Reel Iraq poetry - the videos

Friday night's Reel Iraq event at the rich mix was the beginning of an intense weekend. First and foremost I have to recognise the amazing work the Reel people have done and the kind invitation of Ryan Van Winkle and Dan Gorman to allow me to curate an hour of poetry to commemorate the 10 year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. The event was very well attended and the work on display was at times quite special to witness. If I'm honest I couldn't have envisioned the tone of evening being anything but intense, and in fact, it wasn't really, so I felt a little out of sorts. A lot of valuable reflections have been made since the event by people like George Szirtes and Clare Pollard, and I feel what I might add is either too big to say or too didactic to be valuable. Hopefully the videos below speak for themselves, to some extent, though I'm not sure the issue was really touched where it should have been touched outside the readings of a few on the night.  You can view the rest of the videos, including readings from the 3 Iraqi poets in attendance on my youtuuuube www.youtube.com/fowlerpoetry

Man Ray at the National Portrait gallery & poem

An amazing exhibition that has its hand of the period I am most possessed by, certainly in my research. DUCHAMP SCHOENBERG RIGAUT TZARA COCTEAU STRAVINSKY DESNOS ATHANASIOU HUXLEY MILLER MIRO GRIS BRAQUE CREVEL ARTAUD ERNST ELUARD JOYCE DALI SATIE http://www.npg.org.uk//whatson/man-ray-portraits/exhibition.php

& a poem in response, also

 Berberian Developing Fluid

                                                    for e.p.

      Can you believe we were ever strangers?
      I'm leaving you everything
      except my corneas. This blonde turns on
      the local air.
                  Oli Hazzard

 spectacular poems portray
spectacular breasts armtight to a paradise called rainboe land
& men taking the ticket
are noticeably distracted

 thick bones are Watching
the last wet
in London
late 
revenge
who would want to heel the jaw
of this girl who|?> / photograph watched
won't go anywhere

 the quarrel between milk
& ruining my life
happens.

 *

 a little dog I loved drowns in the sink
the horse says fuck it I want to be a seahorse
& runs into the sea.
demonchest of the steppes
makes menace
cruel black dog stop tempting me

Hollo the prophet

Every morning since Hollo died I've read his work (many of his books, but all of the indescribable Sojourns collected poems volume) on the tube, going to woerk, on the central Line. I've already written about how this work has had a profound affect on me, how personal it has become, how I feel his work like a ghost around me in this city. Now starting to read other poets for the first time in what feels like a long time, I have the sensation there are other things at play. This poetry has done something to me poetry has not done before. I don't know what that is. The humour, the trace of Scandinavia is in there. I'm sharing this work with people I really care about and they are feeling it too. Some snippets



whatever these two do
is interesting

round lamps of cells grow
up to lover porridge later

switch then   to sleep now
the flying foxes swarm out
great   its flurry time

watching the spectacle of the money
come to an end
things become clear

the energy of the world has grown tired
of our green &
bumbling

bumbling miniature world tree
in our front room

at times it seems merely a question of how to abdicate

the dashing biologist
“with the looks of a viking”

but really my parents
you were giant white rabbit people

one worries about the future of bears
in public in one house
this is known as a poetry reading
then one proceeds to drink gallons of cider in public
this is known as getting cracked

in love we loaf
munching love’s leaf
it is a fortunate condition
it is a pre-occupied porcupine
going about mother maya’s business

ah  anna bloom
sweet ginger muff

the world seen as a huge inpenetrable
granite arse

el che is dead long live moomin troll

the elephant fell in love with a milimeter

francois villon was beautiful people
   he went around treating people like shit

didn’t marry him ‘only to sleep’
  but does now
            sleep

they drowned my puppies
so I drunk a lot of vodka

there’s none could cure you
                                    of your ignorance
               I mean that’s great
                        we love you as you are

here
      in the upper devonian sea
    life is quiet

tumbleweed
looks like the skeleton of a brain
if a brain had bones

a bear, I thought

not one minute of my life have I wasted

Reel Iraq poetry

http://www.reelfestivals.org/schedules/reel-words-in-collaboration-with-maintenant

In just over a week’s time, on Friday March 22nd at the rich mix arts centre at 7pm, I'll be curating part of the Reel Words event for the Reel Iraq festival, which commemorates the ten year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by evidencing the resilience and diversity of the arts in that country.  The event will feature a diverse spectrum of poets from the UK and Iraq, including Ghareeb Iskander,Sabreen Kadhim, Zahir Mousa, Awezan Nouri. The hour I’m curating will be half of the poetry to happen on that night, from around 7.30 on.

