poem for Chris Weidman

whether legs parallel will sit closely with LEFT hook
that decent dip / switch rather 10th fight over the greatest
ever that has been known because it took you lightly & gladder stoked I AM
LEGITIMATE / not even needing
fucking wrestling to know you can be
too fucking relaxed AS the human tower builds LV
around a dirty bomb & I cannot bell the end
switched / won't back written by jeff lynne
& TOM PETTY on jersey new run in the heat
I find myself screaming AT A COMPUTER ON SUN
morning // off to celebrate haha. you are a artiste
beneath your hands-on-hips im-too-down-to-earth-to-be-outwardly-
-repelling-chris--facade THE WAR IN THE RING
not out A GOOD DAY FOR sipping laps of Wormwood Scrubs / I am sorry again, Im glad the experience was a pleasant one. Ive long since lost the thread of the place's obvious majesty. One day it will return to me and I will consider myself to have been blind.

Fight Music & Silk

A week of seeing my work thrown back at me in forms that utterly supersede my perception of its initial value. First I got to sit anonymously in St Lukes in Old st. and see the work of Philip Venables crescendo with our piece the Revenge of Miguel Cotto. It's been said before but Phili's ability to set music and text is truly groundbreaking and it was such a lovely moment to see our work appear so dynamic and valuable, it made me feel a poet, though Id normally eschew or ignore that feeling. Quite rightly the concert was a laudable success for Phil, whose application to his craft is intimidating. I hope we get to further Cotto. It was a nice audience to be in too, friendly and erudite and I took the time to chat to people afterwards, asking their opinion of Cotto without telling them I was involved in it. All good. Richard Baker conducted the balls off it too.

 Then I had the joy of seeing my old friend Thomas Duggan before he jetted off again, and took possession of our work for the Hardy Tree Enemies exhibition. The glory of the work is not that is utterly unique, made of a material never seen in public before, that it is technologically trailblazing, the future of biodegradable material and has world significance in that, and that it probably cost a fucking packet, but that it is aesthetically so understated it appears before one as a jelly film on black, unassuming and gentle. People will walk past it in the gallery, such is its precision. Little will they know what they are walking past. So precious is it that a framer turned down setting the material, for fear of destroying it. For if water touches the silk, it disappears.

Portobello road pop up shop reading

This was a really enjoyable, relaxing afternoon visit to the Portobello road pop up shop run by Charles Boyle and Todd Swift of CB editions and Eyewear publishing respectively. Charles was very charming, and the books he produces are genuinely beautiful objects. I felt very much a west london poet at home in his presence. Some of the work he has put out, to be found here http://www.cbeditions.com/ is quite iconic and brilliant - Bursa, Apollinaire, Josipivici, amongst others, including this http://www.cbeditions.com/ponge.html which I simply couldn't leave without having. The nature of the enterprise, quite an adventurous one, to stake up a shop full of poetry in the middle of Portobello, meant that passing traffic was not as forthcoming as one would've hoped but the reading was still very much worthwhile and it's always nice to spend sometime in the company of Michael Horovitz, who was as charming as ever.

Enemies at the Hardy Tree gallery

Just days away from the opening night of the Enemies: visual art & avant garde poetry exhibition at the Hardy tree gallery, http://hardytreegallery.com please find below updated listings for all seven of the events, and here, a trailer for the show:


All events are free to attend, and open to the public, as it were. All take place at the Hardy Tree gallery itself - 119 Pancras Road, London, NW1 1UN. All start at 7.30pm. The exhibition runs July 6th to 20th 2013, with the space open for viewing 12-6pm on July 7th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 18th, 19th, 20th.
 
July Saturday 6th – Exhibition opening night:
readings from Iain Sinclair, Ragnhildur Johanns, SJ Fowler - performances from Ben Morris & Marcus Slease, a super8 screening from David Kelly, and interactive asemic writing.
 
July Monday 8th – Voice art
Celebrating the non-lingual in poetry / avant garde music / sound art, sonic landscapes without technological assistance, experimentation in unpure human sound - performances from Dylan Nyoukis, Ben Morris, Adam Bohman, Holly Pester, SJ Fowler, Emma Bennett & more, finishing with an ensemble soundwork. 
 
July Thursday 11th – Mini-lecture Poetics
Short, informal, aberrant talks given by contemporary British experimental poets – Peter Jaeger on John Cage & Buddhism, Tim Atkins on London poetry in the 90s, Marcus Slease on travelling poetics, Chris McCabe on Collaborating with the dead, James Wilkes on Cognitive Neuroscience & poetry & more on the night
 
July Saturday 13th – ‘Dear world & everyone in it’
Readings from the groundbreaking anthology, published by Bloodaxe and edited Nathan Hamilton, featuring Fabian MacPherson, Ahren Warner, Stephen Emmerson, Amy Evans, Becky Cremin, Andy Spragg, Emily Hasler, Sarah Kelly, Ben Stainton & more.
 
