Enemies: Camarade IV

A thank you to everyone who contributed and attended on saturday night. There were a few hundred in attendance and the performances were inspiring. I’m very happy the Enemies project could begin in such an atmosphere of pluralism and ingenuity, and that everyone is so enthusiastic about the project. Here is the footage from the event: 

Thanks to Ben Morris for his poster design magic, and to David Kelly for his usual help on the night. Gratitude too to the Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Arts Council England for making it possible, and the Rich Mix, as ever, for their generosity.

Ten British poets read from Maya to honour the passing of Anselm Hollo

I really wanted to organise a reading to mark the death of Anselm Hollo, whom I admired so much. This was the feeble gesture I had to settle for, but the readings from these wonderful poets are uniformly beautiful.

The Dark Would is coming

The Dark Would preview event at the Poetry Library last night was as generative and inclusive an event as would be expected for an anthology as necessary and timely as the Dark Would itself. Philip Davenport has poured two years of his life into building a document that should stand for a moment I have been skirting around for around the same amount of time - that is the point where genre definitions between avant garde poetry and art die away and the practise of text becomes the join between what has been previously perceived as two wholly different artforms despite their obvious objective similarity. The conversations I had many years ago with my friend Ben Morris when he lamented how Bob Cobbing had not been on his art degree and I said the same about the immense myriad of sonic artists like Ghedalia Tazartes not being discussed in poetry circles. The introductions I tried to make between those regular on the avant garde poetry reading circuit in London and those who were seen as performance artists or text artists, purely out of my own curiosity and obvious feeling that there was so much that could be shared between the two genres is really now becoming redundant. The inclusion of Patrick Coyle, Holly Pester, Tamarin Norwood, Hannah Silva and others in the recent Bloodaxe anthology speaks to that. Philip has gone a step further, specifically in the world of visual text, and concretely laid down a marker for the future, for the rest of the century in fact. Seeing the book's proof I was genuinely bowled over by it's form and content, it's range and it's ambition. It will be a step toward a sloughing off of the old guards and barriers and a new dialogue, long begun, has an excuse to increase in volume until it is one noise. I'm very proud my work with Anatol Knotek, a great collaborative partner, features in the book, and that I'm alongside so many peers that I admire like Emily Critchley and Holly Pester, as well as those who have been absolutely pivotal in my development as a poet and a person, like Carol Watts, Tim Atkins and Tom Raworth. 

Bled Suburbs with Ryan Van Winkle for his Commiserate project

Ryan Van Winkle is a kindred spirit. Since meeting him in Bulgaria he has become a friend and a collaborator, someone whose energy and spirit is unmistakeable, and someone who has managed to often surprise me with a rare combination of characteristics - dynamism and vociferousness alongside a profound sense of humility and kindness and eagerness for the new. Alongside his myriad of projects he has begun a new venture to do with collaboration, very much in tandem with Enemies, and I'm really delighted to see his work in tandem with a whole group of other writers and artists. For the second issue of his Commiserate series, he has posted one of the many poems we've written, from a work that'll feature in the Enemies book, called The Burbs. http://ryanvanwinkle.com/commiserate-part-deux-sj-fowler

Commiserate Part Deux: SJ Fowler

SJ Fowler: Enemy, friend, bear-lover

As mentioned last month, ‘Commiserate’ is an experiment in poetic collaboration born out of SJ Fowler’s inspiring Enemiesproject. As I’ll be down in London’s Rich Mix on the 9th as part of his ‘Comrades IV‘ line up I thought I’d share one of the five collaborations between SJ & I. Dig into Fowler’s ‘Enemies’ site and I’ll be sure to let you know when his big book of collaborations comes out in September. If the names associated with the project are any indication, it will be a dynamic, challenging publication featuring cutting edge work from throughout Europe.

This month: SJ Fowler

RVW says: I was genuinely flattered when SJ asked if we could make a sequence of poems together. I had no idea what to expect or if I would totally embarrass myself / ourselves in this process. Not only was Fowler generous in his encouragement but he also seemed fearless in a way that was very freeing. I could toss out insane non-sequitors, drop an F-bomb, shift the poem radically and know that he’d run with it. Further, I think we had a genuine conversation though the work – we both stole from our discussions or emails and it was heartening to see Fowler use my own words against me. I can’t say enough kind things about this avant-garde provacatour. I remain inspired by his work and his commitment to the form.

