Review of Tomas Tranströmer
The Swedish book review commissioned this review of the new nobel prize winner, Tomas Tranströmer, a few months back. Thanks to Anna Paterson Here it is online.
Kaminsky & Co at Oxfam poetry
I had the pleasure of attending one of the regular Oxfam poetry events in Marylebone and took some videos of the readings. Enjoy.
Todd Colby - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4yG4OJkYuA
Khin Aung Aye and James Byrne - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpuS8iycXDI
Annie Freud - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBfh--e3544
Other room preview
SJ Fowler – a preview
SJ Fowler will be reading at the next Other Room on Wednesday 26th October at The Old Abbey Inn on Manchester Science Park. You can read some of his work a the Voiceworks site and much more at hisown site. Or watch a film of him reading at the launch of his collection Fights on Veer Publications.
Preview of Colin Herd to follow soon. Click here to read a preview of Jennifer Cooke.
Camarade publication available to buy
Now available to buy at www.theredceilingspress.co.uk, I edited the booklet and it features an introduction before the incredible poetry of Tom Jenks & Chris McCabe, Holly Pester & Patrick Coyle, James Wilkes & Ghazal Mosadeq, Tom Chivers & Simon Barraclough, James Byrne & Sandeep Parmar, Sam Riviere & Jack Underwood, Emily Critchley & Tamarin Norwood, Marcus Slease & Tim Atkins, Sean Bonney & Jeff Hilson. It's only 5 pounds and its without doubt the best work I've ever edited, the poets have really excelled in showing the potentiality of collaboration and the quality of work being produced in contemporary circles.
Maintenant poetry at "Linguistically innovative €#*@$?!"
"Notes on old new little presses part seven
& parts one, two,three, four, five,six
For a 21st century expanding European generation of poets new international networks are emerging fast. Through, for example, 3:AM Magazine Maintenant and Poetry Kit hub - the internet provides updates on local, regional, and international scenes. Universities have their own creative writing bubbles and old London town has plural exhibition/music/poetry spaces.
Both Norwegian poet Paal Bjelke Andersen and Swedish poet Aase Berg, in recent Maintenant interviews with younger generation British poet Steven Johannes Fowler; seem to suggest, in their individual and distinctive ways that 'innovative', 'experimental' may now be the dominant published poetry in Scandinavia, with small press its mainstream vehicle.
Maintenant: the Camarade project has brought into the picture new collaborative possibilities between English-speaking and foreign language-speaking poets.
New small publishers like The Red Ceilings Press, who've published the Maintenant Camarade mini-anthology as perfect-trim A6 artzine, produce inexpensive limited edition print plus open access screen readings. Working from regional locality it is difficult to envisage this little press and others as new mainstream-in-the-making.
These rough 'Notes on the old new little press' will conclude next post before addition to planned Songs Our Teachers Learn Us, or, Lessons To Be Learnedpublication."
& parts one, two,three, four, five,six
For a 21st century expanding European generation of poets new international networks are emerging fast. Through, for example, 3:AM Magazine Maintenant and Poetry Kit hub - the internet provides updates on local, regional, and international scenes. Universities have their own creative writing bubbles and old London town has plural exhibition/music/poetry spaces.
Both Norwegian poet Paal Bjelke Andersen and Swedish poet Aase Berg, in recent Maintenant interviews with younger generation British poet Steven Johannes Fowler; seem to suggest, in their individual and distinctive ways that 'innovative', 'experimental' may now be the dominant published poetry in Scandinavia, with small press its mainstream vehicle.
Maintenant: the Camarade project has brought into the picture new collaborative possibilities between English-speaking and foreign language-speaking poets.
New small publishers like The Red Ceilings Press, who've published the Maintenant Camarade mini-anthology as perfect-trim A6 artzine, produce inexpensive limited edition print plus open access screen readings. Working from regional locality it is difficult to envisage this little press and others as new mainstream-in-the-making.
These rough 'Notes on the old new little press' will conclude next post before addition to planned Songs Our Teachers Learn Us, or, Lessons To Be Learnedpublication."
Thanks to MJ Weller at http://egnep.blogspot.com/
Maintenant #75 - Anna Auziņa
One of the stars of the contemporary Latvian poetry scene, Anna Auziņa, already established as a classically trained artist, has emerged as a constant and resonant force in Baltic poetry over the last decade. Her work maintains a resolute affinity with the organic and perhaps overtly poetic language of her own personal journey as an artist. Gifted in both fields, her work reveals this creative agility in its imagery and tone. One of the five non-British poets visiting for the Maintenant Camarade event in the East end of London this October 2011, we are pleased to welcome our 75th interviewee in the Maintenant series.
