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Monday
Apr162007

Parasol Unit: poetry reading series

The Parasol Unit poetry series is pleased to announce that a third reader has been added to our previously announced reading on Tuesday, 5 June, at 6:30 PM. In addition to the English poet Michael Glover and the Mexican poet Ernesto Priego, this reading will also feature the distinguished American poet Bill Berkson. Bill Berkson, poet, critic, and teacher, was born in New York City in 1939. A longtime resident of California, he has for many years taught at the San Francisco Art Institute. He is the author of sixteen books and pamplets of poetry, most recently Our Friends Will Pass Silently Among You (The Owl Press, 2007) and Gloria (Arion Press, 2005, with etchings by Alex Katz). Other recent books include Sudden Address: Selected Lectures 1981-2006 (Cuneiform Press, 2007), What’s Your Idea of a Good Time: Letters & Interviews 1977-1985 with Bernadette Mayer (Tuumba Press, 2006), and The Sweet Singer of Modernism & Other Art Writings (Qua Books, 2004). As Ron Padgett says: "Bill Berkson's writing is witty, musical, daily, and deep, underpinned by a bracing integrity and shot through with gorgeous abstraction and other brilliant hookups between eye, ear, mind, and heart." Michael Glover has written art criticism for The Times, The Economist, The Independent, and The Financial Times, among others. He is the author of several books and chapbooks of poetry, including Amidst All This Debris (2001) and The Bead-Eyed Man (2000), both from Dagger Press, and Impossible Horizons (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995). Of his new book, For the Sheer Hell of Living, to be published this year by San Marco Press, John Ashbery writes, "Michael Glover’s lines unspool gravely and efficiently with few commas like waves that know they are on the way to someplace but without making much fuss about it. They can be piercingly sad and hilariously wry, sometimes at the same time, as: ‘Someone loses the midge swat./ Many glasses are raised.’—this from a poem called ‘Few things happen.’ Few things happen here, true, but those that do are tremendously important even when tiny." Ernesto Priego is a Mexican poet, essayist, and translator presently living in London. He is the author of Not Even Dogs (Meritage Press, 2006) as well as the blogs "Never Neutral" (http://neverneutral.wordpress.com/) and "The Jainakú Project" (http://thejainakuproject.blogspot.com/). A recent interview with him can be found on Tom Beckett’s blog "e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e-v-a-l-u-e -s" (willtoexchange.blogspot.com). The readings at Parasol Unit are organized and introduced by Barry Schwabsky. Previous readers have been Tim Atkins, Guy Bennett, Peter Cole, Kelvin Corcoran, Linh Dinh, Carrie Etter, Allen Fisher, Mark Ford, Lee Harwood, Lyn Hejinian, Sue Hubbard, Vincent Katz, Tony Lopez, Drew Milne, Redell Olsen, Anthony Rudolf, Leslie Scalapino, Barry Schwabsky, John Seed, Simon Smith, Carol Szymanski, Catherine Wagner, and Barrett Watten. Readings begin at 6:30 PM and are free to the public. Parasol Unit is located at 14 Wharf Road, London N1, near the Old Street and Angel tube stations.

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Sunday
Apr152007

Eclipse

'Eclipse is a free on-line archive focusing on digital facsimiles of the most radical small-press writing from the last quarter century. Eclipse also publishes carefully selected new works of book-length conceptual unity.' Link Superb collection of work by established, you-know-they're-good writers.

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Saturday
Apr142007

How 2: London Calling

'This section brings together new and emerging work from writers based in and around London who have not yet had a major collection of poetry published. For some of these writers the page-based book will not be the final destination of this work and so it seems all the more reason to gather them together here in a temporary snap-shot-gathering of various textualities which seem poised to continue in lines of allegiance both towards and away from the book.' Link Co-ordinated by: Redell Olsen Featuring: Rosheen Brennan Emily Critchley Kai Fierle-Hedrick Kristen Kreider Frances Kruk Marianne Morris Sophie Robinson Lydia White

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Friday
Apr132007

'Openned last night (at the Foundry)' by Jow Lindsay

Looksee on the issue page Openned Issues 2006-2007, Issue One, Poetics of the Foundry. Also, to call Jow's blog prolific is something of an understatement. Ya'wee smasha.

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Friday
Apr132007

Allen Fisher reading at Openned 8, Thursday April 5th, 2007

[wpvideo xvSMlVKh] Allen's brilliant reading filmed at a previous Openned night. The year after this recording Openned conducted an interview with Allen Fisher.   Openned-8-Poster.jpg As far as I can remember Mike Wallace-Hadrill did not turn up for this reading However he did read at a night sometime in 2008.

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Friday
Apr132007

Openned 9 update

John Cayley confirmed as a second half reader. E-flyer now available on nights page.

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Friday
Apr132007

ITCH AWAY

Link John Sparrow's new site, still under construction, but as of April 10th he seemed happy enough to post a little thing saying things were nearly ready, and there's plenty to see already so go see it. The homepage header image is a work of art.

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Thursday
Apr122007

Digitise or die: what is the future of the book?

Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank Centre, London Margaret Atwood, Andrew O'Hagan, Stephen Page & Erica Wagner Digitise or Die: What is the Future of the Book? Tuesday 17 April 2007, 7:30 P.M. 'What is the future of the book? Authors Margaret Atwood, Andrew O'Hagan and Erica Wagner and publisher Stephen Page, Chief Executive of Faber & Faber, discuss the brave new world of authors, readers and publishers in the age of new technology.'

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Thursday
Apr122007

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

'Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like "Slaughterhouse-Five", "Cat’s Cradle" and "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died Wednesday night in Manhattan.' Link One of the few worth the hype.

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Thursday
Apr122007

Notes.

1. View a night as event - your audience as community. 2. Take a holistic approach, consider: pace, texture, politics. 3. Build an event for a community - organiser as community member. 4. The room is space. 5. Walk into an open space, each time imagine the space is new/situated. 6. Imagine events as separate entities, encroached in space, talking over time. 7. Walk into an event - build an approach. 8. Create an obstacle, forget it, find it later. 9. Work from found material – space as found material. 10. Talk as a method of excretion, a narrowing. Convergence. 11. Simultaneously create yourself as stranger and member. 12. Community member as event. 13. Event and talk in dialectic - synthesis of found material. 14. Re-read previous events as a tactic of current construction. 15. Create a non-linear network of pattern and fibre tracing. 16. Re-write network out of fibre-optic into tactility; bonding. 17. Constraint: isolate units of event, propelled over by talk, expelled over by time.

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