Carcanet Press invites you to celebrate the launch of
Collected Poems
by
EDWARD DORN
from 7pm on
Thursday 29th November
Join us for a celebration of Edward Dorn's poetry, featuring recordings and readings by a host of friends and fans. Linked to the Black Mountain poets and The Cambridge School of Poets, Edward Dorn was the author of over forty books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and translation. The evening will be introduced by Iain Sinclair with readings by the poet's widow Jennifer Dunbar Dorn, Carcanet poets Tom Raworth and Elaine Feinstein, as well as Lee Harwood, Tom Pickard, Justin Katko and more at the London Review Bookshop, 14 Bury Place, London, WC 1A 2JL. 020 7269 9030. RSVP toalice@carcanet.co.uk. The event is free and all are welcome. Refreshments will be available.
Click here to order Collected Poems with 10% discount or here to read more about Ed Dorn.
Alexander Kell is a friend. More than the fact that we worked together for awhile (money work) and trained together for a bit too (martial arts), we also just hang around a lot. I give him chips and he then comes to the poetry events to take snaps. These pictures have come to be a record of this time in London, and one I think might be important to me in the future. For the PFPRII event, he indulged me by taking some more snaps of me with friends and people I admire - Michael Horovitz, Marcus Slease and Tim Atkins. I am adorned with the Koto Atkin's designed wolfhood.
http://issuu.com/alecnewman/docs/est_issue_2/1 The remarkable north-west based poet and editor Sarah Crewe has published a really generous review of my collaboration with the poet Sarah Kelly 'Ways of Describing Cuts', in the second issue of the Jo Langton edited Establishment magazine, the poetry magazine wing of the ever brilliant Knives Forks and Spoons press. This small collaborative chapbook has garnered some really positive reviews, which is heartening, considering it's experimental form and tone.
Equus press presents a unique opportunity to witness some of the most exciting contemporary avant garde European fiction authors from London and abroad, representing equally adventurous and groundbreaking 21st century publishing houses, including 3am press, Stork press, Equus and Carcanet. The authors will be reading excerpts from their works.
The Golden hour is a tradition. This is what I discovered spending a week touring with Ryan Van Winkle's capricious enterprise of music, poetry, art writing and I suppose one could say Cabaret. The tradition he is maintaining is one that is far too rare but is fundamentally a part of the avant garde history of performance. When surrounded by artists who work in other mediums, whether through desire or osmosis, their performitivity, their personality of performance affects your own, and rarely does the poet become consistently exposed to that kind of difference. By aligning the spoken word (and I obviously I mean that phrase in its purest sense, not in the sense of the escape clause phraseology used by cheesey motivational speakers who parade as poets) with the epithets of other mediums in one whole, curated by a strong aesthetic hand, there is a lot to be given and a lot to be taken. I had an extraordinary time on this tour. Brighton, Oxford, Bristol, Cardiff and London saw shows both in the confines of a travelling van, a moveable gallery as it were and in venues I had never performed in before, art cafes and bars and such. The intimacy of the smaller shows really forces an adaptation of manner which is a unique challenge, the onus of the poet to become a performer, or at least to present people with something that they can engage with when it is just three bodies in a small space, is interesting. This model was based on an installation work Ryan Van Winkle pioneered at the Edinburgh festival and I glad to have a part in it. The other artists were both warm and humble as well as quite brilliant at what they were doing. Discovering the work of Deborah Pearson and Garance Louis were special highlights of the experience. I was able to adapt the originally commissioned 22 poems I wrote for the tour day to day thanks to immersion of the tour experience and much of what the other artists said and did found their way into my work. The 22 meditations on scent owes much to Bill Griffiths too and his remarkable 'tract against the giants'. I would be lying if I said the fact that the tour was sponsored by a perfume company did not give me pause for thought. The reality was in fact what I was promised. An unobtrusive presence, complete creative freedom and the sense, whether one believes it or not from the outside, that a perfumier is the olfactory artist equivalent to the poet with language. In such an environment as this tour, such concerns have a way of falling away, even if there immediate consideration is vital if one is going to maintain integrity.
I saw the Modern Tower as part of my apprenticeship, as it were, part of my education, to listen to all these different voices and to find out as much as possible. And I wasn’t going to get that from the fucking University, because they weren’t putting on readings; it was as it is now: horribly institutionalised. I think I am a bit of an activist, or certainly have been. I suppose you just have the energy and if you have someone to support you, a partner, that makes it easier. I suppose I was an arrogant bastard and I didn’t like being told to fuck off and I was persistent in trying to get money to keep the thing going. But that wasn’t so difficult when you had the encouragement of Basil and MacDiarmid, who people could appreciate, plus the audiences who were coming, and it was our own place and it seemed pretty much a part of what was happening.
