A Note

Hi everyone,

A quick note about Openned. We've rejigged the site a bit to make it a bit easier to get around and given it some spit and polish to (hopefully) make it more enjoyable to move around. We've had a few people saying the Calendar and the Reader are their favourite features of the site so now there's a quick links menu in the first column that will take you directly to these pages.

We are closing the Submit page for now - we don't feel we have enough free time to give your work the consideration it deserves. If you have already submitted work we will look over it as soon as we can.

We've also removed the Bookshelf page, it was an experiment that didn't really work, so if you're one of the few people looking for it, it's gone.

No web addresses have changed so if you link to any particular page on Openned or to any work of yours that is on Openned, don't worry, you don't have to change anything.

We hope you like it all verily.

Steve & Alex

Demo-lition

Wednesday 10th November, 11.30am

Join us as we march on the streets of central London to fight against the looming, savage education cuts.

NUS and UCU are jointly organising a national demonstration - 'Fund Our Future: Stop Education Cuts'.

Horse Guards Avenue, London

Website

Poetry Library Events

You can now add your event to the London Poetry Library event listings through their website.

England's Lane Books

Not often we let you know about shops on Openned but if you like the poetry section in West End Lane Books you will love this new shop:

England's Lane Books 

41 England's Lane, London NW3 4YD

This new shop has a load of events coming up. Today (Friday 17th) there is a discount day. Loads and loads of great poetry at discounted prices.

New Publication by Bob Cobbing

Writers Forum blog:

Bob Cobbing’s 8 image poem “Wire and Fork” from September 1992, which has apparently never been published, will be published in a small / limited edition by No Press of Calgary during 2010 and then republished by Writers Forum in an unlimited edition later in the year or in 2011. More information when it becomes available

Update on Tuesday 7 September, 2010 by Openned

More details emerging over at the blog.

Modern Poetry

Peter Philpott is looking for some help keeping modernpoetry.org.uk up to date. It's an absolutely vital resource and a great primer for anyone looking to get a handle on British poetry. He is looking in particular for help with suggestions for video and audio material resources and lists of anthologies, literary histories and critical texts. Head over to his blog for more details.

84 Great Eastern St.

84 Great Eastern Street is now occupied.

The Foundry was a free accessible space that hosted a variety of arts and music events.

This building will be leveled by Park Plaza who intend to build an "Art'Otel" in its place, sweeping away the DIY culture that has been built here over many years by many people. This luxury hotel will capitalise on a sanitised imitation of what was, selling sub-culture tourism art a premium.

This process of gentrification has forced out the disenfranchised inhabitants of the area. Our creative potential is being sacrificed to a political system that pursues profit though cultural demolition.

In defiance of the destructive forces of the market we assert our right to culture and community through the occupation of this building and the creation of a free and open space.

Visit the website.

via Harry Gilonis

Middlesex University Estate Strategy

Thanks to Tessa Whitehouse for pointing me to this enlightening document: 

Welcome to the Middlesex University Master Plan.

This type of reductive thinking is going on across the whole university sector but I wonder how many other U.K universities have campuses in Dubai? Attend the protest on Thursday.

RALLY -THURSDAY

Via Facebook:

Due to the management's unintelligent decision to close down the philosophy department at Middlesex University, and furthermore suspending their own staff and students from the premises due to the resistence of the closure, we will have a rally on Thursday the 27th of May 4pm in front of Middlesex University, Hendon Campus.

Bring your banners and raise your voices in protest against this bullying from the management at Middlesex University and their repellent decision to close down the department.

For directions see here.

The second part of this event will take place on Friday the 28th May, same place. Please check this link for more info: 

See you all then.

You can inform yourself about the campaign here: Save Middlesex Philosophy.

Welcome to Cameron Land

If even 5% of this article is true (and I suspect the truth-to-word ratio is much much higher) no one, under any circumstances, should consider voting conservative:

Hammersmith and Fulham is a sprawling concrete sandwich of London's rich and London's poor. It starts at the million-pound apartments on the marina at Chelsea Harbour – white and glistening and perfect – and runs past giant brownish housing estates and Victorian mansions, until it staggers to a stop on Shepherd's Bush Green, where homeless people sit on the yellow-green grass drinking and watching the SUVs hurtle past. Here, high incomes squat next to high-rises in one big urban screech of noise. In such a mixed area, the Conservatives had to run for power as a reconstructed party "at home with modern Britain". They promised to move beyond Thatcherism and make the poor better off. They were the first to hum the tune that David Cameron has been singing a capella in this election.

People who took this at face value were startled by the first act of the Conservatives on assuming power – a crackdown on the homeless. They immediately sold off 12 homeless shelters, handing them to large property developers. The horrified charity Crisis was offered premises by the BBC to house the abandoned in a shelter over the Christmas period at least. The council refused permission. They said the homeless were a "law and order issue", and a shelter would attract undesirables to the area. With this in mind, they changed the rules so that the homeless had to "prove" to a sceptical bureaucracy that they had nowhere else to go – and if they failed, they were turned away.

Read the rest here.

via Timothy Thornton