Tom Jenks
Maintenant #91 – Gunnar Harding
It is too easy, and often, it would seem, far too tempting for the assumption to be made that it is just longevity itself which accounts for the repute and esteem of certain figures in poetry, whose influence seems so fundamental and ubiquitous within a nation’s poetic culture. Yet Gunnar Harding, as much as many a near legendary poet, has influenced so many and built such an immense following precisely because of his remarkable ability to make his poetry one founded on renewal, on tone, on intricacy, on inhabitation – to strike the reader with an original voice no matter their generation and poetic taste, whether they read his first published book in 1967, or his last, a third volume of selected poems. For nearly fifty years Harding has been at the forefront of Scandinavian poetics, rising from the generation of so many great poets in the 1960’s, a former artist and jazz musician, his fluid, energetic, deeply intelligent poetry has been a consistent inspiration to his countrymen and many poets who do not have five decades of writing behind them. For the 91st edition of Maintenant, Gunnar Harding.
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-91-gunnar-harding/
Accompanying the interview are three of Gunnar’s poem, translated and generously given over to Maintenant by Roger Greenwald.
The BlazeVOX controversy
“A big controversy in the poetry world these days is the discussion surrounding Buffalo-based small press BlazeVOX [book]’s (now discontinued) model of charging some authors a portion of the costs of publishing their poetry books ($250, as I gather). In the closing months of last year, the revelation of this practice inflamed passions in the generally staid world of independent literary publishing. The controversy just got an enormous boost with the recent decision of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) banning poets from listing books published by BlazeVOX on their grant applications.
Questions arise about the viability of poetry publishing in an age of narrow audiences and little financial reward, and about gate-keeping, quality control, editorial integrity and the technologies of dissemination.”
Read more, including the thoughts of Geoffrey Gatza, in this piece by Anis Shivani at The Huffington Post.
Wire: Sound Poetry Portal
This month’s issue of Wire magazine includes an article about sound poetry. Their website currently features a portal with links to Bob Cobbing, Henri Chopin and Michael McClure, shown here radicalising a lion.
POLYply 18
Paula Claire: a preview
In addition to live performances by Becky Cremin, Tony Lopez and Elena Rivera, The Other Room on Thursday 19th April will feature a video performance by Paula Claire. For an extensive overview of her work, including texts, sound recordings and films, visit her own site.
Alec Finlay’s Question your teaspoons
More at Peony Moon.
Text and Electricity
Text and Electricity is an afternoon symposium designed to bring experimental poets together with those working creatively with technology: coders, circuit-benders, dorks and hackers.
We plan a loosely structured and exploratory conversation, punctuated by short informal accounts from participants talking about their work and approaches. The afternoon will be designed to enable people working across disciplines to share ideas and experience.
Discussion could focus on possible points of convergence between experimental uses of text and technology, whether in performance, online, in software applications or in gallery contexts. It will be up to you!
The event will be facilitated by Will Montgomery Director, Poetics Research Centre, Royal Holloway and Brian Condon of C4CC.
Co-organised by the Poetics Research Centre, Royal Holloway and the Centre for Creative Collaboration.
Thursday, April 19, 2012 from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM. Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG. Book a ticket at Eventbrite.
The Claudius App III
The Claudius App, an online journal of negative reviews and poems, is now accepting submissions for its third issue, deadline June 5th. The second issue, an avant-post-Fordist labor product digitally congealed at www.theclaudiusapp.com, included work by or attributed to: Brian Ang, Sara Deniz Akant, Jerimee Bloemke, Feng Sun Chen, Patrick James Dunagan, Pierre Klossowski, Purdey Kreiden, Ben Lerner, Mark Levine, Anthony Madrid, Chris Martin, Jessica Marsh, Jeff Nagy, Tim Shaner, Josh Stanley, Jonty Tiplady, Cathy Wagner, Elisabeth Workman, and your dreams, with a splash by Ian Hatcher. Send fast poems, negative reviews, and letters with a self-addressed stamped brick for your manuscript’s eternal return, or query editors@theclaudiusapp.com for more information.
Maintenant #90 – Andrei Codrescu
It is hard to think of fitting superlatives that have not already been bestowed upon Andrei Codrescu over the course of his writing career, which spans five decades and two continents. Since his emigration from Romania in the late 1960s, his work has lodged itself in the poetic consciousness of both America and Europe for its sheer edges – its energy, its voice, its deft wit, and like all great dadaists, at heart, he is the hardest of realists, a man who cannot lie to himself above all others, in his poetry or in his ebullient criticism, journalism and collected writing. A poet whose oeuvre reaches back into the depths of Europe from the core of America, who has been peer to some of greatest writers of our century, where he now, as we roll into the 21st century, must take his own place. For the 90th edition of Maintenant, Andrei Codrescu.
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-90-andrei-codrescu/
Accompanying the interview are three of Andrei’s poem, generously given over to Maintenant.
Land Diagrams
Land Diagrams is an ongoing series in which commissioned writers respond to the same visual encoding of landscape. See the website for info.
A Summit of Joyful Old Savages
ANSELM HOLLO – TOM RAWORTH – GUNNAR HARDING – ANDREI CODRESCU
Wednesday 18th April 2012 – Doors at 7.30
The Horse Hospital, Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD
+44 (0)20 7833 3644 – Tickets – £8 in advance here.
equus press
equus press was established in 2011 between Paris, London & Prague with the objective of publishing new writing that is innovative & conscious of being doubly marginalised: outside the literary establishment defined by the Anglo-American publishing industry, & outside the confines of nationalism, pursuing a broadly cosmopolitan “agenda”; what has come to be termed “translocal” writing. The press is launching its next two novels, The News Clown by Thor Garcia and Breakfast at Midnight by Louis Armand at a series of events in London and Manchester:
- FRIDAY 13 APRIL, 7-9pm @ Rich Mix, 35 – 47 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA..