Patrick Coyle / Joe Dunthorne / Caleb Klaces / David Berridge / Jon Stone / Kirsty Irving / Nick-e Melville / George Szirtes

"This special event features Iraqi poetry from Ghareeb Iskander,Sabreen Kadhim, Zahir Mousa, Awezan Nouri with new translations from John Glenday, Jen Hadfield, William Letford and Krystelle Bamford.  Reel Iraq will also present short readings for Iraq from UK based poets including George Szirtes, Joe Dunthorne, Kirsty Irving,Nick-e Melville and Patrick Coyle.  A rare opportunity to hear Iraqi poets, to engage, ask questions and enjoy the riches harvested from translation. Presented in partnership with Maintenant. 
This event is the culmination of the Reel Iraq translation project, began in January 2013 when four Scotland-based poets met their Iraqi counterparts in Erbil, Kurdistan for the first time. They had been invited to present new work at the Erbil Literature Festival but, first, had to create new translations of each other’s work. So, before the festival, our Reel Festivals cohort retreated to the tranquility of the Safeen mountains and rolled up their sleeves. As none of the poets were fluent in the other language, it might be more fair to call these poems ‘versions’ – as each poet brought their own sensibilities to the work while maintaining a loyalty to the original poem as detailed by the poets themselves, live and in person. As such, the work we are presenting reveals not just the original poetic intention but the intimacy of understanding and empathy between poets with different cultures and traditions but surprisingly similar concerns."

Missing Slate published - an interview with Jacob Silkstone

http://themissingslate.com/A fascinating magazine, edited in part by the British poet Jacob Silkstone, emanating out of Pakistan has recently run an issue that features an extraordinary selection of British poets including many I admire like Luke Kennard, Ryan Van Winkle, Caleb Klaces, James Byrne and Anna Selby. The section has an introduction too, from Todd Swift. My contribution is two poems from the Museum of Debt, a collaboration with the photographer Alexander Kell. You can read the issue here http://themissingslate.com/digital-editions/interactive-digital-editions/

 As well my poetry Jacob conducted an interview with me to be found in the issue, the text is below:

Q - In an interview with the Huffington Post, you mention that you ‘believe less than many of [your] peers in the transformative power of poetry.’ Is that a reiteration of Auden’s idea that ‘if not a poem had been written, not a picture painted nor a bar of music composed, the history of man would be materially unchanged’? Is poetry of any importance?

A - I think this notion centres around two ideas; the first is a recognition that while poetry is a profound resource for engaging with the remarkable fact of our existence, and moreover our extraordinary ability to utilise language, it is not a matter of matter. It does not, and should not, ever be considered before our own sense of personal responsibility or ethical engagement in the world. It does not matter next to death, to injustice, to love, and while this may seem obvious (or not), there is much value in it being directly stated rather than implicit acknowledgement. The second thing is that when a poet states poetry is useless, or indefensible, as Hans Arp proclaimed, when one is affirming poetry in the most comprehensive way by being a poet, what is happening is an attempt to affirm an ethical selflessness, a refusal of solipsism, by engaging in a paradox. It is a poet’s way of saying poetry is private, it is for I, and if the reader chooses to engage with that poetry, that is beautiful, but it is never a relationship of entitlement – it is never the poet’s place to say his work is profound, it is never the poet’s place to say it is for the benefit of all. It is a reiteration of the private sphere, poetry as an act that, at its core, involves only one. I would suggest all ethical acts occur in this sphere, that they are constituted by a relationship one has with oneself, one made without witnesses. And I would further suggest the root of all ethics are subsumed in paradoxes, clearly in the Judaic tradition perhaps than our own post-Christian understanding of ethics. This is why I personally choose to write, and read so often, because it makes me happy, yes, because it improves my understanding, and thus my sense of humility, and thus makes me treat people better, with empathy and consideration, but fundamentally because all this happens alone, without any recourse to ambition in its being witnessed and at the expense of the question, is this worthwhile? So I think the reason some poets like Auden and Arp decry poetry somewhat is to emphasise the private nature of poetry and the paradox at its root. And this refutes the proselytising post-Christian, post-romantic mystical theory that surrounds the notion of poetry even now, throughout our education system. This notion that poetry in and of itself is improving and beneficial is absurd, and arrogant. A legacy of victorian educational theory and colonial asininity that alienates children from poetry. Fundamentally, poetry does not improve one by the mere act of its encounter or its objective content. It only offers something to the individual who makes the private and personal decision to engage with it, to make a sacrifice to it, to remove themselves from the public sphere of learning and into the private sphere of knowledge and creativity.



