» Maintenant #70: Ilya Kaminsky


Simply one of the few boundless poets on the world scene, and already a centrifugal presence in American poetry, Ilya Kaminsky carries with him the power of the great Russian tradition and the obvious potential to be recognised, in an age where poetry is a reticent presence in the public’s eye, as one of the finest writers of the oncoming century. An activist as well as a poet, his remarkable energy and intellect permeate his earnest, fulsome poetry and his unforgettable, idiosyncratic readings. In an interview which seems typically representative of his generous spirit, Ilya has offered one of the most ebullient accounts featured in the Maintenant series, and we are especially excited to have him read at the next Maintenant event in London, this coming october. To mark our 70th edition, Ilya Kaminsky
with thanks to Nikola Madzirov за многу нешта


To accompany the interview are two of Ilya's poems.


Ilya will actually be visiting the UK and reading at the next Maintenant event in London! On October 15th at the Rich mix arts centre in Brick Lane, Ilya will read alongside Macedonian and Latvian poets and those involved in the culmination of the first Maintenant Camarade project, which sees nine pairings of British based poets reading work they have created specifically for the event, which will be published by the fantastic Red Ceilings press in a limited edition chapbook. http://www.theredceilingspress.co.uk/

The following poets will be reading original work in what should be a truly memorable night of poetry, please do come along!: Sean Bonney & Jeff Hilson / Tom Jenks & Chris McCabe / Holly Pester & Patrick Coyle / Marcus Slease & Tim Atkins / Emily Critchley & Tamarin Norwood / Sam Riviere & Jack Underwood / Tom Chivers & Ben Borek / James Byrne & Sandeep Parmar / James Wilkes & Ghazal Mosadeq

Here are the poets published on 3am over the last few weeks:
Tim Atkins: the Wrestlers Series - http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/tim-atkins-wrestlers/
James Davies: Budgies - http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/james-davies-budgie/

'Fights' poetry book available to buy


My new collection 'Fights' is now available to order from Veer books, and if you're kind enough to nab one, then you can use paypal to order http://www.bbk.ac.uk/cprc/publications/Veer_Publications/Veer040

You can use paypal with the payee address: estaphin@hotmail.com ( Stephen Mooney - editor of Veer) and the book is £9.00 + £0.80 p&p = £9.80

For any questions or for ordering outside of the UK, the contact is at veerbooks@gmail.com




» Maintenant #69: Márton Koppány


Márton Koppány’s opus of visual poetry stands as a remarkable entry into the ledger of post WWII European poetic innovation and expression. Behind him sits a life’s work, denoted by intellectual rigour and brilliance, as he has quietly, but indelibly, edged his medium forward. Producing work of immense quality, consistently, in the field of visual poetry for over thirty years, he has inspired new generations of poets while working from the inside out of his environs in Budapest and with a capacity for profound inflection and wholly accurate understatement (to a level of humorous / satirical reverence so poorly missing from much experimental poetry) he has tackled the nature of his own family history and it’s entwining with the darker days of modern Hungary. His work is thus indicative of the possibilities, and even the necessities, of visual poetry, his fundamental mode one of honesty in expression, led by a suspicion and engagement with the limits of language. Koppány has always maintained an incisiveness that has attracted the plaudits from poets in his field, and his sophicated, intellectual and urbane corpus has rendered him simply one of Europe’s finest poets and an immense contributor to often the most stimulating field of contemporary poetry.

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-69-marton-koppany/

Incorporated into the interview are 13 poems by Marton, selected to display the width and evolution of his work over the last 30 years.


Here are the poets published on 3am over the last few weeks:
Grzegorz Wroblewski - http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/grzegorz-wroblewski-5-poems/
Kristen Stone - http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/kristen-stone-4-poems/

Pugilistica!

This past thursday was the release event for my second collection called 'Fights', put out by Veer books. From writing to publication the book was over 18 months in the making, and I read the first cycle (one of 15) 'Arthur Abraham' at my first writers forum workshop in January 2010. The book is made up of 15 cycles with 9 poems per cycle, so 135 poems in all. Each cycle is an attempt to record or synthesise the life / acts /persona of a modern era boxer in the lexicon of poetry, be it visual, verbal or otherwise.

I have always said that Fights has been my favourite project to work on purely because it needs no internal justification when being written. I love boxing, am enamoured with the sport and watch so many hours of it whenever possible, so the poetry is just a representation of that experience. There is no middle ground, no possibility for posturing, for finding a reason to write each poem. This is probably why the book is so structured, just to find a form to my 'recordings'.

