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Thursday
Aug302007

Verbotomy

'Verbotomy is about creating words. Every day we create a new definition and matching cartoon. Your challenge is to create a word -- a verboticism -- that matches the definition. After you create your verboticism, you can vote for other authors's words to help select the winning verboticism for the definition'

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Thursday
Aug232007

Widget

The Openned widget is for Mac users running Mac OS 10.4 or later, and displays the latest 10 blog posts from the home page. Click the image to download it and add it to your dashboard.

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Wednesday
Aug222007

BLUE BUS series: Jeremy Hilton, Sean Burn, Gareth Mitchell

Jeremy Hilton will be reading his poetry and Sean Burn and Gareth Mitchell will be performing poetry and music in the upstairs room at The Lamb, 94 Lamb's Conduit Street, London WC1, from 7.30 on Thursday 30th August. This is the fourth in THE BLUE BUS series. Admissions: £5 / £3 (concessions). Nearest tubes: Russell Square; Holborn. Further events will include Maggie O’Sullivan and Ulli Freer (20 September), Stephen Watts, Christopher Gutkind and Richard Leigh (25 October) and Lee Harwood and Laurie Duggan (22 November).

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Tuesday
Aug212007

Spook Country

'Proposal for a novel by William Gibson “Warchalker” is one of the more obscure and peculiar of the many warblogs and news-filters that sprang up on the Web in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Obscure because it generally offers little more than the apparent result of some news-junkie sitting in a basement, endlessly splicing in links to the latest-breaking from AP, Reuters or other standard sources. Peculiar because the thread of routine news is occasionally interrupted by some deeply strange dispatch from Warchalker himself -- as, for instance, his first-person account of the looting of the Baghdad museum, involving any number of international art-mercenaries and at least two supposedly extraterrestrial artifacts.' Link to rest of proposal Link to novel (published 2nd August 07)

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Monday
Aug202007

Issue update

We have added two new poems to Distances, the Openned issue that accompanies the anthology. En el Caribe by Trini Decombe powderedlung by Nikki Dudley

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Monday
Aug202007

Racter: William Chamberlain

Bill sings to Sarah. Sarah sings to bill. Perhaps they will do other dangerous things together. They may eat lamb or stroke eachother. They may chant of their difficulties and their happiness. They have love but thay also have typewriters. That is interesting.

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Friday
Aug172007

A word from Jack

'Modern bizarre structures (science fiction, etc.) arise from language being dead, "different" themes give illusion of "new" life. Follow roughly outlines in outfanning movement over subject, as river rock, so mindflow over jewel-center need (run your mind over it, once) arriving at pivot, where what was dim-formed "beginning" becomes sharp-necessitating "ending" and language shortens in race to wire of time-race of work, following laws of Deep Form, to conclusion, last words, last trickle-Night is The End.'

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Thursday
Aug162007

Buraiha

'The Buraiha or Decadent School (無頼派 buraiha, the school of irresponsibility and decadence) were a group of dissolute writers who expressed the aimlessness and identity crisis of post-World War II Japan. While not comprising a true literary school, the Buraiha writers were linked together by a similar approach to subject matter and literary style. The main characters in works of the Buraiha feature anti-heroes that are dissolute and aimless. Their work was based on criticism of the complete body of pre-war Japanese literature as well as American social values that were introduced into the Japanese society with the occupation. Their work did not appeal to any one particular group, and their range was not well defined.' Has anyone heard of/know of any works that I should look at to familiarise myself with this pseudo-movement? The formidable Google falls flat on this. - Alex Link

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Thursday
Aug162007

Printing

We have had many of you enquire about the possibility of a printed version of the anthology. This is something we will be looking into over the next few weeks/months. If any of you have any advice, signposts or contacts for us to follow up, please drop us an e-mail. Your help would be very much appreciated.

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Tuesday
Aug142007

£1 coin edge inscriptions

1983: DECUS ET TUTAMEN ("An ornament and a safeguard" – originally on 17th century coins, this refers to the inscribed edge as a protection against the clipping of precious metal) 1984: NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT ("No-one provokes me with impunity" – the Latin motto of the Order of the Thistle) 1985: PLEIDIOL WYF I'M GWLAD (" True am I to my country" – from the chorus of the Welsh National Anthem). 1986-1993: DECUS ET TUTAMEN 1994: NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT 1995: PLEIDIOL WYF I'M GWLAD 1996-2003: DECUS ET TUTAMEN BRIDGES: 2004-2007: two overlapping lines, one curved and one angular

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