I have decided that I will list what I read at
readings I’ve given. I’m offering this one a little retrospectively, and I
thought it best to reflect a little on my imperfect reporting of previous gigs
as I did so. I see that I have done it in the past for the so-called (by me!) DeKoninck Tour I
gave to launch A Translated Man), but
not in any systematic way. I curate each reading I give with some care and I
have never read the same set list twice, even on the DeKoninck Tour. It seems
such configurations of poems deserve recording, since they are records of
important mediations of the work (if only for me but, I hope, not only for me).
Interestingly, I did offer the set list for the last reading of the tour here,
but that was more a ‘playlist’ for the video of the reading than a simple
record. I do keep a record in my diary of what I’ve read. But I plan to do this
more systematically in future (and use the ‘set list’ tag in title and keyword tags).
This
piece on the opening of 8 Water St
recently gives a sense of what we did at the reading and there’s a portion of
the single text we performed here. (I’ve
also retrospectively added some photos of the event after the original posting,
another new aspect to this blog, the re-sculpting of previous posts. This is
not an unchangeable ‘journal’ or ‘log’ any longer. Though that’s a different
point for separate consideration as I approach the tenth anniversary of this
blog.)
I
have also got into the habit of removing announcements of forthcoming readings once
they’ve happened (such as this one about the launch of The Alchemist’s Mind, here which escaped culling) though
interestingly there is a kind of ‘set list’ here (and I’ve added the tag to it
retrospectively). Practically I shall turn announcements into reports.
Another
kind of ‘set list’ is simply when you have the video embedded in the blog, such
as with the ‘Honda Hands’ video of my collaboration with Jeff Hilson here or
even of my collaboration with Zoe Skoulding (Gurkan Arnanut, the first
collaborative work of the EUOIA, the
European Union of Imaginary Authors) which she had to read without me
because of illness. Here.
 |
| Me reading at the Arts Centre, Edge Hill, to launch the opening of the exhibition of collaborations with Pete Clarke. I am clearly reading work relating to the images (some behind me). |
In
short, I have been un-systematically offering set lists and account of readings
over the years. So here is the first systematic one (with links to poems read
and books excerpted):
The
Knives Forks and Spoons Pop up Reading on the 4th of
October 2014 in the public area of St Helens Central Library, Merseyside featured
PATRICIA FARRELL, JOANNE ASHCROFT, JAMES BYRNE and ROBERT SHEPPARD (as such it
was an Edge Hill reading too, since we all work there as well as having
publications out from the press).
Set
List
I
designed this reading (which I knew would be in the ‘public area’ of this busy
library) around short poems, all of them associated with named ‘places’; I
thought this might be a good handle to allow passing trade to grasp or even
those concentrating on the reading to keep focussed on (with the ambient noise and bustle).
I think I was right in this. No long poem could have stood it. I decided to
read some accessible pieces towards the beginning, detour into something more
complex, and then bring it back out again, and geographically to return to the
North West of England. A long
list for a short reading (with the poems' 'locations'):
‘Crescent’
(Berlin Bursts) - Bolton
‘The
Only Poem: Mentzendorf House, Riga’ (BB) – Riga
‘Riga Duet’ (BB)
– Riga
‘Berlin Bursts (BB)
– Berlin
‘After
Pasternak’ from Words Out of Time (unpublished;
forthcoming KFS) – Sussex, the Saxon Shore, the Downs
‘for
Stephen; (Warrant Error) – Prague
‘Netherlands’ (WE) – Netherlands
‘Afghanistan’ (WE) – Afganistan
‘Lebanon’ (WE)
– Lebanon
‘London (WE) – IKEA, London
‘Liverpool
2nd July 2007’ (WE) – Liverpool
Links
‘Berlin
Bursts’ may be read here.
‘Afghanistan’
may be read here.
‘The
Only Poem’ and ‘Riga Duet’ may be read here.
Read about Warrant
Error here.
