Tom Jenks

Maintenant #49

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The notion and standing of the “poet” as a figure of cultural significance varies enormously from European nation to European nation. It almost goes without saying that by and large there has been a reduction in the audience and therefore cache afforded the poet as an artist, and many poets eschew the self-analysis and regard traditionally afforded to those recognised as somehow significant in their field. However there are poetic cultures that remain indelibly “literary”, where the poet is a voice representing far more than just their own concerns. Emilian Galaicu-Păun is inarguably one of these poets – eloquent, assured, politically engaged, his work has left a firm mark on European poetry, and is uniquely bound to the idiosyncratic circumstance of his home nation, Moldova. For the 49th edition of Maintenant, Emilian Galaicu-Păun.

(this interview was translated, conceived and written in collaboration with Livia Dragomir.)

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-49-emilian-galaicu-paun/

Accompanying the interview are two of Emilian’s poems, translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Cristina Cîrstea

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/two-poems-emilian-galaicu-paun/

Maintenant #48: Morten Søndergaard

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Representative of a golden generation of Danish poets, Morten Søndergaard is as versatile a poet as there is currently writing in the synthesised Northern European style of the 21st century. Having gained a wide reputation across Europe and the US for his organic adaptation of poetic form, his output over the last few decades has been varied and remarkable. A true blueprint for the future of European letters, he is as comfortable with verse as with sound poetry and his highly humourous, ethical and sensory poetry is a major contribution to Northern European poetics. In a typically generous interview, we present the 48th of the Maintenant series


Accompanying the interview are four of Morten’s poems, translated into English by Barbara Haveland

Two new books by Robert Sheppard

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Two new books by Robert Sheppard from Shearsman

BERLIN BURSTS (poems)

These new poems feature territories as dispersed as Sheppard’s local Capital of Culture and the global city of division and political murder of the title poem. Yet a series of metapoems brings agency and wonder to the idea of the poem, always seeing the world as well as itself, in perceptual double-takes that tease away at the meaning of the poetic act
At the centre of the collection is ‘Six Poems Against Death’ whose lyric imperative hovers before the portals of the unknown to embrace human unfinish as the condition of our survival.

Ian Davidson in Poetry Wales called Sheppard’s Complete Twentieth Century Blues ‘a major poem of serious intent’; Alan Baker in Litter called Warrant Error ‘political poetry of the first order’, and John Muckle wrote of ‘this brilliant, disquieting book.’

“Robert Sheppard . . . composed a few words around Liverpool’s status as City of Culture. ‘Their shit’s verdure but that’s OK/ This isn’t a nature poem.’ Sheppard’s near twenty-year epic, Complete Twentieth Century Blues, outweighed the Ringo returns, the showbiz art: he cooked slow and long, with tangy sauces and bits that break the teeth. The city
averted its eyes . . . As if it were the poet’s fault that we want our meat pre-chewed.” -Iain Sinclair

Order from the Shearsman online store and read more at:
http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/catalog/2011/sheppardBB.html

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WHEN BAD TIMES MADE FOR GOOD POETRY (criticism)

This study presents an episodic history of an epic period in British poetry, when bad times forced political subversion and textual impaction upon its central figures and provisional institutions. Episodes cover the Poetry Wars of the 1970s; the centrality of Bob Cobbing as poetry activist and the SubVoicive poetry scene in 1980s London; he also writes individual chapters on the poetry and poetics of Allen Fisher, Tom Raworth, Iain Sinclair, John Hall, Ken Edwards, and Maggie O’Sullivan.

“A landmark study.” -Benjamin Keatinge reviewing The Poetry of Saying in The European English Messenger

Order from the Shearsman online store and read more at:
http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/catalog/2011/sheppardWBT.html
Order from amazon.co.uk
Order from The Book Depository

( the sixteenth letter )

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“is a monthly serialized, interweb archive of creative, heterodox texts & provocative, culturally relevant critiques, commentaries, interviews & podcasts on 21st century motifs, figures, films, literature, images & music — aimed to oppose, resist & upend any & every traditionally neutered, perpetually homogenized, mainstream objective”

More here.

