The Camaradefest was a unique one day explosion of dynamic collaboration in contemporary avant garde and literary poetics. 100 poets aligned in 50 pairs, each writing an original collaborative work, written specifically for the festival and premiered on the day. We feature 4 of the pairs - Marcus Slease & Claire Potter, Stephen Watts & Will Rowe, Julia Bird & Sarah Hesketh, Ghazal Mosadeq & Ricardo Marques - and discuss the thinking behind the process with SJ Fowler. http://www.weareenemies.com/camaradefest.html This episode includes electro-acoustic collaborative works from the EP 'Eye' from Bark Torch. More info at:
The Enemies project presents Erkembode: an exhibition at the Hardy Tree gallery
Running from November 7th to December 1st 2013, at the Hardy Tree gallery in Kings Cross (http://hardytreegallery.com/), the Enemies project is very proud to present an exhibition of the work of Erkembode, 'not just another saint', which evidences the artworks of one of London's most dynamic modernist artists. His extensive engagement with poets and poetry, and his consistent collaborative practise, has made him a fundamental part of the Enemies project. Amongst the many pieces that will be exhibited, there will be a wall of visual translations, responses & collaborations with poets such as David Berridge and Daniele Pantano, amongst others, that will be constantly changing over the near month the exhibition takes place.
Visit http://erkembode.com/ for more information, and two posters for the event are attached. Opening hours are Thursday to Sunday 12pm to 6pm and during the many events, Not just any old saints, that will run throughout the exhibition, beginning with the opening on Thursday 7th November from 7pm, followed by...
Saturday 9th November, 7.30pm- Krampusnacht
An evening of music, performance art and non-lingual poetry from Provokief, Glass Human Penis, Closed Circuits SJ Fowler and Marcus Slease.
Monday 11th November, 7.30pm - Saints on Film
An evening of expanded cinema and experimental film from Josh Alexander, Alex Kell and Erkembode. Plus a showing of William Burroughs cut-up films.
Saturday 23rd November, 7.30pm - Poets as Saints
Event specific poetry by avant-garde poets bouncing around the subject of saints. Poets/saints on board so far are Tim Atkins, SJ Fowler, Robert Kiely, Sarah Kelly, David Berridge and Marcus Slease.Sunday 24th, 11am - Pilgrimage of Saints Excursion
A pilgrimage with Saint Erkembode that begins at the Hardy Tree Gallery, then wander up to the road to see the Thomas Hardy Tree in Saint Pancras Church Cemetery. From there we will walk to Angel to join the canal, walk until Hackney to visit Saint Augustine's tower and then finally to the Pembury Tavern pub.
Please come to support another exciting enterprise that splices contemporary vanguard poetry in collaboration with another equally vibrant artistic medium.http://www.weareenemies.com/
Austrian Cultural Forum - avant garde poetry now!
Sound and Vision: Avant Garde Poetry Now
Caroline Bergvall, Peter Finch and S J Fowler
Thursday 14 November 2013, 7.00pm | Austrian Cultural Forum London Martin Colthorpe, freelance programmer, presents an evening with Caroline Bergvall and Peter Finch, two leading lights in the UK’s avant-garde poetry scene. Join us to hear two mesmerizing poets performing their work in the context of the Art Meets Languageexhibition. Ranging from Bergvall’s language art to Finch’s concrete/sound poetry, the readings will be followed by a conversation and audience questions chaired by the poet S J Fowler, who will also give a short talk on contemporary avant-garde poetics. The event is organized in association with Modern Culture. http://www.acflondon.org/literature-and-books/sound-and-vision-avant-garde-poetry-now-caroline-b/Very excited about this, I'll give a ten minute talk and then chat with Caroline and Peter, please come down to Knightsbridge if you can!
