Unoriginality

“The irony is that The Guardian reading chattering classes – the left-liberals whose tender sensibilities determine the mainstream poetry scene – would rather die than be seen as insular or parochial. But any claims to be “progressive” are certainly laughable when assessed through their literature.”

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Directions by by Robert Fitterman and Steve Giasson

Via Derek Beaulieu:

For Les Figues Press’ fundraising auction, Fitterman offered something called “Not A Thing;” an offer to collaborate on a conceptual text.

Giasson won the bid and together they came up with a text titled Directions where they chart out the various ways to get from Fitterman’s apartment to Giasson’s … car, ship, plan, bicycle and more.

Published in an edition of 60 handbound copies (30 of which are for sale), each copy has handcut BFKRives covers.

Directions is available for $8 (shipping included).

To order, please email derek@housepress.ca

Shad Thames, Broken Wharf

From Chris McCabe:

“My play for voices has just been published by Penned in the Margins, it’s called Shad Thames, Broken Wharf and was performed at the London Word Festival in March this year. It’s a beautifully made mini-book of 48 pages that comes in a limited edition box (200 made) with a free-gift of an item from the Thames (fitting the theme of the play), including Victorian claypipes, pottery, a McDonalds toy, a champagne cork and what looks to me like a horse’s tooth. The play will be performed again at the Bluecoat in Liverpool on the 4th of December. More info and to buy on Penned site here: http://www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk/?p=954

And there’s background text to the whole project here: http://chris-mccabe.blogspot.com.

Soho Curzon Poetry Reading – SJ Fowler – October Wednesday 6th 7pm

A release of five SJ Fowler publications by four presses Zimzalla / Knives Forks & Spoons press / Kitt press / Arthur Shilling press (http://www.zimzalla.co.uk) (http://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk) (http://www.kittpress.com) (http://arthur-shilling-press.blogspot.com) Wednesday October 6th 2010 ~ 7pm ~ Entrance free the Soho Curzon cinema, Mezzanine bar
99 Shaftesbury Avenue London W1D 5DY 0871 703 3988

A unique collaborative poetry event featuring the presence of the four of the UK’s most vital and productive publishing organisations. The event will feature a forty-minute reading from SJ Fowler and a sales table with work from the list of each of the presses.

SJ Fowler is one of the most prolific and inventive young poets emerging in Britain. A formidable reader, his poetry is concerned with the latency of aggression in passive cultures, and the violence of the banal.  A devotee of boxing, his symbolic engagement with the combative arts lends his writing an assailing immediacy. Concurrently antagonistic and innovative, his poetry is distinct and affecting whether spoken or read from the page – Robert Sutcliffe (editor of Kitt press)

Kitt press present Saint Augustine of Hippo

A poetic / pictorial collaboration with the artist David Kelly, the book is a love letter to Augustine’s secular lust and apparently disingenuous commitment to chastity. The fragmented abstract of an Augustine icon permeates the poetry.

The Knives forks Spoons press present Arthur Abraham

Ten poems in celebration of the German / Armenian boxer recall the tonality of epic Anglo-Saxon poetry run through the grinder of avant-garde documentation.

Kitt press present Animal Husbandry

A series of poems written in response to the Rorschach inkblot paintings of Sian Williams. Each is a meditation on the novelty of this psychological test and the supposed inevitability of its response – an invocation of the sexualized female form.

Arthur Shilling press presents Antonio Margarito

A poetry cycle dedicated to the Mexican boxer banned for loading his gloves with Plaster of Paris, the poems evoke Aztec ritual invocations and Beat-esque free verse ecstatics.

ZimZalla presents Klitschko

Zimzalla object number 6 is a boxing poster designed by SJ Fowler in the manner of the Vienna group concrete poets. Mixing heavy blocked type with irreverent commentaries on the nature of punching people in the face for a living.

Maintenant #27 – Zvonko Karanović

Via Steven Fowler:
An interview with the Serbian poet, Zvonko Karanović, the 27th subject of the 3am magazine interview series centred on contemporary European poets.

In an extraordinary interview, Karanovic speaks of his influences, the context of the Balkan wars and his experience of how Serbia, and Serbian poetry, has altered in the countries tempestuous recent history.
Included with the interview is ten of his poems spanning five collections.

Our next Maintenant reading:
Ny Poesi: 3am magazine’s Maintenant interview series presents New Norwegian Poetry at the Rich mix
(35 – 47 Bethnal Green Road, London. E1 6LA)
Saturday September 25th – 7pm – Entrance free
Jenny Hval / Endre Ruset / Paal Bjelke Andersen / Audun Mortensen

A free evening of International poetry and performance from four of the most vibrant and resounding young poetic talents in a grand Scandinavian tradition. Hval, Ruset, Mortensen and Andersen belong to a generation of poets that measure the sophistication of literary poetry with the groundbreaking developments of the avant-garde poetic practise and performance. This reading will feature poets who have already gained prominence for their originality and power, and seemlessly engage the boundaries of what poetry can and should become as we reconfigure poetry as song, as lyric, as art and text.
The event will also see the release of a one off special publication from Knives Forks and Spoons press featuring poetic collaborations between the visiting Norwegian poets and Jeff Hilson, Sean Bonney, Agnes Lehoczky and Sam Riviere.

