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Crater Press have published a novel written in collaboration with Philip Terry. This is how they describe it: With purity of playfulness and razor-edge wit, this novel tells a story of true romance, and also the quest to find a decent place to get a drink. Anarchic, ridiculous, considered and capricious, When Two Are In Love or As I Came to Behind Frank’s Transporter is a unique vision of the peculiarity of attachment – of young sweethearts, passionate lovers and sticking it out until the very end. And just as love dissolves all in its path, here, as you read, the story starts to fall apart in your hands and turns into something else altogether. A kind of 21st century Metamorphoses. Richard Makin has this to say about it: “Mentalist reiteration, a hallucinogenic interbreed with jokes in working order, each skew of the preceding paragraph a flawed echolalia, near-tautologies that nudge romantic love and the reader further into a reassuring pit of absurdity. I wanted to start chanting along out very loud, clapping my hands and stamping my hoofs to the arhythmia. This is literature as stroboscopic minimalism – total surface, no core – antinarrative narratives to collapse to, gently.” And here's Lily Robert-Foley: “When Two is a weird and sexy romp through hijacked romance narrative strands, that completely ruined romance novels for me in the best way possible. The effect is a series of strange renewing loops of story beginnings, that gently erode expectations, lulling the reader into a rhythmic fever dream that feels like watching a Nora Ephron film on acid. One travels in bits and pieces between two rampantly different, inter-contaminating worlds, the oddness of the transformation revealing the oddness of the original. I lolled.” It's available at the Lulu Crater page HERE 
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New video poem work with Stephen Emmerson - and offshoot of our Think Pieces. This time a Listen Piece. The title Listening in the Abyss refers to the concept of mise en abyme; the technique of placing a copy of an image within itself. Davies and Emmerson listen to Emma Bennett's works Slideshow Birdshow and Robin, whilst birds sing live on location. In these works Bennett listens and responds to recordings of birdsong; and in her words ends up ‘Talking like a bird talking about a bird’. (The recording Davies and Emmerson are listening to can be found here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Upf7...). Camera - Lucy Harvest Clarke.  This is out now while stocks last at Sam Riviere's If A Leaf Falls Press. Great to be part of such a fantastic project. This is the link - https://samriviere.com/index.php?/together/if-a-leaf-falls-press/  Sunday 9th September / 7pm / Free Common Bar, 39-41 Edge Street, Northern Quarter, Manchester Think Pieces are video-poem collaborations with the poet and artist Stephen Emmerson. In Think Piece 3 I thought about Steve's poem 'A Piece' and Steve thought about my postcard poem sequence 'snow'. Think Piece 1 & 2 are here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYqG52HBUPM In October last year I launched my recent book stack at The Other Room. I also read part of Changing Piece and these things that are poems in packaging boxes. My press, with its amazing poets, has a special event coming up soon.  if p then q is an independent poetry press, specialising in conceptualism and other modes of contemporary writing. The press is as much interested in the term ‘art’ as it is in ‘poetry’. For the past ten years the press has been disseminating a range of vital works. The poems tell the story.
Note that this is a free event. Think: as much fun as a night seeing Kraftwerk, etc. but £100 cheaper. Tim Allen’s poetry is situated in the post-avant and has its roots in symbolist euphony and surrealism. In September 2017 he published Under the Cliff Like, a re-appropriation of Grainger’s Index to Poetry. https://ifpthenq.co.uk/books/allen-tim-under-the-cliff-like/ Lucy Harvest Clarke work is never concrete, and specific readings unlikely. A highly charged visceral poetry that can be seen in her two if p then q publications Be3a and Silveronda. https://ifpthenq.co.uk/books/clarke-lucy-harvest-silveronda/ Peter Jaeger’s latest book, the long poem Midamble, concerns his walking practice to sacred sites all over the globe. He has also published A Field Guide to Lost Things with if p then q. https://ifpthenq.co.uk/books/jaeger-peter-midamble/ Tom Jenks work is often verbivocovisual and always hilarious. He has published three books with if p then q. A new book of flash fiction will be launched at the event. https://ifpthenq.co.uk/books/jenks-tom-a-priori/ Emma Cocker is a writer-artist whose work explores the slippage between writing on page, to performance in time, between still and moving image, between individual and collective action. An if p then q publication is in the pipeline. http://not-yet-there.blogspot.co.uk/ Stephen Emmerson is interested in the merger of conceptual art and poetic practices. His works for if p then q include the automatic templates Poetry Wholes, as well as Family Portraits, a collection which encourages the ingurgitation of poetry enhancing pills. https://ifpthenq.co.uk/books/emmerson-stephen-family-portraits/ https://ifpthenq.co.uk/  An oldish sequence of poems - nøjagtig pamplemousse - is published in Synapse International, an incredible online journal of visual poetry guest edited by Philip Davenport.
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I'll be reading, next week, at the Crossing The Line reading series with Peter Jaeger, Ghazal Mosadeq & Katherine Bash.
Here are the details: 25th April, 7.30 @ Iklectik ‘Old Paradise Yard ‘ 20 Carlisle Ln / Royal Street corner / Archbishop’s park, London SE1 7LG More here – https://www.facebook.com/events/174227443390876/ Throughout July I'll be teaching an interactive, online studio course at The Poetry School. Below is what the course description I've written: Archive, document and catalogue carefully selected moments of your life past, present and future At a time in which we are archived by others, often through digital means, it seems more and more important to attempt to define ourselves – on our own terms – as individuals and as members of a diverse range of groups. Written attentively, poetry that archives the self is subversive and can present radically different narratives to those purported by digital and mass media. By using methods such as diaries and collation of information one can conduct a close examination of the self as it stands, now and then, to see how it fits into the bigger picture. Alternatively, but just as interestingly, one can invent new identities, establish new routines and exist in new environments to generate original stimulus and structure for archival poetry. During this three-week Studio course you’ll write a number of poems which will archive, document and catalogue carefully selected moments of your life past, present and future. Some of time you’ll write about what you normally do on a regular basis. At other times you’ll look at yourself in relationship to local, national and global issues. And yet at other times you’ll be encouraged to try out new ways of seeing and behaving, in order to dictate how your ‘self’ can be a vehicle used to record infinite possibilities of being. The Poetry School describes the online studio format like this: Poetry Studios are short, intensive poetry writing courses that last 3-4 weeks. Unlike our standard 10 week courses, the emphasis on ‘Studios’ is more heavily skewed towards writing and getting words on the page, with a softer focus on group feedback and editing. If you're interested in finding out more click on the LINK to course |
