On Tuesday I was ‘conferred’ as a professor at Edge Hill University, and I shall probably take on the title Professor of Poetry and Poetics. I celebrated this in the usual ways, but I thought here I’d explain the basis of my application, how I see it, why the title I intend to choose is apposite.
What follows are the ‘introductory remarks’ to my application, which I shall use in other contexts, hence the square brackets and final elision.
In a brief citation of my book Far Language, in her essay on contemporary poetic innovation, Professor Marjorie Perloff refers to me as a ‘poet-critic’, the hyphen appearing to announce an uneasy hybrid that dangerously looks as though it is trying to yoke by violence together two opposites. It suggests that unity is achieved by pressurised co-habitation, force of will. And yet, it is unity of purpose and project I would like to emphasise in [this presentation of] my academic career, a unity that is achieved by introducing a third term, ‘poetics’, not just as a mediator between the scholarly research of the ‘critic’ and the practice led research creative writing activities of the ‘poet’, although it is also that.
Poetics suggests a higher equivalence between the two activities, and relates these concerns to my own double-headed research, my supervision of research students, my designing and stewardship of the MA Writing Studies, my day-to-day teaching of undergraduates, my pedagogic innovations, and my current leadership role as Co-ordinator for Creative Writing at Edge Hill. It is at the centre of my proposed academic leadership role as a Professor….
... and read more stuff here.
Page 520
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Babylon Burning
POETS FOR RED CROSS COMMEMORATE 9/11 FIVE YEARS ON at
http://www.nthposition.com/babylonburning911.php
Nearly 90 poets from around the world have contributed to Babylon Burning: 9/11 five years on, an anthology of poems on the Twin Towers atrocity and its consequences. But they aim for more than pious hand-wringing: the anthology will be free, but there will be a request to donate to the Red Cross.
nthposition, the site behind the anthology, wants to maximise the money raised by listing it on iTunes as a PDF. A print-on-demand paperback of the anthology will also be available from lulu.com, with all profits going to the Red Cross.
Contributors to Babylon Burning are: Ros Barber, Jim Bennett, Rachel Bentham, Charles Bernstein, bill bissett, Yvonne Blomer, Stephanie Bolster, Jenna Butler, Jason Camlot, J R Carpenter, Jared Carter, Patrick Chapman, Sampurna Chattarji, Maxine Chernoff, Tom Chivers, Alfred Corn, Tim Cumming, Margot Douaihy, Ken Edwards, Adam Elgar, Elaine Feinstein, Peter Finch, Philip Fried, Leah Fritz, Richard Garcia, Sandra M Gilbert, Nathan Hamilton, Richard Harrison, Kevin Higgins, Will Holloway, Bob Holman, Paul Hoover, Ray Hsu, Halvard Johnson, Chris Jones, Jill Jones, Kavita Joshi, Jonathan Kaplansky, Wednesday Kennedy, Sonnet L'Abbé, Kasandra Larsen, Tony Lewis-Jones, Dave Lordan, Alexis Lykiard, Jeffrey Mackie, Mike Marqusee, Chris McCabe, Nigel McLoughlin, Pauline Michel, Peter Middleton, Adrian Mitchell, John Mole, David Morley, George Murray, Alistair Noon, D Nurkse, John Oughton, Ruth Padel, Richard Peabody, Tom Phillips, David Prater, Lisa Pasold, Victoria Ramsay, Harold Rhenisch, Noel Rooney, Joe Ross, Myra Schneider, Robert Sheppard, Zaid Shlah, Henry Shukman, Penelope Shuttle, John Siddique, Goran Simic, Hal Sirowitz, Heather Grace Stewart, Andrew Steinmetz, John Stiles, William E Stobb, jordan stone, Sean Street, Todd Swift, Joel Tan, Nathaniel Tarn, Mark Terrill, Helên Thomas, Vincent Tinguely, Rodrigo Toscano, John Tranter and John Welch.
Babylon Burning will be available from 6 September from nthposition.
_ _
Todd Swift
Poetry Editor - Nthposition
http://www.nthposition.com/babylonburning911.php
Nearly 90 poets from around the world have contributed to Babylon Burning: 9/11 five years on, an anthology of poems on the Twin Towers atrocity and its consequences. But they aim for more than pious hand-wringing: the anthology will be free, but there will be a request to donate to the Red Cross.
nthposition, the site behind the anthology, wants to maximise the money raised by listing it on iTunes as a PDF. A print-on-demand paperback of the anthology will also be available from lulu.com, with all profits going to the Red Cross.
