A reading of Anselo Hollo's translations from the Kalevala, dedicated to the great man, in concert with the Jouhikko of Pekko Kappi, another viking legend of the near future.
Maintenant at Poetry Parnassus
My first event at the festival was the first of two Maintenant celebration readings. The Maintenant series is a regular interview platform for contemporary European poets designed to allow elucidation of their work, theoretically and otherwise, and to present poets who are truly contemporary, and not occluded by the near legendary figures of the near past. It also aims to show a true breadth of what poetry might be in the 21st century, and promote the idea we can leave stylistic and factional dualisms behind by just presenting good work in all its forms.
The event was housed in the Blue room, on the spirit level of Southbank centre, which is a little bit hidden to say the least. I was worried no one would be able to find it but in the end we had near 100 people in attendance and it was standing room only.
The reading were magnificient, a truly varied and fascinating mix of European poetics. Karlis Verdins’ wit, Christodoulos Makris’ energy, Endre Ruset’s gravitas, Damir Sodan’s ebullience, Sylva Fischerova’s power and Pekko Kappi’s brilliance really made an impact on the audience and couldn’t have been more pleased with the event. I had the privilege of reading the translations of Endre’s poem about the tragedy in Utoeya, and having lived in Oslo for a year when I was younger, and having not seen the poem up until the moment I read it, the experience was emotionally intense. And Pekko Kappi, with his pure engagement with the great balladic tradition of Finnish poetry really ended the night perfectly.
Poetry Parnassus blog 1 & 2
Blog #2 The first day of the festival proper was a really remarkable, exciting, exhausting and profound stretch of poetry and discussion and happenings. It began for me at 9am and finished around 11pm.....
I carried a lot of those thoughts into the World Poetry Summit, which was a chance for people with a stake in poetry, its reception and its growth, to discuss a myriad of issues that specifically related to the art in the current climate. I chaired a genuinely engaged discussion with Rocio Ceron, Tom Chivers, Tishani Doshi and Christodoulos Makris about whether Tradition v Innovation was a still a truism in poetry, and how we might move past that dualism into the future with new understandings of poetry, and new and different methodologies and attitudes. As continued to be the case throughout the day, the atmosphere was eloquent and forceful, but never didactic or declarative. People were genuinely interested to listen and learn as well as express.
From the Summit, I had the pleasure of watching the first Lunch poems event, which featured Gerdur Kristny, Bewketu Seyoum and Pekko Kappi, all of whom I had interviewed. The sun was ridiculously hot on the QEH roof garden which bode well for the Rain of Poems going ahead in the evening.
I was joined by my friends Alexander Kell and David Kelly, who are both in residence throughout the week of Poetry Parnassus in order to document the events through photography and art respectively. Their work, from image to drawing to collage, will form part of the post Poetry Parnassus exhibition, curated by Chris McCabe and housed in the Poetry Library. We stayed in the Poetry Library for sometime, with Alexander taking portraits of at least two dozen poets and capturing the moment they signed the World Record book of Record and the specially made Parnassus desk in the front of the library.
I was joined by my friends Alexander Kell and David Kelly, who are both in residence throughout the week of Poetry Parnassus in order to document the events through photography and art respectively. Their work, from image to drawing to collage, will form part of the post Poetry Parnassus exhibition, curated by Chris McCabe and housed in the Poetry Library. We stayed in the Poetry Library for sometime, with Alexander taking portraits of at least two dozen poets and capturing the moment they signed the World Record book of Record and the specially made Parnassus desk in the front of the library.
I described the feeling of the first day at the festival like being in the army – great lulls in between intense exertion, but somehow the day had a very specific rhythm, one that was continuing dotted with unique and fascinating encounters with poets from around the world. The idea that the immensity of the conflagration would see egos clashing, or prima donna poets strutting around the poets village seems laughable now – the air of relaxation, of informality and friendliness is ubiquitous.
Blog #: I will be writing this blog, hopefully full of videos, images, artworks and recollections throughout the Poetry Parnassus which is begins tomorrow morning and runs all the way to Sunday evening.