Popescu prize 2013
The Popescu Prize awards are upon us, and I've taken specific interest this year because of the names on the list. Henry Israeli translating my friend Luljeta Lleshanaku (my interview with her - http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-60-luljeta-lleshanaku/), Ciaran Carson > Rimbaud, Ilmar Lehtpere > Kristiina Ehin, Alice Oswald > Homer and my pull for the win Peter Manson's Mallarme! amongst others. http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/competitions/popescu/ The awards night takes place at Europe House, Ill be there
Mexico city diario de poesia #7
The last entry, writing it from England. Sad raining psychologically repressed England. Went to a dead town by a desolate coastline, filled with slot machines, battered chip shops and grown idiots staring at me, the day after my return. A huge mistake. I should've gone away to Spain, or stayed in Mexico. The final day was spent feeling as though it was surreal to leave, that I couldve spent a month, a year, in Mexico city and written something good. Maybe a mirage, maybe it's always polished when you know you're off and every day is packed with new things and new people. Maybe though, there's a difference between the places. We ate our free massive hotel breakfast again, the last time Ill be having quesadillas in the morning, then I went out into the city to meet Ioan Grillo, the remarkable British journalist who moved to Mexico city 12 years ago. Originally from Lewes, I discovered his story and his amazing book Narco some time ago and contacted him out of the blue to see if he would meet me. He did, and I was privileged to spend a few hours speaking with him, plying him with questions about his experiences with cartels and his experiences of Mexico. Consummate journalist, he spent more time asking me questions. The beginning of a friendship I hope and undoubtedly a special experience to mark my last day in the city. www.ioangrillo.com
Holly and I then met up and walked down to Regina again to eat and sit and talk. The hours passed before we did a final circle of the Alameda and the Madero before catching our cab to the airport and flying 11 hours through the night. What can be said about the hospitality, warmth, generosity and energy of those who have gone far out of their way to host and befriend us in Mexico? One of the best trips of my life. Thanks to Ari, Ed, Rocio, Amanda, Itzel, Eliza, Adrian, Jack and many others. I hope to return, soon.
Mexico City diario de poesia #6
We soundchecked, looked after by the amazing staff of the cultural centre, and Ari, from Festival Expandibles, and really sat in the size of the hall, an amazing venue. Ari and I then took to the cathedral square, to get my face painted as a Calavera, to pay true homage to the fact that the performance was taking place on the day of the dead. The family doing the face painting, for 50 pesos, were cholos apparently, a gangster family. The girl who did my makeup couldn't have been more than 10 years old. The show ended up going very well, and certainly left us on a high. There is something shared in the act of performance, and in the act of collaboration, that brings you intensely close to someone, and Holly and I having known each other for years, seen each others work for years, and spent a load of time together, but without ever having collaborated before, meant this crescendo was all the more powerful. Holly was on special form, it was all I could do to keep up with her! So much in that piece, too much to write about, hoping to get the video sometime soon. Suffice to say we covered translations, prisons, ravens, volcanoes, shanties, jaguars, and massive projected sexy pictures of me shampooing my hair amongst many other things.
The audience wasn't huge, but this seems to be in the inverse of the immense Mexican hospitality. If you phone someone on 20 minutes notice they will meet you for coffee and take you around the city or their home, but if you set a date and time, they probably won't make it. None the less many of the people in the city we met and admired did make it, which was amazing. We all went for food afterwards in the cultural centre restaurant where we had been spongeing all week with meal tickets, and then we wandered down to the beautiful Regina street where we closed out our last night in Mexico city in an appropriately buoyant, satisfied, slightly exhausted mood. The day of the dead was over too.Mexico City diario de poesia #5
Days are running out. I actually walked into the restaurant used to people speaking Spanish, or used to me not understanding what anyone's saying. A quieter day, but perhaps the most profound of what has been an immensely human, social trip. Some time to actually explore the city, to realise how enormous it truly is. I walked from the historical centre, down the entire length of the Reforma down to the Chapultepec park, which is a huge complex of forests, avenues, museums and most importantly a zoo. In the last month or so alone I've been to Edinburgh, Bratislava and now Mexico city zoo. An institution which reveals the character of the people of the city. It was day of the dead, the family day, so it was packed with kiddles, but the whole feeling was very respectful towards the creatures. I saw brown, black, ice and Panda bears! and Axlotls. A charmed two hours.
