Wordpharmacy readings at the Hardy Tree gallery

The second part of Fjender was as satisfying as the first. Where the event at the rich mix had the energy and the speed of the best of the kind of events I try to experiment with, this, at the Hardy Tree gallery, had all the familiarity, community and intimacy I hope my events always have. It was a genuinely considered and friendly and engaged reading, with the British poets writing new work that responded to Morten Sondergaard's remarkable Wordpharmacy installation and exhibition. Morten is such a sweet man, so so remarkably nice, it was a proud moment to see him touched by the efforts of the readers and the audience, those 50 or so bodies packed into the intimate space. The evening was defined by a series of intense and rewarding conversations with other poets for me, and a lot of whom Id not had read before expressed the feeling that they felt welcome and that there was a noticeable lack of standoffishness or posturing, which is what I want to always be the case. All 8 readings were wonderful, huge thanks to those who made it what it was, and who did so collectively and generously 
David Berridge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb0DUkjvGLo
Claire Trevien https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peVSIUyhu28
Alison Gibb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYa-TltihTA
Andy Spragg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35v4Rp_LvGY
Prudence Chamberlain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8Enn-vUR38
Mark Waldron https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXozGut3-NE

Fjender

I'm very proud to announce Fjender: a Danish Enemies project. Taking place over an entire month, Fjender will feature 3 events, 1 exhibition and over 30 poets. At the heart of Fjender is the visit to London of 3 of Europe's most brilliant innovative poets; Morten Søndergaard, Cia Rinne & Martin Glaz Serup. I’ve been trying to get them to the UK for sometime, and thanks to the Kulturstyrelsen (the Danish Agency for Culture), they are coming, for Fjender, to share their work.

Fjender - March Saturday 15th at the Rich Mix Arts Centre
Venue 2 – 7pm doors – free entry
http://www.richmix.org.uk/whats-on/event/fjender-the-enemies-project-danish-poetry

The flagship event of the Fjender project, featuring new collaborations from Martin Glaz Serup & Peter Jaeger, Cia Rinne & Chrissy Williams and Morten Søndergaard & I. The Danes will also share their own work, and there will be a series of brand new commissions from UK based poets, in response to the concepts and themes of Morten’s amazing http://www.wordpharmacy.com

New work by James Davies, Prudence Chamberlain, Philip Terry, Claire Trevien, Fabian MacPherson and Stephen Emmerson, who will present his Neurolinguasulphate.

This packed evening of avant garde poetry will also feature a collaborative group reading from 13 students from my Poetry School course Maintenant. http://www.poetryschool.com/courses-workshops/face-to-face/maintenant.php

Wordpharmacy at the Hardy Tree gallery
March 15th -31st www.wordpharmacy.com / www.hardytreegallery.com

For the first time ever in London, the remarkable Wordpharmacy will be exhibited for the Fjender project. The Hardy Tree gallery will be turned into a fully functioning poetic chemist’s, a pharmacy for the avant garde poet, replete with stocked shelves, white-coated pharmacist and a near endless supply of word-drugs. Situated just behind Kings Cross St Pancras, the exhibition will look something like this ...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE1rBI06szI

Wordpharmacy reading / special view
March Thursday 20th, 7.30pm, at the Hardy Tree gallery. Free entry

To celebrate the Wordpharmacy exhibition a half dozen British based poets have been commissioned to write, or conceive of, original works that respond to the ideas and concepts of the project. On this evening brand new work from Alison Gibb, David Berridge, Claire Trevien, Andy Spragg, Prudence Chamberlain, Fabian MacPherson & of course, Morten Søndergaard himself will be shared.

Fjender in Copenhagen
April 7th at Ark books. 7.30pm. Free entry.  http://www.arkbooks.dk/

Sharing the work of Peter Jaeger and I, as well as the original collaborations between myself and Morten Søndergaard, and Peter Jaeger and Martin Glaz Serup, a reading will take place in the Danish capital, featuring local poets and accompanied by a short run exhibition of the Enemies project. More TBA. Made possible by Arts Council England International Development fund.

I’m very excited to present this month of events, and for more information on the poets, you can read my Maintenant interviews with Cia, Morten and Martin here: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-52-cia-rinne/
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-48-morten-s%C3%B8ndergaard/
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-30-martin-glaz-serup/

or visit these web pages http://mortensondergaard.net / http://www.lesfigues.com/author/martin-glaz-serup/ / http://www.afsnitp.dk/galleri/archiveszaroum/

Without the support of the Royal Danish Embassy in London, Fjender wouldn’t exist, so special thanks to Kirsten Hansen, and thanks too to the generosity of Kulturstyrelsen (the Danish Agency for Culture) as well Arts Council England, the Rich mix and the Hardy tree gallery.

handlingen is thus - collaborating w/ Lone Eriksen

Lone Eriksen is a Danish photographer of some wonderful capability and skill. She and I met a few years ago before she moved back to Copenhagen, and since then has been a valued link to that city. We first collaborated for Rattle magazine, and then did so again, for our longer piece Brumhold's diary, which took in notion's of photography about photography, novels about novels and which appeared in the following issue of Rattle, and will feature in the Enemies book with penned in the margins.

 Recently we have often been in touch and have collaborated once again. Lone has a photographer's sense of depth and space, and seems to pick up on my methods before I do, and thus was born a project which involved me eating into her beautiful critical commentary blogspace http://theactionisthus.tumblr.com/ and fashioning from it a poem, mulching text to become a new.

 the poem http://theactionisthus.tumblr.com/poem & from Lone on the piece ... 

 "The text, that is written in relation to the artistic work in the blogposts, should be seen as an approach to photography rather than absolute statements. I like the idea of disturbing the curatorial text and wanted to mimic the way that power is distributed on the internet through a textual dialogue. I contacted Steven, who I have collaborated with before and we agreed that he should use the text on the blog to create a new lyrical work. Here I should add, that the title on the blog point to a visual/textual collaboration we did a few years ago, in which the poem that Steven wrote starts out as follows: The action is thus - an icon is painted before us (...)

The poem title what photography is: light, colour and form completes the title of the blog, which now reads The action is thus - what photography is: light, colour and form.

The poem is made up entirely of words and sentences from the blog posts about Qiu-Yang, Gina Zacharias, Boris Mikhailov and Tereza Zelenkova respectively. The textual fragments from the blog posts are highlighted in pink and linked to the poem page. The contrasting colours, blue and pink halt my reading process.  

The curatorial text is cut into pieces, pasted back together and presented in a new lyrical form. Although the poem is also talking about photography it seems to be talking to the senses rather than trying to make sense. It has a mysterious performance quality similar to that of the photograph; I can talk about what the poem is doing, but I cannot determine and fix it's meaning. It's doing depends on the person facing it and the context of the encounter.

If writing is authoritative, then the poem present the curatorial text as staged and ideological. The dialogue between the poem, the text on photography as performance and the artistic works is playful, yet it is a power struggle." 

a privilege to work with such a mind and such an eye www.loneeriksen.com