Blog #: I will be writing this blog, hopefully full of videos, images, artworks and recollections throughout the Poetry Parnassus which is begins tomorrow morning and runs all the way to Sunday evening.
We had our first contact this evening, a chance for many of the poets who are arriving minute by minute from around the world to meet with their British counterparts and the myriad of tireless organisers from the Southbank centre. Often these occasions feel like a slightly tepid school disco but everyone was genuinely enthused and relaxed and in a wholly earnest and positive mood. The ambition of the project, it’s clear desire to strike out against cynicism has really left everyone who is lucky enough to be part of this project feeling humbled by its size and keen to make their work speak. There is so much good work going to come out of the next six days, not just the readings, but the interchange between poets, their methodologies and the chance happenings which are the lifeblood of such understanding. This sense of creative freedom, to have the remarkable space we have in which to discuss, to write, to collaborate, really hit home, sitting in the Poet’s village. With so many poets around too, over 200 in all, the endless possible interchanges are almost overwhelming.
Simon Armitage and Martin Colthorpe gave warm, welcoming speeches and Jude Kelly spoke with a real sense of inspiration and purpose about the project and its origins, and its goals. I will quite rightly end this slight beginning to the blog by bringing attention to the remarkable work of Anna Selby and Bea Colley, Jana Stefanovska and Emma Mottram, who, amongst many others, have been astounding under heavy fire in putting the thing together
Two Renga workshops for the Poetry Parnassus
Im running two workshops as part of the Parnassus. The first will be housed in the Poets Festival village, at 2pm on Friday June 29th, and open only to the Parnassus poets and the local poets chosen to be hosts, or 'buddies.'
Parnassian Renga: a workshop with SJ Fowler - 2pm on Friday June 29th in the Festival village: Following the tradition of the global adaptation and idiosyncratisation of the form of Renga, this workshop follows the chain games of the Surrealism, the translations of the Vou group, the chainpoets of New York and the Tomlinson / Roubaud / Paz project of the 1970s. A riff on what Charles Henri Ford defined as “intellectual sport … an anonymous shape laying in a hypothetical joint imagination.”
The second is open to all. It starts at 2pm on Saturday June 30th and runs for two hours, meeting outside the Poetry Library on level 5 of the southbank. The caveat is that the lines are all stolen from books housed in the poetry library, but, in fact, they can be from books participants bring, and I don't really care if they are poetry either, or if they are adapted or rewritten. All that matters is the essentially Oulipean / Situationist spirit at the heart of proceedings. http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/events/writingpoetry/?id=7768
Cento, or patchwork text or homage renga or thievery poetry: a workshop with SJ Fowler Saturday June 30th at 2pm in the Poetry Library foyet
The ancient art of Renga, but as an act of homage and theft, creating a Remix poem out of the singled, lost lines of other poets great works. A collaborative work of plagiarism, attendees will be given a set of rules with which to work and let loose.Using the poetry library as a resource, this workshop is a facilitated session where those in attendance work line to line with in concert with each other, creating series of poems in small groups while writing simultaneously to order their lines after writing, and then coming together to write one larger poem in narrative, responsive order. Friday 29th in the Festival village
The first 60 Poetry Parnassus Interviews
#1. Luljeta Lleshanaku - Albania http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/lleshanaku-luljeta
#2. Mimi Khalvati - Iran http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/khalvati-mimi
#3. Nikola Madzirov - Macedonia http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/madzirov-nikola
#4. Mariama Khan - Gambia http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/khan-mariama
#5. Rocio Ceron - Mexico http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/ceron-rocio
#6. Marj Evasco - The Phillipines http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/evasco-marjorie
#7. Sharanya Marivannan - Malaysia & Sri Lanka http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/manivannan-sharanya
#8. TJ Dema - Botswana http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/dema-tj
#9. Karlis Verdins - Latvia http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/verdins-karlis
#10. Kim Hyesoon - South Korea http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/hyesoon-kim
#11. Jan Wagner - Germany http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/wagner-jan
#12. Nigar Hasan Zadeh - Azerbaijan http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/hasan-zadeh-nigar
#13. Sylva Fischerova - Czech Republic http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/fischerov%C3%A1-sylva
#14. Valzhyna Mort - Belarus http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/mort-valzhyna
#15. Damir Sodan - Croatia http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/%C5%A1odan-damir
#16. Elisa Biagini - Italy http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/biagini-elisa