I then walked a ring around Chapultepec, found the avenue of poets, which features busts and memorials to Mexico's famous poets and was adorned with skeleton paraphernalia for the weekend. I cut out of the park and spent a few hours walking south, exploring la Roma and the Condessa. I walked all the way back to the hotel from there, coming back via the Madero pedestrian road and seeing the teeming thousands of families and fancy dressed revellers. The atmosphere was very warm and some of the costumes are truly amazing, and funny. Parents seem to be practising a mild form of child abuse by dressing their young, many babies wrapped in bandages as mummies.
In the evening Amanda de la Garza was amazingly generous to pick us both from the hotel and drive us an hour outside the city to a small town in the mountains to visit a famous cemetary and witness an authentic day of the dead celebration. It was a humbling and moving experience. Winding through the steep cobbled roads of the town we followed an almost hidden path to the cemetary, a place we would have never found in a thousands years without Amanda. The walk to the gates were lined with brightly lit food stalls and joke shops. Hundreds of people were dressed for the occasion, but inside the cemetary, lit by hundreds of candles, with live musicians playing, with families sat around the graves of their loved ones, eating, talking, joking, it felt we had entered something entirely new and yet wholly welcoming. The atmosphere was like the music, upbeat in rhythm, profoundly sad in content. Many sat alone on graves, other families sat around dioramas and flowers and food on the graves. To witness an old couple look on to the grave of their child, covered in toys, left us silent. It's an experience I will remember forever.
On our return we ventured into the carnage of the Madero to see the thousands and thousands who poured into the city centre to celebrate. Some of the costumes were violently gory, others funny, but it was so packed you could barely move. I felt completely relaxed, there was no violence in the air though people had been drinking all day and we let the mass tide of humans carry us on.
Mexico City diario de poesia #4
I was immensely lucky with kind people who attended my seminar. The whole thing was a joy, because they were very warm and interested and English speaking! That being said the Cultural Centre actually laid out a translator with a microphone booth and earphones. Only one person took the translation. He was used to doing political translations, so he said he loved a bit of avant garde poetry for three hours! I just did a little tour of my methods - written work with disjunction, found text, mishearings, write throughs, performance, conceptual work, visual work etc... we did three workshops. One where we wrote through Coral Bracho and Octavio Paz with stolen lines to form new poems, another where we rendered a Paz poem visually, as a spiral, and a third making new poems in the Renga form, stealing lines and going multilingual. I showed some of my more out there performances on video too, they loved my boxing when ill and sound gorillaing. Met some great people, they were too too nice to me. 
Holly and I made our way to the Labatorio Arte Alameda next to Alameda park where the Enemigos performance would be. A famous avant garde venue apparently, it was a remarkable space inside of a giant yellow church, a big black cube. While we waited for Mexican time to catch up with Greenwich Mean Time we went to a cafe where a man had a hat on with rabbit ears and then his fellow waiter picked up an accordian and played it with such beauty.. i was terribly heartsick for my romanian, he played romany tunes! I finally met Amanda de la Garza, who I'd written with for the Enemigos anthology, we had transliterated each other's poetry. She was remarkably friendly and charming and talented, she is a curator at the contemporary art gallery in the city and has a clearly powerful poetic presence, as well as incredible freckles, el tigre. Also there was a frog on the coffee machine in the cafe and some sort of creature next to it, see below
The Enemigos evening, the reading, were grand. Amanda, Rocio, Holly and I popped up throughout the night, to a nice intimate crowd. Amanda did a great piece with a typewriter, her poem 'dictated' as she read, and she read her transliterations after I'd read three poems from the anthology, Atacama, the one about James Harvey and the one about Newquay. We had a VJ all night collaborating too, showing videos behind us as we read, he was amazing www.vimeo.com/nomadaspace Rocio showed some of her new work, which was very beautiful and then to close, Holly and I did an improvisational piece, on an hours notice! We came up with it fast. She sat in the dark and said mean things to me while i sat in the light and said nice things to her. They dont get our humour really so it ended up being like a drama exercise! i acted so heartbroken that i made one of the sweet Mexicans weeep! haha, maybe I should be a fucking actor. It was fun though, being restrained and not being able to verbally abuse Holly as I wanted to. This picture to the left is of the audience while Amanda read one of the transliterations.
