Enemies Berlin - Feinde with Alessandra Eramo performed at Wortwedding

​​​​​The first of the Enemies projects to venture outside of the UK, Feinde was a conceptual installation and a performance collaboration between Alessandra Eramo and myself. The work took many forms and was a long while in preparation - we met at the Liverpool Biennial 2012, hosted by Mercy's one day Electronic Voice Phenomena symposium, thanks to Nathan Jones. We began a collaborative correspondence of some intensity, and when Alessandra was offered a residency at the remarkable Wortwedding project http://wortwedding.blogspot.co.uk/, she invited me to go to Berlin to produce something that explored what we had been discussing - notions of performative ritual, martial physicality, personal historicity and collaborative conceptuality. We wanted to use different mediums, certainly I'm always keen to learn and expand my practise, so we decided to produce a video installation alongside a performance, and what turned out to be much more than that in fact. 

After spending a week or so in Berlin, I wrote a poem I called Eight Lessons at Wortwedding. It's intention was to be purely reflective to the environment I found myself in, but, as I often do, to use irony, humour and disjunction in syntax to create occlusion in the text. WS Graham was a huge influence on the piece, and it grew into a fat beast of a poem, which again was an intention - I knew I'd be performing it in English and I knew my performance style was one of deluge - so I hoped to swarm the audience in so much Second language that as the performance went on, the abstract sound and voice work Alessandra would be producing would actually become the more concise and sensitive and sensible medium that they could experience. I knew our performance would be by its very nature be muddled (because of our contrasting styles and aesthetics, and because of the short time we had to create it) and a sort of cacophony (because of the three mediums in play - voice, dance, video), so my hope was to accelerate that confusion, to inculcate it. 

Poetry and sound / song / voice doesn't sit well together, and so I wanted to emphasise that, just as the languages of English and Italian / German cannot sit snugly, I wanted to admit that lack from the beginning. Just as our performance utilised an exchange of martial arts exercises (a dance, in fact, a first for me) to begin, so I thought this would be a little bit silly, and hoped for that, because I thought Alessandra and I's physical stature would provide a slightly unsettling aesthetic contrast to the expectation of the performance. While we performed the video installations were also projected behind us. The hope was for the poem, which referred to the very specific happening of the poem often, and to the city in which happening in, to open up into a space which allowed Alessandra to be bold and free with her improvised soundwork. Here is the video of the premiere performance:And here is Our Daily Rituals, the video installation we created, unexpurgated. It's concept was one minute of our daily lives, filmed in the 16 days leading up to my time in Berlin, filmed at the same time of day each day .I think the strength of this exchange is its juxtaposition of aesthetics - that mine is quite offhand, and I hope, ironic and funny and weird, where as Alessandra's is graceful and tailored and artistic. Lobster, monkey slippers and co. are my daily rituals. Also, behind the scenes of our preparations, here are two videos of us prepping and rehearsing for the performance: 
After the performance and my return to London, the work from our collaboration remained on exhibition for the Kolonie Wedding route, a kind of roadmap through the traditionally working class area of Wedding in Berlin that navigates different galleries, performances and artworks. Alessandra and Nicola were on hand to discuss the piece and my poems were hung on the walls of the Wortwedding space. Nicola even reread my First Lesson to those in attendance. 
The collaborative exchange is something I have wholly embraced over the last year or two for the Enemies project and my experimentations with performance and form. It is never easy when you don't have a pre-existing personal relationship with your collaborator, one in which aesthetics, and vitally, humour, is pre-established within your working relationship. It was precisely the boundaries of city / language / nationality / medium / aesthetics / physicality that Alessandra and I did not share that attracted me to this exchange and so it proved to be amazingly beneficial for my own understanding and creative enterprise. It was precisely in our differences that interesting space was opened up, and Alessandra is a erudite, powerful and brilliant artist who brings so much to the process of collaboration which was valuable and interesting. Though not always comfortable, the Feinde work was engaging and that's all that matters. Moreover, my time is Berlin was inspirational, and to link projects like Wortwedding, Corvo records, Enemies, Mercy and so forth, is the kind of work that needs doing, and the reason why Enemies was created in the first place. http://www.weareenemies.com/enemiesberlin.html
my Eight Lessons at Wortwedding being read

recent poets published on 3am

CALEDFWLCH translated into Portuguese by Ricardo Marques


CALEDFWLCH

em
1976
garryfrid
d um rapaz d
e nove anos d
idade descobriu es
ta espada enquanto p
asseava o cão ele en
controu-a na marg
em do rio em gil
ling west g
arry foi dep
ois galardoad
o com uma
 medalha blue peter
 pela sua descoberta
e apareceu no programa uma me
dalha dessas é dada às crianças que
aparecemnoprogramablue
peterincrível foi
a espada
ter também recebido uma medalha