Maintenant #47: Anatol Knotek

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Following in the footsteps of some of Europe’s greatest poetic innovators in the 20th century, the work of Anatol Knotek is the latest chapter in the visual / concrete / conceptual poetry legacy that has emerged from Austria, and most specifically, the city of Vienna. It is often suggested that concrete and visual poetry reached it’s apex in the 1950’s to 1970’s and since then has declined somehow. It is probably true that the vitality and power of the original movement, (led, outside of Austria, by the likes of Bob Cobbing, the de Campos brothers, Henri Chopin, Edwin Morgan, Andras Petocz, Shimpei Kusano…) could not be sustained and attention from a wider readership waned. However, it is clear when poets as young as Knotek produce work of this superlative quality the medium is not lacking, it is in resurgence and rather some of the very best poetry in Europe is part of this tradition. At it’s forefront sits Knotek and we are pleased to present a poetic artist whose work will no doubt become a focal part of the European poetic landscape for years to come.

Accompanying the interview are eight of Anatol’s poems

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/eight-poems-anatol-knotek/

Allen Ginsberg and the story of Howl

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Special Edition is pleased to present an evening exploring the groundbreaking poem by the luminary of the Beat generation. This event, celebrating the release of the film Howl later in the month, includes a reading of the poem and a talk on Ginsberg and the Beats.

Admission free but space is limited, so arrive early to avoid disappointment. To guarantee a place email specialedition@poetrylibrary.org.uk

More here. Via Steven Fowler.

Maintenant #46 – Holly Pester

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Perhaps other than the rarefied skill of performance, originality might be the hardest attribute to find in contemporary poetry. The ability to engender an audience to one’s work without appearing reluctant or melodramatic or trite is a trait often located in the poet’s personal dedication and consideration. Originality is perhaps harder to explicate, given the nature of its newness. These characteristics are what define the work of Holly Pester, and the experience of seeing or hearing her perform leaves an indelible impression on the viewer that they are witnessing a deeply gifted poet, one who it would seem will lead the way in the UK in the near future and beyond. Her work is incisive and wise, unpretentious yet sophisticated. She is without posture or affectation and still her urbane performances entrap and captivate audiences, their exploration of tonality, voice, volume and sound forcing a profound concentration on the potentialities of everyday language, whether that is a potential for oppression or amusement. Truly representative of what we hope to advocate in the Maintenant series, the 46th edition of the series – Holly Pester.

Accompanying the interview are soundfiles of two of her poems and Holly’s reading for Maintenant at the Icelandic embassy.

Maintenant #45 – Aleš Šteger

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Undeniably one of the most engaging and enjoyable poets currently writing in Europe, Aleš Šteger is a cultivated and often brilliant poet whose work demands rereading for its fluency and lumination. He maintains an air of philosophical sophistication while imbuing his work with a laconic satire and aberrant minimalism that makes it distinct in the memory. A leading light in the rich Slovenian poetry community, we are very pleased to introduce Aleš Šteger as Maintenant edition Forty Five.

Accompanying the interview are nine of his poems.

Special thanks to Jan Wagner for his assistance with this interview.

http://soundcloud.com/maintenant

Reillumination #5 – Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

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The fifth of the bi-monthly article series with Nthposition.com focused on unjustly overlooked European poets.
This edition is focused on the German Dadaist icon Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

Also featured, three poems by Freytag-Loringhoven


Reillumination #1 – Gunnar Ekelöf http://www.nthposition.com/amiracleworkingicon.php
Reillumination #2 – Daniil Kharms  http://www.nthposition.com/reilluminationii.php
Reillumination #3 – Kostas Ouranis  http://www.nthposition.com/reilluminationiiikostas.php
Reillumination #4 – Lucian Blaga  http://www.nthposition.com/reilluminationsiv.php

Openned Zine #4

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  • Mackenzie Carignan & Marthe Reed on The Dusie Kollektiv
  • Tony Trehy exploring the possibilities for Text Festival 2011
  • Will Montgomery describing POLYply
  • Posie Rider’s guide to poetry in Edinburgh
  • Arabella Currie & Thomas Graham explaining halfcircle
  • Sara Wintz outlining poetry in New York
  • Tom Jenks telling us what zimZalla is
  • Steven Fowler describing the Maintenant series and outlining The Workshop, a new new project on Writers Forum in conjunction with Openned
  • Edmund Hardy reading four lines of poetry
  • Simon Howard describing Department
  • Part 2 of Lara Buckerton’s essay on The eBook Nova

Plus regular features:

  • Bird Puke
  • Bookface
  • Logbay
  • @sinclairinruins* (new)
  • Photography: in this issue, Georgie M’Glug, Nat Raha and Sharon Borthwick

Available in full-colour PDF or an easy-to-print black and white version, here.

