Friday 20 October 2017

Simon Turner's Birmingham Jazz Incarnation is here...


No, of course, not 'here' in a literal sense, but it has been published, and met its public for the first time at what I can only describe as an epoch-redefining event at the Birmingham Literature Festival on October 14th, where I read alongside Julia Bird and Jan Carson, two brilliant co-authors with the equally brilliant Emma Press, who have taken it upon themselves to publish my crazed Oulipian scribblings.
 
"And what is Birmingham Jazz Incarnation?" I hear you ask.  No, of course, not 'hear' in a literal sense, it's a figure of speech, but I can sense nonetheless through the digital ether that you're interested.  Birmingham Jazz Incarnation is a pamphlet, lavishly illustrated by Mark Andrew Webber, in which one of my poems is un- and remade through a variety of constraints, forms and procedures: one moment it's a sonnet, the next it's the contents page for an imaginary fictional tome from the 18th century; at other times it's a skipping rhyme, whilst in extremis it's reduced to little more than an alphabetical catalogue of its own constituent atoms.       
 
Over the next few days, to whet the appetites of those of you who didn't immediately leap to their Paypal accounts to bulk-buy this genuinely gorgeous artefact after reading that scintillating description, I will be posting some variations that didn't quite make the cut: DVD extras, if you will.  In the meantime, here's a video of Kojack, singing the praises of the industrial heartland which inspired me:
 
 

        

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