Ramon Dekkers - the turbine from hell is dead

I spent a weekend in Amsterdam in my early twenties training the Dutch style of kickboxing, or trying to before I beasted so bad I had to give up a day early and come home. There's hardly shame in that considering what the Dutch style is famous for - revolutionising the striking martial arts, partially through technical synthesis and partially through unsurpassed levels of pressure testing and sparring in training. What really took me to Holland is the enormous influence of a group of ground breaking fighter who showed the world the Dutch style was strongest. For me and many others,  at the very summit of that special group of athletes was Ramon Dekkers, whose fights I would watch endlessly in the short time I was fighting professionally. His style, mentality and more than anything to me, his technique, made him a legend. He died a few days ago at the awfully young age of 43. Having also trained briefly in Thailand, and knowing how high the standard is there, it remains his greatest testament that Dekkers travelled there to fight in a golden age of Thai fighters and did the near impossible, destroying his opponents. Watch the video and eat leg pies.

new Yannis Ritsos translations from Enitharmon

In Secret: Versions of Yannis Ritsos
David Harsent

In Secret: Versions of Yannis Ritsos

• Paperback • New Titles 
Description:
The Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation for the Winter Quarter, 2012.
Yannis Ritsos (1909–1990) is one of Greece’s finest and most celebrated poets, and was nine times nominated for a Nobel Prize. Louis Aragon called him ‘the greatest poet of our age’. He wrote in the face of ill health, personal tragedy and the systematic persecution by successive hard-line, right-wing regimes that led to many years in prison, or in island detention camps. Despite this, his lifetime’s work amounted to 120 collections of poems, several novels, critical essays, and translations of Russian and Eastern European poetry.The 1960 setting, by Mikis Theodorakis, of Ritsos’s epic poem Epitaphios was said to have helped inspire a cultural revolution in Greece.
In Secret gives versions of Ritsos’s short lyric poems: brief, compressed narratives that are spare, though not scant. They possess an emotional resonance that is instinctively subversive: rooted in the quotidian but at the same time freighted with mystery. The poems are so pared-down, so distilled, that the story-fragments we are given – the scene- settings, the tiny psychodramas – have an irresistible potency.
‘Harsent is one of those rare poets whose work commands attention outside the poetry world.’ – Guardian

http://www.enitharmon.co.uk/pages/store/products/ec_view.asp?PID=570

Lungfull magazine - 20 great books of poetry published in the UK since 2000


Tim Atkins has been writing an annual column for the huge Lungfull poetry magazine for the last 4 years. http://lungfull.org/Recently he wrote a list: 

20 GREAT BOOKS OF POETRY PUBLISHED IN THE UK SINCE 2000 - In alphabetical order
1.       Sean Bonney: Baudelaire in English (Veer)
2.       Amy De’Ath: Caribou (Bad Press)
3.       Steven J. Fowler: Fights-cycles I-XV (Veer)
4.       Elizabeth Guthrie: X Portraits (Crater)
5.       Lucy Harvest Clarke: Silveronda (if p then q)
6.       Ralph Hawkins: The Moon, The Chief Hairdresser (highlights) (Shearsman)
7.       Jeff Hilson: In the Assarts (Veer)
8.       Peter Jaeger: The Persons (information as material)
9.       Kent Johnson: Homage to the Last Avant-Garde (Shearsman)
10.   Justin Katko: The Death of Pringle (Veer)
11.   R.T.A. Parker: From the Mountain of California (Openned Press)
12.   Holly Pester: Hoofs (if p then q)
13.   Jessica Pujol I Duran: Now Worry (Deptpress)
14.   Emily Critchley: Love / All That / & OK (Penned in the Margins)
15.   Tom Raworth: Windmills in Flames (Carcanet)
16.   Lisa Robertson: The Weather (Reality Street)
17.   Sophie Robinson: The Institute of Our Love in Disrepair (Bad Press)
18.   Marcus Sleaze: Hello Tiny Bird Brain (Knives Forks & Spoons Press)
19.   Elizabeth Treadwell: Birds and Fancies (Shearsman)
20.   Jonty Tiplady: Zam Bonk Dip (Salt)