#17. Christodoulos Makris - Cyrpus http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/makris-christodoulos
#18. Agnes Lehoczky - Hungary http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/lehoczky-agnes
#19. Gerður Kristný - Iceland http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/kristn%C3%BD-ger%C3%B0ur
#20. Kate Kililea - South Africa http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/kilalea-kate
#21 - Valeria Melchioretto - Switzerland http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/melchioretto-valeria
#22 - Selina Tusitala Marsh - Tuvalu http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/marsh-selina-tusitala
#23 - Qassim Haddad - Bahrain http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/haddad-qassim
#24 - BaoChan Nguyen - Vietnam http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/chan-nguyen-bao
#25 - Shailja Patel - Kenya http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/patel-shailja
#26 - Bewketu Seyoum - Ethiopia http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/seyoum-bewketu
#27 - Katarina Iliopoulou - Greece http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/iliopoulou-katerina
#28 - Melisa Machado - Uruguay http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/machado-melisa
#29 - Beverly Perez Rego - Venezuela http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/perez-rego-beverly
#30 - Jennifer Wong - Hong Kong http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/wong-jennifer
#31 - Immanuel Mifsud - Malta http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/mifsud-immanuel
#32 - Tusiata Avia - Samoa http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/avia-tusiata
#33 - Kapka Kassabova - Bulgaria http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/kassabova-kapka
#34 - Evelyn Schlag - Austria http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/schlag-evelyn
#35 - Reza Mohammedi - Afghanistan http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/gu%C3%A9mar-sole%C3%AFman-
#36 - Anise Koltz - Luxembourg http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/koltz-anise
#36 - Anise Koltz - Luxembourg http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/koltz-anise
#37 - Ashjan Hendi - Saudi Arabia http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/hendi-ashjan-al
#38 - Agnes Agboton - Benin http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/agboton-agnes
#39 - Esther Phillips - Barbados http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/phillips-esther
#40 - Imtiaz Dharker - Pakistan http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/dharker-imtiaz
#41 - Evelyne Trouillot - Haiti http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/trouillot-evelyne
#42 - Roni Margulies - Turkey http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/margulies-roni
#43 - Craig Santos Perez - Guam http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/perez-craig-santos
#44 - Doina Ioanid - Romania http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/ioanid-doina
#45 - Tishani Doshi - India http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/doshi-tishani
#46 - Paulo Henriques Britto - Brazil http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/britto-paulo-henriques
#47 - Audrey Brown Pereira - Cook Islands http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/brown-pereira-audrey
#48 - Katarina Kucbelova - Slovakia http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/kucbelova-katerina
#49 - Ribka Sibhatu - Eritrea http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/sibhatu-ribka
#50 - Donatas Petrosius - Slovenia http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/petrosius-donatas
#51 - Saradha Soobrayen - Mauritius http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/soobrayen-saradha
#52 - Karen Solie - Canada http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/solie-karen
#53 - Maureen Roberts - Grenada http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/roberts-maureen
#54 - Mir Mahfuz Ali - Bangladesh http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/ali-mir-mahfuz
#55 - Syl Coker - Sierra Leone http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/coker-syl-cheney
#56 - Teresia Teaiwa - Kirbati http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/teaiwa-teresia
#57 - Rosa Alice Branco - Portugal http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/branco-rosa-alice
#58 - Lucy Cristina Chau - Panama http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/chau-lucy-cristina
#59 - Ilya Kaminsky - Russia http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/kaminsky-ilya
#60 - Kosal Khiev - Cambodia http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/poetry-parnassus/poets/khiev-kosal
the Rain of Poems
http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/literature-spoken-word/tickets/rain-of-poems-1000249
Sand issue 5 is very pearly
Halfcircle 4 released- Ashbery, Bergvall, Notley et al
Halfcircle 4 is now available online (www.halfcircle.org/Halfcircle_4.html) for £7 incl. P&P. It is 138 pages, perfect bound, and features previously unpublished work by, amongst others:
John Ashbery, Peter Manson, Linus Slug, Anatol Knotek, Juha Virtanen, Alice Notley, Sean Bonney, SJ Fowler, Marianne Morris, nick-e melville, Caroline Bergvall, bruno neiva, Nat Raha, Frances Kruk & Steve Willey
Hosting the Literature Across Frontiers event at the Poetry Parnassus
|
Poetea!