Q - Staying with the Huffington Post interview for one more question, you mention the ‘factionalism’ of the current British poetry scene. How would you characterise those competing factions? Would you say that the emerging generation is more eclectic, more capable of transcending the barriers between mediums and styles?

A - Perhaps it’s better to answer this question by speaking about how I believe the major factionalism of the recent past seems to be changing, and how I firmly believe the dualistic landscape of British poetry is not, and will not, be so categorical in its divisions in the future. Of course, there will always be factions in poetry, and there will always be those who define themselves as independent not because of a method or a strongly held belief but just because they gain status they otherwise would not have. And I must stress the true avant-garde, as I see it, has nothing to do with opposing a ‘mainstream.’ That would be a blindfolded exercise. The avant-garde is defined by its commitment to the new, the original, to philosophically important ideas and engagements, and these need not oppress or combat, inherently, the ideas of others. There will always be those who try to ignore what is new, and push it aside because they perceive it as a threat. Just as there are those who don’t even know such innovative works exists! If the focus is on the work, there is much ground to be found between these unnamed factions, which I leave unnamed for good reason.

I come from an avant-garde tradition, both in my work, my education, my reading and my peers. Some within that fraternity have tried to continue the lame legacy of binary opposites between formal and experimental, mainstream and avantgarde, by passing on their grievances (perhaps valid ones) to our generation. They warned me of the exclusion I would face before ‘maintream’ poetry. It’s a myth. For one of the first Maintenant events I invited poets like Sam Riviere and Jack Underwood to read alongside avant gardists like Holly Pester and Eirikur Orn Norddahl. Not only were poets associated with the mainstream because of the Faber young poets pamphlets extremely well versed in experimental work they were extremely receptive to avant garde poets. Concerns are shared between these battlelines, and I find there is much more that binds these traditions than divides them, in the work anyway. Difference does not mean dislike. If I was a musician, could I appreciate styles other than the one I play? Of course, why is not so with poetry? I think that a global reading taste has for the first time, thrown up ubiquitous points of reference that at some point bind everyone even if they are not direct influences – Joyce, Beckett, O’Hara, Ginsberg, Bukowski...Moreover there is a sure sense that many contemporary poets refuse the model of the disengaged lackadaisical writer and are organising, making their own events, publishing houses, and criticism, which reflects this wider sense of what poetry can be. I am very proud to be part of a peer group that is thus engaged, with people like Tom Chivers, Nathan Jones, Alec Newman, Chris McCabe, James Byrne, Sasha Dugdale, Ryan Van Winkle, Nathan Hamilton, Linus Slug, Alex Davies, Steve Willey, Sophie Mayer and many others. They all write and instigate, they are refusing to allow the future to be dictated from the outside. This is so important in my opinion.



Q - As the founder of Maintenant, the UK editor of Lyrikline and the interviewer for this summer’s Poetry Parnassus, you’ve established yourself as perhaps the most internationally-minded of all contemporary British poets. Where did that interest in poetry from other cultures and other languages originate? Do you support the idea that the poetic ‘mainstream’ is prone to insularity?