we went out for a big meal afterwards in this massive hall with hundreds of people eating and playing dominos. they were so nice to me, the extended Enemigos Mexican family, a whole host of them, like i was an old friend. Ari the panda and her pando, Sara, who moved to Mex from Berlin to study, Rocio, Amanda, loads of people. They all got my jokes and were kind enough to laugh. They ripped the piss out of me a lot too for the picture I allegedly sent for the performance poster where I look like I am in a shampoo advert, and for the fact that Eduardo, the VJ, and I, both were wearing the same clothes with the same hair. But he was a dude, so I was happy to have a twin in Mexico city. / Nearly everyone we've met in mexico is really really kind hearted and gentle, much more than england. they find it very easy to make time for you and want to speak to you. Mexico City diario de poesia #3
Teotihuacan. The bus driver drove Mexican speeds and having been in a car crash, I began the day with fear lacing my joy. We saw the slums that line the hillsides of the north east of Mexico city, where people claimed land like a goldrush and now own it after squatting. The pyramids are an hour outside of the city. We were paraded first to a weird shop where they showed us native dogs which were black and hairless, then the multiple uses of the many cactus', like alcohol and paper. The smell was of a leaking septic tank. The handmade aztec and mayan object recreations were proper takk. The mangey dogs loved Holly.
No one knows who built the pyramids or why, the aztecs just found them later on. The complex is enormous. We did the sun temple, a hard steep step climb, with groin sweats on, and then the moon temple. Holly takes lots of self pictures. There were loads of stray dogs, racing each other. I bought a Jaguar flute, that makes one of the most obnoxiously entertaining noises you can imagine, and seems to have a curse that once you buy one you have to keep fucking blowing it in the ears of strangers. Human slavery was put to epic use. The spirituality of the place was somewhat mauled by tourists, but it didnt matter, the day was gentle, calm, sunny with a sprinkle of rain god / dog.
Mexico City diario de poesia #2
We then were accompanied again by the lovely Ari, el pandarhia, and walked a fair swathe of the city, from the historical centre down the Alameda central and onto the reforma (a massive avenue de avenue), through the Zona Rosa (which is full of gay people and prostitutes apparently but seemed to me like a quaint, upmarket shopping district) and then into the Condesa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condesa very much famed for its trendy ways. We visited the American legion and their English language bookshop http://underthevolcanobooks.com/, which had loads of amazing writers and then doubled a mochacino in a trendy cafe. I left Holly as she was meeting a mate of a mate and walked back to the hotel in the dusk / darkness on the massive glowing streets of the city, music in my ears.
Mexico City diario de poesia #1
Every single person on the street stares at my big white face, my stupid mohawk and my mustard trousers, which is fair enough, and not entirely unpleasant. The city is both immensely busy and fraught and yet indelibly slow. I walk at least three times faster than anyone else I've seen. My lack of Spanish is a serious breakdown of possibilities, as perhaps it should be, to teach me a lesson, as Ive skived off English nearly everywhere else in the last five years, when I've not travelled much outside of Europe, as I used to often. The police are everywhere, look bored, but have intense weaponry, personalised shotguns and assault rifles. People let off fireworks which have no visible result but make a hard, dense crack when they go off. Sounds like gunshots every few minutes. There are 1000s of people crammed into tiny streets just off the historical city centre where we are staying and they all walk in front of cars. The food is absurdly dense and pleasant. The city is so big, that I am grateful I live in London in order that I not be overwhelmed. People are generous and patient with me.
We were met by one of the organisers, the charming Ari Chavez, in the morning and were shown to the Centro Cultural de Espana en Mexico, where we are doing workshops and a reading later in the week. It is a beautiful, unique architectural space, full of art and art spaces. We then took to the city. She walked us around, gently touring the very city centre. I've munched enchilladas and tacos so far, and guacamole so spicy I feared for the toot fog. The flight over was so easy, British airways has Louis CK and Alan Partridge on its in flight, and the great bear stakeout, unbelievable. No brain sleep cloud. Sharp.