I shall writing a poem in response to the Strong tea....
Muyock
Part of my ongoing long poem Muyock, which is about Tiphaine Mancaux, the D-Day landings and Matteo Patocchi's photographs of Aomi Muyock, has been published by Walter Ruhlmann's 'D-Day 68th Anniversary Anthology' through the Anglo-French online press mgversion2.0>datura. http://mgversion2datura.blogspot.co.uk/ You can buy the anthology on Issuu and Lulu, in both digital and hard copies.... an excerpt below
on m knees
theearth bere
ft breaks
intodryred
mud
heavy w birds
& gherman pricks
dumpin a way that invites...
until th wet congeals
everywhere / in the great
arches of invitation
..
all th roads ar ebuilt
now you can fuck
off back to spider island
w allthe dead i cant thank enough
Performance at Cafe Oto with Ben Morris for Mercy: Electronic Voice Phenomena
It was also a great pleasure to perform for Mercy. Nathan Jones is one of a few remarkable figures in poetry and sonic art I am fortunate enough to call my contemporary who is genuinely enthused by complex and intense performance, and who will do the hard work it takes to get that performance a proper stage and reception. He feels a stringent sense of responsibility to promote the work of others and this kind of selflessness is integral to the building of a scene of dynamic poetry and sound performance. I know I speak for Ben when I say to have the opportunity to work with Mercy producing these new commissions is a privilege.
In the end, the performance was something I am pleased with, of course never wholly, but conceptually. I had really hoped it would explore avenues of delirium, confusion, kineticism - that it would not just be about violence and force, as some of my other pieces have been. I deliberately made the format of my punching non combative, so I stood still, used 'James Toney' type hands, with sloppy angles and no power form, and would emphasise my breathing and noise and would create motion blurs, using speed, rather than some dumb platform for the force of my punching.
The piece is called "We're getting married tomorrow" and is described as "A piece of conceptual sonic art in collaboration that explores notions of exhaustion, suffocation, exertion & kineticism, drawing together a specific mode of bodily, as well as vocal, experimental expression and innovative performance."
Massive thanks to Alexander Kell, who held the pads for me and is a loyal friend and great training partner, to David Kelly, Tiphaine Mancaux and Catherine Carncross who came to support and film and photo, and of course Nathan and Ben. I have a good feeling more work will emerge from this relationship.
The Revenge of Cotto - preview performance
Philip Venables and I had the preview performance culmination of our London Sinfonietta Blue Touch Paper commission a few weeks ago at the Village Underground in Shoreditch. Philip has kindly aligned the video above. From Phil "The preview version of The Revenge of Miguel Cotto was premiered on 16th May at Village Underground in Shoreditch, London. What a great evening! The London Sinfonietta were performing, conducted by Richard Baker, with vocalists Leigh Melrose and Alexander Robin Baker" It was undoubtedly a special evening, the culmination of much hard work by many.
Species published by Sand: Berlin's English language journal
Really proud to feature again in SAND, it's one of the best quaility journals in Europe and to have ties with the Berlin literary scene is important to me. You can see the contents, where the issue is sold and other stuff here http://sandjournal.com/issues The poems included this time are a meditation on species of bears.
