City State: New London Poetry

City State showcases the work of twenty-seven London writers between the ages of 16 and 36. From hyperlinked walks of Battersea bombsites and guerilla gardening projects to jagged urban lyrics and dark hymns to the East End, City State presents a confident, entertaining and truly diverse snapshot of the best new poetry from London.

Featuring:

• Jay Bernard
• Caroline Bird
• Ben Borek
• Siddhartha Bose
• Tom Chivers
• Swithun Cooper
• Alex Davies
• Inua Ellams
• Laura Forman
• Christopher Horton
• Wayne Holloway-Smith
• Kirsten Irving
• Annie Katchinska
• Amy Key
• Chris McCabe
• Marianne Munk
• Holly Pester
• Heather Phillipson
• Nick Potamitis
• Imogen Robertson
• Jacob Sam La Rose
• Ashna Sarkar
• Jon Stone
• Barnaby Tidman
• Ahren Warner
• James Wilkes
• Steve Willey

• Ed. Tom Chivers

Published 20th May 2009, 192 pages, £9.99 Pre-order from Amazon Visit Penned in the Margins

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TEXTMUSICTEXTMUSIC Symposium

Saturday 23rd May

The Birkbeck Poetics Centre will be holding a Symposium on Text and Music in their multiple relationships, both in theory and in poetic and musical practice, with special emphasis on collaboration as a process. Apart from offering a forum for papers, videos and performances, the event will give an opportunity for people working with text and music to meet.

10 am – 6.15pm - Symposium: £20 (£10 conc.) 7 – 11pm - Performances: £10 (£5 conc.)

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Bad Breath

New recordings of Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Peter Manson and John Wilkinson are now up on Bad Press. via Jow Lindsay

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Charles Bernstein in Cambridge

Thursday 7th May, The poetry of Charles Bernstein: talks and discussion 2 - 4pm:

• Allen Fisher, 'Readdressing Constructivism and Conceptual Art: aspects of work factured by Charles Bernstein'
• David Nowell-Smith, 'Slurring the / unslurrable ; Satire and Subject in "The Lives Of The Toll Takers"'
• Redell Olsen, 'Absorbing Dysraphism; strings attached: a reading of Charles Bernstein'

5pm:

• Charles Bernstein, 'On Election Day (for Emma)', a poetry reading / performance / talk

Friday 8th May, The Politics of Poetic Form: a symposium 10am - 12pm:

• Drew Milne, 'The persistence of poetic forms: from lyric to text'
• Ian Patterson, 'Containers, pulses, lentil: Tel Quel, and Veronica Forrest-Thomson'

12pm:

• Poetry readings / performances by Allen Fisher & Dell Olsen

2 - 4pm:

• Peter Middleton, 'Dynamical Analogies: Charles Olson's poetics of energy'
• David Ayers, 'Literature and Revolution: The Politics of the Politics of Poetic Form.'

4pm:

• Charles Bernstein: Response: The Attack of the Difficult Poems

5pm:

• Poetry readings / performances by Maggie O'Sullivan & Tom Raworth

Faculty of English, University of Cambridge Admission is free. Events organised by Drew Milne and funded by the Judith E Wilson Fund. Enquiries: agm33[at]cam[dot]ac[dot]uk (Drew Milne)

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Reality Street Launch

Tuesday 12th May, 7pm

• Peter Jaeger
• Wendy Mulford

Launch of Jaeger's Rapid Eye Movement and Mulford's The Land Between. Calder Bookshop, 51 The Cut, London SE1 8LF Books can be ordered in advance of publication from Reality Street.

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TRANSLATED ACTS No. 2

The purpose of this cross-institutional series of roundtable discussions is to bring together invited writers, artists, critics and staff and students, to discuss some of the tools, methods and ideas about writing as they deal with operations of translation, transmission, exchange and collaboration. This second seminar will focus on discussing methods of writing and of manipulating language that enhance questions of textual transmission, writing for mixed-media environments, audio forms of writing. Invited speakers include: sound and video artist Imogen Stidworthy, writer Claire MacDonald, text-based artist Polly Gould, performance critic Bonnie Marranca, Shelley Cobb on filmatographic adaptation, Mandy Bloomfield on film and poetry, Will Montgomery on his own audioworks, Stephen Morton on new translation, Holly Pester on forms of archive, poet Sean Bonney, and other writers, artists, researchers. The format includes an evening of public presentation and discussions, followed on the next day by a one-day seminar led by the conveners, including presentations by visiting writers and research students.

Friday 8th May, 5pm-7pm Presentations open to all:

• Auditorium A – TEXTS AND SCREENS: Writers and artists present their work.

Saturday 9th May, 10am-5pm Roundtable:

• Room 2115 – WRITING AND CONTEMPORARY MEDIA

University of Southampton, English, Avenue Campus  30 participants max. – sign up necessary. Contact: carolinebergvall[at]googlemail[dot]com (Caroline Bergvall)

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Quick Reminder: Chlorine Reading Tonight

Tuesday 28th April, 8pm

• Keston Sutherland
• Timothy Thornton
• Luke Roberts
• Francesca Lisette

The Hope, Queens Road, Brighton Admission £5 (waged) / £3 (conc.) Chlorine Readings are proud to present a Grasp Press Reading in Brighton. Chlorine Readings is a poetry reading series organised by the poet Francesca Lisette.

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La Langoustine Est Morte

Saturday 2nd May, 7.30pm

• Jim Goar
• Ira Lightman
• Anna Ticehurst

Poetry Cafe, 22 Betterton Street, London Nearest Tube: Covent Garden

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Espresso Book Machine

The Guardian:

It's not elegant and it's not sexy – it looks like a large photocopier – but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launching today at Blackwell's Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.

Read the rest.

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'Dardanic' Prose Poems

Steven Fama:

These coined words derive from the remarkable wonder known as the Dardanus crab. The Dardanus, a type of hermit crab, uses for its “home” the abandoned shell of another creature, just as all hermit crabs do. The Dardanus, however, also decorates the shell it borrows. The crab may attach bits of algae, other pieces of marine invertebrates, or even an entire sea anemone to the shell it has taken as its own. The Dardanus thereby specially makes the borrowed form – the shell – its own. That’s a pretty apt analogy, I think, for what a poet does when making something new using an established form that’s typically used for something else. Ergo, the “dardanic” poem.

Read the rest. via Ron Silliman

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