Accompanying the interview are four of Anna's poems.
Maintenant #76 - Kārlis Vērdiņš
One of the most versatile young poets writing in the Baltic, Latvian Kārlis Vērdiņš is a renowned critic and a prize winning poet. Already included in two of the most important anthologies of young poets from Central and Eastern Europe in the English language ‘A Fine Line’ (Arc Publications, 2004) and ‘Six Latvian Poets’ (Arc Publications, 2011), Kārlis Vērdiņš has already begun to establish his legacy outside of Latvia. We are especially pleased that he is one of the five visiting poets to read at our largest event in London yet, Maintenant XI: Camarade. October 15th will see him read along side some of the finest poets in Europe, undoubtedly where he belongs.
Accompanying the interview are two poems by Kārlis, translated by Ieva Lešinska
just two weeks until the big Maintenant event: Camarade!
Poetry Book Society article
http://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/poetry_portal/knives_fists_and_spoons
Huge thanks to Peter Hughes
I hope Alec Newman and Steven Fowler are having a relaxing break this summer. They have been busy.
Earlier this year, Alec Newman's Knives, Forks and Spoons Press was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award for outstanding UK publisher of poetry in pamphlet form. It is easy to understand why. KF&S has been putting out an amazing range of innovative poetry at an extraordinary rate. There is a buzz and an urgency about the whole project which has made it a particularly welcome addition to the British poetry scene. The website is riddled with unpredictability - as well as some enticing offers, such as three books for £10.
The first KF&S pamphlet I can remember reading was by S J Fowler and was the first in his fightsseries. There are now at least twenty of these, each one inspired by a different boxer. The first fifteen have been assembled and published in a single volume by Veer books, in July 2011, under the title fights cycles I-XV.
Maggie O'Sullivan describes this as a dazzling, visceral, proficient, kinetic work. Tim Atkins agrees, saying there are not many books of poetry where you turn the page not knowing what is coming next, but this is one of them.
Steven Fowler was born in Cornwall in 1983. He studied philosophy at Durham, then at the University of London. Somehow he finds time to edit the Maintenant interview series for 3 am magazine, write extensively, study for a PhD in contemporary poetics at Birkbeck, and hold down a job at the British Museum. He has been an employee of the museum since 2007 and its vast holdings inform his recent volume Red Museum, (Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, 2011).
It is difficult to convey the breadth of reference in this book. Perhaps listing a few of the titles will give some idea: a cubic mile is sufficient to contain one hundred billion souls, provided they are packed tightly, 'like anchovies'; the Crusaders treacherously Crucify those taken at Odessa; William of Orange; how to shorten the yard; Tamerlane harvests horses; how to enlarge the Pudenda; Porphyria; The Hospitalier grand master Guillaume de Villiers or Guillaume de Clermont defends the walls of Acre without enthusiasm; Blue cocoon; Pagan depression; the sixth fiddle; Oswald Spengler has a go; Jesus wept; I leave my meals to Neseus.
I feel that this should whet your appetite. Iain Sinclair is impressed too:
A tremendous and persuasive surge of the red and the black: conflicted doctrines, scorched paper. Gothic scripts and plague-year screenplays for an apocalyptic cinema. Death chess. Heretical crusades. Hurt flesh. Fire angels. Madness. A grimoire for a haunted river-city. The poetry lies in the interpretation of malfated woodcuts. It is sinewy, knotted, persistent. And true.
So it has been a year of formidable achievements by Alec Newman and Steven Fowler. Red Museum is just one of their accomplishments, but it is the most startling book of poetry in English to appear this year. I hope they are sitting somewhere sunny, nursing chilled drinks, enjoying well-deserved breaks. But something tells me that they're not.
Peter Hughes' poetry publications include Paul Klee's Diary, Blueroads, Nistanimera, The Summer of Agios Dimitrios and The Pistol Tree Poems. Nathan Thompson writes of it as ‘flickering, intense, innovative and utterly mesmerising'. Peter also runs Oystercatcher Press, based on the Norfolk coast, which has published more than 40 poetry pamphlets over the last three years.