Ken Edwards – Millions of Colours

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Crater Press announces Crater 10, Ken Edwards’s Millions of colours:

Millions of colours is the final part of Bardo: forty-nine prose pieces over seven days, a modern rewrite of theBardo Thodol, the devotional work known in the West as The Tibetan Book of the Dead. “Bardo” means an interval or a transitional period. The setting here is the port and old town of Hastings, on the south coast of England. Previous parts of the work in various versions have appeared as Red & green, a pamphlet from Oystercatcher Press (2009), and also in the journals and e-journals Cannibal Spices, Pages, 10th Muse and Veer Away. It is hoped that the whole work will be published before too long.

Ken Edwards is the editor and publisher of Reality Street. His most recent book is Songbook (Shearsman, 2009).

It’s £5; available from www.craterpress.co.uk

Maintenant #44 – Tadeusz Dąbrowski

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Simply one of the most substantial and powerful poets emerging from Europe as a whole, Tadeusz Dąbrowski is a figure who is climbing toward worldwide prominence. An essayist, critic and editor (of the literary magazine Topos) he has authored five poetry collections and won the Hubert Burda Prize and, from Tadeusz Różewicz himself, the Prize of the Foundation for Polish Culture. His poetry has been translated into thirteen languages. Maintenant, as a series, hopes to be a platform in which readers will be able to come across poets who might grow into the stature of their most reputed and iconoclastic forebears. Perhaps with Tadeusz Dąbrowski we have arrived too late. Fundamentally a product of his generation, and quite definitively, the literary culture of Poland in general, Dabrowski’s is a voice both singular and alert, both wry and contemporary. He is a poet who should, and does, speak for himself.

Accompanying the interview are seven of his poems.
Special thanks to Izabela Banasik for her assistance with this interview.

http://soundcloud.com/maintenant

Lee Machell – Drawings & Matches

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Drawings & Matches is a series of drawn studies by Manchester-based artist Lee Machell. Synthesizing elements from a practice that incorporates sculpture, installation, and performative elements in a series of works on paper, Drawings & Matches presents Machell’s experiments with matches as a drawing media, as well as pencil studies of the artist’s sculptural work.

Works such as Bag and Kerbstone (2010) are delicate pencil drawings of Machell’s sculptural works. Stripped of their three-dimensional context, Machell depicts the essential formal characteristics of the original works in a two-dimensional space.

In Bag, a brown paper bag leans against a wall, balancing precariously atop a thin wooden pole. Rendered as a drawing on paper, Bag appears to float without a wall for support, defying gravity as it stands alone surrounded by a white mass of paper.

Kerbstone is a sculpture divided by a charred suture of marks, a horizontal line left by the ignition of adjoining matches. As a pencil drawing on paper, Kerbstone is removed from its context as a floor-based sculpture.

Machell’s use of matches to delineate various found objects is a process developed in site-specific works in which the residuum of a line of matches set ablaze creates an ephemeral vestige to a process conditioned by its impermanence. In Drawings & Matches, Machell arranges matches around quotidian, mass-produced objects such as an audio cassette and scales, and construction waste such as a piece of tarmac and eroded concrete. A thunderous riot of sparks on paper results in corpse-like traces, an asymmetric negative space framed by scorched shadows:

Lee Machell studied at the University of Salford, where he received his BA (Hons) Visual Arts in 2005. After graduating, Machell’s first solo exhibition, Workings (2006) took place at the Chapman Gallery, Salford. Machell has exhibited in group exhibitions in France, Italy, and the UK. Scheduled for November 2011 is a residency at 501 Artspace in Chongqing, China.

http://www.untitledgallerymanchester.com/exhibitions/drawingsandmatches.htm