Sandra Alland

Caesura #18

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Friday, 8th November, 19:00.

Artisan Bar. 35 London Rd, Edinburgh,  EH7 5BQ.

THIS MONTH we’ve got a radical writer and mixed-media artist who champions all things good, an incredible local poet and occasional performance artist, an avant-guard writer venturing through from the wild west and a local, by of Calfornia, innovative poet.

That is: Sandra Alland, Iain Morrison, Karen Veitch and James Leveque

WHAT IS IT? Bespoke spoken word performances at Edinburgh’s monthly night of racketeers and raconteurs, experiments and experience, synapses and sounds. Avante-jive for the masses.

SANDRA ALLAND

Sandra Alland is a writer, filmmaker, performer and interdisciplinary artist. Her work has been published and presented throughout the UK, North America and Europe. Sandra’s poetic love-affair with voice-activated software and disability poetics, Naturally Speaking, was published in 2012 by Toronto’s espresso Books. In 2009, Edinburgh’s Forest Publications published Sandra’s chapbook of short fiction, Here’s To Wang, which quickly went into a second printing. Sandra has published widely, including two other books of poetry: Blissful Times (BookThug, Toronto); and Proof of a Tongue (McGilligan, Toronto). She was guest editor at Jacket2 for a special edition on Scottish poets in 2012.
– www.blissfultimes.ca

IAIN MORRISON

Iain Morrison serially lost kitten slipper and voguer, Dickinsonian Mirror’s son, who despite veering all over the shop, remains interested loyally in sound structures and overlays in support/distort of meaning structure; expresses this in poems at present. Hoping to present new poem sequence at Caesura. At time of writ, proven in clinical trials to be enjoying whatever was happening way too much.

KAREN VEITCH

Karen Veitch grew up in Glasgow, where she currently resides. In 2013 she completed her doctorate studies at the University of Sussex in political and working-class women’s poetry of the Depression Era United States. She has translated Spanish poetry (such as by Pedro Salinas) into English and her work has been published in Comparative American Studies and SCREE.

JAMES LEVEQUE

James Leveque was born in Los Angeles, California, and grew up on Fresno, California. He has lived in Edinburgh since 2009. He is completing a PhD in literature and works as a tutor. His poetry has appeared in SCREE and the San Joaquin Review.

Syndicate 7: NANO

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Inspace, 1 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB. Thursday, 19 September 2013, 18:45.

Technology isn’t just changing the way poetry is produced and disseminated, and it isn’t just creating new media forms for poets to colonise. It’s also creating a context in which many techniques characteristic of experimental poetic practice have become commonplace. Join us as Syndicate curates a series of live performances, installations and dialogues at the raw intersection of avant-garde poetics, technology and cyberculture.

Performing tonight:: Sandra Alland / Steve Willey / Ian Davidson

WHO::

Sandra Alland is a writer, filmmaker, interdisciplinary artist and performer. She has published and presented her work throughout the UK, Europe, the US and Canada. In 2009, Edinburgh’s Forest Publications published Sandra’s chapbook of short fiction, Here’s To Wang, which went into its second printing in 2010. Sandra has published three books of poetry: Naturally Speaking (Toronto: espresso, 2012); Blissful Times (Toronto: BookThug, 2007); and Proof of a Tongue (Toronto: McGilligan, 2004). Sandra curates Cachín Cachán Cachunga Queer & Trans* Cabaret in Edinburgh, and was recently guest editor at Jacket2 for a special issue on Scottish poets. http://www.blissfultimes.ca.

Steve Willey lives in Whitechapel, London. His poetry has been widely anthologized including in: Dear World and Everyone In It (Bloodaxe, 2013); Better Than Language (Ganzfeld press, 2011); and City State (Penned In The Margins, 2009). His long-form poem Elegy (his debut collection) was published by Veer Books in July 2013, but you can’t get it yet. Steve enjoys working collaboratively and across different media, and in the past he has worked with the composer Edward Nesbit and the post-rock band Rumour Cubes on pieces that have been performed at the Wigmore Hall and at Glastonbury Music Festival respectively. Steve’s current poetic projects derive from a trip he took to Aida Refugee Camp in 2009, and a further visit in August 2013. He holds a PhD on the subject of Bob Cobbing 1950-1978: Poetry, Performance and the Institution, from Queen Mary, University of London. With Tom Bamford he runs the Benefits event series in London, and he is happy to be contacted via http://www.stevewilley.com.

Ian Davidson’s latest poetry collection, Partly in Riga (Shearsman 2010) was mostly written while on a residency in Latvia. His current project explores the ways that practices and ideas of movement and mobility, particularly those of humans, relate to contemporary writing. He has made extensive use of a seven syllable line, a quantity that always seems incomplete, and see the pamphlet Into Thick Hair (Wild Honey 2011) for an example. Other poetry collections include Harsh (Spectacular Diseases 2003), As if Only (Shearsman 2007) and At a Stretch (Shearsman 2004), and critical books include Ideas of Space in Contemporary Poetry (Palgrave 2007) and Radical Spaces of Poetry (Palgrave 2010).

Expect:: Innovative poetics, multi-media artworks, interactive performances, lively debate and sparkling wine.

About:: Syndicate is a unique initiative bringing together writers, musicians, artists and researchers working with and in response to digital technologies, new media and evolving network practices. It is organised by Lila Matsumoto, Jo L. Walton and Samantha Walton in collaboration with Inspace and with the support of the Edinburgh Fund’s Innovative Initiative Grant.