Contributors to Babylon Burning are: Ros Barber, Jim Bennett, Rachel Bentham, Charles Bernstein, bill bissett, Yvonne Blomer, Stephanie Bolster, Jenna Butler, Jason Camlot, J R Carpenter, Jared Carter, Patrick Chapman, Sampurna Chattarji, Maxine Chernoff, Tom Chivers, Alfred Corn, Tim Cumming, Margot Douaihy, Ken Edwards, Adam Elgar, Elaine Feinstein, Peter Finch, Philip Fried, Leah Fritz, Richard Garcia, Sandra M Gilbert, Nathan Hamilton, Richard Harrison, Kevin Higgins, Will Holloway, Bob Holman, Paul Hoover, Ray Hsu, Halvard Johnson, Chris Jones, Jill Jones, Kavita Joshi, Jonathan Kaplansky, Wednesday Kennedy, Sonnet L'Abbé, Kasandra Larsen, Tony Lewis-Jones, Dave Lordan, Alexis Lykiard, Jeffrey Mackie, Mike Marqusee, Chris McCabe, Nigel McLoughlin, Pauline Michel, Peter Middleton, Adrian Mitchell, John Mole, David Morley, George Murray, Alistair Noon, D Nurkse, John Oughton, Ruth Padel, Richard Peabody, Tom Phillips, David Prater, Lisa Pasold, Victoria Ramsay, Harold Rhenisch, Noel Rooney, Joe Ross, Myra Schneider, Robert Sheppard, Zaid Shlah, Henry Shukman, Penelope Shuttle, John Siddique, Goran Simic, Hal Sirowitz, Heather Grace Stewart, Andrew Steinmetz, John Stiles, William E Stobb, jordan stone, Sean Street, Todd Swift, Joel Tan, Nathaniel Tarn, Mark Terrill, Helên Thomas, Vincent Tinguely, Rodrigo Toscano, John Tranter and John Welch.
Babylon Burning will be available from 6 September from nthposition.
_ _
Todd Swift
Poetry Editor - Nthposition
Monday, August 28, 2006
Simon Perril: Two Poems
Melomania
there's a new headline in the land of silver rain:
celestial body swallows train. Consider
how celluloid grain swells and rabbits
quest for hats to pass through
into the land of incoherent geography. They are pursued
these creatures of the cut. Louche luminaries of the painted set
plan a jaunt through inky space-time, perched
on the proverbial shoestring. Terrible telescoping
takes the new craft to the surface of the sun;
grease paint and gaseous mane greet the nauseous pill
a century of thrill and illusion
spills to the bottom of the seen
standard life crisis
I have no scream
yet must mouth at times
not altogether certain
mean little things
thick with obliquity
and the casual antiquity of the very small.
They lap, graze neural crest
fend, sate; matriculate in mind-phosphate, tho’
so little is known of their habitat.
All those things the head holds
without ever having them
chunks of mental masonry
from which to build life’s annex.
And “mean” seems
somehow underwritten to phase us
labouring under perpetual insistence
to fill out a form. Paper
breaks the fall
of this unstable incendiary device.
Scramble a life in ticking boxes. Write
a hand that might contemplate the wiring
this alien brain of ill-compute.
For chrissakes little book:
move!
These poeems are from Simon’s next collection, which concerns itself with the history of cinema. Do catch his Salt volume Hearing is Itself Suddenly a Kind of Singing, or his earlier anthology appearance in the Reality Street anthology New Tonal Language. Simon works at De Montford University, Leicester.
Page 518
there's a new headline in the land of silver rain:
celestial body swallows train. Consider
how celluloid grain swells and rabbits
quest for hats to pass through
into the land of incoherent geography. They are pursued
these creatures of the cut. Louche luminaries of the painted set
plan a jaunt through inky space-time, perched
on the proverbial shoestring. Terrible telescoping
takes the new craft to the surface of the sun;
grease paint and gaseous mane greet the nauseous pill
a century of thrill and illusion
spills to the bottom of the seen
standard life crisis
I have no scream
yet must mouth at times
not altogether certain
mean little things
thick with obliquity
and the casual antiquity of the very small.
They lap, graze neural crest
fend, sate; matriculate in mind-phosphate, tho’
so little is known of their habitat.
All those things the head holds
without ever having them
chunks of mental masonry
from which to build life’s annex.
And “mean” seems
somehow underwritten to phase us
labouring under perpetual insistence
to fill out a form. Paper
breaks the fall
of this unstable incendiary device.
Scramble a life in ticking boxes. Write
a hand that might contemplate the wiring
this alien brain of ill-compute.
For chrissakes little book:
move!