Fowler says: ‘The Burbs is a collaborative writing through of the city space that is not the centre, and so these poems, dotted across the globe, are neither periphery or core. The goal was to leave behind who wrote what, and become poetically annulled, as is appropriate in a celebration of the places people only go to live’.

The Poem Says:

Bled Suburbs

if there is a date to make
what if I arrive injured?
swinging a cane with pleasure, singing
this is all coming together
sighing
a student of Hebrew
a Scot
delayed at the threshold by the English
rewriting / a marsh
that kills an army
blue cross
dark red beef cross family feelings
let’s abandon the discussion in
favour of poetry that is comedy
that is not song
that is what time slows down to
stick a pin in meat
friends

I have a yellow heart
an apple
a burned-out physic Dodge
I can psychic drive
38 dollars and
desert desert desert
a wilderness of mirrors
in my left pocket, no
right pocket, rain
where my right pocket should be
You are right
to ask questions. You are left
turn at the light. I have one
thing I never talk about
another I can’t stop breathing.
What is a name
if you don’t know the eye,
the color red?

so I’m trained now
steven did you know, that even if you
have bad knees and can crouch down,
you can actually lean your torso
forwards from your hips? it’s called
bending over ooo tiny rabbit, i see your moon
but your health is crucial
to the inflatable you can’t resist
puffing air into your chest and pushing
into rain and I only remember
my mother’s maiden name
when they ask, steven did you hear
the shaking keeps you steady
you should know

The Little Magazines Project

The Little Magazines Project is a listing of UK print-based poetry magazines, from 1945 to the present, with selected details of contents for some of the magazines and in a few cases full indexes. It’s a project David Miller developed at Nottingham Trent University, and can be seen as an online parallel resource to the book he wrote with Richard Price (British Poetry Magazines 1914-2000: A History and Bibliography of ‘Little Magazines’, The British Library / Oak Knoll Press, 2006). It is available at http://www2.ntu.ac.uk/littlemagazines/ and I thoroughly recommend you checking out an invaluable resource for British poetic history.

Poems in Beeswax

I submitted poems to Beeswax in 2010. They were taken in 2011. The magazine was prepared in 2012 and now it arrives in 2013. The double issue is an exquisite object.

BEESWAX 7/8: CLICK HERE TO ORDER A COPY
We are extremely excited to announce our first double issue, Beeswax 7/8, which features fantastic poetry, fiction, visual poetry, and visual art, plus illustrations by featured artists Jesse Duquette and Jon Stich. The issue features a double-size accordion-style cover (letterpressed inside and out) and hand-stitched binding.

ISSUE 7 CONTRIBUTORS:
Trevor Calvert • Diana Aehegma • Ajay Vishwanathan • Crag Hill • CC Hart •
Rebecca Eddy • Sarah Layden • Grant Hazard Outerbridge • Bryan Zubalsky • SJ Fowler

ISSUE 7 FEATURED ARTIST: Jesse Duquette

ISSUE 8CONTRIBUTORS:
Steffi Drewes • Hugh Behm-Steinberg • Audri Sousa • Kathleen Lane • Marissa Bell Toffoli • Elliot Harmon • M.J. Nicholls

ISSUE 8 FEATURED ARTIST: Jon Stich

translations in the Spanish by Mario Dominguez Parra on Revista Kokoro

http://revistakokoro.com/incidentesfowler.html

So proud to have had 7 of the incidents of antisemitism translated into Spanish by the remarkable translator Mario Dominguez Parra and published by the fantastic Revista Kokoro journal, based in Spain. Im in great company here, amongst the work of my friend Juan Andres Garcia Roman and translations of Alice Notley in this issue. Mario's immense labour is a really remarkable benefit to my work.

Music for Enemies

While a Voiceworks / Blue Touch paper celebration event is in the works for the Enemies project I thought Id revisit my work with both schemes

anselm hollo obituary by Pierre Joris on his Nomadics blog

In Front of The Boulder Dushanbe Tea House…

… a few years ago, Anselm & Jane, Jerry & Diane, Nicole & me.