I hope Alec Newman and Steven Fowler are having a relaxing break this summer. They have been busy.Earlier this year, Alec Newman's Knives, Forks and Spoons Press was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award for outstanding UK publisher of poetry in pamphlet form. It is easy to understand why. KF&S has been putting out an amazing range of innovative poetry at an extraordinary rate. There is a buzz and an urgency about the whole project which has made it a particularly welcome addition to the British poetry scene. The website is riddled with unpredictability - as well as some enticing offers, such as three books for £10.
The first KF&S pamphlet I can remember reading was by S J Fowler and was the first in his fightsseries. There are now at least twenty of these, each one inspired by a different boxer. The first fifteen have been assembled and published in a single volume by Veer books, in July 2011, under the title fights cycles I-XV.
Maggie O'Sullivan describes this as a dazzling, visceral, proficient, kinetic work. Tim Atkins agrees, saying there are not many books of poetry where you turn the page not knowing what is coming next, but this is one of them.
Steven Fowler was born in Cornwall in 1983. He studied philosophy at Durham, then at the University of London. Somehow he finds time to edit the Maintenant interview series for 3 am magazine, write extensively, study for a PhD in contemporary poetics at Birkbeck, and hold down a job at the British Museum. He has been an employee of the museum since 2007 and its vast holdings inform his recent volume Red Museum, (Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, 2011).
It is difficult to convey the breadth of reference in this book. Perhaps listing a few of the titles will give some idea: a cubic mile is sufficient to contain one hundred billion souls, provided they are packed tightly, 'like anchovies'; the Crusaders treacherously Crucify those taken at Odessa; William of Orange; how to shorten the yard; Tamerlane harvests horses; how to enlarge the Pudenda; Porphyria; The Hospitalier grand master Guillaume de Villiers or Guillaume de Clermont defends the walls of Acre without enthusiasm; Blue cocoon; Pagan depression; the sixth fiddle; Oswald Spengler has a go; Jesus wept; I leave my meals to Neseus.
I feel that this should whet your appetite. Iain Sinclair is impressed too:
A tremendous and persuasive surge of the red and the black: conflicted doctrines, scorched paper. Gothic scripts and plague-year screenplays for an apocalyptic cinema. Death chess. Heretical crusades. Hurt flesh. Fire angels. Madness. A grimoire for a haunted river-city. The poetry lies in the interpretation of malfated woodcuts. It is sinewy, knotted, persistent. And true.
So it has been a year of formidable achievements by Alec Newman and Steven Fowler. Red Museum is just one of their accomplishments, but it is the most startling book of poetry in English to appear this year. I hope they are sitting somewhere sunny, nursing chilled drinks, enjoying well-deserved breaks. But something tells me that they're not.
Peter Hughes' poetry publications include Paul Klee's Diary, Blueroads, Nistanimera, The Summer of Agios Dimitrios and The Pistol Tree Poems. Nathan Thompson writes of it as ‘flickering, intense, innovative and utterly mesmerising'. Peter also runs Oystercatcher Press, based on the Norfolk coast, which has published more than 40 poetry pamphlets over the last three years.
Maintenant #74 - Ailbhe Darcy
Already considered one of the finest poets of Ireland’s new generation, Ailbhe Darcy has gained international recognition for her vibrant poetry and rapidly growing body of work. Being at the forefront of a tradition as considerable as Ireland’s has required her to maintain the idiosyncracy of her own taste and voice, and though undoubtedly, the lilt of her work, it’s care for being read and for being rhymtical, resounds with the narrative tradition of Irish poetry, it is also true her idiom can be disjunctive, unpretentious and colloquial. More vitally she creates poems that are conceptually often unresolved, an act of humility that sits apart from neat lyricism. Yet it is too far to say she has made a break from the tradition of her nation, and many would say this is the bigger achievement. For the 74th edition of Maintenant, our first Irish poet, Ailbhe Darcy. thanks to Michael Schmidt
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-74-ailbhe-darcy/Accompanying the interview are three of Ailbhe's poems. http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/3-poems/
Art Gallery Bouncer
Patrick Coyle & I reading our collaboration 'Art Gallery Bouncer' at the Soho Curzon cinema mezzanine bar in central London August 2011.
Poetry at Aubin & Wills
A fascinating event held at 188 Westbourne grove, Notting Hill. Thanks to Tom Chivers.
