Tom Jenks

Mathematics and Modern Literature 2018

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The University of Manchester, Thursday 3rd and Friday 4th May 2018.

On the face of it, few activities, disciplines or modes of thinking seem as disparate or as incommensurable with one another as those of mathematics and literature. If, according to a common, broadly ‘Platonic’ conception of the subject, mathematics insists upon rigor and exactitude in order to discover eternal, objective and universal truths, literature is often imagined as addressing itself to that which is irreducibly human, subjective, particular or contingent. Where the one may be lauded for yielding access to a neutral, unchanging domain of that which is the same forever and for all, the other might be celebrated as the privileged medium of that which differs, or of that which is true or real for us as creatures of material, historical, cultural, intellectual and linguistic change.

Just as this sketch of ‘literature’ will not suffice—failing, as it does, to take account of the significant and often dramatic ways in which our conception of literature and the literary has shifted since the late nineteenth century—so the opposing caricature of mathematics proves inadequate to register the crises and developments that affected the field—and the ways in which mathematicians and others understood it—over the same period.

Please send proposals (250-300 words) for fifteen-minute papers to mathmodlit@gmail.com by 5th February 2018. Please include a short (100-150 word) biography with your abstract. Notification of decision will be made by 19th February 2018.

Full details here.

 

Confingo at Verbose

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Monday 27th November at 8.00 PM. Fallow Café, 2a Landcross Road, Fallowfield, Manchester, M14 6NA.

The next Verbose will be a Confingo takeover, with readings from Nicholas Royle, Tom Jenks and others. Confingo is a biannual literary magazine published by Tim Shearer. Copies will be available to purchase.If you’re interested in having an open mic slot, email verbosemanchester@gmail.com

Atlantic Drift at Edge Hill

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Thursday 23rd November 7:30pm
Launch of the second title from Edge Hill University Press
Atlantic Drift: An Anthology of Poetry and Poetics

TICKETS FREE, but booking required

7.00pm – Light Refreshments
7.30pm – Atlantic Drift Book Launch

Introduced by the books’ editors, Professor Robert Sheppard and Dr James Byrne

This reading will feature three poets from a new and groundbreaking publication of poetry and poetics and a brief Q&A.

Atlantic Drift publishes 24 poets from the UK, Ireland, USA and Canada in partnership with Arc Publications. This anthology seeks to highlight new and existing writing and to define/redefine the discussions between poets from both sides of ‘the pond’. By developing a dialogue between English-speaking traditions, Atlantic Drift will include some of the most exceptional poetry and poetics written in the 21st century.

Otoliths issue forty-seven

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Mary Kasimor, M. Leland Oroquieta, Texas Fontanella, differx, Bill Yarrow, Jim Leftwich, Steve Dalachinsky, Vernon Frazer, Andrew Topel, Philip Byron Oakes, j4, Kyle Hemmings, Sanjeev Sethi, Karl Kempton, Robert van Vliet, Heath Brougher, hiromi suzuki & Márton Koppány, Kevin Tosca, Karen Downs-Barton, Demosthenes Agrafiotis, Seth Howard, Aurélien Leif, John M. Bennett, Lakey Comess, Drew B. David, Howie Good, Olivier Schopfer, Dah, Raymond Farr, Carol Stetser, Adam Fieled, Joe Balaz, Martin Edmond, Jill Chan, Thomas M. Cassidy, osvaldo cibils, Neil Leadbeater, Christopher Barnes, Pete Spence, Ken Bolton, Dawn Nelson Wardrope, Ben Oost, Piet Nieuwland, Stephen Nelson, dan raphael, gobscure, Travis Cebula, Stuart Barnes, J.J. Campbell, Pearl Button, Nika + Jim McKinniss, Penelope Weiss, Brendan Slater, Jack Kelly, Bryony Bodimeade, Tony Beyer, Cecelia Chapman, William Allegrezza, David Baptiste Chirot, Willie Smith, Cheryl Penn, Obododimma Oha, Michael Brandonisio, Kenneth Rexroth, John Levy, Richard Kostelanetz & Igor Satanovsky, Luigi Coppola, Keith Nunes, Jesse Glass, Joseph Salvatore Aversano, David Lohrey, Scott MacLeod, Tom Beckett, Angad Agora, Jeff Harrison, Gregory Stephenson, Simon Perchik, wiggly jones, Michael Gould, Shloka Shankar, Volodymyr Bilyk, Marcia Arrieta, Cindy Hochman, Bob Heman, Jack Galmitz, Jeff Bagato, Andrew Galan, Barnaby Smith, Edward Kulemin, Indigo Perry, Paul T. Lambert, John Pursch, Marilyn Stablein, J.D. Nelson, Carey Scott Wilkerson, Cherie Hunter Day, Bela Farkas, Menkah, Erik-John Fuhrer, Diane Keys, & Ishita Basu Mallik. Details here.