The evening itself was a lovely experience because of the generosity of others, the readers who made it an event and the friends who came to support me.






3 poems on the Red Ceilings

These three poems are taken from my upcoming collection Minimum Security Prison Dentistry to be published later this year by Anything Anymore Anywhere press. Thanks to Mark Cobley, always a supporter of good British poets, for placing these on the Red Ceilings



Herbarium reading

Friday night, the 22nd of July, was the release of the Herbarium poetry anthology edited by James Wilkes. Held in the Urban Physic garden, it was a lovely evening. I took videos of the readings, 35 poets in all, and some of my favourite working in London like Jeff Hilson, Tim Atkins, Marcus Slease, Michael Zand, Chris McCabe, Philip Terry and on and on. Such a unique evening with such great work and the anthology itself was beautiful. Jamie Wilkes did an incredible job and it was one of those readings that seems special because it is so fundamentally unique, wide ranging and justified, it wasn't for the sake of it, the concept was fantastic. It also is a credit to James that he is aware of so many excellent poets, there were many i had never come across before who were real discoveries. http://www.physicgarden.org.uk/


3am poetry editorship!

I am really pleased to say that along with the Maintenant series, I am now the poetry editor for 3am magazine in general. Huge thanks to Darran Anderson, my predecessor, who has helped me immeasurably in the last few years. Here are the poets published on 3am over the last few weeks.


My top 5 poems & summer reads
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/3am-top-5-sj-fowler/
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/under-the-paving-stones-the-beach-1/

Pugilistica

Pugilistica

a literary celebration of boxing

Thursday July 28th 7pm ~ entrance free

Birkbeck Cinema Theatre, Birkbeck College 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD

poetry book launch - SJ Fowler’s “Fights” cycles I-XV published by Veer books

"A dazzling, visceral, proficient, kinetic work. fights runs its combinations in formal excitement and trenchgut force." Maggie O’Sullivan

Lynda Nead, Pevsner Chair Of History Of Art at Birkbeck college presents ‘Stilling the Punch’ a talk & presentation on boxing imagery

Kasia Boddy, author of Boxing:a Cultural History & Senior lecturer at UCL presents 'Save the Public's Soul by Punching Its Face': Modernist Poetry and Pugilism

Tim Atkins celebrates the legendary heavyweight bout between Jack Johnson v. Arthur Cravan in the Monumental bullring, Barcelona, April 1916

Michael Zand reads "The Klitova-Klinchko Kuntador"

Patrick Coyle reads 'The first painting i ever sold was of Muhammad Ali'.

» Maintenant #68: Ulf Stolterfoht


Concepts that may link poets from one nation are as fraught as the idea of nationhood itself. The poet who truly understands the nature of his own beginnings, most often by acquiescing to a conceived misunderstanding, perhaps offers the finest representation of his language and his country. Often only in the trace, the fragments, the shadows and the bunkered leftovers of language and expression can the truly analytical, intellectual and philosophically rigorous poet find safe ground. Thus we come to Ulf Stolterfoht , simply one of the most sophisticated and brilliant poetic minds of our generation, conceivably of any generation. Utterly unique, wise, witty and thoroughly considered, Stolterfoht’s work has been a beacon in European poetry for some time, and his standing has been a lightning rod for many poets he might call his peers. In one of the finest interviews given for the series, we present one of the finest German poets of his generation.

Glitches


Anatol Knotek, one of the most remarkable visual poets in Europe, has been kind enough to collaborate with me recently. We have undertaken two sets of work so far, this is from the second set. Called Glitches, I have been sending Anatol phrases and blocks of text in English and German and he has been running it through a glitching program to produce aberrant visual pictorial code things.


The Blue Bus

Thanks to everyone who came to see me read and who bought Red Museum, it was a lovely night. The normal room above the Lamb pub in Lambs conduit street had been double booked so we read out in the garden. It was interesting, eventually it worked out well, the heating vent adding character to the poetry.


Reading at the New Gallery Peckham


I decided to read some Taxidermy poems, about dead animals, rather than the piece in the Aspidistra magazine that was being launched. It was a lovely evening, my friend Chris Page came to keep me company as I knew no one in the room aside from the magazine editor, Bella, who did an amazing job. This was the first time I had ever been to Peckham, I think. It was nicer than most people's first visit to Peckham.