We go to meet Jack Little in the evening. Just such a fundamentally decent, warm hearted, open, hospitable soul. Amazing to spend hours with him, with a view over the city and then from a near cantina in the old town, just listening to how he found himself in Mexico City, 22 years of age, now his home, having perfect Spanish, mexican family around him, years past and how poetry became his passion in the years spent in Mexico, despite his mother being a really well known and established poet in the UK. Just an humbling experience to spend time with someone so outgoing, positive, human. Really the day is a day of two generous people who live in this city, giving something of their home over to us, allowing us new eyes to a place so big and intense it can blind you. Here's some of Jack's work on 3am http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/two-poems-jack-little/ and his remarkable Ofi press, where he published this interview we did awhile back http://theofipress.webs.com/fowlersteven.htm
Camaradefest
One of the best things I've put on, without a doubt, it was a grand success. Primarily because, all day long, from 2pm until 10.30pm, the atmosphere was uniformly friendly, warm and cohesive - people felt welcomed in sharing their work, they were able to meet others without artificiality and their was a sense of things being offered, rather than performed. Without trying to curate anything, never putting a word in about content, and without trying to force any aesthetic or spirit, the feeling of welcome and cohesion was present from the off and undoubtedly met with the 37 brilliant pieces of collaborative poetry, that were accentuated because of the generosity of attendees. I feel like I did achieve something with this event, and what that is is fleeting and impermeable, but all the more resonant and real because of that transience. I showed how much good work there is out there in the UK and beyond (Afghanistan, Serbia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Czech Republic etc... all had presence), and how many good poets who are good people, who will work together, will step outside of their comfort zones through the auspices of collaboration. Of the 74 poets, so so many were remarkable, too many to explicate, but watching Holly Pester and Emma Bennett, Ryan Van Winkle and Billy Letford, Sam Riviere and Joe Dunthorne, James Davies and Philip Terry it was clear the few hundreds in attendance felt as I did, that we were witnessing something special, with all the power of a movement and a time, without any of the didactic limitation and definition. More to come on this, videos of everything, when I return from Mexico.
Launching Enemies
the book, and those who have made the book something special, that is a unique document, in that it is neither a collection, nor an anthology, but a selected set of collaborations, needed a night for itself. Though the massive camaradefest was to follow the next day, we put it together on Friday oct 25th, at Toynbee studios, near Liverpool street and I read with Tom Jenks, Tim Atkins, Eirikur Orn Norddahl, Sarah Kelly, Sam Riviere and David Berridge. We projected youtube videos behind ourselves as we read, each one tailored to the work being read and it seemed as though the subtle differences we aimed to evidence between each work, though they were all readings, was apparent across the evening, complimenting each other with their difference. We tried some polyphonic reading for the final shift and though I wanted the night to be more conceptually performative originally, it ended up representative of the spirit of the book I think. I'm very grateful to everyone who came to the launch to support me, to everyone who is in the book, to Tom Chivers who published the book, everyone who read with me on the night and of course, everyone who bought a copy.
Ars Poetica reading video
Huge thanks to Igor Stimka, who hooked me up with this footage, all cut up softly straight.
Rich mix exhibition special view reading videos
A lovely intimate night at the Rich mix cafe gallery, where we celebrated the Gilles de Rais / Estates of Westeros exhibition from myself, David Kelly and Ben Morris with readings from myself, Eirikur Orn Norddahl and Ondrej Buddeus. I was a bit pumped for mine, not so good, but Eirikur was his usual spectacular self and it was good to mix it up with more European work. Thanks to those who came out to support the cause, and everyone who contributed themselves to the final collective reading of the Westeros poems!