Verbivoracious Festschrift #6: the Oulipo

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The sixth Verbivoracious Festschrift is a brobdingnagian spectacular fêting the famous workshop of potential literature, The Oulipo, now entering its 57th year. Our contributors were invited to write a piece of fiction, an essay, a poem, or any other hybrid, and choose their own constraints. The results have yielded a marvellous sprawl of oulipian homage, from petite poetic tributes to Queneau, to long lipogrammatic bows to Perec. In this issue: Philip Terry’s take on Perec’s I Remember, Warren Motte’s literary abecedaries, David Bellos’s iconoclastic essay on Hugo and Perec, two chapters from Jeff Bursey’s lipogrammic novel Ennead, Louis Bury’s anticipatory blurbs, Michael Leong’s take on the Oulipo’s ever-expanding influence, Tom Jenks and Jeanelle D’Alessandro’s satirical N+7s, Andriana Minou’s typographically playful novella Hypnotic Labyrinth, John Peck’s murder mystery in 100 sentences, poetry from Doug Nufer and Stephen Frug, Marc Lapprand’s view on evolution and The Oulipo, a slew of palindromes, lists, papers, and fancies from Pablo Ruiz, and many other pieces. The issue concludes with a wholly original work of sustained constraint: Christine Brooke-Rose’s first novel rewritten with her grammatical constraints and polylingual puns reinstated. The sixth issue is our fattest feast yet, and a must for Oulipo enthusiasts. More here.

Twitters for a Lark

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If the right poets for the times don’t exist, then they have to be invented.

Twitters for a Lark: The Poetry of the European Union of Imaginary Authors

 is published by Shearsman Books at £9.99 and in available here:

Working in collaboration with a team of real writers, Robert Sheppard has created a lively and entertaining anthology of fictional European poets. There is no resultant ‘Europoem’, but a variety of styles that reflects the collaborative nature of the poems’ production, the richness of a continent. The works range from the comedic to the political, from the imaginatively sincere to the faux-autobiographical, from traditional lyricism to the experimental. Accompanied by biographical notes, the poets grow in vividness until they seem to possess lives of their own.

This collection marks a continuation of the work Sheppard ventriloquised through his creation, the fictional bilingual Belgian poet René Van Valckenborch, in A Translated Man (also available from Shearsman here: http://www.shearsman.com/ws-shop/product/4328-robert-sheppard-a-translated-man )

Although devised before the neologism ‘Brexit’ was spat across the bitter political divide, this sample of 28 poets of the EUOIA (European Union of Imaginary Authors) takes on new meanings in our contemporary world that is far from fictive, ‘fake news’ or not.

The collaborators are: Joanne Ashcroft, Alan Baker, James Byrne, Alys Conran, Kelvin Corcoran, Anamaría Crowe Serrano, Patricia Farrell, Allen Fisher, S. J. Fowler, Robert Hampson, Jeff Hilson, Tom Jenks, Frances Kruk, Rupert Loydell, Steve McCaffery, Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, Sandeep Parmar, Simon Perril, Jèssica Pujol i Duran, Zoë Skoulding, Damir Šodan, Philip Terry, Scott Thurston.

“Twitters for a Lark heralds a new movement: the European Poetry Revival. It is a book that arrives like a new channel forged by collaborative poets, with all past ideals of state rolled up in an old five pound note. This illuminated sect of future Rimbauds lightens the island’s burden, the lights on their vessels burning like the tips of duty free cigarettes.” Chris McCabe

 

Writers’ Centre Kingston

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Kingston University’s literary cultural centre’s new year of events, projects, festivals and initiatives begins in October.  The core programme consists of a dozen events – each themed, with three speakers responding to that concept with a new reading or talk or performance. The speakers are both guests to the Centre, including Tom McCarthy, Stella Duffy, Nell Leyshon and Iain Sinclair, as well as those drawn from the academic staff at Kingston University. Student and alumnus readings often accompany this main programme.

The Centre will present brand new initiatives including a programme of adult education courses, a bookclub curated with Stanley Picker Gallery and a publication series for student poets with Sampson Low. See www.writerscentrekingston.com for more details on the centre and the year ahead.