3 new chapbooks from NO press: Zits, Molotiu/Mallarme, Upton

No press is proud to announce the release of 3 new handbound limited-edition chapbooks:

MASSACRE STREET
by Paul William Zits

MASSACRE STREET is Zits’ avant-garde interpretation of Alberta’s Frog Lake Massacre, created using only primary documents. Zits has created a text which simultaneously disturbs history and language. Produced in a limited edition of 70 handbound copies, $4.00 each

**
THE AFTERNOON OF A FAUN
by Stephane Mallarme (translated, and with an afterword by, Andrei Molotiu)

THE AFTERNOON OF A FAUN is Andrei Molotiu’s translation of Mallarme’s classic text, allowing for swerves in meaning and expansion of possibilities within the form and narrative of the original. Produced in a limited edition of 50 handbound copies, $3.00 each

**
NAMING For Betsey
by Lawrence Upon

NAMING For Betsey is Upton’s latest radical asemic visual poetry score; a radical act of reading and performance by a renowned visual poet. Produced in a limited edition of 40 handbound copies, $3.00 each.

to order copies, or for more details, please email derek@housepress.ca

Ken Edwards reading

Ken Edwards and Harry Gilonis, in the Blue Bus series at The Lamb, 94 Lamb’s Conduit Street, London WC1, in the upstairs room, on Tuesday 14th September, from 7.30. Admissions: £5 / £3 (concessions).

Ken Edwards and Myung Mi Kim, in the Poetry Center series at the Meridian Gallery, San Francisco, Saturday 25th September, 7:30 pm. Admission: $10.

Juan Andrés García Román

Via Steven Fowler:
An interview with the Spanish poet, the first Spaniard to be featured in Maintenant, Juan Andrés García Román, the 26th subject of the 3am magazine interview series centred on contemporary European poets. Four of his poems are also included. An exceptional interview by an exceptional poet.

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-26-juan-andres-garcia-roman

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/four-poems-juan-andres-garcia-roman

We can happily announce that November Saturday 27th will feature our third Maintenant reading in London at the Rich mix centre in 2010. From Iceland we will welcome Ragnhildur Jóhanns / Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl / Bryndís Björgvinsdóttir / Jón Örn Loðmfjörð. As part of the event, the four poets from Iceland will collaborate to produce work with four poets from Britain and we can announce those participants too – Iain Sinclair / Stewart Home / Scott Thurston / Tom Jenks.

The Text of Shelley’s Death

Alan Halsey

reading

The Text of Shelley’s Death

An Optic Nerve CD, 70′ 37″

Recording by Colin Still

£12 post free in the UK. Payment by cheque or Paypal.

The Text of Shelley’s Death was first published by Five Seasons in 1995. The West House reprint, 2001, 84pp, is still available @ £8.95

The Text of Shelley’s Death ‘merely underlines one’s worst fears that the postmodern world view adds nothing to any subject and tends to confuse what we already know.’ Christopher Goulding, Keats-Shelley Review

”I sometimes carry it with me for protection against the spirits who want to steer me away toward death.’ Ronald Palmer, Goodreads

West House Books, 40 Crescent Road, Nether Edge, Sheffield S7 1HN

www.westhousebooks.co.uk

info@westhousebooks.co.uk

Paradigm of the Tinctures

The new ebook from Argotist Ebooks is “Paradigm of the Tinctures” by Steve McCaffery and Alan Halsey. This revised and expanded edition of “Paradigm of the Tinctures” by Steve McCaffery and Alan Halsey revisits the classic humanist idea of the Sister Arts where poetry is understood to be a speaking picture and a picture a silent poem. The revisitation, however, is bluntly revisionary and the result is a fresh text-graphic dialogue. Available as a free ebook here.

Allen Fisher revised itinerary

An amendment to the earlier post. Please note the revised time for The Other Room reading with Maggie O’Sullivan and Jerome Rothenberg on 19th October and that the conferences included in the previous itinerary, at the Royal Geographical Society and at University of Kent, will not be open to the public, but are for conference attendees only. More details on Allen’s New Site here.

24th September, annual autumn lecture, 7.30 pm, Friday

Courtyard Studio Theatre, Edgar Street, Hereford

Love and Beauty: a lecture reviewing the legacies from ancient art and their usage in modern and post-modern painting.
 A conversation about continuity and invention, illustrated through works of art from Roman villas, Renaissance palaces, French Salons and twentieth century galleries. http://www.courtyard.org.uk/whatson/847

6th October, 8 pm, Wednesday

The Complexity Manifold, one of three talks

Poetry Library, Southbank Centre, London SE1

assemblage and empathy: paying attention to poetic composition with regard to aspects of spacetime, catastrophe theory, decoherence and proprioception

http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/events/readings/?StartRow=41&PageNum=5&type=oneoff

13th October, 7.30 pm, Wednesday

The Complexity Manifold, second talk

Contemporary Poetics Research Centre, Birkbeck College,

University of London, Torrington Square, London WC1

reiterates the process of the first talk and develops those proposals through ideas of situation and dislocation

19th October, 6 pm Tuesday

Other Room reading with Jerome Rothenberg and Maggie O’Sullivan

Anthony Burgess Foundation, Engine House,

Chorlton Mill, Manchester

21st October, 7 pm, Thursday

The Complexity Manifold, third talk

Poetics Research Group at Royal Holloway,

University of London, 2 Gower Street, Bedford Square, WC1

27th October, 7.30pm, Wednesday

Openned reading

Corsica Studios, 5 Elephant Road, London SE17 3LG

It’s Nice That

“It’s Nice That curate, publish and direct the finest work and practitioners from across the creative industry. Since setting up in April 2007, we have remained dedicated to staying up to date with studios and individuals and discovering new talent from all over the world, adding to our online archive daily.

itsnicethat.com, has evolved into a well populated and respected online platform, viewed by an ever expanding audience of over 90,000 visitors every month, looking for their daily fix of inspiration and reference. From it’s online home, It’s Nice That has evolved into some broader ventures, including a biannual publication, as well as a curated series of talks and a weekly podcast series.

Alongside publishing regular content, It’s Nice That also run a creative studio. Drawing on their awareness, It’s Nice That art direct relevant practitioners for both big and small companies, helping them speak to a relevant audience.”

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