EVP Liverpool

Saint Georges Hall is a ridiculous place to look out from, into an audience. My mum tells me her dad used to take her there every saturday morning, this must have been in the mid 50s. More time in a city my family is rooted in but I never returned to until doing things with art / performance. The view from the green room is immense. A day of dressing room with Outfit, http://www.everynightidressupasyou.
com/main.php who are as intelligent, down to earth, brilliant a group of creative individuals self-coerced into a collective as I've met. I feel removed from the procedural responsibilities of such an undertaking. We consider the balcony for a thing. Still really scared for this one. Honor Gavin plays, really impressive  http://honorgavin.tumblr.com/ The whole tour lineup is a huge act of skill on the part of the producers, the acts are so radically different but wholly communicative, and they do speak across each other. The gore, a silhouette fudge, but it's fine. Colin Herd was kind enough to mail me, he saw Gateshead, was very kind about it, respect his opinion, helps to hear. Leaving Liverpool, staying at a hotel I've stayed at before. Threats in late nite tesco. I am as confused as I believe the audience were, which is a tremendous alienation achievement. I lay on the stage long after, bespattered, as they snapped pictures of me, and filtered out. The view was beautiful. See below.

EVP Gateshead

Groups of men in tight t-shirts, and I say men, those in their 40s, stared at me aggressively because I was wearing light blue trousers. The Baltic is a wonderful gallery. To play at the Sage is an achievement for me http://thesagegateshead.org/ We passed Durham on the train up, where I went to study, and haven't been back since. Three years of my life between Durham, Newcastle, Middlesborough, Stockton, Sunderland, Hartlepool, Chester-le-street. The train journey becomes the centre of what I aim to take in, the company of others, the experiential focus which allows me to put my own experience first, to appreciate the opportunity at all possible moments, to utilise the unique and challenging nature of the performance and its demands, and the company of those demands, to put the audience second, in order to benefit them. Met http://www.hetainpatel.com/ for the first time, a deeply generous and warm presence.

How to write the month spent writing my piece, the month rehearsing it, the unexpected but welcome discomfort at essentially having to confidently perform a touring acting theatre piece on a national tour to major venues with a few months notice never having done so before. How does that affect my private aesthetic experience, permanently, in the face of the inexorable contradiction between the intense engagement of performance and the dreary low of inevitable dissatisfaction? Doesn't matter. Lots of tiny changes made, shavings, prepared the Ash, the Animus, the call, the musicality and imagery. New shoes on, cut my feet to ribbons. The show went well, looking up, into the bowl. I'm told, repeatedly, the first one is the hardest. Is it? Hotels begin. The room sits in the middle of a pool, friday night in Newcastle.

Shaman electrique - a poem for the tour as it is being toured - #EVP

Shamans were once essential for the survival and wellbeing of Arctic communities. Are we not of a similar climate now, that such a necessity has arisen? Shamans are men or women who have the particular ability to communicate with other-than-human-persons. These may be, for example, animals, for example, BEARS, or the personified forces of disease, or weather. Shamans are especially important in ensuring that animals continue to give themselves as gifts to hunters. Without a shaman to intercede and negotiate with these powers, a human community is vulnerable to disease and starvation, even self-inflicted death. I bought myself a gift to reward myself for being so good, it is a gift I am giving to you. Latex nurse. French maid. Lingerie. For your body is not needed, rushing out into the unknown, out of the human world 

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Skeleton_Bear_(in_shamanic_transformation)_-_label_-_De_Young_Museum.jpg

handlingen is thus - collaborating w/ Lone Eriksen

Lone Eriksen is a Danish photographer of some wonderful capability and skill. She and I met a few years ago before she moved back to Copenhagen, and since then has been a valued link to that city. We first collaborated for Rattle magazine, and then did so again, for our longer piece Brumhold's diary, which took in notion's of photography about photography, novels about novels and which appeared in the following issue of Rattle, and will feature in the Enemies book with penned in the margins.

 Recently we have often been in touch and have collaborated once again. Lone has a photographer's sense of depth and space, and seems to pick up on my methods before I do, and thus was born a project which involved me eating into her beautiful critical commentary blogspace http://theactionisthus.tumblr.com/ and fashioning from it a poem, mulching text to become a new.

 the poem http://theactionisthus.tumblr.com/poem & from Lone on the piece ... 

 "The text, that is written in relation to the artistic work in the blogposts, should be seen as an approach to photography rather than absolute statements. I like the idea of disturbing the curatorial text and wanted to mimic the way that power is distributed on the internet through a textual dialogue. I contacted Steven, who I have collaborated with before and we agreed that he should use the text on the blog to create a new lyrical work. Here I should add, that the title on the blog point to a visual/textual collaboration we did a few years ago, in which the poem that Steven wrote starts out as follows: The action is thus - an icon is painted before us (...)

