerald.
Eleanor Rees was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside in 1978. Her pamphlet collection Feeding Fire received an Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and her first full length collection Andraste’s Hair (Salt, 2007) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Glen Dimplex New Writers Awards. Her second collection ‘Eliza and the Bear (Salt, 2009) is also a live performance for voice and harp which has toured in the North West. Rees works freelance as a poet in the community and is also currently studying for an AHRC funded Creative Writing PhD University of Exeter. She often collaborates with other writers, musicians and artists and works to commission. She lives in Liverpool. www.eleanorrees.info
Evan Jones was born in Toronto. A dual citizen of Canada and Greece, he has lived in Britain since 2005. He has a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Manchester and has taught at York University in Toronto, and in Britain at the University of Bolton and Liverpool John Moores University. His first collection, Nothing Fell Today But Rain (2003), was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. He is co-editor of the anthology Modern Canadian Poets (Carcanet, 2010). Paralogues (Carcanet, 2012), his second collection, is out now.
Neil Fraser Addison is currently residing in Liverpool. His previous work includes The Everyday of Irma Kite (The Arthur Shilling Press), and Apocapulco (Salt) which was short-listed for the 2011 Michael Marks Award. His first full collection, Stealth-Exile-Inventory, is about to be published as a joint venture between go-Subsist & OWT Creative. His website is here.
On the evening of July 19th 2012, a large group of friends, family and fellow poets met in the Keynes Library, in Birkbeck college, in London’s Bloomsbury to celebrate the life and work of the British innovative poet, James Harvey.
James Harvey (1966–2012) studied biology at UCL before becoming a full-time poet in the thriving experimental and innovative poetry community in London. His interest in science, especially biology, extended into his poetry. He was fascinated by the potential of ‘science in poetry to dismantle existing structures, and then put them back together again, build them up “mechanically” while at the same time each level of complexity is acted upon equally through “the forces of nature,” questioning the integrity of the structure.’
Jeff Hilson and Holly Pester above. Full list below:
otherroom.org 