23rd June at 18:00. Royal Hoolway University, 11 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3RF.
David Herd * Carol Watts * Allen Fisher (film)
Room 0-02 * Free entry.
Full details here.
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David Herd’s collections of poetry include All Just (Carcanet, 2012), Outwith (Bookthug, 2012) and Through (Carcanet 2016). His recent writings on the politics of movement have appeared in Almost Island, Los Angeles Review of Books, Parallax, and PN Review. He is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Kent and a co-organiser of the project Refugee Tales.
David will be reading from Through. Written between 2011 and 2015, the book is an inquiry into the language of public space and human movement. Five extended poems set out to address the ways contemporary public discourse has been rendered officially hostile. What does it mean, the book asks, to inhabit a language that frames itself in such a hostile manner? How, it asks, might users of the language begin to re-occupy the terms? Considering the cost of such official hostility to human intimacy, the poems set out explore possibilities of solidarity. The picture they aim to present is of a language on a knife-edge. How, in the present moment, do we hear the term ‘through’?
Carol Watts’ poetry includes: Dockfield (Equipage, 2017), 56 a collaboration with George Szirtes (Arc, 2016), Sundog (Veer Books, 2013), Occasionals (Reality Street Editions, 2011), Wrack (Reality Street Editions, 2007). Her chapbooks include the series When blue light falls (Oystercatcher, 2008, 2010, 2012), this is red (Torque Press, 2009) and the sonnet sequences Mother Blake (2012) and brass, running (Equipage, 2006). She is the head of the school of English at the University of Sussex.
Carol will be reading from a number of her books, including her most recent publication, Dockfield (Equipage, 2017) in response to ideas of nature, ecology, landscape and the anthropocene.
We will also be screening Allen Fisher’s 2017 film ‘Y Gors Ddu: The Black Bog’ (5 mins) in which he describes his recent working process on Black Ponds a new collection of paintings, facture and gathering of drawings, paintings, in situ performances and presentations on y Waen Ddu, the Black Bog – a rare raised peat bog situated in the Brecon Beacons. The project is supported and assisted by Arts Alive Wales and BBC Waleshttp://www.allenfisher.co.uk/
Allen Fisher is a poet, painter and art historian. He has exhibited in many shows from Tate Britain to King’s Gallery York to Hereford Museum and Art Gallery. Examples of his work are in the Tate Collection, the King’s Archive London, the Living Museum, Iceland and various British and international private collections. His last single-artist show was at the Apple Store Gallery Hereford in 2013. He has over 150 single-author publications to his name. In 2016 new publications were: Imperfect Fit: Aesthetics, Facture & Perception from the University of Alabama, Gravity as a consequence of shape and a second edition of the collected PLACE from Reality Street Editions, and a reprint of Ideas of the culture dreamed of was published by The Literary Pocket Book.
This poetry reading and film showing is part of the project Nature and Other Forms of That Matter.
otherroom.org 