A - It’s clearly very important for me to engage with poets from beyond the UK, and this is because my interests are not confined to my own nation, and I would suggest, nor should they be. I am a human being and share that fact beyond citizenship, with other human beings, and I would always hope that my writing and my interests reflect an open, reflexive, inclusive notion of humanity. I have been distinctly influenced by global poetic traditions, I read as much as I can from whatever sources I can and allow that work to permeate throughout my own writings. It might be that this began from travelling, but I hope not, I hope it is just an approach to other human beings which has been channelled through this specific interest at this specific time.

Whether mainstream poets are prone to insularity is very difficult to say, primarily because I wouldn’t quite know who to call mainstream. Without that definition I am on rather shaky ground to make any criticisms. I would suggest perhaps that there will always be people who are prone to insularity in any cross section of society because they are essentially fearful and conservative, and thus insecure. It strikes me that few British poets are keen to have their work translated, and that’s certainly a difference between some of the more innovative poets I know, who, like myself, are active is sourcing foreign language versions of their own work.



Q - Does parochialism preclude a writer from being a major poet? Should Larkin’s contempt of all things ‘abroad’ be regarded as a significant weakness?

A- I’m hardly a Larkin scholar, so I have to venture forward with some caution, but essentially my answer is no, a poet can still be great if they are parochial within a given historical context, but in this case yes, I don’t consider Larkin to be a major poet because his parochialism is often specifically actualised within his poetry and the historical context of his writing and its intrinsic links to his views are in no way justifiable.  Undoubtedly there is much to be taken from his work and there are moments of profundity amidst his writing, but to me, just in my opinion, he is primarily a poet interested in making smug observations about the middle class, flirting with the banal as much as the insightful. It’s not his fault that his poetry has become the defining, somewhat oppressive, style of the day, and his conscious influence has borne a thousand bastard sons, imitators of lesser poet, that continue to exercise their primacy over the current poetical landscape. Just to me perhaps, but it is a surprise his racism and the occasionally fey, bitter whimsy, given over through the litany of writers who have aped him, has not even proven decisive in lessening his influence on every classroom and conspicuous coffee table. I do recognise the reason for people’s love of his work, and do admire elements of his oeuvre, but his presence also blotted out so many other writers who were far more brilliant in their understanding of the world around them through the medium of poetry.

I would suggest that retrospective historical judgement of a poet by modern ethical standards should not impede our appreciation of their work, unless it is implicit in that work to a degree that cannot be separated. But realistically, of course, it affects our understanding of that work in question. If Pound suffers in retrospect, if Hamsun suffers, if D’Annunzio suffers, why is TS Eliot’s anti-semitism not so prevalent in discussions of his work?  And why is Larkin’s racism oft ignored? The letters published in 93 contain some repulsive passages that can’t be excused. We have a responsibility to take poetry in its honest context and not to sweep inconvenient truths under the rug. And Larkin’s racism and right wing leanings and misogyny were part of a general snobbery against translated poetry, poetry from cultures other than his own, that defined a formalism which sought not only to be dominant but to occlude others. This is the real crime to me, as a British poet, that a wholly unnecessary dualism was fashioned out of this conservative enclave of post war ‘major’ poets, which alienated if not buried, the appreciation for the great British modernists of his era like Tom Raworth, Bill Griffiths, Lee Harwood, Anselm Hollo, Alex Trocchi. When you hold Larkin up to those considered the major figures of the European tradition of his time - Brecht, Beckett, Amichai, Brodsky, Milosz, Sachs, Celan, Ekelof, Rozewicz - how does he stand? When he is held up against Ginsberg, O’Hara, Neruda, Paz, Seferis...? I could make a very long list. He wouldn’t be on it, and those who would from the UK, are not known by most.



Q - Do you agree that online magazines have transformed the poetry scene? It seems to be widely accepted that the Internet has democratised poetry, and encouraged experimentalism, but — looking solely at prize-winners and publishing lists at the bigger houses — you could be forgiven for thinking that old hierarchies remain firmly in place. Are we perhaps in the early stages of a long-term shift?