The poem title what photography is: light, colour and form completes the title of the blog, which now reads The action is thus - what photography is: light, colour and form.

The poem is made up entirely of words and sentences from the blog posts about Qiu-Yang, Gina Zacharias, Boris Mikhailov and Tereza Zelenkova respectively. The textual fragments from the blog posts are highlighted in pink and linked to the poem page. The contrasting colours, blue and pink halt my reading process.  

The curatorial text is cut into pieces, pasted back together and presented in a new lyrical form. Although the poem is also talking about photography it seems to be talking to the senses rather than trying to make sense. It has a mysterious performance quality similar to that of the photograph; I can talk about what the poem is doing, but I cannot determine and fix it's meaning. It's doing depends on the person facing it and the context of the encounter.

If writing is authoritative, then the poem present the curatorial text as staged and ideological. The dialogue between the poem, the text on photography as performance and the artistic works is playful, yet it is a power struggle." 

a privilege to work with such a mind and such an eye www.loneeriksen.com

anniversary of the rain of poems at the southbank centre

EVP eats the Anthony Burgesssss centre in Manchester soon.

http://www.creativetourist.com/articles/art/manchester/sound-art-art-meets-the-afterlife-in-electric-voice-phenomena/ ...h a “subliminal” message, purportedly concealed within the band’s recordings, exhorted two young American teenagers to “do it” and end their lives. The case proceeded, regardless of conclusive evidence for either the efficacy of subliminal communication, or – indeed – the alleged message itself. More tangentially, the evening is rounded out by S.J. Fowler channelling Dada’s metaphorical ghost, and Ross Sutherland, who combines “reclaimed” video footage with the spoken word; his looped clips of The Crystal Maze will doubtless summon some unpredictable manifestations. All in all, it promises to be a strange, unnerving and probably fairly noisy affair, though if you listen close, you might hear the voice of the now-deceased Raudive, vindicated at last.... http://www.anthonyburgess.org/

Maintenant #96 - George Szirtes


Conventional wisdom would suggest when a poet leaves their country of birth at a young age, for a new nation, they might bring to bear both traditions upon their writing. Perhaps it is possible, though arguably reductive, that the poet in question would be of neither nation truly - forever an immigrant in one and a stranger to another. What seems assured though, is that this sense of displacement, ambiguity of tradition and identity, this fundamental plurality of language and culture, would seem to find its proper place in the intangibility at the heart of a forceful and considered poetic, where such equivocality is not only welcome but perhaps necessary. At the core of the last century's European poetry tradition lies the notion of trace, of multiplicity, invention, migration and these are the defining characteristics of George Szirtes' oeuvre. His body of work, 40 years in the making and prolific in that time, has carried across forms, mediums, language and tones. It is the poetry of a singular individual extolling individualism, a poet whose responsibilities towards generosity and openness of spirit seem gracefully self-imposed across writing, translating, teaching, editing and anthologising. Moreover, it is the not the work of a man trapped between nations and histories, but one who has been emancipated by a lifetime's fidelity to poetry, never bound by a national dualism, despite the complications of being explicitly Hungarian and implicitly English. Author of over 20 collections, winner of numerous prizes including the TS Eliot, the Cholmondeley, the Gold star of the Hungarian republic and the best translated book award, George Szirtes is an immense poet and undoubtedly the greatest translator of Hungarian into English of the last century, if ever. In an wide ranging and generous interview, we present the 96th edition of Maintenant.


Alongside the interview, 3 new poems by George have been published, including one that forms part of his Camarade project commissioned collaboration with Carol Watts 

BBC Radio 3 - the Verb

A really gratifying experience to be on the Verb, talking about my new commission for the Electronic Voice Phenomena tour http://www.electronicvoicephenomena.net/. Ian McMillan was immensely friendly and generous, as he has a wide reputation for being, the other guests were charming and erudite and the producers were amazing in their knowledge and affability. They really invested time into my work, into researching it, and making the actual experience of being in the studio, in the booth, really relaxed and enjoyable. And actually travelling to Salford, to the media city, was an experience interesting enough that I could write an essay on that itself, if I had the energy. I decided to read a manifesto poem and a sound poem. I tried also to be calm in the reading, which I am normally not, because it was radio and didn't want to screech down the airwaves. People have been nice about the show, but in retrospect I wish I had been a little more bold. Oh well. Amazing to be on the bbc.