Twins born Triplets - a new publication with Matteo X Patocchi
Really proud to work with Matteo, a brilliant Swiss photographer I've collaborated with in London on two projects, both of which have been developed over a few years now. This one, Twins born Triplets, features his beautiful innovative portraits of twins surrounding by my long poem for Pussy Riot, about Stalin, Khlebnikov and zygote splitting. He did an amazing job with the typography and an even better job sourcing a printer to render the work as a newspaper, an original format that really embodies the work beautifully. Here's his website http://www.matteopatocchi.com/ and email info@matteopatocchi.com if you want a copy, they are limited edition. Here's also a link to the amazing images in the book http://www.matteopatocchi.com/twins2.html
Ars Poetica – Bratislava / diary of a magic weekend / poetryfest
One of the best things
I’ve done, getting poetry to travel me. I try and only do things that somehow
lead to a generative experience that somehow lead to some ambiguous feeling of
fulfilment that equates to being happy and positive towards other human beings
in the face of the obvious arbitrary coldness and fragility of being alive etc… To be flown,
housed, fed and exposed to an amazing city, generous people and wholly
authentic expressions of living in language all because Ive written some stuff
down is absurd enough to render ridiculous the notion that I might not be
buoyed by the experience and I was and am. The beginning of many new things and
a multitude of experiences that only leave me better.
So much to admire about
the way the festival was run and the poets who attended, and those involved in
the program. The festival has been
running for over a decade, and really has established itself through the work
of Martin Solotruk, Peter Sulej and others, as a space in which generations mix
as much as styles of poetry. All too rare a thing, to see formal poetry readings
in translations sitting alongside experimental poetics, electronic poetics and
collaborative practise. For me personally, with my desire to see the same
breadth and difference in poetry events, to actualise a variance and a
pluralism in organisation, it was especially gratifying. Moreover, there was a
indelible sense of being part of the city somehow, that the content of the
festival was fused directly to the happenings of Bratislava. The support staff
with the festival were really energetic and generous, and the venue for the
readings was the perfect balance of size and grime.
DAY ONE: arrived, looked
after, sent to the floating hotel, the Botel, on the Danube, with Mariano
Peyrou, a Spanish poet who I’ve known about for years but never met. Really a
great person to begin the thing with, as he’s unpretentious, honest and clever.
I need to visit Madrid, sounds like an immense amount happening there. Shown to
the restaurant where we can get free meals all week. Beerhall northern European
meatcheesedumplingbrown. I’dve ballooned into a full chunk if I ate there all the
days, so I didn’t. Meeting all the poets, from as far as India, I’m the only
Britisher, thanks fuck. 
DAY TWO: Took a tram out
into the suburbs of Bratislava and then walked back in. Pretty repetitive, but
the parks were really peaceful and full of modernist sculpture. Lots of sexshops
and coffee shops. Loads of them in fact, a few each road. Had two lovely
meetings, one with the dynamic people from LitCentrum, that pushes Slovak
literature abroad. Took me ages to find their office, it was actually in what
equated to a literature museum and I felt an intense sense of déjà vu when
standing on that road, not realising til I was up in their office that that was
where I stayed the last time I visited Bratislava, sleeping in my friends car
as we drove across Europe. Two nights sleeping in the front seat. A bit
different for this visit. Then I met the brilliant poet Maria Ferencuhova, who
I had over for Camarade last year and wrote with Frances Kruk.
The readings were again
quite memorable. Robert Rybek, a Polish poet, front kicked the mic off its
stand before cursing out the audience and really digging into some weight.
Really breathtaking, it was completely genuine, completely authentic. Kato
Djavakhashvili read, all the way from Tbilisi, Tozan Alkan from Istanbul,
Gerhard Falkner from Berlin and then the electronic poetry performances – Jorg
Piringer was a force of nature with his visual concrete animation soundwork,
and Heike Fiedler, a revelation from Switzerland, mixing languages and
improvising with great aplomb.
DAY THREE: I upped early
again and walked an hour or two down the Danube before cutting in to the
outskirts to visit the Botanical gardens, and then one of the best fucking Zoos
Ive ever visited. I got quite emotional meeting the bear. I got to touch a
fucking baby meerkat. There was a white tiger and a red panda. The whole thing
was mental. And they had a dinopark was animatronic dinosaurs that could only
move one appendage. Must have cost a bomb. So weird it was one of the happiest
mornings I can remember, pumped on coffee, music in, animals right in my fat
face.