Also: a lovely obit by Steven Fowler in 3ammagazine, one para of which goes:

This is a man who wrote through his life – who skewered life with his work, who affirmed his being alive in poetry, and made things new there too. Anselm Hollo was a viking – he looked like one, he wrote like one, and I am told, he often lived like one. He published over 40 books, and untold numbers of translations into and from Finnish, German, Swedish and French. In 2001 he was elected the United States anti-laureate. He lived for 78 years, and for over 60 of them, he wrote.

You can read the whole piece here.

Also, today (Thursday 31st) he Finnish Obituary in  Helsingin Sanomat (the biggest Finnish newspaper), written by one of the editors of the Cultural Section. Anselm is remembered as having been “Finlands link to the Beat Movement in US”. (via Leevi Lehto on FB):

anselm hollo obituary by Tom Raworth

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/anselm-hollo-poet-translator-and-teacher-8473828.html

In a famous 1965 photograph he sits on the steps of the Albert Memorial behind Trocchi and Ginsberg. His hair is dark; his eyes slant. His clothes, as always, are black.

Anselm Hollo was a major poet, a prolific and fine translator and an inspiring teacher. His death is a loss to the world of letters and intelligence. He was born in Helsinki five years before the Winter War into a cosmopolitan and intellectual family. His professor father translated Cervantes, Dostoevsky and Henry James into Finnish, his mother taught music, his grandfather Paul, a chemist, invented the Walden Inversion. A visit to him in Germany as a small child left Anselm the memory of walking past Hitler's Reich-Chancellery. The home language was German. His sister taught him ...

anselm hollo 1934 – 2013

(Image by Alexander Kell – taken in London 2012)

I cannot pretend I knew Anselm Hollo. I met him just last year, in what would be the last months of his life, which ended a few days ago. I witnessed one of the last readings he ever gave, if perhaps actually the very last, at the Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury. I helped organise the reading and I had the chance to spend an afternoon with him. Even if I cannot say I knew him really, I met him, and before that meeting, and I am sure for many years after it, he will have a presence in my life through his poetry. For there are bonds between him and I, and it is my opportunity now, in the wake of his dying, to make them real in the act of a thorough, if primarily private, recognition. This is a man who wrote through his life – who skewered life with his work, who affirmed his being alive in poetry, and made things new there too. Anselm Hollo was a viking – he looked like one, he wrote like one, and I am told, he often lived like one. He published over 40 books, and untold numbers of translations into and from Finnish, German, Swedish and French. In 2001 he was elected the United States anti-laureate. He lived for 78 years, and for over 60 of them, he wrote.

His life was one of breaking new ground, both in the literal ashes of post war Europe and in the redefinition of what poetry might do to us and for us. He also came to stand for the singular role of what a poet might pursue – to evidence a new kind of holistic understanding – as a translator, with a reach beyond single cultures and ‘great’ figures, as an anthologist, who is a collector of specimens and not a accountant of poetries, as an editor, a teacher, an organiser, a friend to poets and a community in himself. He was completely unique in his voice, instantly recognisable, eminently witty, underhanded, profound and disarming. He was gifted in understatement and ethereal profundity. He was prolific and generous. He was a poet’s poet.

And as many of us writing now are the underlings to his achievement, so he dragged with him so much from a past that might’ve otherwise been occluded or lost in the rearranging world of his youth. Finland, always a place of quixoticism, of underappreciated extremes, spent the better part of its modern history under Swedish yoke, and the great scholars of the fin de siecle, like Hollo’s father, rode a wave of pioneering linguistic and cultural reconstruction, of archiving, of repatriation. Hollo was a child of this movement, perhaps the most important literary Finnish traveller who ever lived, for he took this spirit of newness, of cosmopolitanism, of national energy to the world, unable to leave behind the dryest of Nordic wit and poetic noir. Unwilling to let go of his propensity to admire and inculcate mishearings, misspeakings, mistranslations, he offered this gift to poetries in Germany, England, and America. This is a man who moved to Germany during the immediate post war period, then fled to England when it became too stable, and then again ditched London in the 60s for America. This is a poet who spoke his time in his poetry, who chased it down.