- SATURDAY 14 APRIL, 6.30-8.30pm @ The Anthony Burgess Foundation, The Engine House, Chorlton Mill, 3 Cambridge Street, Manchester M1 5BY.
- SUNDAY 15 APRIL, 7.30-9.30pm @ The Castle Hotel, 66 Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LE.
- MONDAY 16 APRIL, 7-9 pm @ The Phoenix Artists Club, 1 Phoenix Street, London, WC2H 8BU.
More at the equus press site.
The Debris Field
14 Apr 19:30 Blue Room, The South Bank Centre, London. The Debris Field is a new multi-media production written and performed by poets Simon Barraclough, Isobel Dixon and Chris McCabe. The evocative poetic text is accompanied by original music from Oli Barrett of Bleeding Heart Narrative, and film by Jack Wake-Walker. The poets will take you on a resonant tour of the cultural debris of this iconic event, exploring ideas of luxury and labour; courage and folly; life and loss; and human ambition in the face of nature’s power. A key historic event explored with striking poetic, musical and visual impact.
Surrey Poetry Festival
The death of conceptualism?
“Conceptualism is probably over now, even in its newest iterations. The generative energy has gone out of procedural work and gestures of appropriation, retranslation, transcribing, and other methods of production that take an idea as a point of departure and carry out its terms to whatever affectless effect can be realized.” Johanna Drucker.
“Johanna Drucker has suggested that Conceptual Literature has begun to enter the twilight of its eminence, on the verge of becoming yet another one of the exhausted movements in the history of the avant-garde. While I am happy to see Conceptual Literature discussed within the context of its historical precedents (even if only to suggest that such writing has merely rehashed the techniques of its more noteworthy precursors), I feel that Drucker might be underemphasizing the degree to which her own observations about the “death” of Conceptual Literature might be recycling historical complaints, no less “unoriginal,” no less “uncreative,” in their obituaries, which declare the death of a genre, long before its generative potentials have been fully explored or fully absorbed….” Christian Bök.
Now Worry, Jessica Pujol i Duran
Out now from Department.
p.o.w. broadsheets
The artist Antonio Carvalho has just published the first in a series of poetry broadsides bases on Hansjorg Mayer’s futura editions from the 1960s. Writers include Peter Finch and Other Room reader Chris McCabe. p.o.w. broadsheets are available to buy from Studio Bookshop, Brighton, and can be bought via visa through email:studiobookshop@btconnect.com. They are £5 each or £25 for all 6 broadsheets.
BLUE BUS Reading 62: Elena Rivera, Scott Thurston and Melissa Buckheit
The Blue Bus is pleased to present a poetry event featuring Melissa Buckheit, Eléna Rivera, Scott Thurston, on Tuesday 17th April, from 7.30 at The Lamb (in the upstairs room), 94 Lamb’s Conduit Street, London WC1. This is the sixty-second event in THE BLUE BUS series. Admissions: £5 / £3 (concessions). For future events in the series, please scroll down to the end of this message. Forthcoming events will include Marcus Slease, Lesley McKenna and Fran Lock (15th May), D S Marriott, Sarah Kelly and Robert Sheppard (19th June), and John Muckle and tba (17th July).
Melissa Buckheit is a poet, dancer, photographer, English Professor and Bodywork Therapist. She is the author of Noctilucent (Shearsman Books, 2012), Arc, a chapbook, (The Drunken Boat, 2007), and her poems, translations, photography, interviews and reviews have appeared in nth position, Blue Fifth Review, The Drunken Boat, Sinister Wisdom, Cutthroat, Bombay Gin, Pirene’s Fountain, A Trunk of Delirium, Spiral Orb, Shearsman Magazine, and Sonora Review. She translates the poet Ioulita Iliopoulou from Modern Greek, and her poetry has also been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. She holds an M.F.A. from Naropa University and a B.A. from Brandeis University. She has taught at University of Arizona, Pima College and SUVA. Melissa is the curator of Edge, a monthly reading series for emerging and younger writers at Casa Libre en la Solana in Tucson, AZ.
Scott Thurston lectures at the University of Salford where he runs a Masters in Innovative and Experimental Creative Writing. He co-runs The Other Room reading series in Manchester, edits The Radiator, a little magazine of poetics, and co-edits The Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry with Robert Sheppard. He is the author of Hold, Momentum, Internal Rhyme, and Of Being Circular.
Eléna Rivera was born in Mexico City and spent her childhood in Paris, France. She is the author of Remembrance of Things Plastic (LRL-e Editions, 2010), Mistakes, Accidents and the Want of Liberty (Barque Press, 2006), The Perforated Map (Shearsman) and translator of Secret of Breath (Burning Deck Press, 2008) poems by Isabelle Baladine Howald. She won the 2010 Robert Fagles prize for her translation of The Rest of the Voyage by Bernard Noël, which will be published by Graywolf Press in November 2011. She was also awarded a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Translation, and a 2009 Fundacíon Valparaíso Poetry Residency in Mojácar, Spain.
More here.
Eléna Rivera: a preview
Eléna Rivera will read at the next Other Room on Thursday 19th April. For a comprehensive overview of her work, visit her own site and her author page at Shearsman, including details of her most recent collection The Perforated Map. You can also find examples of her work at Little Red Leaves 4 and Sky Press.
Please note that this event is on a different day (Thursday) to our usual day (Wednesday) and is also at a different venue: the Basement Bar of the Deaf Institute just off Oxford Road, Manchester.
The other two readers will be Becky Cremin and Tony Lopez. There will also be a video performance by Paula Claire.
otherroom.org 