July Monday 15th – The Contemporary Poetics Research Centre
A rare academic entity, the CPRC, based in Birkbeck College, University of London is a hub for avant garde poets featuring Dan O’Donnell, Ollie Evans, Mendoza, Dan Eltingham, Albert Pellicer, James Wilkes, Vicky Sparrow, Mark Jackson & more

July Thursday 18th – P.O.W.
Edited by Antonio Carvalho, P.O.W. is a publishing project reigniting the great global tradition of concrete poetry. Readings from Simon Barraclough, Chrissy Williams, Pascal O’Loughlin, as well as other readings including Ryan Van Winkle & others.
 
July Saturday 20th – Closing night: a celebration of art writing
Brand new performances and artworks from Tom Jenks, Claire Potter, Tamarin Norwood & a host of collaborative performances from poets / artists involved in the Enemies project.
 
www.weareenemies.com supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Arts Council England.

new 3am poets - Neiva, Kiely, Stainton

Three new tremendous writers up on 3am, in the poetry section, which I have the privilege to edit. Bruno Neiva, bringing avant garde visuality out of Oporto in Portugal / Robert Kiely, scholar of the CPRC, Irish rebel language masher / Ben Stainton, witty, multimedia understatementist.


Ben Stainton http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/ben-stainton-short-fish/
Robert Kiely http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/robert-kiely-attempt/
Bruno Neiva http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/bruno-neiva-pastoral/


Kingston Writing School 1st International Conference: Pedagogy and Practice: Writing and Higher Education

http://fass.kingston.ac.uk/activities/item.php?updatenum=2496 On Wednesday July 10th I’ll be taking part in a panel discussion on innovative pedagogy in creative writing practise at the 1st International Kingston Writing School conference in the John Galsworthy building of the Uni’s campus. Should be a really interesting discussion, led by the novelist James Miller. Hanif Kureshi will be there that day too. I’ll be reading that night too at 7.30pm, alongside some interesting poets. 

Morphrog publishes Bristol by Patrick Coyle & I

http://morphrog.com/morphrog7/Fowler%20&%20Coyle.html#Bristol 

 Second time up in Morphrog, edited by Jeremy Page, this time they have kindly published my third collaboration with Patrick Coyle, entitled Bristol, which was commissioned as part of the Arnolfini led Enemies of the South event, which was thanks to Jamie Eastman. This rounds off my trilogy of found text work with Mr Coyle. Good to see it on the web page http://morphrog.com/ 


Norway & from last year, reading with Endre Ruset

I met some interesting Norwegians recently, poets and otherwise, got me thinking about this reading last year, which I was very proud of. Not just because I like Endre, respect him too, and that we share some similarities in our lives, but because I lived in Norway before I went to university, lived in Oslo, and the people there took care of me when I needed it, over nearly a year all told, in between less gentle travels. Norway will always be a lofty place in my mind. When Utoeya happened it hit me, and when then I found myself reading this with Endre, it stayed with me. Endre and I wrote together for a bit, but it fizzled. Next year, maybe, another Norwegian poetry thing, we'll see...

Silk & Thomas Duggan

This is the most groundbreaking collaboration I've ever been involved with, and one of the highlights of my career as a writer. All thanks to the remarkable artist, Thomas Duggan, who has been a friend of mine for nearly twenty years now. What he has gone on to achieve professionally is really no shock to me, he was always ahead in his thinking, and somehow he has managed to turn his powerful mode of thought and aesthetic engagement under really strict and challenging, self-imposed, expectations of quality and validity into a vocational life practice that benefits not just himself, not just his peers, not just those who might attend a gallery, or handle an object, but our entire understanding of materiality and form and presence and environment and permanence. It's breathtaking. I feel privileged to have reconnected with Thomas in such a fashion, our artforms fusing, coming together, like our corporality, after so long, into a palpable thing which has a life and legacy all of it's own.

 He has printed a poem of mine in silk – silk fibroin, entirely biocompatible and biodegradable and programmed to disappear, when required, without leaving any trace – it is three dimensional poetry in a revolutionary new material developed using the very latest design technology, that has the potential to realise new environmentally sustainable modes of substance - material never seen in public before. It is actually a world first. Hard to say how much that means to me. The poems were written for Thomas and his work, and now seem a feeble gift in the light of what he has given back to me.

 Come and see the piece on July 6th, at the Hardy Tree gallery in St Pancras London. http://hardytreegallery.com/

Portobello Road pop up shop reading July 5th

http://www.eyewearpublishing.com/about-us/pop-up-shop/ Thanks to the generosity Eyewear publishing and CB editions, Todd Swift and Charles Boyle, respectively, I'm delighted to be part of a project running on Portobello Road, just ten minutes from my door, right on my backyard, on July 5th. 

