 A new poetry pamphlet has been published by the marvellous Red Ceilings Press. The book contains 45 couplet poems. I have written 178 poems to date using this structure. This is what Scott Thurston has to say about the collection:
In Davies’ multiverse, everything is alive and unpredictable. In a perpetual motion search for a container, tubs, pots, boxes, lids, even a bucket, offer their services: ‘what am i now but someone standing next to a lids’ (sic). Channelling Wittgenstein, Lao Tzu and Robert Grenier, Davies’ double- line form acts as a strange attractor, drawing in quotidian minutiae alongside visionary apprehension. This small book is both heavy and light: ‘notice how good i look in this fire engine’, ‘when the final explosions happened’, and to read it is to walk a fine line between comedy and tragedy: ‘let’s go into those woods / (no)’. The Red Ceilings website is HERE
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 Written over roughly the space of a year The Wood Pigeons began as a 365 word story. The 261 chapters here represent the removal of words at a rate of roughly one per day. Part Droste effect the result is a narrative that is highly recursive yet just as varied too, leading finally and inevitably to nothing.
What this means is, if you can stand it, you can read from start to finish with some weird deja vu going on. Or dip in at different places for some major shifts in narrative. Here's what David Berridge has to say about it - Is this an obsessive rumination upon a vanished bit of everyday? Do a writer’s revisions push a book to the edge of disappearing? Viewed as a whole its chapters reduce from prolixity to a single word, but from one chapter to the next what gets lost is concealed by narrative’s ability to patch up gaps, plus the typesetter’s arts, at work upon a fiction of C and D, sleep, a glass of wine, a pullover, on repeat. Does a novel decay to develop? Does each micro-adjustment of a novel's code re-figure protagonists, intoxicant on new terms? It spells the “hoo-hooing of the wood pigeons” as well as literature ever could. You can buy it from Dostoyevsky Wannabe here - https://www.dostoyevskywannabe.com/originals/the_wood_pigeons If you've bought When Two Are In Love or As I Came To Behind Frank's Transporter you might find these notes about people and things that appear in the text useful. If you've not got a copy then they give you a flavour of the book, which is available here - http://www.lulu.com/shop/philip-terry-and-james-davies/when-two-are-in-love-or-as-i-came-to-behind-franks-transporter/paperback/product-24097682.html
Notes Chapter 1: Nissen hut – A cylindrical tin hut used predominantly on military bases Chapter 2: Tom Otter – A murderer from Saxilby - http://www.orpheusweb.co.uk/ynnad/tomo.htm, Captain Jack Sparrow – A fictional pirate film character played by Jonny Depp Chapter 3: Sting – A contemporary pop musician famous for songs like Roxanne, Mike Oldfield – A contemporary pop musician famous for his album Tubular Bells Chapter 4: The Doors – A 1960s rock band famously fronted by Jim Morrison, The Band – A 1960s rock band fronted by Robbie Robertson Chapter 5: Bjorn Borg – A champion tennis player (rival of Ilie Nastase), Ilie Nastase – A champion tennis player (rival of Bjorn Borg), Andy Murray – A champion tennis player, Chantecaille – A manufacturer of lip screen Chapter 6: Buffalo Bill – A nineteenth century American showman Chapter 7: Zmist – A metamorphic computer virus created by the Russian virus writer known as Z0mbie Chapter 9: Liam Gallagher – Lead singer with 1990s rock band Oasis, Ursonate – Epic sound poem by Kurt Schwitters Chapter 10: Beryl Cook – Twentieth Century British painter, Botticelli – Fifteenth Century Italian painter, Captain Cook – British Eighteenth Century explorer, Captain Scarlet – Eponymous character from the 1960s puppet TV series Captain Scarlet, Dr Watson – The sidekick of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes Chapter 11: Tristram Shandy or The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman – Eighteenth Century novel by Laurence Sterne recounting the life of its eponymous hero, Other Side of Love – Song by contemporary pop singer Sean Paul Chapter 12: John Boy – Principle character in the TV show The Waltons, Jon Pertwee – British TV actor most famous for his role as scarecrow Worzel Gummidge Chapter 15: Neoprene – specialist material used in the manufacture of wetsuits Chapter 18: Queen – 1980s rock band famous for their song We are the Champions, Crazy Frog – 2000s chipmunk style pop act, We are the World – Charity song written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, Who wants the World? – Song by the punk group The Stranglers , ‘We want the World’ – Lyric from The Doors song When the Music’s Over, Petmix – A manufacturer of pet food, Belinda Carlisle – 1980s US pop singer Chapter 19: Joe Pesci – US film actor famous for his role as Tommy in Goodfellas Chapter 20: Danilo Dolci – Italian historian and documenter of Sicilian life, Enoch Powell – Tory Politician, Merz – One-man art movement invented by Kurt Schwitters, Justin Vitiello – Translator of Danilo Dolci Chapter 21: Boundary Road – Road that passes through Essex University, Ted Berrigan – 1950s New York School poet who taught at Essex University, Liquid – Nightclub in Colchester, Essex Chapter 24: KFC – A fashionable chain of fried chicken takeaways, Jim Morrison – Lead singer with The Doors, Quasimodo – Protagonist from Victor Hugo’s Nineteenth Century novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame Chapter 27: Fredrikson mobile – Imaginary mobile as if designed by Patrick Fredrikson and Ian Stallard (contemporary designers), New Road and Paul Church – Two locations in Land’s End, A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall – Song by US folk singer Bob Dylan Chapter 28: Sandbourne – Thomas Hardy’s fictional name for Bournemouth, Plantarium – A tank for growing plants and animal life - http://www.theartofscience.eu/en/plantarium.htm, PIL (Pubic Image Limited) – 1980s post-punk band fronted by John Lydon, FSOL (Future Sound of London) – Contemporary electronic musicians Chapter 29: Michael Gove – A fashionable piece of chicken, Grantley Dee – 1960s rockabilly musician, Kevin Lin – Contemporary ultra-marathon runner and star of Running the Sahara Chapter 30: IED – Improvised explosive device, Chuck Berry – 1950s rock and roll musician, Abba – 1970s pop group, Ultimate Abba – UK-based Abba cover band, Ozzy Osbourne – Lead singer with heavy metal band Black Sabbath Chapter 31: Camels – A famous brand of cigarettes Chapter 32: Captain Sensible – bass player and later lead guitarist with 1970s punk group The Damned, Captain Beefheart – Twentieth Century rock musician, Help – Album by the rock group The Beatles, TLC – 1990s R and B pop group 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  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/ |