A - I’m not sure if that’s true, there certainly is a shift taking place, but it is not something unique to poetry. The internet changes the means by which we communicate, it opens boundaries at a speed never before possible, but I think it is possibly a misnomer to associate the prevalence of online poetry journals with a rise in experimentalism. We are less tolerant, as a poetic culture, of the new now than we were one hundred years ago. The internet is so democratic that it is almost endless, and thus, while it has the potential to fashion new modes of the poetic, and make dynamic new poets well known, is that really the case? Has any poet become well received because of their presence online? The potential may remain just that. I do think though that there is a change afoot, but that the presence of internet magazines is simply one part of a larger progression. The main reason for the change is probably because the status quo simply isn’t that popular with a new generation of poetry readers. I don’t know anyone of my age, who is interested in poetry, who buys up the latest book by the major prize winners they are already long familiar with. There is undoubtedly the climate for change, if we are active in making it happen and do so without sabre rattling. No doubt the online poetry community will play a part in that change.

Enemies in the North


Since I've been active in UK poetry Manchester has been a succinct, but powerful scene for avant garde work, and has had an immense effect on me and my direction as a poet. One an point to over two dozen amazing poets / performers, presses like knives forks and spoons, if p then q, zimzalla, like this press, carcanet, erbacce, department, reading series like the Other room, organisations like Mercy. More than that there is an absolute lack of posturing or politics, and that has directly informed my curating of the Maintenant & Enemies events. Moreover, this is not motivated by an idealism that is bound to crush under its own weight. It is founded an an urbane sense of humour and an enjoyment of the activity of poetry, as well as the poetry itself. It is s scene without pretension that ensures its own longevity by being both diffuse and exact, by being approachable yet complex. It is driven pu putting people before poetry. I said all this when i read at the Other room - Tom Jenks published my first poem in Parameter magazine, Alec Newman published my 1st collection. My family is actually entirely from the northwest, which is probably why I held it at arms length before poetry brought me back. Now it's a second home.

Enemies of the North - March Saturday 30th at the Cornerhouse in Manchester 
http://www.cornerhouse.org/ - 5.30pm to 9pm in the Annexe room – entrance free
 
A special Camarade event, a day of original collaborations in poetry, sonic art and visual art, celebrating the resurgent energy of the northwest innovative poetry scene. Enemies in the north will also see the launch of Gilles de Rais (by David Kelly and I) & the Estates of Westeros (by Ben Morris and I), two books in boxes, published by Like This press www.likethispress.co.uk  as well as Elephanche (by Marcus Slease and I), a book of poemplays, published by Department presswww.departmentzine.blogspot.co.uk The event will feature:
 
Zoe Skoulding & Robert Sheppard
Richard Barrett & Nathan Thompson
Sarah Crewe & Jo Langton
Michael Egan & Bobby Parker
Steven Waling & Matt Dalby
Adam Steiner & Eleanor Rees
Alec Newman & Ryan Van Winkle
James Byrne & Sandeep Parmar
SJ Fowler & Marcus Slease
Daniele Pantano & David Kelly
Tom Jenks & Chris McCabe
& Ben Morris

Gilles de Rais with David Kelly published this month with Like This press

The first publication of the Enemies series! A book in a box, a sculptural art object - 34 double sided "postcards" (a poem on side, a picture on the other) this is one of the five collaborative projects David Kelly and I have worked on http://erkembode.
wordpress.com/ 

 An interchangeable narrative reflection on the life and legend of Gilles de Rais, this fusion of avant garde poetry and modernist line drawing aims to satirise and subvert the manner in which the monstrous myth surrounding such de Rais is echoed in our own time by Jimmy Saville. This is the disjunctive folklore of idiot's resounding through the ages, from 15th century France to 21st century Britain.

 Like This press, edited by Nikolai Duffy, is a remarkable publishing project which aims to break ground in the form and content of the poetry it publishes. Another credit to the vibrant north west scene, the prolific press has already published some the UK's most interesting poets. http://www.likethispress.co.uk/

 A blog exclusive, here is the 35th Gilles de Rais collaboration between David and I, not to be featured in the book! Click to enlarge the penissses.


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