Phonica: Four

Wednesday 19 October 2016
Jack Nealons, 165 Capel Street, Dublin 1
8pm start
admission free

The fourth edition of Phonica takes place on Wednesday 19 October, and we’re excited to be joined by Martín Bakero, Susan Connolly, John Kearns, Neil Ó Lochlainn, Elizabeth Hilliard and David Lacey for a set of performances and presentations traversing the realms of sound poetry, electronic music, visual poetry, improvisation, and more.

Kakania in Berlin

Kakania at Lettretage, Berlin – October Tuesday 11th 2016: 8pm. Free entrance http://www.lettretage.de/ Mehringdamm 61, 10961 Berlin, Germany. Supported by Österreichisches Kulturforum Berlin.

New performances & poetry from:

  • Lea Schneider on Bertha Eckstein-Diener
  • Kinga Toth on ‘Sissi’ Empress Elisabeth of Austria
  • Rike Scheffler on Marie Pappenheim
  • Günter Vallaster on Raoul Hausmann
  • Fabian Faltin on Ernst Mach
  • Norbert Lange on Rainer Maria Rilke

There has been no one city’s culture, at one singular time in modern history, more widely influential on contemporary thought than that of Habsburg Vienna a century ago. A time so densely constituted with intellectual revolution in fields as diverse as poetry, fiction, journalism, music, composition, philosophy, psychology and art, that it seems it can often only be evoked through a wistfulness that belies the melancholy, the energy and the seismic change that constituted it.

But in the Kakania project, sentimentality is set aside for radical new works by contemporary artists, each responding with a new performance or reading that celebrates or commemorates a single figure from the era in question. After 7 events and a symposium in London and Berlin, from the Freud Museum to the Österreichisches Kulturforum, and two exclusive publications, Kakania returns to Berlin at Lettretage for a night of newly commissioned avant garde live artworks. More here.

 

Soundings

SJ Fowler and Phil Minton at Kings Place, 90 York Way, London, N1 9AG. October 7th : 8pm

Soundings comes to an end on October 7th at Kings Place with a new collaborative performance between SJ Fowler and sound art / experimental music legend Phil Minton. The performance is part of a night celebrating Hubbub at Wellcome Collection and tickets are available here.

Soundings has been a series of collaborative sound poetry and sonic art performances held in seven different venues in the city of London over the last 18 months. Each edition of Soundings began with Wellcome Librarians suggesting images, manuscripts and books from the Library’s collections in response to a title initiated by Hubbub curators. More here.

Charles Bernstein – a preview

The next Other Room is on Monday 3rd October at The Castle Hotel, Manchester, featuring Susan Bee, Charles Bernstein and Maggie O’Sullivan. 7 PM start, free entry, as always.

This clip is of v’s University of Pennsylvania 6o second lecture What Makes a Poem a Poem?

Charles Bernstein is an American poet, essayist, editor, and literary scholar. He holds the Donald T. Regan Chair in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania and is one of the most prominent members of the Language poets, having co-edited (and co-founded) L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine with Bruce Andrews between 1978 and 1981. In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has published 17 major books of poetry including Legend, with Bruce Andrews, Steve McCaffery, Ron Silliman and Ray DiPalma (New York: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E/Segue, 1980), Controlling Interests (Roof Books, 1980), Islets/Irritations (Roof Books, 1992), Rough Trades (Sun & Moon, 1991) The Sophist (Sun & Moon, 1987) and many others, including two selected volumes: Republics of Reality: 1975-1995 (Sun & Moon, 2000) and All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010). Bernstein is also an important critic and editor of contemporary poetry and this year the University of Chicago press published his Pitch of Poetry. His other remarkable critical writings include: Attack of the Difficult Poems: Essays and Inventions (University of Chicago Press, 2011), My Way: Speeches and Poems (University of Chicago Press, 1999), A Poetics (Harvard University Press, 1992) and Content’s Dream: Essays 1975-1984 (Sun & Moon Press, 1986). Other notable projects include A Conversation with David Antin (Granary Books, 2002) and Shadowtime: a libretto for an opera about Walter Benjamin with music by Brian Ferneyhough (Green Integer, 2005). Find out more about his work at the Electronic Poetry Center and Penn Sound.

Susan Bee – a preview

The next Other Room is on Monday 3rd October at The Castle Hotel, Manchester, featuring Susan Bee, Charles Bernstein and Maggie O’Sullivan. 7 PM start, free entry, as always.

This clip is a sound recording of Susan Bee reading with Johanna Drucker as part of the Segue Series at the Bowery Poetry Club, New York, May 2007.

Susan Bee is an artist who lives in Brooklyn. She has had seven solo shows at A.I.R. Gallery, NY, and solo shows at Southfirst Gallery, Accola Griefen Gallery, and Lisa Cooley Gallery in NY. She has a BA from Barnard College and a MA in Art from Hunter College. Bee has published sixteen artist’s books. She has collaborated with poets including: Johanna Drucker, Susan Howe, Charles Bernstein, and Jerome Rothenberg. She is the coeditor of M/E/A/N/I/N/G Online. Bee received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts in 2014. She teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. Find out more about her work at the Electronic Poetry Center site and at Penn Sound.

novelling

A new work of electronic literature created by Will Luers, Roger Dean and Other Room reader Hazel Smith.

novelling is a recombinant digital novel that employs text, video, and sound. It poses questions about the acts of reading and writing fiction. Readerly and cinematic, the work unfolds through suggested narrative connections between four characters. The characters, immersed in their isolated life-worlds, appear to be transported elsewhere by what they are reading. Are they reading and thinking each other? The variable and deterministic system of selection and arrangement produces a fluid, ever-novel and potential narrative.