Returning from his last trip to his old home in London, where he was amongst some of his finest friends and peers, those who we can now only envy and take inspiration from for their innovation and energy and daring, he faced the kind of battle against ill health that even his near indestructible constitution could not hold out against. His name lives on in the children of his great contemporaries, more than one of them being blessed with the name Anselm, and we should take time in the wake of his death to mark the passing of a generation that began much of what we might hope to continue, so that we don’t err into thinking we are original while in the shadow of those who have done it all before but have just been stupidly neglected, so that we can build on what took a lifetime to produce, and so that we might try to write well, because Anselm Hollo wrote well. He was an immensely good poet and it is a loss to the world and to poetry that he has died.

You can watch the reading he gave in London last year here

I significantly recommend you buy his books.

your friend

By Anselm Hollo.

he said this
he said that
when pressed
as to which
he said nothing at all

in his country the weather
was mostly rainy

he tried to ride horses
they didn’t go or went
too fast

he punched them in the head
he fell off them

he tried to love women
tried to write poems

even his fellow men

their wives their children and cattle
he tried to love

but he didn’t know
how or what was
or was good for him
at all

whatever it was
it kept punching him
in the head to make him
fall off

so he blamed them for it
all of them fellow men women
children cattle poems and horses

many a rainy
day you could hear him
yelling ‘it’s all
your fault’

after that things
were all right for a while
until the next try

dear world renga

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/dear-world-renga/

These poems are the result of a collaborative workshop called ‘Theft Renga’ i ran at the launch of the ‘Dear world & everything in it’ anthology launch, at the Saison Poetry Library, at the Southbank centre, in London, January 24th 2013. Around a dozen poets were asked to rapidly write sequential lines in response to one another, upon a piece of paper passed clockwise around the group, with reference to themes decided by the group and, if needed or desired, with the aid of plagiarised lines lifted from books in the Poetry Library’s collection.

These poems were written collectively by myself, Angus Chisholm, Taniel Yusef, Tim Wells, Iman Sid, Becky Cremin, Dennison Smith, Mitch Albert, James Wilkes, Elizabeth Guthrie and Chris Kerr.

Camarade edition IV

a journey through our daily rituals

Cristine Brache on 3am magazine

a great pleasure to publish Cristine's work on 3am

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/biometrics-cristine-brache/

Poem in Portuguese, translated by Ricardo Marques

http://revistaagio.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/oni-por-sj-fowler.html I recently had the pleasure to meet a remarkable Portuguese poet living in London, Ricardo Marques, who shares many of my pre-occupations, within and beyond poetry. Our worlds overlapped through Ana Hudson's project of offering contemporary Portuguese poets to an English language readership, and I have a sure feeling his work and presence in London will become intertwined with the activities I'm trying to maintain. He has been kind enough to turn his gift for translation towards some of my work, including this poem from Red Museum

ONI por SJ Fowler

ONI

(SJ Fowler, 1983-) 

Os demónios japoneses não têm pernas e são do sexo feminino.

Eu tenho um profundo respeito pela perspicácia da sua cultura.

O espaço da galeria é dividida em quatro, quatro faixas,

braços estendem-se de uma sala circular central,

centrada por sua vez pela onda interna,

a escultura aquática de Onchi Koshiro.

As maravilhas da actual era da arte.

The DARK WOULD - preview event Feb 6th at the Southbank centre

I'm really happy to say on February 6th at the Poetry Library there will be a preview event for the launch of THE DARK WOULD anthology, edited by Philip Davenport. There will be both a physical and e version of the anthology. My work with the Austrian visual poet Anatol Knotek features in the books, along with a discussion between Anatol and I and Philip. Please make it along if you can.

THE DARK WOULD

A preview event for a new, pioneering anthology of text artists and poets THE DARK WOULD, which includes work/interviews from 100 contributors including Richard Long, Fiona Banner, Charles Bernstein, Robert Grenier, Marton Koppany, Elena Rivera, Maggie O'Sullivan, Kenny Goldsmith, Caroline Bergvall, Tacita Dean, Tsang Kin Wah, Tony Lopez, Robert Sheppard, Geraldone Monk, Rosemarie Waldrop and many more.