These poeems are from Simon’s next collection, which concerns itself with the history of cinema. Do catch his Salt volume Hearing is Itself Suddenly a Kind of Singing, or his earlier anthology appearance in the Reality Street anthology New Tonal Language. Simon works at De Montford University, Leicester.
Page 518
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Patricia Farrell: On 'A Space Completely Filled with Matter'
Jennifer Pike Cobbing performing A Space Completely Filled with Matter at The Ivy, 16th December 2005A Space Completely Filled with Matter was developed in 2003 as a visual dance score for Jennifer Pike Cobbing. I had for some time wanted to produce a series of pieces which Jennifer could freely adapt as the basis of a dance performance.
A Space comprises a strand of twelve images selected from an original set of thirty-one. All the images were produced by the computer manipulation of an original pen and ink landscape drawing. A Space remains essentially a landscape drawing.
I sent the piece to Jennifer with the proviso that it was now entirely hers to do with as she wanted – performing it how and with whom she thought appropriate. I need not even know about it. However, Jennifer, ever generous, decided that she would perform it where I could be involved in its preparation, as part of the Celebration for Bob Cobbing evening (19.3.05) situated in the excellent exhibition of Bob’s work she curated with Phil Davenport for Bury Art Gallery. This exhibition was itself part of the gallery’s Text Festival, a series of exhibitions and performances which ran for nine months in 2005 (See Pages archive for March 2005 for more details).
As Jennifer had conceived the piece, she would dance in front of slide projections of the images. She had devised a simple costume of a voile shroud with a set of hinged sticks and hoops inside, which she could manipulate: rather like an Indonesian shadow-puppet turned inside out. This costume depersonalised the dancer and allowed her to articulate and emphasise both her movements and the projected images. The effect in rehearsal was stunning – pulling the images across her body and out into the space in front of the screen – simultaneously powerful, economical and elegant. The intention was to perform the piece with musical improvisation by David Toop. However, Bury Art Gallery’s slide projector packed up at the crucial moment and this first performance became something more impromptu, considerably noisier and less ‘elegant’, with Jennifer improvising from the printed images and with vocal interpretations from Phil Davenport, Robert Sheppard and myself in addition to David Toop’s music: something more in the spirit of Bob Cobbing’s own creative responses to unforeseen circumstances.
In the hope of letting people see the work as she had intended it, Jennifer arranged two performances at the ‘Klinker’ organised by Hugh Metcalfe. The first was again as part of a Celebration of Bob Cobbing evening – to celebrate Hugh’s birthday - on 15.12.05 at the ‘Klinker’s’ venue at The Ivy in Nunhead in south London and the second on the following evening at The Sussex Pub in East London. In spite of another temperamental slide projector – (which became a case of refusing to take nonsense from a mere machine) – Jennifer’s performances were both individual and consistently wonderful. The second performance included piano accompaniment by Veryan Weston – something I had secretly wanted when I devised the piece but hardly thought possible.
Page 516
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Monday, July 10, 2006
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Monday, July 03, 2006
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Friday, June 30, 2006
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Monday, June 26, 2006
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Friday, June 23, 2006
Mark Mendoza: Four Poems
between a rock & the deep blue sea
for s.v
between fifteen & twenty-five words at one time
between dip & caress
between ear & remote
between mock dress between despising
between the enhanced & the soupless
between the exclusive & the uncut
between Plymouth & black soda
between shadow & Stalin’s tomb
between grief & updated policy
between accident & coincidence
between emergence & occurrence
between equivalence & action (a hinge
between frogs & blue whales
between angelic scripts & the shit
between their own lives & our pocketbooks
between amor fati & amor dei intellectualis
between scarecrow & prayer
[untitled] for h.r.h
buying : cut laxation
shingle of flying jackets
sweet bells! the princely
nose “enjoys buildings
enjoys looking at them”
enemy lines envied
wads of soft incantation
lingering ives swimmers
locked in disrobbed eve
embugger the white bill
dang as five edges put it
the harsher pace of B
MR scanned all-the-way
back to gold-lit cells
turned caps in victory
energy enslav’d : TLC crusade
cokes barely fit the instant
to unwrap T
exas cutting boards
in these & several ways
relations grasp him
by the right hand paper
expiring extraterrestrial
spy compost i’ll walk
noblesse b/o : mute wade
“the exercise book was green”
for l.h.