Available now on the New Binary Press site.

Storm and Golden Sky

Susan Bee and Charles Bernstein will be reading for us at the Other Room on Monday 3rd October, along with Maggie O’Sullivan. There’s another chance to catch Susan and Charles on their rare visit to the north-west of England on the Friday before, in L:iverpool. Details below.

Storm and Golden Sky
Friday 30th September 2016
Susan Bee and Charles Bernstein
7.30 (entrance £5)
At The Caledonia  (in the Georgian Quarter on the edge of Catharine Street and Cadedonia Street: up the steep stairs at the back of the bar room)

SUSAN BEE is an artist who lives in Brooklyn. She has had seven solo shows at A.I.R. Gallery, NY, and solo shows at Southfirst Gallery, Accola Griefen Gallery, and Lisa Cooley Gallery in NY. She has a BA from Barnard College and a MA in Art from Hunter College. Bee has published sixteen artist’s books. She has collaborated with poets including: Johanna Drucker, Susan Howe, Charles Bernstein, and Jerome Rothenberg. She is the coeditor of M/E/A/N/I/N/G Online. Bee received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts in 2014. She teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.

CHARLES BERNSTEIN is an American poet, essayist, editor, and literary scholar. He holds the Donald T. Regan Chair in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania and is one of the most prominent members of the Language poets, having co-edited (and co-founded) L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine with Bruce Andrews between 1978 and 1981. In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has published 17 major books of poetry including Legend, with Bruce Andrews, Steve McCaffery, Ron Silliman and Ray DiPalma (New York: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E/Segue, 1980), Controlling Interests (Roof Books, 1980), Islets/Irritations (Roof Books, 1992), Rough Trades (Sun & Moon, 1991) The Sophist (Sun & Moon, 1987) and many others, including two selected volumes: Republics of Reality: 1975-1995 (Sun & Moon, 2000) and All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010). Bernstein is also an important critic and editor of contemporary poetry and this year the University of Chicago press published his Pitch of Poetry. His other remarkable critical writings include:Attack of the Difficult Poems: Essays and Inventions (University of Chicago Press, 2011), My Way: Speeches and Poems (University of Chicago Press, 1999), A Poetics (Harvard University Press, 1992) and Content’s Dream: Essays 1975-1984 (Sun & Moon Press, 1986). Other notable projects include A Conversation with David Antin(Granary Books, 2002) and Shadowtime: a libretto for an opera about Walter Benjamin with music by Brian Ferneyhough (Green Integer, 2005).

This is a Liverpool Biennial Fringe Event.

Maggie O’Sullivan – a preview

The next Other Room is on Monday 3rd October at The Castle Hotel, Manchester, featuring Susan Bee, Charles Bernstein and Maggie O’Sullivan. 7 PM start, free entry, as always.

This clip is of Maggie O’Sullivan’s interpretation of the letter L, part of our celebration of Bob Cobbing’s The ABC in Sound in October 2012. For more clips of Maggie, see her page at Penn Sound or her performance as part of the Other Room’s Poems for the Millennium launch in October 2010.

Maggie O’Sullivan has been making and performing her work internationally since the mid 1970s. Anthology appearances include Poems for the Millennium, Volume 2. She is the editor of out of everywhere: an anthology of contemporary linguistically innovative poetry by women in North America and the UK (1996). Books include eXcLa with Bruce Andrews (1993), In the House of the Shaman (1996), red shifts (2001), Palace of Reptiles (2003), all origins are lonely (2003) and Body of Work (2006), WATERFALLS (2009), ALTO (2009), and murmur (2011). The Salt Companion to Maggie O’Sullivan (2011) collects essays by contemporaries on her work. Her author page at Pennsound is a primary resource for online recordings of her readings/performances. Her website is www.maggieosullivan.co.uk

Pierre Reverdy – The Thief of Talant

Translated and introduced by Ian Seed, out now on Wakefield Press.

Originally published in French in 1917 but ignored (though subsequently a collector’s item after the end of WWI), The Thief of Talant would not see a new edition until 1967, after the author’s death. To this day it remains a particularly enigmatic book in the poet’s œuvre. Challenged by his friend, poet and art critic Max Jacob, to write a novel, Pierre Reverdy produced this strangely titled experiment: a fragmented assemblage of loneliness, paranoia, and depersonalization drawn from his own experience of Paris in the early twentieth century, the sometimes antagonistic atmosphere of the avant-garde, and his own troubled relationship with the generous but frequently suspicious Max Jacob, who like many of his literary and artistic friends, detected the threat of his literary treasures getting plagiarized among everyone he knew.

Toward the end of his life, Reverdy confirmed that the alienated and anxious “thief” of this novel in verse was a portrait of himself (“Talant” conveys both the dual echo in French of “talent” and the small town of “Talan” near Dijon, thereby evoking a potential plagiarizer from the countryside, finding his way in the Paris of the years 1910–1917), and “Abel the Magus” a semi-satirical portrait of Max Jacob.

The Thief of Talant was and remains a radical experiment in verse and narrative, but it is also a hauntingly beautiful and moving evocation of the loss (and recovery) of self, and an encrypted guidebook to the “heroic” years of Cubism and that movement’s literary and artistic protagonists.