Wortwedding

It's natural, with my interest in European poetry and avant garde poetry, and my engagement with collaboration for the Enemies project that I would seek out opportunities to work and perform with artists like Alessandra Eramo in spaces like Wortwedding, in cities like Berlin.
Alessandra and I met at the Liverpool Biennale and began a particularly intensive and productive exchange or ideas. When she was offered the opportunity to produce something for Wortwedding, which is solely existent to encourage poetry in collaboration with other media, she offered me the opportunity to work with her to create an installation and a performance. The work takes many forms - a video installation which features 16 videos from both of us detailing our daily rituals at a certain of the morning from February 1st to 16th, a performative exchange of martial arts exercises (almost a dance in fact) and indeed a bout of poetical expression, in which I have written a poem and she a piece of sound art.
Wortwedding, founded and curated by Nicola Caroli, is completely unique. Situated in the working class area of Wedding, very much up and coming in Berlin, it is a shopfront in a residential street whose entire purpose is poetry and poetry exhibition and poetry performance. There are no readings here, just exchanges and workshops that are designed to allow people to experience poetry as a medium that does not exclude them. It amazes me that such a space exists, it is unfathomable in London, and Nicola's vision is inspirational, sharing so many concerns of the Enemies project when it comes to the width of our artform and the possibilities of collaboration. http://wortwedding.blogspot.de
Berlin is covered in snow, it is freezing cold and it feels like a particularly exciting time to be here. In many ways it seems to my very subjective experience to be a twin of London, certainly one in which I feel both excited and at home. I have spent my short time here walking huge tracts of the city, writing and trying to clear myself of the normal intensity of London. To be in an enormous cityscape with so much energy which doesn't force one to work at such a pace is a novelty.

My book Fights features in this Vispo exhibition at the Poetry Library


Really happy that Fights, which attempts to synthesise the visual with the written word features at the Poetry Library for the next few months.
This exhibition, curated by David Miller and Chris McCabe, focuses on the ways in which poetry has moved into a visual dimension in work by recent practitioners. In particular, the emphasis is on the way that individual poets have incorporated their writing in or with visual images, or pushed their writing into something inherently visual, either lucidly, vividly or extravagantly. Among those whose work is exhibited are Thomas A Clark and Laurie Clark, Gavin Selerie, Liliane Lijn, James Harvey, Sarah Kelly and David Miller.

Saison Poetry Library at Royal Festival Hall, Tuesday - Sunday 11am - 8pm
Free - 12 February 2013, 11:00am - 14 April 2013, 20:00pm

And How It Goes by Anselm Hollo (I miss him)

Beyond the sadness of losing Anselm Hollo as a human being and a poet, his death has grown into something that continues to have significance for me because in his work I find an intense feeling that he lived how I live, through his writing, but 50 years ahead of me. Obviously there are enormous differences, none more so than he was a finer poet than I'm ever likely to be. Yet his work possesses a sense of place and a sense of humour, and trickery, and darkness, that I seek to possess. I've read so many poems of his in the last week that have made me feel a little overwhelmed that I have been to these places and hope to do these things, in life and in poetry. The people around me whom I love seem to be echoed by those he loves. He seems to have walked London as though it would not be his for long, as I often do. He dedicates poems as I have done. He has energy for new relationships, for endless writing, as I do. Now he is dead, 40 years on from writing these poems that have moved me so. It doesn't make me very sad, just makes me feel the inevitability of life and makes me appreciate how much my life is full of warmth and health and lovely humans, and lovely things, like poem below. For my friends!

And How It Goes 
                                                          by Anselm Hollo (1967)

Zoo-day, today
with the 2 young

"What animal
           did you like best?"
"That man"

She's three, more perfect
            than any future
                           I or any man
                           will lead her to

but now, to the gates
            and wait for the boat
                           by the Regent's canal

we stand in a queue
all tired, speechless

A line from Villon
           sings into my head:
"Paradis paint"
           "A painted paradise
where there are harps and lutes"

Yes and no children
but who say such pretty things
            for me to inscribe
                           in one of my notebooks
with the many blank pages
            marking the days
                           when I feel as forsaken as
                                              balding Francois
      
       who also found
in himself            
                        the need to adore

       as different as my stance is
       here, in a queue of mums & dads
                            down the green slope
                                           to the canal

- when he wrote to the Virgin
            hypocrite, setting his words
                            to the quavers
of his mother's voice

             le bon Dieu
                              knows where he'd left her

At least
                              I'm holding her hand
           she's here, my daughter
                              he is here

                                                       "my son

the lives of poets
        even the greatest, are dull
                        and serve as warnings"

To say this, suddenly
            here, in the queue
                           would no doubt be brave

He's half asleep,
clutching a plastic lion

"The thing is, they could not
           get out of themselves
                           any better than these
who also wait
                                              for a boat
                     - o that it were drunken
                                   on what wild seas -
they didn't
         even try, just griped about it
                        or made little idols
for brighter moments ... "

The boat has arrived
         and there,
                      the elephant's trumpet
                                   farewell

Her weight on my knees
His head on my shoulder
                          here
                            we
                              go

We, best-loved animals
one, two, three
         and as illuminated
         as we'll ever be

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.

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.