Upcoming polyvocal explorations

A double bill – talk and performances – of polyvocalia at Birkbeck. Monday 20 June. Free and all
welcome.

6pm, 43 Gordon Square, Room 124
Cris Cheek, ‘Before I am Anything Else: provisional transatlantic communities in polyvocal poetic
performance’.

& then around the corner…
7.15pm, 32 Tavistock Square
FRIENDLY AMENDMENTS
Lawrence Upton, Chris Goode, Cris Cheek, Holly Pester & others revisit work by Sumner, bpnichol,
Basinski, Cobbing, MacLow & other scores, poems and possibilities

In Utero: Intercapillary Places Poetry @ Parasol Unit

23 June · 19:00 – 20:30

Carol Watts: A talk on craniality, political economy & memory
Marianne Morris: Poems With Beats
Jakub Julian Ziolkowski: Exhibition ‘In Utero’

*** Free Drinks & ‘Interior Ears’ hand-out for all ***

£3 / £1.50 – for booking details see below

More info see: Intercapillary Places website https://sites.google.com/site/intercapillary/
Parasol Unit: http://www.parasol-unit.org/index.php

Important: As the capacity for the event is limited, please book in advance by emailing Charlotte Jones at events@parasol-unit.org or calling on 020 7490 7373 ext 20. Please be aware that if you haven’t booked in advance and turn up on the night, this is fine but if capacity is reached you may not be allowed in.

About the Speakers

Carol Watts is Reader in Literature and Poetics, Birkbeck, University of London; Co-Director, Birkbeck Centre for Research in Contemporary Poetics. She has published a study of Dorothy Richardson (Northcote House, 1995) and The Cultural Work of Empire: The Seven Years War and the Imagining of the Shandean State (Edinburgh: EUP, 2007). Her poetry publications include Wrack (Reality Street, 2007), brass, running (Equipage, 2006), When blue light falls (Oystercatcher, 2008) and alphabetise (Intercapillary Editions, hardback edition 2011). She is currently researching the transatlantic culture of loyalism during the American Revolution.

Marianne Morris was raised in London. She studied English Literature at Cambridge, and was the recipient of the Harper-Wood Studentship for Creative Writing from St. John’s College in 2008. She is now researching for a PhD in contemporary poetry at Dartington (University College Falmouth). She founded Bad Press in 2002. Publications include: Commitment (Critical Documents, 2011); Tutu Muse (Fly By Night Press, 2008); A New Book From Barque Press, Which They Will Probably Not Print (Barque Press, 2006); with Bad Press: Cocteau Turquoise Turning, Fetish Poems (2004); Gathered Tongue, Memento Mori (2003); Poems in Order (2002). Who Not To Speak To and Iran Documents are forthcoming from Acts of Language and Openned Press respectively.

‘Intercapillary Places: Poetry at Parasol Unit’ is organised by Edmund Hardy and Felicity Roberts

More here.

The Ground Aslant

“Over the past 40 years or so, British poets have been remaking the pastoral. It has been a violent business. What Raymond Williams once severely called the old “enamelled world” of pastoral poetry has been worked over, its certainties cracked and shattered. Long gone are those shepherds and shepherdesses idly enacting class hierarchies. Toxins have seeped into Arcadia; “nature” is a mess of our own manufacture. Out of the static conservatisms of an ancient form has come a series of countervailing modes: the anti-pastoral, the counter-pastoral, the radical pastoral, the post-pastoral.”

The Ground Aslant, a new Shearsman anthology edited by Other Room reader Harriet Tarlo and featuring Other Room readers Zoë Skoulding and Carol Watts, reviewed in The Guardian, here.

Reality Street Supporter Scheme 2011

Via Ken Edwards:

The Reality Street Supporter Scheme 2011 has officially opened. Already some existing Supporters have re-subscribed – if you would like to join them, you will receive copies of the following five books in 2011:

  • James Davies: Plants
  • Leopold Haas: The Raft
  • Richard Makin: Dwelling
  • Carol Watts: Occasionals
  • Johan de Wit: Gero Nimo
(Subject to final confirmation and not necessarily in that order)

More than 80 people actively supported Reality Street in 2010. This support is vital for the continuation of the press, as it has been in the past few years. All Supporters, in addition to receiving copies of every book published during the year, are entitled to be listed as a Supporter in the back of the books and in relevant publicity, unless they have expressed a wish to remain anonymous.

The most convenient way to become a Reality Street Supporter is to visit http://www.realitystreet.co.uk/supporter-scheme.php
and click on the appropriate button: UK/Europe (£45) or Rest of the world (£60). You can then pay with your credit/debit card or through PayPal. If you prefer, you can send a sterling cheque payable to Reality Street to the address below. If you would rather pay with a non-sterling cheque or via bank transfer, please reply to this email.

PLEASE CONSIDER JOINING US AS A SUPPORTER – Reality Street gets NO grant aid and is dependent on its readers!

Anna Mendelssohn/Grace Lake celebration

A Celebration of Anna Mendelssohn

There will be a celebration of the life and poetry of Anna Mendelssohn/Grace Lake on 15 September, 6-9 pm, to be held in the Council Room in Birkbeck College, Torrington Square, London WC1. The event is jointly hosted by Birkbeck Poetics Centre and The Centre for Modernist Studies at Sussex, and has been organised with her family and friends, as well as those interested in her poetry. There will be readings from Anna’s work and other poems from among others Ian Patterson, Sean Bonney, Barry Schwabsky, Frances Presley, Chloe Harries, and Jane Liddell-King, and words from those who knew her, including members of her family and Peter Riley, who worked to save her extraordinary archive after her death.

The event is open to all, and if you’d like to read please let either Sara Crangle (skcrangle@gmail.com) or myself know (c.watts@bbk.ac.uk), so that we can plan the evening with room for everyone. Also do drop me a line if attending, so we have a sense of the numbers for refreshment. If anyone has any images of artwork or photos of Anna that we can receive in jpeg form, that would also be great and we’ll display them on the evening.

Via Carol Watts

Voiceworks

The culmination of work from our Voiceworks project, a six-month collaboration between poets via Birkbeck Poetics Centre and composers and singers from Guildhall School of Music & Drama, is taking place at 6pm at Wigmore Hall on Thursday 20 May, free to attend and also live streamed for the first time on the internet. Full details of this and the upcoming new website voiceworks.org.uk which is launched at the same time is at: LINK

Voiceworks 2010 participants are:


Francisco Coll Garcia, Albert Pellicer, Iria Perestrelo

Antonia Barnett-McIntosh, Emma Bennett, Adam Crockatt

David Moore, Ben Gwalchmai, Luke Tracey

Raymond Yiu, Kim Patrick, Luis Gomes, Clément Dionet

Patrick Brennan, James Wilkes, Robert Elibay-Hartog

Nick Scott, Frances Kruk, Lucy Hall

Matthew Mendez, Holly Pester, Victor Sicard

Come along in person or virtually. It lasts 45 minutes.

Via Carol Watts