"Summertime – and though for poets and independent publishers the living isn’t exactly easy, it’s time to come out onto the street and play. Specifically: THE SHOP. For the first week of July, 1st to 7th, Eyewear Publishing is joining forces with CB Editions. We will be taking a pop-up shop in Portobello Road, London: number 201, a block along from the Electric Cinema. We’ll be selling books from our own presses and those of some others (Arc, Five Leaves, Flipped Eye among them, and not exclusively poetry), and there’ll be photographic prints by Ken Garland and other things. And balloons. The shop is essentially a shop, and is hardly the most comfortable of reading venues, but there’ll be events in the evenings and pop-up readings by various poets during the daytime."

The week features friends like James Byrne, Sandeep Parmar, Astrid Alben, Michael Horovitz and many others, please do wander down if you're free, I'll be bringing some books and a buddha box and smashing out some poetry on Boxing and Prisons. 

Imminent Rattle issue 4

http://rattlejournal.org.uk/issue-four/ Edited by Jon K. Shaw and Tom Robinson, anyone who follows journals of repute in London will know the quality of the publication. It has the unusual feature of being scrupulously edited and sustainable through sales and distribution. I have had the privilege to feature in issue 2, and in issue 3, collaborating with the photographers Lone Eriksen and Edith Bergfors. Well now in issue four the amazing magazine is letting me userp space with David Kelly to show out the Rasenna collaboration we did early in the year for an exhibition held in Farringdon. This is the papered premiere of a work that will be central to our Mystics collected collaborations book next year and a fine moment between David and I. Issue four will also be available to buy at the launch event on Wednesday 3rd July, to be held downstairs at the Glasshouse Stores pub, Soho (London W1F 9UL) from 19.00. The editors and many of the contributors past and present will be in attendance for an evening of drink and conversation at the convergence of art and writing. All are most welcome.Full details, including a map, here. Here is me reading the poems on a sweltering night in Farringdon, on an evening full of balls, where people were whooping and clapping and got drunk and I nearly beat someone up. 

the rumbling on the cliffs for another year of Enemies

Plans are really starting to grow for Enemies year two. Whether or not they come to fruition as I hope they will is another story, but for now, some exciting possibilities developing with Danish, Slovakian, Kiwi, Mexican and maybe Swiss poets, as well as possible partnership with Like Starlings, the Poetry Library, Chelsea college of art, maybe an art writing tour, maybe a Scottish thing. I feel a trenchant need to not stay still in the form and shape of poetry events and project, they have to keep changing and I feel ambitious that 2014 can be a year where this really happens in a groundbreaking way. We'll see. If I'm still in England then I hope it happens. Part of that year will also be a partnership with Knives forks and spoons press, one of the most dynamic publishing initiatives that the UK has ever seen for avant garde poetry. We are lucky to have them around, and the Enemies project is very lucky that they will be publishing 3 to 5 new books around our endeavours. 

666 blows, one break at Open Work

If I'm doing what might be seen as art performance, and I'm happy for it to be seen as that, then it needs to be something that I feel is authentic to me. I need to feel an absolute internal assurance that the work is genuine, whatever that means. It might have heavy conceptual ideas behind it, but it can't be founded on them. Otherwise I feel I risk pretentiousness in a way I am not comfortable with, and this because I always feel a sense of exposure and a combative relationship to audiences. This performance, 666 blows one break, is another that calls out my martial arts background, looking to transpose a life practice into a new context in order to make it performative. The piece is supposed to be about a faux vedic ritualism, guttural voice, masculinity turning into emasculinity because of exhaustion and the dance like movement of muay thai pad repetition. All things wither, lose their lustre and decay in one form of another. Hopefully what begins here as shiny, blood covered, pad booming manliness devolves into emptied, failing, exhausted humanity. 

 I enjoyed the experience very much, though so much of it was actualised very late in the day and we had to stay simple to make it work. I owe a huge debt to those I collaborated with on the piece. Chris Page, who trained with me for quite awhile and is a great musician and old friend, was amazing holding the pads, bringing back my mcguffin dragon mask and generally taking the power with aplomb. David Kelly, my best friend and oft collaborator, who created the fundament of the piece with his buddha box soundscape. Robert Hitzeman, who is rapidly becoming someone close to me who I admire very much as an artist and a person, who curated the show along with Mohammad Namazi and Emily Purser

 Moreover, those in attendance were uniformly warm and qualified with their opinions, offering many different interpretations of the piece but all sensing that the work was just a process of transference from the practise of my life into the practise of my artwork, if it is that at all. The work featured in the show was also of a fine quality, a real interesting mix, and the space, at the very end of Kilburn Lane, quite close to my west london homestead, was a unique slightly emptied old leisure centre turned artspace. I was able to walk there and back, enjoying a night in the city with my pads and warpaintbloodbag and little incense elephant. Check out  http://www.openworkproject.com/ this is the first of a proposed series of shows.