earth a beautiful blue
clouds in the morning red
as it was a single orbit
n’est pas the tents tangl’d
rolling pins in pinked evening
excess not opposed to being
under cover of truck starkness
the trash strata baggage
claim teens temping their first
spree when control plus
zed fails EUREKA
red cedars to return things just-so
rigged tip shawls whetted want
well structure floral lens faltering
obedient sows of so-so danger
we were taught to walk
Adur Arun from sibylline shackles
flood as cold signal brawl
where there’s a till there’s
a weigh as in aureate
matter the yahoo dot co
dot UK worde package
customery brood pressure
contrast standing ceremony
Snowdon’s histrionic café
stepping out from the pyramyth
golden arches secure first sight
so steal hospital colouring
books false weekend starts
obtuse sharp-shooter jinx prize transmitter
rabbit epidemic shoo first utterance
dharma Damocles ampoule ampelopsis
solar tea dough machine-fun
office marks ex-centric drift tensity
walk a little further
an atomic line regurgitated
tax privilege sworn to
harvest blue-gray of atmospheric haze
white lilies to Lee’s windowsill
answer for Schwitters’s green blood
man utters her best man
tasting iodised salt mango St
Elmo’s fire sunspot activity green
tea-water medium AURORA
green is fluid
particles of the night serpent fire
friends pass phrases seaspent
spraying ochre buildings commanding Church
or Western Road sites complaining
exoneration green graphic count
less desires to come into day very
very dark & some
space covered by dense cumulus
home here indefinitely
& green
a degree of infinite infelicity
relief to Klein’s equal blue
stunned by live oak sunning
swimmers generic pus slow
thesis strand
haunches for slow hut
shackles cognate strata but
this is only an excuse
Run It
for j.w
Brisk between corkscrews, meat dumpling & droll
build up to irascible optics, then leave them to this
Cobalting, my rock & snatched book, oversize pearl
Cowling meant for prefect navigation &
their blouse lengths, shocks to be parsed, undernecks
then fronts as grout in the hole-in-this-wall
A wheelchair wet with choco drool, to spun-out
losing roll like vapor rents on Hogbacks high
Larger facts at the two snare drums & wily
house scarves. Nay-saying nil will outlive tarns;
floss with assenting hubby gulps, carpeted territories
tail a wide clamp & smoked hams, its gimme
darts due fashion cobalt on cobalt, thatch
censurably at handles to dependable spokes
As though the get-go was let go before the rat wife
As though flames of stumps were to crack achromatic
unremembered rides to the hash mark media kites
Arms locked across paraphernalia. Wait up, donate
A struggling whale chokes above the landing strip
Penalize a squeegee girl in the lane pit. Where,
at least. Certified-same-tissue leaves the pops well,
alone to be hummed-out soon, tuck & tuckered in
the bare racking blame awaits a hearty spool, brittle
with dew — tough on the clause of grime,
overcoats flash a lip-stiff EZ-pass. The Handy Plan
can but hound no pint-size gum by notation
16.10.03
Mark Mendoza is a British writer currently researching in Oxford, Ohio. He’s also one of the few poets I’ve met who comes from my neck of the woods. He hails from Shoreham-by-Sea, next town along from my Southwick. The poem for Lee Harwood here cites a few familiar sights and sites.
Page 503
for s.v
between fifteen & twenty-five words at one time
between dip & caress
between ear & remote
between mock dress between despising
between the enhanced & the soupless
between the exclusive & the uncut
between Plymouth & black soda
between shadow & Stalin’s tomb
between grief & updated policy
between accident & coincidence
between emergence & occurrence
between equivalence & action (a hinge
between frogs & blue whales
between angelic scripts & the shit
between their own lives & our pocketbooks
between amor fati & amor dei intellectualis
between scarecrow & prayer
[untitled] for h.r.h
buying : cut laxation
shingle of flying jackets
sweet bells! the princely
nose “enjoys buildings
enjoys looking at them”
enemy lines envied
wads of soft incantation
lingering ives swimmers
locked in disrobbed eve
embugger the white bill
dang as five edges put it
the harsher pace of B
MR scanned all-the-way
back to gold-lit cells
turned caps in victory
energy enslav’d : TLC crusade
cokes barely fit the instant
to unwrap T
exas cutting boards
in these & several ways
relations grasp him
by the right hand paper
expiring extraterrestrial
spy compost i’ll walk
noblesse b/o : mute wade
“the exercise book was green”
for l.h.