 The show was broadcast live on Friday May 3rd, at 10pm, and is now downloadable, and listenable until May 10th. Once gone its gone, so please visit to listen or store away for later. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s35n4


This week Ian's guests are Rebecca Solnit with her new book 'The Faraway Nearby', SJ Fowler, with a piece connecting Electronic Voice Phenomena and Dada, Richard Williams discusses sex and buildings and Rozi Plain performs from her album 'Joined Sometimes Unjoined
Follow The Verb on Twitter: @R3TheVerb.

new poets published on 3am - Goring / Van Winkle / Connolly / Niven

an exceptional group this, all of whom I admire, all of whom work their ways their way.

 http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/and-you-know-how-they-can-let-you-down-these-people-other-poems/ Penny Goring lives in a block of flats in London. She wrote The Zoom Zoom (eight cuts gallery press, 2011). Her work has been published in HOUSEFIRE. The Guardian calls Penny ‘a lively and original new voice in poetry’.

 http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/new-york-poems/ Alex Niven is originally from Northumberland and now lives in Leytonstone in East London. His poetry has been published in Ash, Etcetera, North-East Passage, and the Oxonian Review, and his poem ‘The Beehive’ recently provided the epigraph to Owen Hatherley’s architectural survey A New Kind of Bleak. He is currently working on a combined work of poetry and criticism for Zero Books, and a book about Oasis’s Definitely Maybe for the 33 1/3 series (Continuum).

 http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/stephen-connolly/ Stephen Connolly is 24 and from Belfast. Both a graduate and current student of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, he is in the second year of doctoral research looking at the innovation of traditional set forms in the work of Paul Muldoon. He runs The Lifeboatreading series and is an editorial assistant for The Yellow Nib.

 http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/van-winkle-there-is-no-library-for-what-i-know-of-books/ Ryan Van Winkle is Poet in Residence at Edinburgh City Libraries following a successful run as the Scottish Poetry Library’s first-ever Reader in Residence. He remains the host of the SPL’s weekly poetry podcast as well as The Multi-Coloured Culture Laser Podcast (link). Ryan has been invited to read internationally at The Melbourne Writer’s Festival, Sofia Poetics, The Edinburgh International Book Festival, and Shakespeare & Co. in Paris. His first collection, Tomorrow, We Will Live Here, was published by Salt in 2010 and won the Crashaw Prize. 

Enemies of the South

I can't help but be grateful for the opportunity to put together an event like this one, that happened last Saturday at the Arnolfini in Bristol. To travel outside of London, to make a highly memorable day out of such a thing as poetry jaffing, in such an amazing institution like the Arnolfini who could've not been more supportive or gracious toward our collective enterprise, from commissioning to execution.
All seven pairs were as excellent and varied as was expected, as this was a different Camarade event in aesthetic, more about community than heavy contrasts, more toward the avant garde and performing arts. I travelled there with friends who came to support us, and we mooched about the city on a lovely sunny day before sinking into the hour long reading completely relaxed. A moment to be grateful for how pleasant an experience the Enemies project is and how well it is going. 


thus ends a trilogy of foundtext performances with Patrick Coyle

the latest in Bristol's Arnolfini was about Bristol Bristol Birstol. I've learned so much from the practise of mr Coyle it was a privilege again to work and read with him. An immensely warm, witty, erudite and lovely human being, as much as he is intimidating as an artist. We first did in 2011, then again in 2012, and now in 2013. We had a profound series of moments preperformance discussing what we are trying to do in general with our work and how it is changing, and undoubtedly we shall work again in the future, moving further into the world of improvised raw pain pain.

Enemies of the South


on Saturday April 27th at 6.30pm, at Bristol's Arnolfini, a South West Edition of the Camarade series takes place as part of the Enemies project. The event will be part of the Arnolfini's remarkable 4 days festival programme, curated by Jamie Eastman, which features many of the best avant garde poets and lingual artists working in the UK at the moment. More info on 4 days here  http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/series/4-days and more on the Enemies event specifically here http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/
The exciting lineup is thus:
 
 
Exciting to take Enemies outside of London again, and this edition of Camarade also co-incides with the Bristol Poetry Festival. Please do join us if in the vicinity of the city.

the Synesthesia exhibition

My own personal trajectory working in collaboration, like so many things (perhaps sadly) comes, in some part, from the last five years I've spent working at the British Museum. Some of the most remarkable artists, and people, I've ever met work there (among some of the least remarkable) and inevitably, as people such as this become your friends, you work with them. Last night when I attended the private view of Gabrielle Cooper's wonderful Synesthesia exhibition at the Darnley gallery just off Mare st in Hackney, my work with Ben Morris and David Kelly was on display, alongside work by Robert Hitzeman, Francesca Marcaccio while Alexander Kell took photographs, and curators / artist like Siobhan Feeney, Mamiko Karusudani and others attended. Everyone has or had worked at the museum. Whatever must be said about working a dead end job for food moneys, it does produce art.
Gabrielle did an extraordinary job with the exhibition, she was so remarkably professional and the books in the boxe with David and Ben were hung beautifully. Ben and I's work was nailed to the wall, while my work with David was strung like leather floor to ceiling. Such a privilege to be part of an exhibition such as this, most especially because I write first and foremost and rarely get to it back and admire stuff on walls. Moreover, with David and Ben's achievements being so considerable with these pieces, I can hide behind their talent. The pictures here, again remarkable from Alexander Kell, are a proper testament to the exhibition.