Join us for a set of readings and a panel discussion by artists and poets. Chairing the discussion and fielding audience questions is THE DARK WOULD editor Philip Davenport, with a select panel. 
Free but space is limited. To book your place email specialedition@poetrylibrary.org.uk

dear world anthology launch at the poetry library

LONDON SE1: Launch Event: Dear World & Everyone In It

The Poetry Library, Level 5, Royal Festival Hall, London, SE1 8XX
Thursday 24th January 2013, 8pm
Free but booking essential, please email: specialedition@poetrylibrary.org.uk

"Join us at the Poetry Library for the launch of Dear World & Everyone In It: new poetry in the UK   (Bloodaxe),  an eagerly anticipated and groundbreaking new anthology. Hear and meet those who are leading UK poetry in exciting new directions; receive a free glass of wine on entry and find out more about what's going on."

The publicity material for the book says:

"Edited by Nathan Hamilton

Dear World & Everyone In It is a ground-breaking new poetry anthology presenting the work of over 60 of the most talented and interesting young poets currently writing in the UK. Chosen by one of the country's leading young poetry editors, inspired by American precedents, and growing out of The Rialto's recent series of young poets features curated by Nathan Hamilton, it is the first British anthology to attempt to define a generation through a properly representative cross-section of work and a fully collaborative editorial process.

By drawing on the poets' own recommendations, this anthology represents more effectively and appropriately a new generational mood - hybrid, playful, collaborative, ambitious, inclusive, cooperative. Less top down, more bottom up, it speaks also of other movements in our world, and even ends up challenging parochial notions of Britishness by including overseas poets who live or work here and who have become engaged and influential in the scene.

Avoiding older, oppositional attitudes, Nathan Hamilton introduces his anthology with an essay describing 'this new generation's hybridisation of two aptly ironic and business-sounding "strains" in UK poetics...taxonomised as "product" and "process"'. His lively analysis juxtaposes modernist approaches with those exploring more traditional modes, hoping to bring some of the pleasures of the former to a wider audience.

Dear World & Everyone In It is an indispensable summary or starting map for anyone wanting to explore and enjoy more of the current UK poetry landscape or seeking to better understand what's going on out there.

The poets included in the book are: Rachael Allen, Andrew Bailey, Emily Berry, Ben Borek, Siddhartha Bose, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, James Byrne, Stuart Calton, Tom Chivers, Tim Cockburn, Becky Cremin, Emily Critchley, Joe Crot, Patrick Coyle, Amy De'Ath, Laura Elliott, Stephen Emmerson, Amy Evans, Ollie Evans, S.J. Fowler, Miriam Gamble, Jim Goar, Matthew Gregory, Elizabeth Guthrie, Emily Hasler, Oli Hazzard, Colin Herd, Holly Hopkins, Sarah Howe, Tom Ironmonger, Meiron Jordan, Katharine Kilalea, Sarah Kelly, Luke Kennard, Laura Kilbride, Michael Kindellan, Agnes Lehoczky, Frances Leviston, Eireann Lorsung, Chris McCabe, Michael McKimm, Fabian Macpherson, Toby Martinez de las Rivas, mendoza, James Midgley, Marianne Morris, Camilla Nelson, Kei Miller, Tamarin Norwood, Richard Parker, Sandeep Parmar, Holly Pester, Heather Phillipson, Kate Potts, Nat Raha, Sam Riviere, Sophie Robinson, Hannah Silva, Angus Sinclair, Marcus Slease, Andy Spragg, Ben Stainton, Keston Sutherland, Jonty Tiplady, Emily Toder, Simon Turner, Jack Underwood, Ahren Warner, Tom Warner, Rachel Warriner, James Wilkes and Steve Willey."

Enemies in Berlin - February 19th collaborative performance with Alessandra Eramo in Wedding

http://wortwedding.blogspot.de/search/label/02%20Februar%202013

The culmination of one of the most engrossing collaborations of the Enemies series will come to a head this February when I'll be working with Alessandra Eramo on a brand new performance. She has been an extraordinary correspondent and is an artist I really admire, so it's very exciting prospect.