 

Change of line-up for 31st October

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Unfortunately, Pascal O’Loughlin is unable to read at our our next event on Tuesday 31st October. His place will be taken by Scott Thurston, who will be reading from his brand new book Poems for the Dance. See above for a film of Scott performing with Steve Boyland and one from our own archive.

The other readers will be James Davies and Stephen Mooney. We will still be at The Castle Hotel, Oldham Street, Manchester and the Other Room will still be, as always, free. We hope to see you there.

Scott Thurston is a poet, mover and educator working in higher education in Manchester, UK. He has published twelve books and chapbooks of poetry, including three full-length collections with Shearsman: Hold (2006), Momentum (2008) and Internal Rhyme (2010). More recent work includes Reverses Heart’s Reassembly (Veer, 2011), Figure Detached Figure Impermanent(Oystercatcher, 2014) and, just out, Poems for the Dance (Aquifer, 2017). He edited The Salt Companion to Geraldine Monk (2007) and in 2011, Shearsman published his collection of four long interviews with the poets Karen Mac Cormack, Jennifer Moxley, Caroline Bergvall and Andrea Brady, called Talking Poetics. Scott is founding co-editor of the open access Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry and co-organizer of the long-running poetry reading series The Other Room in Manchester. Since 2004, he has been developing a poetics integrating dance and poetry which has seen him collaborating with dancers in Berlin and New York as well as in the UK.

Poems for the Dance (Aquifer Books, 2017) contains an essay and poems occasioned by Scott’s engagement with Five Rhythms and other improvised dance and movement practices over more than a decade. The book is a multi-faceted enquiry into the relationship between poetry and movement, exploring the shared vitality dynamics of both artistic forms as it seeks for personal, social and political truths. With an introduction by Camilla Nelson and photographs by Roger Bygott.

Poem Brut

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An ambitious new project, Poem Brut is an exploration of poetry and colour, handwriting, composition, abstraction, scribbling, and illustration, affirming the possibilities of the page, the pen, the pencil – in a computer age – generating over a dozen events, multiple exhibitions, workshops, conferences and publications.  The first event will take place at Rich Mix on November 25th followed by an exhibition – Hard to Read – also at the Rich Mix, opening December 9th. 3ammagazine, a partner in the project, is also running open call for new works that fit within the tradition. More details here.

Scott Thurston’s Poems for the Dance

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Containing an essay, and poems, occasioned by the author’s engagement with Five Rhythms and other improvised dance and movement practices over more than a decade, Poems for the Dance is a multi-faceted enquiry into the relationship between poetry and movement, exploring the shared vitality dynamics of both artistic forms as it seeks for personal, social and political truths. With an introduction by Camilla Nelson and photographs by Roger Bygott. Full details here.

 

Equus Press / Minor Literature[s] / 3AM

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11th November at 19:00. Caravansérail, 5 Cheshire Street,  London, E2 6ED

An exciting evening of readings by contemporary experimental authors from Equus Press, Minor Literature[s] & 3:AM Magazine.

CONFIRMED READERS:
Louis Armand – author of eight novels and ten collections of poetry, most recently The Combinations (2016) and East Broadway Rundown (2015).

Daniela Cascella – her work is focused on sound, literature, and art, driven by a longstanding interest in the relationship between listening, reading, writing & translating.

Lara Alonso Corona – a freelance writer of noir, sci-fi and literary fiction. London via Gijón.

Juliet Jacques – author of a book on English avant-garde author Rayner Heppenstall for Dalkey Archive Press (2007), and a memoir entitled Trans (Verso Books, 2015).

Fernando Sdrigotti – a London-based Argentine writer and cultural critic. He is editor-in-chief of Minor Literature[s] and a contributing editor to Numéro Cinq and 3AM Magazine.

Richard Makin – a writer, poet and artist. His first trilogy of novels comprises Work (Great Works, 2007), Dwelling (Reality Street, 2011) and Mourning (Equus Press, 2015).

Richard Marshall – has been a contributing editor for the cultural magazine3ammagazine.com since 2001. He has published Philosophy at 3AM: Questions and Answers with 25 Top Philosophers (2014).

The highlight of the evening will be Daniela Cascella & Juliet Jacques launching Cascella’s brand-new book, Singed (Equus Press 2017).

Entry free of charge. Everyone welcome.
Equus Press: https://equuspress.wordpress.com/
Minor Literature[s]: https://minorliteratures.com/
3AM: http://www.3ammagazine.com/