Jurassic Strip in Here Comes Everyone

http://herecomeseveryone.me/ the second issue that editor adam steiner has been kind enough to take my work for HERE COMES EVERYONE. This issue, Dinosaurs, and examples of my collaboration with David Kelly, the artiste, about JP, known as Jurassic Strip. They published 4, took a little bit of a liberty with the pagination etc...gluing the text over the work. Ah, whatever. Ched ched cheb, the poems are all about the glory of a park full of dinosaurs, relocated to the middle east or something, so the fact that they appeared in what appears to be a granny magazine, all plastered up in microsoft paint is kind of fitting http://herecomeseveryone.me/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/The-Dinosaurs-Issue.pdf We're on page 26. Everyone reads pdf books online, so the thousands who weep at the sight of dinos and their poetry will be able to choc my twitter feed with frozen berries.


Sarah Zakzouk on Reel Iraq poetry

http://www.reorientmag.com/2013/04/reel-iraq/ "Reel Words, an evening of poetry in translation, was but a small element of the Reel Festivals lineup. This year’s festival, Reel Iraq, was comprised of a series of cultural events marking the ten-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by US and UK forces. Dubbed ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’, America and Britain’s stated mission was to liberate the Iraqi people from despotism, and disarm Saddam Hussein  of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’. Serving as a poignant reminder of the consequences of the invasion, Reel Iraq brought the nation’s cultural sphere to the forefront, exploring Iraqi contributions to art, culture, and creative expression in the UK, during a time of conflict and unrest. Featuring film, art exhibitions, poetry readings, and concerts, as well as panel discussions with audiences across the UK, the festival not only celebrated cultural diversity, but also provided a forum for people to reflect on the suffering and hardship endured by the people of Iraq during the past decade.
Hosted by Ryan Van Winkle, Reel Festival’s’ Literary Coordinator, in collaboration with Maintenant and 3AM Magazine, the Reel Words event was an evening of poise, impact, and eloquence. Introducing the readers of the evening, 3AM’s Poetry Editor, Steven Fowler, emphasised the theme of the evening as a reminder to people of the ongoing events in Iraq, and spoke about the cyclical nature of news stories presented via Western media. ‘It might have been our country, our culture that was invaded … this [event] is about peoples’ lives’, he remarked, as he asked the audience to compare the situation in Iraq with that of the UK.
The first half of the night played host to a variety of poets. Particularly outstanding was Patrick Coyle, who read a poem entitled Kirsty Wark’s Questions to Tony Blair, Reversed. Dictating a series of events backwards, Coyle counted down as the narrative progressed in Kirsty’s dialogue with Blair. Images were confused, and the narration distorted, as he disoriented minds with his verse in reverse. Highly engaging, his careful intonation lending itself to the backwardness of the text, the audience was still able to make sense of his words in their chaotic format....."

The Poetry School: a cameo

http://www.poetryschool.com/ The Poetry school is an intriguing thing. An admirable endeavour, but one, perhaps because of my background in the avant garde (or towards it, a bit more than some), that I haven't encountered often. My first such tryst came thanks to Chris McCabe, who kindly invited me to join him for the last hour of his penultimate class on collaborations. Set back on Lambeth walk, amidst boutique shops and a few housing estates, the evening was spent chatting with genuinely engaged and interesting people about Enemies, Camarade and my opinions on collaboration in and outside of poetry. I brought some books, books in boxes and anecdotal stories along with the theories. Then I joined the group in a frightening local pub afterwards... The hope, of course, in such a class is that the teacher is just leading the flow of an organic exchange, rather than being demonstrative. In this situation, where those attending were so erudite, artists and poets of significant merit in their own right, and the teacher was so capable and multifaceted as a poet himself, this was the inevitable result. It is really considerable that people will pay to attend such a focused programme about poetry, and collaborations at that! after working a full day, and bring so much creativity, energy and enthusiasm. Respect to everyone involved. I'm sure the relationships began on the night will bear fruit in the future. Here is a link to one of the students in the class speaking with the Poetry School too. http://www.poetryschool.com/courses/featured-student--sophie-herxheimer.php