» Maintenant #73: Lidija Dimkovska
The poetry scene in Europe seems, from the vantage of the UK, to be far more fluid and less divisive than that of the UK. This may not be true, but there certainly seems, through the regular festivals, readings, residencies and academic exchanges, a sense of physical communication between poets who traverse many nations, languages and traditions. In the case of a poet like Lidija Dimkovska, we seem to have an individual whose experience is truly pan-Balkan, traversing Macedonia, Slovenia, Romania … but whose reception is continent wide. She carries her influences with a fidelity that makes them invisible within her explicitly well considered and captivating poetry. A formidable academic, a poetic folklorist, a respected translator and an innovative and elastic lyric poet, we are pleased to introduce Lidija Dimkovska as the 73rd edition of Maintenant (and furthermore, we are very pleased that she will be reading at the Maintenant IX event on October 15th 2011 thanks to Literature across frontiers and Arc publications.)
Accompanying the interview are four poems by Lidija translated by Ljubica Arsovska and Peggy Reid
Tomorrow!
Enemies: so many collaborators!
The process of collaboration is intrinsic to what I am attempting to achieve, and over the last year, without design, it has become a fundamental resource of new material and environments which force me to be agile across mediums and projects. Hopefully next year all the collaborations will be collected into a volume, at the moment I am or already haved produced work with Tim Atkins, Marcus Slease, David Kelly, Joel Ely, Mia Porter, Tommi Musturi, Ghazal Mosadeq, Sarah Kelly, RDG Thomas, Jeff Hilson, Patrick Coyle, Drew Millward, Anatol Knotek, Marco Giovenale, Wenjing Wang, Joseph Royce Lewis, Katerina D'Autremont, Edith Bergfors, Lone Eriksen, Eirikur Orn Norddahl, Philip Venables, Ben Morris, Robert Lye, Sian Williams, Matteo Patocchi, Ragnhildur Johanns, Michael Zand & Holly Pester. Some are being published in journals and online.
Covers: episodes 1 to 6
Like collaborations, cover versions are under used and under acknowledged in poetry. This is most likely because poetry is not disseminated like music, via the page and not in audio files, and also because readings are not so frequent. None the less I have initiated a small project to shed some light on the poetry that contemporary poets consider vital to their own work. The first six installments of the Covers project were taken on August 31st in and around Soho and Chinatown. Patrick Coyle was kind enough to film my own, a reading of Bill Griffith on some stairs in the Curzon cinema:
Readings upcoming readings
Voewood festival - August 27th - nr Sheringham, Norfolk - reading with Emily Critchley, Luke Kennard, Christopher Reid and Kate Kilalea http://www.voewoodfestival.com/
Slease book launch! - August 31st - Soho Curzon, London - collaborative reading with the gorgeous Patrick Coyle http://www.patrickcoyle.info/
Aubin & Wills - September 21st - Notting hill, London - reading with Ahren Warner, Nathan Penlington and Mark Waldron
the Other Room - October 26th - Manchester - reading with Colin Herd
Mercy online - November 11th - Liverpool - reading in collaboration with Ex Easter Island head http://www.mercyonline.co.uk/
Minimum Security Prison poetry - November 24th - London - reading with Willey, Atkins, Pester, Coyle, Hilson, Barrett, Emmerson, Irving, Slease etc...
» Maintenant #72: Johannes Göransson
A Swede who is an American, an American who is a Swede. The irrelevancy of the nationhood of Johannes Göransson is never more obvious than in the multifarious and rapacious nature of his work - it calls on traditions too intertwined, too psychological and introverted to make its genesis of much interest. What is of interest is his industry as a translator. As well as being one of the most interesting and acerbic poets and educators currently at large in the US, he is also a vital conduit to the breadth and brilliance of contemporary Swedish poetry. For Maintenant in it’s 72nd guise, the excellent Johannes Göransson
Accompanying the interview is a significant selection from Johannes' most recent publication.
» Maintenant #71: Lies Van Gasse
The exceptional nature of the work of Lies Van Gasse, established, formidable and achieved well before her 30th birthday, is clear to all who follow central European poetry and the figures who are now showing themselves as the future of the medium. Emerging from the vivid and remarkable tradition of Flemish poetry, Lies maintains a focus and an exactitude about her work and its direction that well belies her relative youth. Adept and acclaimed at both more traditional lingual poetry and highly original 'graphic' poetry, her oeuvre is innovative and confident, straddling the finer points of language and art. Our first Belgian poet to be featured in the Maintenant series, Lies Van Gasse is undoubtedly a figure whose prominence will only increase in the coming decades.Thanks to Jan Pollet.
Accompanying the interview are 7 of Lies' graphic poems, translated into English by Trees Van Gasse.