Once Upon a Time
Ice and morning mist, cold juice for breakfast, long hours to fill. The chronometer is not working and you would be surprised how much we sleep, how much we eat – probably how often meal times come around.
In a funny sort of way happiness is not to do with being happy. It is simply being content and settled in routine. Keeping warm and alive takes all our time up here. What little spare we have we dedicate to mapping out words on the white pages of our journals.
This is a fiction. And also this.
--
This is the first of nine parts extracted from a longer collaborative project titled 'Memos to Self' by Rupert Loydell and Nathan Thompson. We'll be serialising them daily. You can read further sections from the series in Shadowtrain #27.
Thursday, 19 March 2009
Sunday, 15 March 2009
Elisabeth Bletsoe: The Separable Soul (audio)
Late November 2008 I organised a reading for students, featuring Tony Frazer of Shearsman and Elisabeth Bletsoe, one of my favourite poets of 2008. It was a real gem of a recording, though I was completely nervous and an incompetent host (and technician, when it came to recording the event).
Elisabeth very kindly gave permission to share some of the poems from the recording of the event. To begin, 'The Separable Soul', which she introduced as wondering "what it would be like to be transformed back into a swan".
Recorded live at the Writers' Room, CAPITAL, University of Warwick. Elisabeth Bletsoe's latest collection, Landscape from a Dream, is published by Shearsman. Full text of this poem is available at Poetry International Web.
Elisabeth very kindly gave permission to share some of the poems from the recording of the event. To begin, 'The Separable Soul', which she introduced as wondering "what it would be like to be transformed back into a swan".
Recorded live at the Writers' Room, CAPITAL, University of Warwick. Elisabeth Bletsoe's latest collection, Landscape from a Dream, is published by Shearsman. Full text of this poem is available at Poetry International Web.
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Likestarlings
Just discovered a new and very interesting project, pairing up poets for timed, collaborative work: Likestarlings. Editor-in-Chief and co-founder, Caleb Klaces, is a former Foyle Young Poet of the Year (twice), amongst other things.
I like the fact the project pushes the idea of collaboration, emphasising the shared nature of writing. Reading sequences of poems produced by paired poets, I get the sense of the dialogue emphasised above the individual poems. One piece, Caleb writes, reads as if it is a single poem broken into sections. Others respond to each other, as if a strange object - some kind of essence of the poem - is being passed back and forth between the pair.
Mostly the poets are being commissioned at the moment, but do get in touch if you'd like to know more or be considered for a pairing. And have a read of the articles on the blog - 'Palaver' - which express very eloquently ideas relating to collaborative writing and writing collectives.
Link also added to the sidebar.
I like the fact the project pushes the idea of collaboration, emphasising the shared nature of writing. Reading sequences of poems produced by paired poets, I get the sense of the dialogue emphasised above the individual poems. One piece, Caleb writes, reads as if it is a single poem broken into sections. Others respond to each other, as if a strange object - some kind of essence of the poem - is being passed back and forth between the pair.
Mostly the poets are being commissioned at the moment, but do get in touch if you'd like to know more or be considered for a pairing. And have a read of the articles on the blog - 'Palaver' - which express very eloquently ideas relating to collaborative writing and writing collectives.
Link also added to the sidebar.
Monday, 2 March 2009
Things have been a little quiet here. But at the same time, things haven't been quiet elsewhere. Here are some things that have been taking up my time:
Ira Lightman on Ira Lightman
(Hilarious stuff! I hope the first in a new series of reviews from Stride Mag. Which reminds me: if anyone else has outstanding reviews for Stride, send 'em in.)
A pile of Shearsman titles lined up:
Claire Crowther's The Clockwork Gift
Robert Sheppard's Warrant Error
Susan Connolly's Forest Music
Hanne Bramness's Salt on the eye: selected poems (trans. Bramness and Frances Presley)
Technically should be sending them out for review, but I'm going to read them all first.
Robert Sheppard will be reading with Philip Kuhn tomorrow night in London. Wish I could go, but will be teaching out of town until late.
New Tears in the Fence is just out - issue 49.
(David Caddy very kindly put the G&P editors' poems on consecutive pages. I've not seen it yet as it went to London, not my Not-London address, but I assume our poems are sat side by side on stools, drinking caipirinhas and absinthe, muttering like graffiti scratched into the bar's much-abused surface.)