I hiked over the hills
back into the city and had a really lovely lunch with Louis Armand. Whatever I
aspire to do in London, Louis has done it in Prague, having lived there over 20
years, originally from Sydney. He’s published a boatload of novels and is the
man behind the microfestival, VLAK, Equus and all that amazing stuff that
wouldn’t exist with innovative poetics in Czechland, along with David Vichnar.
Really good to shoot breeze with him, finally, after being an associate editor
of VLAK for awhile.
Final night of readings,
quite a male lineup, chest puff. But Ville Hytonen! Ive wanted to meet Ville
for ages, hearing of his great work through Pekko Kappi, one of the best
performers Ive worked with on my events. Great to hear his brogue, Anselm Hollo
resurrected quickly. Ville is in Talinn now, Im definitely going to visit him
next summer, and probably write with him too. Daniel Cundari was amazing too, a
dapper gent from Calabria, living in Granada, he really upped the emotion with
some severe youthful panache. Jason Mashak, an American living in the Czech
Republic was great too, such a decent bloke, very humble, and his work was
graceful and funny. And Louis read, growling out some jazz work that
capitivated. After the break Erik Simsik, who seems to be right on the front of
the younger avant garde in Slovakia and then Olga Pekova, who created a
beautiful, vulnerable / inverted penetrative moment to end the fest with,
collaborating with nudity and a boxharp. 
It is not always the case
that thirty or so poets, dropped into a city together, will gel. I often think
the immaterial nature of our creative connection is overstated in terms of
predicting how people get on, its just about whether people are kind and humble
or not. For an undertaking this size, the connections made between the poets
were really inspirational. I had so many generative conversations with those
attending and discovered so much new work from across Europe and even beyond. I
feel like some relationships were the first step into friendships /
collaborations / correspondences that might span my life, and so if poetry is
the vehicle of that, all the better, as long as it happens on and again. Im
fortunate to have gone, to have been exposed to what I was and will remember
Bratislava all lit up by the best circumstances I could imagine.
the Last Day of the Republic - Gerhard Falkner
Letzter Tag der Republik/ Last Day of the Republic from Artstudio Reynolds on Vimeo.
I got to watch this remarkable videopoem at the Ars Poetica, and got to meet the poet Gerhard Falkner. Beautiful inversions taking place in the text.
I got to watch this remarkable videopoem at the Ars Poetica, and got to meet the poet Gerhard Falkner. Beautiful inversions taking place in the text.
Teaching Beckett for the Rest is Noise study evening at the Southbank centre
Teaching Beckett is
frightening. Teaching Beckett at the Southbank centre, in the QEH hall, as part
of the groundbreaking Rest is Noise festival, at a free evening study course
open to the general public for free is even more so. Teaching alongside Tom Service
and Charlottle de Ville, even more so yet again. But it went proper well, a
small generous group of people, amazing support staff at the Southbank, and my
focus on the ethical engagement /disengagement of Beckett through paradox and
disjunction in language was well received, not having the skill or expertise to
make a proper ham of historical fact or textual analysis. I just waffled with
purpose and read excerpts from Worstward ho! It could hardly go wrong.
Charlotte and Tom were both inspiring to hear, I genuinely spent hours after
the evening, which felt an easy 150 minutes (!) researching what they were
speaking about. I hadn’t come across Tom Service before, but his work is really
amazing with the BBC radio and the guardian, and I was at Wigmore hall just a
few days later, rediscovering my discovery of classical music.VLAK 4 is here and its all that we hoped for
I'm proud as punch to be an associate editor of Vlak. Louis Armand, David Vichnar, Olga Pekova and the many others involved in this heavyweight publication are doing the important work, and making Prague something it would not otherwise be because of their grind towards powerliterature. The new VLAK is breathtaking in its production value, as always, there is not a magazine like it, simply said. http://vlakmagazine2.wordpress.com/