{Species}
all bears today have descended from a common ancestor known Ursavus or ‘dawn bear’. This animal, which lived about 20 million years ago, was about the size of a small terrier.
Bernd Brunner
i. Ursus Arctos
blonde bear
so populous to be popular
& if blackened, silver tipped
watch for the large hump
of muscle, if you see its worry
you are likely food
ii. Ursus Maritinus
give of thy hands
to measure its awful size!
creampuff or fat white its blubber ...........
Museum of death & an interview with Jack Little at Ofi press
The Mexico based journal Ofi press has published the first part of my collaboration with the photographer Alex Kell, due out this summer, the Museum of death http://theofipress.webs.com/collaboration.htm
#1
wife; lunatic
until moonlit
then, a dwarf
of melody
a celestial harmony
perfection
below
thus, a debut
in the unter
tow
Alongside this work, the editor Jack Little, has interviewed me for the site http://theofipress.webs.com/interview.htm
3. Is poetry flourishing today?
Hard to know and of course it depends on each individuals perception. I would say in general probably not, but that isn’t a bad thing necessarily. Perhaps I should only speak for England, or even London. I would say if poetry isn’t flourishing, it is doing poets as much of a service as a disservice.....
This is a genuinely exciting enterprise from Jack Little, a journal that is bringing together some genuinely exciting work from across the globe and really creating a hub for an exploration of contemporary Mexican poetry in and out of that country.
wolves in chernobyl - featured artist on Counterexample poetics
http://www.counterexamplepoetics.com/2012/05/sj-fowler-featured-artist.html
April 26th 1986
Ю
but even apart from our wood
I do not know how one should say
things in the dark have colour
will the wise do things,
things that are forbidden,
knowing it won’t be found out?
a simple answer isn’t easy to find
but freedom from trouble in the thing
and from pain in the thing
are still in the pleasure,
but joy in the thing, and exultation,
are considered, involving motion.
Ю
all the day
life in the town goes on as normal
families shop and walk their dogs
fisherman lug their tackle off to the Prypyat river
couples sunbath around the cooling ponds
football matches go ahead
as do sixteen outdoor weddings
sponsored by the communist youth league
...
{such a pleasure to be featured in the remarkable journal Counterexample Poetics, edited by Felino Soriano, one of the most prolific and sophisticated poets in the US. The site has a special section called featured artists, where these poems are housed}
Rattle iii - Brumhold's diary: a collaboration with Lone Eriksen
Rattle issue iii is now available, priced £8 + p&p here.
"....my work with a Danish photographer, Lone Eriksen. She took a series of pictures in Norway, while teaching, deliberately distorting pictures of people taking pictures..... realist fiction, the Scandinavian / Habsburg fin de siecle era. Thus I created a diary in collaboration with the images. I wanted the diary to be like a tiny glimpse of what might seem like a massive narrative, and one that carries with it the tonality of the detail, introspection and excessive information of the 19th century type novel, norwegian and danish novels specifically too, people like Hamsun, Gaborg, Hansen etc..."
October 5th night
1987
I
threw up again after the lutefisk. Dagny cried again. She asked me for a review
of the meal. I accused her of trying to poison me. She said it was true; she
was like the doctor who administers chemotherapy so that she might flush out my
‘polluted’ system. To me she looks old, not clever enough to be unhappy, but
she wears a face that would make you otherwise. And she is so tall. Never is
she 27 years of age.
Sinfonietta review at the Rambler
http://johnsonsrambler.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/talking-up-not-down-london-sinfoniettas-new-blue-touch-paper-series/
Talking up, not down: London Sinfonietta’s new Blue Touch Paper series
I was lucky to have been invited last night to attend a preview of the London Sinfonietta’s three latest projects in their Blue Touch Paper scheme.