Which reminds me, the London Word Festival launches this Thursday. Invite received, with thanks, and declined, sadly for similar Not-London reasons. But hopefully one of the G&P agents will be there.
Meanwhile, the second issue of Horizon Review is due some time this month! Woohoo! (Good luck with the workload...) Expect inordinately long review from me, plus a column on the Singapore poetry scene (which, having spent all of 8 days immersed in it, I'm now more than qualified to rant about it).
And less-poetic time-consumers:
Questionable Content
(I feel really guilty about this one. While Simon probably gets all the indie references, I don't which leaves me with no excuse. Although the specials menu in Coffee of Doom sometimes brings great joy.)
Burial
(Thanks to Neeral for this one.)
Gojira
(And thanks to Jeph Jaques of Questionable Content for this one.)
Right, an inordinately unintelligent post, but if I keep regular with these, maybe Simon will crack his knuckles and outwit me.
~
GT
Ira Lightman on Ira Lightman
(Hilarious stuff! I hope the first in a new series of reviews from Stride Mag. Which reminds me: if anyone else has outstanding reviews for Stride, send 'em in.)
A pile of Shearsman titles lined up:
Claire Crowther's The Clockwork Gift
Robert Sheppard's Warrant Error
Susan Connolly's Forest Music
Hanne Bramness's Salt on the eye: selected poems (trans. Bramness and Frances Presley)
Technically should be sending them out for review, but I'm going to read them all first.
Robert Sheppard will be reading with Philip Kuhn tomorrow night in London. Wish I could go, but will be teaching out of town until late.
New Tears in the Fence is just out - issue 49.
(David Caddy very kindly put the G&P editors' poems on consecutive pages. I've not seen it yet as it went to London, not my Not-London address, but I assume our poems are sat side by side on stools, drinking caipirinhas and absinthe, muttering like graffiti scratched into the bar's much-abused surface.)
Which reminds me, the London Word Festival launches this Thursday. Invite received, with thanks, and declined, sadly for similar Not-London reasons. But hopefully one of the G&P agents will be there.
Meanwhile, the second issue of Horizon Review is due some time this month! Woohoo! (Good luck with the workload...) Expect inordinately long review from me, plus a column on the Singapore poetry scene (which, having spent all of 8 days immersed in it, I'm now more than qualified to rant about it).
And less-poetic time-consumers:
Questionable Content
(I feel really guilty about this one. While Simon probably gets all the indie references, I don't which leaves me with no excuse. Although the specials menu in Coffee of Doom sometimes brings great joy.)
Burial
(Thanks to Neeral for this one.)
Gojira
(And thanks to Jeph Jaques of Questionable Content for this one.)
Right, an inordinately unintelligent post, but if I keep regular with these, maybe Simon will crack his knuckles and outwit me.
~
GT
Saturday, 21 February 2009
Thursday, 5 February 2009
Alistair Noon - Sonnet for the Birth Centenary of Seán Rafferty
(Feb 5, 1909 - Dec 4, 1993)
Old men and their mythologies. The line’s
Seán Rafferty’s, who walked into his eighties,
brewed poems for his dead first wife, sold wines
and beers, and never stood on stages,
no, never stood on stages, and had to say
some poet was important, what they meant –
as if pub rules were hung there to obey –
that a certain woman was intelligent;
instead of pulling pints six days a week
slide in he’d sat beside Octavio Paz,
that the poems of a paleskin from Mozambique
were African in their sense of jazz,
and with every birthday pint a lifespan affords
take slower, slyer steps across the boards.
==========
To mark the centenary of Seán Rafferty's birth, a short introduction to his life and work is available at Todd Swift's Eyewear blog, and further essays and responses in an e-chapbook published today at Intercapillary Space.
Old men and their mythologies. The line’s
Seán Rafferty’s, who walked into his eighties,
brewed poems for his dead first wife, sold wines
and beers, and never stood on stages,
no, never stood on stages, and had to say
some poet was important, what they meant –
as if pub rules were hung there to obey –
that a certain woman was intelligent;
instead of pulling pints six days a week
slide in he’d sat beside Octavio Paz,
that the poems of a paleskin from Mozambique
were African in their sense of jazz,
and with every birthday pint a lifespan affords
take slower, slyer steps across the boards.
==========
To mark the centenary of Seán Rafferty's birth, a short introduction to his life and work is available at Todd Swift's Eyewear blog, and further essays and responses in an e-chapbook published today at Intercapillary Space.
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