Alex Niven interviews the British poetry revival legend Tom Pickard
SJ Fowler has published four collections of poetry, commissioned original works sonic art, installation, poetry and performance art for a variety of institutes and organisations, performed and been published in countless countries and publications, as well as editing and working on several poetry magazines. Needless to say, he’s a busy man, which is possibly why his works, as we’ve seen them, tend towards the brief. Which is not to say they’re short – more that he cuts straight to the heart of the matter, whether it’s Ryan’s $20 suit, or a twisted whale-tale in just four lines.
For this tour, SJ has been reading from a specially commissioned work, based loosely around the theme of fragrance. We’ve loved having his stylish person around the place, and are super excited to present him at Cafe Kino in Bristol, The Gorilla Bus in Cardiff, and in London on October 27.
Here he is with the gorgeous Garance Louis, who will also be performing in London. As you can see, they make quite the duo.
Bethnal Green road, E1 6LA 020 7613 7498Free entrance for all
Tom Raworth & Avi Dabach
Emanuella Amichai & SJ Fowler
Tim Atkins & Ran Slavin
A ground breaking collaborative exchange between three Israeli film-makers / video artists and three British poets, translating the medium of poetry into the practise of film to produce three original, poetic films, or cinepoems. http://www.richmix.org.uk/whats-on/event/cinepoem/
The aim of the project is to transform the auspices of a selected, single poem into short, conceptual films, that will be screened on November 22nd in London, at the Richmix Arts centre. The event will also feature poetry readings from Tom Raworth, Tim Atkins and SJ Fowler, and a panel discussion exploring the unique nature of poetic / filmic collaboration and the potentiality of poetry as a medium adaptable to film.
The project is designed to show that the potential for poetry to be realised in the narrative of film and film-making may lay the path for a wide future between these mediums, enriching them both in the process. This is the first instalment of the Enemies project, a year long exploration of poetry and collaboration, curated by SJ Fowler, supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation.
Programme of events:
A poetry reading by the poets: SJ Fowler, Tom Raworth, Tim Atkins. - Ran Slavin will introduce a film based on Tim Atkins' poem: ODES I / 32+ODES II /3 - Avi Dabach will introduce a short film based on Tom Raworth’s poem "TAXOMONY" - Emanuella Amichai will introduce a short film based on SJ Fowler's poem :"38 meditations on strong tea" A panel discussion exploring the unique nature of poetic / filmic collaboration
I came across Chen's extraordinary work through the Poetry Parnassus. He was nominated to attend for Taiwan but was unable to do so due to health problems. It was a real disappointment for me, representing experimental work as I did at that festival, to not have a innovator of his stature at the event.
Composite: Feedback was a multimedia showcase and live archiving event curated by Mercy held on October 13th 2012 at the Cornerhouse in Manchester, England. Mixing together poetry performance with live sampling, notation, analogue processing, and projection -- all in one self generating feedback loop, the event was a mix of experimental poetics, where the performers and the array of interfaces were thrown into a productive conflict, and lectures given on themes including noise, violence and composition, featuring poets SJ Fowler, Hannah Silva and Nathan Jones, with video design by Sam Meech.
The gem of British avant garde publishing at the heart of the ever productive North West - Zimzalla bim bim bim! And this one has Tom Jenks on it himself!
Alison Gibb and Tom Jenks - Pomegranates in the Oak : CD sound collage poem with discovered and manipulated text by Alison Gibb and text and sound treatments by Tom Jenks. £3/£5
The object's primary text is Virginia Andrews' 1979 novel Flowers in the Attic, from which Gibb, using instinctive selection and placement, has created a second text. This second text was then replicated sonically using spoken recordings by Gibb of the relevant sections of the original novel, with selected words and phrases isolated and spliced in order, preserving uneven and disjunctive patterns of tone and stress. This sonic collage was then fed through speech to text software to create a third, shadow text, which was recorded and added as a layer to the first track. Finally, a selection of samples, suggested by the hybrid text, were added, with some distortion. Read more at thezimZallasite.
As the Maintenant series draws to a close over the rest of 2012, I’d like also to bring attention to the other poets I’ve had the privilege to publish on 3am in the last year or so I’ve had as poetry editor of the magazine. Some really brilliant work is being offered to the publication, which must be a sign of the quality Andrew Gallix, Susan Tomaselli, Andrew Stevens and many others have fought to make synonymous with 3am in its decade plus existence.
