Manchester

Matt Dalby has posted a good overview of the recent unintentionally contentious Guardian post about Manchester's literary scene and the subsequent responses.

Jacket 38

At the risk of posting old news, Jacket 38 is available to view online.

Pierre Joris - Justifying the Margins

In this collection of essays, poet, translator, anthologist and critic Pierre Joris extends his "nomad poetics" to a remarkable zigzagging on the margins of twentieth and twenty-first century poetry and poetics. For Justifying the Margins refuses, precisely, to fill out spaces neatly to yield (to) straightened out, pre-set margins, be they cultural, literary, linguistic or political; Joris rather wanders through those spaces, and thereby "justifies" the margins properly speaking.

£11.99, Salt Publishing

Excerpt

Available via the Bookshelf.

Chlorine Reading

Monday 30th November, 7.30pm (8pm start)

• Luska Mengham
• Richard Parker
• Robert Rowland Smith
• Steve Willey

The Hope, Queen's Road, Brighton BN1 3WA

Admission £5 / £3 (conc.)

Oulipo on the BBC

BBC Radio 4

Thursday 19th November, 11.30am

Writer and typographer Ben Schott investigates Oulipo, the French experimental literary group. Founded in 1960 and still in existence, Oulipo create work by imposing playful restrictions the way a text will be produced. Oulipo stands for Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle, meaning Workshop for Potential Literature. In this humourous history of the French literary group, Ben discovers that recently, Oulipo have even made a bridgehead into English-speaking territory.

Fruchtfleisch

Website

Maggie O'Sullivan & Tony Cook Visual Archives

Ken Edwards:

A wonderful online archive has been opened up at Maggie O'Sullivan's website: high quality images of 165 paintings, mixed media sculptures and works on paper by the late Antony Cook, dated between 1970-2003. The works are abstract almost from the start, many at first glance minimalist in content but revealing on closer inspection an extraordinary richness of texture and movement. You can click on each of the 165 thumbnails to be delivered a higher resolution version of the same work.

XmasING the Line

The audience is invited to come dressed to the nines for this poetry party (of sorts) - there will be publications to accompany the evening, and more details may appear here.

Douglas Oliver Conference

Saturday 5th December

Conference 10.50am - 5.30pm

Reading 6pm - 8pm

This conference examines the work and influence of Douglas Oliver including his earliest writings, Oppo Hectic, The Harmless Building and In the Cave of Suicession; unpublished letters to Peter Riley; his theories of prosody and of politics; his visual work in The Diagram Poems; and the final Arrondissements project on the psycho-historical landscapes of Paris. 

With an evening Poetry Reading by:

• Kelvin Corcoran
• Ralph Hawkins
• Simon Jarvis
• Alice Notley

Admission £10 (all-day ticket) / £6 (unwaged) / £4 (evening reading only)

For more information and a registration form, email the conference organisers.

LTB 10, Lecture Theatre Building (off Square 3), University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester C04 3SQ

Campus Map

Lawrence Upton at 60

Short notice:

Saturday 14th November, 7pm

• Tina Bass
• John Levack Drever
• Chris Goode
• Mike McInerney
• Lawrence Upton

Great Hall, Goldsmiths, Lewisham Way, New Cross SE14 6NW

Admission free.