The main part of the evening involved work-in-progress previews of around 20 minutes for each piece (they were all projected to last 45–60 minutes when finished). This was followed by an after-show discussion – we divided into three small groups to take part in a guided critique/dialogue with the creators of each piece. The three pieces were:
- 100 Combat Troupes by Steve Potter (composer) and Kélina Gotman(writer/dramaturg);
- Half of Me by Elspeth Brooke (composer), Seonaid Goody (puppeteer) and Anna Jones (director); and
- The Revenge of Miguel Cotto by Philip Venables (composer) and Steven J. Fowler (poet)
The Revenge of Miguel Cotto (pdf) was, for my money, the most musically complete of the three. An exploration of the ‘sanctioned violence’ of boxing it was set out in a series of contrasting panels (rounds?), some of them connecting clearly with violent and physical theme, others more contemplative. (I half imagined these as post-endorphin come-downs, or as the fighter’s moments of clarity when decisions are made to punch or block, left or right.) There were lots of great musical effect in a score that always held your attention, but the best was two percussionists marking the beat in one section by alternately thwacking a pair of punch bags with giant plastic tubes. As well as the obvious sonic and theatrical verismo, there was an interesting musical function too. Punchbags are imprecisely made by the standards of modern orchestral percussion, so some thwacks came sounded high, some low. Like a metronome, the high ones sounded like accented beats, the low ones off-beats. So despite the relentless crotchets, the metrical pattern kept shifting, giving an unpredictable edge to the whole ensemble sound.
Poetry & Revolution International Conference at the CPRC, Birkbeck College (Friday 25 May 2012 - Sunday 27 May 2012)
Papers: Approximately 45 papers on a wide range of issues over the Saturday and Sunday. Speakers from Portugal, Greece, the USA, Ireland, & the UK
Liaisons and co-operation with Occupied and Free Spaces
Venue: Birkbeck Main Building, Torrington Sq., WC1.
Registration: No registration required. All welcome.
Contact: Stephen Mooney, estaphin@gmail.com
Supported by the Birkbeck Institute of the Humanities, and co-sponsored by the Centre for Modern and Contemporary Writing, University of Southampton
See http://www.bbk.ac.uk/cprc/events/Poetry_and_Revolution for further updates
*************************************
Full Conference Schedule below:
Poetry and RevolutionConference Schedule Sunday 27 May 2012
10.00-11.30 8 papers in 3 parallel sessions
11.30-12.00 Coffee break
12:00-13:30 9 papers in 3 parallel sessions
13.30-14.30 Lunch break
14:30-16.00 11 papers in 4 parallel sessions
16:00-16.30 Tea break
16:30-17:30 Mark Nowak keynote with immigrant workers from UNITE
17:30-18:00 General discussion
18:00-19:00 Wine & chat
All conference rooms are in the Malet Street main building, Birkbeck College, University of London, Bloomsbury
, London WC1E 7HX (entrance on Torrington Sqr)
Sunday 27 May 2012 - Papers
Panel B (Room 354) Chair: Luis Trindade
Richard Owens
SHATTERED SPACE AND LYRIC PRACTICE
SHATTERED SPACE AND LYRIC PRACTICE
Steven Fowler
Dada: the ethical exception.
Dada: the ethical exception.
Maintenant #93 - Charles Simic
What more can be asked of a poet than that they maintain their own sense of integrity towards what they deem poetic? It follows then if the poet who does maintain a writing life of such commitment is a thinker of originality and insight, and that they maintain this commitment across a lifetime, then their work will have a life far beyond them. All the more if they do so with an affability that belies their skill, and a determination that proves them to be enduring. For a lifetime of writing, Charles Simic has been one of world's most engaging and singular poets. He has exerted such an influence over so many and for so long, he has almost come to define an era. His voice is sure, utterly recognisable, both profound and humble, both grounded and flighted, both incisive and witty and he has straddled labels and definitions, as he has the continents of North America and Europe. Never has his own work been occluded by his translations but his lifetime of service to European poetry has fundamentally shaped the perception of Serbian, and Balkan, poetry in the English speaking world at large. He is an immense presence in US poetry and inarguably one of the most important poets of the late 20th century. For edition 93 of the Maintenant series, Charles Simic.
To accompany the interview is an original poem, never before published, ‘Ghost Cinema’