Translation Games workshop for TCCE conference

I had a really fun afternoon at the TCCE conference in the swanky Guildhall building next to the Barbican doing a seminar with the brilliant Ricarda Vidal for the Translation games project http://translationgames.net/?page_id=346 (click the link to see loads of great pictures of the day and the work that was written)

 I was a wee bit ill and wonky, though that tends to make me more relaxed and so far more palatable, but the whole of the day seemed so positive and open that it always seemed like itd be a success. This conference is for creative professionals to share ideas, to try new projects, to network, in the best way, and we had a nice group that Ricarda led through the concepts around cross medium translation before they actually had a go at rendering Anna Cady's film back into the poetry from whence it came. I was really positively surprised with the openness of the participants and thought Ricarda did an amazing job. Such a lovely thing to continue my work with Translation Games, long may that grow.

Archive interview at British Library / Seminar interview at St Martins college

Two ephemeral and pleasurable things I've done in the last week, intertwined with two powerful powerful friends / peers. First I stopped off at the British library to speak at length with Hannah Silva, who is working with the BL archives to conduct research into performance in 21st British poetry and other such things. Though it's uncomfortable at times, putting into words my own approaches to work, so much of which is deliberately kept expressionistic and instinctual, for lack of time, and for a desire to keep rooting things in their experience of being made, rather than their result (believing the latter will emerge from the former, if done right, without too much of a heavy editorial hand), the process is undoubtedly good for me. If only to realise where I am heading, and why that is happening. We also chatted more widely about performance poetry, and my dislike of it. Hannah is such a remarkable performer, and she has such possession of her ideas, it makes working with her in any capacity a beneficial experience. The interview will be in the library's records until the end of the world apparently.

 Then later in the week I was part of a seminar series for undegrads at St Martins, taught by Diane Silverthorne, whose amazing work Ive got to know over the last few years and who has become a friend and great influence on my reading and dwarfish erudition. We chatted through my root into poetry, and then art performance in front of around 40 students, most of whom were impeccably dressed (St Martins is like a fashion show, so beyond being a trendy enclave, its become something bizarrely retrograde in its futurism. It is often like walking through a successful genetic experiment, some benign social engineering program, where only beautiful and attractive young beings mope about concrete stairwells) and possibly interested, though it was hard to tell until I spoke to them. I talked about audience participation, nearly forced them to participate, then showed some vids of my boxing performances. It was again a funny experience, one where I learned something by being forced to waffle about what I do and am trying to do. The people were lovely, very gentle with me. And it always feels a privilege to be inside an institution like this, if only for a day, to watch multitudes try and inculcate creativity. It also doesn't hurt to realise how old I have become.

Mexico City diario de poesia #2

A frightening amount of the buildings here lean. Seriously lean. The city is built on Tenochtitlan, the city of lakes. It makes towers and churches cut angles. They really love the Minions from despicable me in the city too, they are everywhere. After pancakes, we began the day with Holly's seminar in the CCEMX http://ccemx.org/2013/10/07/poesia-sonora/. A bit of a cautious experiment, as we didn't know who to expect, how many, what their knowledge was of avant garde poetry and indeed whether they spoke English. Turned out, they didn't speak English. Holly did an amazing job considering the seminar was to last four hours. I put my fat palm to my face a bit. She was calm and clear and covered her practise in gentle depth. Miscommunication - technology - error - song - body - code. She played some Mondegreens, some BBC radio (which immediately started talking about Jimmy Saville) from which she's usurped for poems and we finished up with a interactive exercise in symbol led sound poetry. All considered, she was doing a poem, talking to a room of people who for the most part couldnt understand her. But there is creative potential in not understanding, and the final feeling was perhaps more warm and intimate and genuine than it couldve been. Her skill, my seminar is thursday. Haha. Though I did find one of the best childrens books Ive ever seen.
We then were accompanied again by the lovely Ari, el pandarhia, and walked a fair swathe of the city, from the historical centre down the Alameda central and onto the reforma (a massive avenue de avenue), through the Zona Rosa (which is full of gay people and prostitutes apparently but seemed to me like a quaint, upmarket shopping district) and then into the Condesa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condesa very much famed for its trendy ways. We visited the American legion and their English language bookshop http://underthevolcanobooks.com/, which had loads of amazing writers and then doubled a mochacino in a trendy cafe. I left Holly as she was meeting a mate of a mate and walked back to the hotel in the dusk / darkness on the massive glowing streets of the city, music in my ears.
I ate alone in a restaurant, getting by on a day's worth of Spanish and going back to the hotel I bumped into the concierge who had helped on our arrival. Clocking off, we started talking, him with his thick American accent and I bought him coffee while he told me how he was deported from the US even though he was born and raised there, leaving behind his (caucasian - he kept saying this, I didnt ask) wife, while she was pregnant. He has spent a year in Mexico city, never having been there before, working as a busboy essentially, and a month ago his wife gave birth. He hasnt seen his kid. He is going to Juarez tomorrow for a physical (?) to finalise his papers to return, hopefully. I wished him luck. He asked about me, thought Holly was my wife, though said it was weird we stayed in different rooms and insisted he was going to buy some of my books. I told him not to waste his money.