The work of Joel Ely was in the magazine and on exhibition in the gallery. It blew me away, we have subsequently begun a collaboration. Can't recommend his work enough. http://www.joelely.com/

Backstage at the Wigmore hall

I got to be the only poet to ever perform during the Voiceworks project (normally the poets write and the singers sing, but this time the composer had me reading as well as the singers singing) and so I got to hang out in the performers dressing room awaiting the final performance at WIgmore hall. It was a once in a lifetime experience, to be in a dressing room that only classical singers get to inhabit, being a poet. The status of the Wigmore hall to the singers and musicians was clear and the atmosphere backstage was utterly unique and captivating to me, as it was completely alien to anything I had done before.

My status as a visitor, a tourist, is what made it feel like a holiday. I watched a lot. Lucy hums the same buzzing insect lullaby for hours to warm up, she is going to the Algarve mountains with friends soon after this, hoping not to be butchered in the Portuguese hills. She has a golf club for protection. Vocalisation exercises and instrument warm ups mean nothing can be heard. Everyone is so nervous. No one is close to cracking at all though. A girl has a huge red flower on the strap of his burgundy dress. It is gross but fitting. She has a tiny waist.

There was a last minute panic before we exited onto the stage, the stopwatch is forgotten. Lucy goes mad, Hadleigh is smiling at this. Lucy leaps to the top of the stairs shouting Pete, over and again. She returns laughing a little bit. We are opening the evening. Maybe 100 or more people await but the place seems smaller than I had imagined.

We return back to the dressing room, all has gone well and I can truly relax and enjoy the others fear. A singer smells so nice as she brushes past me, it disturbs. Two female violinists help each other with zipping. I’ve never studied at a music school but in the dressing room I miss my brief visits to the Guildhall this year.

They ask us to tidy up after ourselves, to leave no trace of our being there, as professionally famous musicians are following us in for a performance later in the evening. Half full imposition, no one minds.Everyone still saying how do you feel, it went ok, ok. I take pictures to document the experience but they are poor quality. I don’t belong in the room, as a poet. It has something to do with discipline. I have little of that compared to them.

» Maintenant #61: Marcus Slease


Though the Maintenant series tries not to overstate the importance of the poet’s origin, practicality alone demands an attempt to show the range of European poetries with a representative range of nations. However in actually seeking out those poets creating exciting, original, genuinely evolutionary work, we find many cannot be tied to one single nation – they are migratory, multi-lingual – pan-European if not pan-global. Marcus Slease fits this archetype more than most. By birth he stands as the first Northern Irish poet to feature in our series. However by experience he is a poet of England, America, Poland, Italy, Turkey. Unsurprisingly he is an adroit and worldly writer, defined by his ability to remain elastic and fluid, and utterly unpretentious in his idiom, and yet fulfilling and resonant in his tone. His poetics are extremely contemporary, and yet they seem to maintain the confidence and solidity of time past. A major feature of the current London scene, we are pleased to introduce Marcus Slease as the 61st edition of Maintenant.
Accompanying the interview are six of Marcus' poems.



{Maintenant Slovakia in association with Literature across Frontiers & Arc Publications}
June Saturday 18th 2011 - 7pm - Entrance Free - The Rich Mix arts centre. London
Ivan Štrpka - Mila Haugova - Marcus Slease
Tamarin Norwood - Jonty Tiplady - Colin Herd ...
Slovak poets Ivan Štrpka and Mila Haugova will be joined by a half dozen London-based poets to celebrate the sixth event in the Maintenant series held at the Rich Mix arts centre in London's Brick Lane. As ever, the Maintenant series will advocate a diverse selection of poetic methodologies, ages & nationalities - collecting together some of the most interesting poets Europe has to offer. Further details to follow...

» Maintenant #60: Luljeta Lleshanaku


It is hard to make a case against Luljeta Lleshanaku being the greatest Albanian poet of the modern era. Such is the measure of her work, and her repute across Europe and America. Her poetry reflects her marked humility and reverence for the written word, utterly unique and yet universal in a way that belies the overuse of that concept. Though a child of political exile and marginalization, let alone physical danger, her work remains dignified and singular, and nor does she allow her poetry to be dominated by the issues of her nation, of it’s politics and history. She is a voice that would be recognized as truly poetic in any language, in any setting and this perhaps her most remarkable achievement. A winner of the International Kristal Vilenica prize (following the likes of Peter Handke, Zbigniew Herbert & Milan Kundera) it is wonderful to announce her first work published in the UK will be released this September with Bloodaxe Books, already a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation, and she will be attending this year’s Aldeburgh poetry festival in November . It is honour to introduce the 60th edition of Maintenant, a pioneer of Balkan poetry and a rightfully major figure in the current European poetry landscape.