RESIDENCY

Alessandra Eramo (IT/Berlin) & poet Steven J. Fowler (UK/London)

“Poetry, Sound, Voice, Object: A journey through our daily rituals”

Presentation of the Residency:

19.02.2013 20:00  ||   Live Performance and Installation

22.02.2013 19:00 - 23:00  & 24.02.2012 14:00 - 18:00 ||  Exhibition

CONCEPT

The ongoing research of sound artist, vocalist and performer Alessandra Eramo explores the interferences between Sign and Voice: writing and sign in their multiple forms, and the human voice as a multi-faceted instrument. Cultural and language interactions have strongly influenced her art, which focuses also on relational aesthetics, action and site specific interventions rather than object-making.

After meeting at the Liverpool Biennial 2012, hosted by Mercy's one day Electronic Voice Phenomena symposium, Alessandra Eramo and London based poet SJ Fowler began a collaborative correspondence of unusual intensity and design. Brought together from across Europe to discuss the new creative possibilities in those art's which approach performance/voice/text/sound/video as one holistic art practise, their collaboration has engaged the full energy of their collective practises, exploring notions of performative ritual, martial physicality, personal historicity and collaborative conceptuality. For Wortwedding, their work will utilise collaborative performance and interactive sculpture alongside a video installation that presents a sixteen day journey through their daily rituals, simultaneously recorded, presented as the heart of a wholly unique and intensive enjambment between two artists whose work together attempts to find shared localities in the compassion of the physical and the gentility of force.

BIOGRAPHIES

Alessandra Eramo is a sound artist, vocalist and performer based in Berlin. She creates text-sound compositions, live performances, videos and installation that have been exhibited and performed in Europe, Canada and USA, among others, at: Italian Pavillion in the World - Venice Biennale, Sonic Circuits Festival Washington DC, Lyd & Litterature Festival Aarhus 2012, Roulette New York,  Festival Bandit' Mages Bourges, Harvestworks New York, Galerie Haus am Lützowplatz Berlin. Since 2010 she is co-founder of the vinyl & sound art production Corvo Records in Berlin. Currently she is conducting her PhD Research at the University of the Arts in Berlin.  Furthermore she is active in educational and cultural programs in Germany.

www.ezramo.com

The residency and performance is being hosted by wortwedding - wortwedding is a space for interdisciplinary and interactive poetry projects, which opened in the spring of 2009 by Nicola Caroli. Artists of all disciplines are invited to explore their art form in connection with poetry. There are exhibitions, residencies, workshops, performances ... wortwedding is also a place of service - at exhibitions, there are actions to participate in residencies and visiting hours, where you can meet the artists. wortwedding is part of the project area network colony Wedding Association. On the last weekend of the month, the project rooms opened and guided tours are available for visitors.

Maintenant #95 - Ivan Hristov

An instrumental figure at the core of 21st century Bulgarian poetics, Ivan Hristov’s poetics are as variable and layered as the modern history of the country itself. As an educator and organiser, Hristov has been the driving force behind the Sofia poetics festival, bringing poets from around Europe to witness and interact with a surging new generation of poets emerging from the city, and as a poet himself, his connection and fusion with English language poetry has produced a unique style and cadence within his output which has gained plaudits from across the continent and America. Another figure in European poetry who conceives of organisation as a responsibility alongside his own practise, we are pleased to introduce Ivan Hristov as the 95th respondent of the Maintenant series.

 

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-95-ivan-hristov/

 

Accompanying the interview are three of Ivan's poems, translated by Angela Rodel.

 

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/ivan-hristov-poetry-room/

Modernism in Bulgaria contradicted the totalitarian doctrine known as “socialist realism.” Even though some scholars claim that socialist realism began as an avant garde offshoot of modernism, the two approaches conflict. This led to repression against many modernist writers by both extremely left-wing and extremely right-wing regimes. Modernism means “freedom” above all, followed by “individualism.” The first stage in Bulgarian modernism is called “individualism.” Freedom and individualism are the two things totalitarianism hates the most. Modernism was marginalized after the Second World War. During the 1960s, due to the partial liberalization of the totalitarian regime in Bulgaria, some modernist writers were rehabilitated and interest in their work was revived. But true interest in modernism began at the end of the totalitarian epoch, when new postmodern literature used the foundation of modernism as its steppingstone.

In the 95th of the Maintenant series, SJ Fowler interviews the Bulgarian poetIvan Hristov.