Klatch 0, Klatch 1

The first three Klatch meetings were held in Steve Willey's house (Openned Co-Editor). Klatch 0 was held on the 6th Dec 2008. This first meeting was a gathering of friends to share their poetry with one another. However, no magazine was put together. You can see photos of this meeting here. 

At the second meeting (21st Feb 2009) each poet that came brought 50 copies of one page of their poetry and over the course of the evening the Klatch 1 magazine was made up. You can see a scan of this magazine here. At least ten of these magazines were sent by Amy De'Ath to Sarah Dowling at UPenn in Philadelphia, many of the others were distributed at the Openned readings at the Foundry. 

This format was followed for the more recent Klatch magazine which has just been posted out. However at Klatch 2 each poet kept a copy for themselves and took one copy to distribute to whoever they wished. The remaining copies were then sent out for free to anyone who requested a copy by emailing Openned. 

At Klatch 2 (29th Jan 2010) a reading was also broadcast via Openned TV. Unfortunately no recordings exist of this performance. It is possible Mike Weller was our only audience member. 

We hope you enjoy Klatch 1. Klatch 2 will be posted at some point in the near future.

The Sound Of Writers Forum

A 36 min documentary made by Steve Willey.

The documentary features eleven poets that have been published by Writers Forum over a period of 50 years. The film had no budget and was made over the course of one week and was first screened at the Off The Shelf event held at the Slade/UCl on the 22nd March 2010.

The website version of the film has some fairly brutal compression applied to it in order to make it fit online. This means you have to watch it at a fairly low quality. If any publisher wants to help turn this film into, and distribute the film as, a DVD please get in touch.

The film is far from a complete account of the activities of Writers Forum and is meant as an introduction to the topic.

Thanks need to go to all the poets that gave up so much of their time to be interviewed, to the AHRC Beyond Text Program for funding my research, to the British Library for giving me tapes to film with and space to record in, to Paula Claire for allowing me to film in her archive, to the UCL Small Press and Little Magazine Store for allowing me to photograph their archive, to the Slade Word Image Forum (of which I am part) and the organizers of the Off The Shelf Event for affording me the opportunity to screen the film at the Off The Shelf Event on the 22nd March 2010.

There are plans to make a much longer film over the course of the year. If anyone wants to be included in this new film please make contact via Openned.com.

The video will be archived permanently on Openned here.