earth a beautiful blue
clouds in the morning red
as it was a single orbit
n’est pas the tents tangl’d
rolling pins in pinked evening
excess not opposed to being
under cover of truck starkness
the trash strata baggage
claim teens temping their first
spree when control plus
zed fails EUREKA
red cedars to return things just-so
rigged tip shawls whetted want
well structure floral lens faltering
obedient sows of so-so danger
we were taught to walk
Adur Arun from sibylline shackles
flood as cold signal brawl
where there’s a till there’s
a weigh as in aureate
matter the yahoo dot co
dot UK worde package
customery brood pressure
contrast standing ceremony
Snowdon’s histrionic café
stepping out from the pyramyth
golden arches secure first sight
so steal hospital colouring
books false weekend starts
obtuse sharp-shooter jinx prize transmitter
rabbit epidemic shoo first utterance
dharma Damocles ampoule ampelopsis
solar tea dough machine-fun
office marks ex-centric drift tensity
walk a little further
an atomic line regurgitated
tax privilege sworn to
harvest blue-gray of atmospheric haze
white lilies to Lee’s windowsill
answer for Schwitters’s green blood
man utters her best man
tasting iodised salt mango St
Elmo’s fire sunspot activity green
tea-water medium AURORA
green is fluid
particles of the night serpent fire
friends pass phrases seaspent
spraying ochre buildings commanding Church
or Western Road sites complaining
exoneration green graphic count
less desires to come into day very
very dark & some
space covered by dense cumulus
home here indefinitely
& green
a degree of infinite infelicity
relief to Klein’s equal blue
stunned by live oak sunning
swimmers generic pus slow
thesis strand
haunches for slow hut
shackles cognate strata but
this is only an excuse
Run It
for j.w
Brisk between corkscrews, meat dumpling & droll
build up to irascible optics, then leave them to this
Cobalting, my rock & snatched book, oversize pearl
Cowling meant for prefect navigation &
their blouse lengths, shocks to be parsed, undernecks
then fronts as grout in the hole-in-this-wall
A wheelchair wet with choco drool, to spun-out
losing roll like vapor rents on Hogbacks high
Larger facts at the two snare drums & wily
house scarves. Nay-saying nil will outlive tarns;
floss with assenting hubby gulps, carpeted territories
tail a wide clamp & smoked hams, its gimme
darts due fashion cobalt on cobalt, thatch
censurably at handles to dependable spokes
As though the get-go was let go before the rat wife
As though flames of stumps were to crack achromatic
unremembered rides to the hash mark media kites
Arms locked across paraphernalia. Wait up, donate
A struggling whale chokes above the landing strip
Penalize a squeegee girl in the lane pit. Where,
at least. Certified-same-tissue leaves the pops well,
alone to be hummed-out soon, tuck & tuckered in
the bare racking blame awaits a hearty spool, brittle
with dew — tough on the clause of grime,
overcoats flash a lip-stiff EZ-pass. The Handy Plan
can but hound no pint-size gum by notation
16.10.03
Mark Mendoza is a British writer currently researching in Oxford, Ohio. He’s also one of the few poets I’ve met who comes from my neck of the woods. He hails from Shoreham-by-Sea, next town along from my Southwick. The poem for Lee Harwood here cites a few familiar sights and sites.
Page 503
Monday, June 05, 2006
Robert Sheppard: Some Recent Work on the Web
I have been conducting a long interview with Edmund Hardy of Intercapillary Space, which has just appeared, entitled 'Signature and Ethics'.
This is accompanied by some poems, a sequence called ‘The War Had Ended; It Had Not Ended’ which is a preface to ‘September 12’, which is also excerpted here, and which I describe in the interview as .my best work to date’.
There is also a section of my prose fiction Thelma, which attempts to do for Liverpool what Breton did for Paris with Nadja.
(Other parts of Thelma appear in Tears in the Fence; the first half of ‘September 12’ appears in the print version of Shearsman.)
Edmund Hardy’s review of my The Poetry of Saying, about whch we converse quite a lot, also appears on Intercapillary Space.
A further sequence of poems, 'Berlin Bursts', appeared recently on Shadow Train.
I admit to be going rather slowly on Pages at the moment, but I have poems from Mark Mendoza and Simon Perril to post soon.
Page 501
This is accompanied by some poems, a sequence called ‘The War Had Ended; It Had Not Ended’ which is a preface to ‘September 12’, which is also excerpted here, and which I describe in the interview as .my best work to date’.
There is also a section of my prose fiction Thelma, which attempts to do for Liverpool what Breton did for Paris with Nadja.
(Other parts of Thelma appear in Tears in the Fence; the first half of ‘September 12’ appears in the print version of Shearsman.)
Edmund Hardy’s review of my The Poetry of Saying, about whch we converse quite a lot, also appears on Intercapillary Space.
A further sequence of poems, 'Berlin Bursts', appeared recently on Shadow Train.
I admit to be going rather slowly on Pages at the moment, but I have poems from Mark Mendoza and Simon Perril to post soon.
Page 501
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