And here's a video of me reading the original poem, made at the Poetry Library one rough morning during Poetry Parnassus:
Showing posts with label video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video. Show all posts
Monday, 27 August 2012
'The Impressionists' into Spanish and on video
Having been dropped along with tens of thousands of others from a helicopter onto London's Jubilee Gardens about two months ago, one of the bookmarks with my poem 'The Impressionists' flew through my letterbox last week. It was great to get it - and to read its translation into Spanish done specifically for the Rain of Poems installation by Marcelo Pellegrini. Here's a rough image of it:
And here's a video of me reading the original poem, made at the Poetry Library one rough morning during Poetry Parnassus:
And here's a video of me reading the original poem, made at the Poetry Library one rough morning during Poetry Parnassus:
Sunday, 15 July 2012
Poetry Parnassus: a short report
The festival village - an information hub, meeting place, refuelling stop and chillout space for all poets and everyone else who took part in Poetry Parnassus - was the venue for a modest welcoming party thrown on Monday evening 25 June for those of us who had arrived by then, prior to the festival proper beginning the next morning. There we had a chance to meet the team that put this mammoth undertaking together and made sure it didn't collapse under its own highly-ambitious weight. Massive kudos and thanks to all for their enterprise and energy - though I must especially mention Jana Stefanovska and festival organiser, Anna Selby.
So, to my own contributions: Tuesday morning's 'Tradition vs Innovation' panel discussion for the World Poetry Summit was well attended, and immaculately chaired by Steven Fowler. Starting from my take on Gysin's quote, we discussed several interconnected issues including the collaborative possibilities of poetry, the effects of the Internet and technology on composition, multiple publishing platforms, and the appropriation of the interrogative practices of contemporary art. There was a healthy balance of agreement and disagreement, and views were further exchanged in response to questions from the floor which, interestingly, focused primarily on issues of funding.
That same evening (26 June) I read at the Maintenant reading, which took place parallel to the official 'Festival Launch' and at a hard-to-locate room. Despite this it was full to capacity (nearly 100 people) for what was an electric session. Unfortunately Serhiy Zhadan was unable to travel to London at all, but the remaining six poets on the bill presented our varied work to an attentive audience. Footage of my reading is below, while videos of the rest of the evening can be viewed here.
We finished in time to make it to Jubilee Gardens and witness the Rain of Poems. It was a breezy evening, ensuring that the tens of thousands of poems dropped from the helicopter onto the large crowd below got dispersed over a fairly large area of central London, initially missing their target altogether - but following multiple positional adjustments we were treated to the experience of flickering cards with poetry dropping down on us and turning us into children scurrying not away from but towards these bombs, and fighting over scraps of words on paper. (Many poets were lucky enough to find or be given the cards displaying their own poems; if anyone happens to have come across one of those with my poem on it I'd appreciate at least an image of it!) A wonderful event, captured by the cameras of Casagrande:
On to Wednesday, and the experiment of the Poetry Bench, for which I read to a closely gathered audience of 5 or possibly 6 people for around 15 minutes. It was a rather unexpected pleasure to be interrupted between (and even during) poems to provide further contexts, and to be coerced into a dialogue with the group as if I was reading for them in someone's living room.
There were several other projects I got involved in during the week, such as the making of a one-off handwritten edition of all visiting poets' anthology-featured poems on paper made from fibres from around the world. Films were made of each of us reading these poems, for the Poetry Library archive. On another morning I joined several others in making a recording for 'A Call to Poetry', a sound installation to be broadcast on the Southbank Centre's Riverside Terrace until the end of the Festival of the World in September (the idea was to record poems in as many languages as possible, so I chose to read 'Το Πίσω Περβόλι' from Spitting Out the Mother Tongue, which is the one poem in the collection entirely in the Cypriot dialect of Greek).
Each visiting poet was given a 'buddy', a London-based poet with the responsibility of easing us in or making introductions. My 'buddy' was Dean Atta, who among other activities co-runs the 'Come Rhyme With Me' spoken word series on the last Friday of every month in north London, and to which he invited me on Friday 29 June to listen to his other guests as well as do a short set. The vibe was relaxed and friendly and I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. Attending it meant that I had to forgo tickets to the festival's main gala reading featuring all the Nobel laureates and so on, but I'd say it was worth it...
By the end of Parnassus I was full to the brim with poetry, and exhausted by talk, debate, new encounters, general excitement and lack of sleep - but wonderfully content. My concerns about the tone and meaning of the festival were extinguished before they even had a chance to take hold: there was a clear understanding that each of us was present as an individual poet, not necessarily tied to the nation they represented - with the organisers going as far as describing its ethos as anti-Olympic in its refusal of the bombastic, the materialistic, the prescriptive. Beyond that, the atmosphere was overwhelmingly positive. I felt none (or very little) of the competitiveness that often accompanies groups of poets performing at the same venues, and was treated to some really excellent work of diverse types. I met many brilliant, committed and energetic poets, editors, translators, publishers etc and left with renewed vigour and optimism about what can be done within the discipline we call poetry.
*
For the Poetry Parnassus tour I arrived in Derry on the evening of Wednesday 4 July - and for my workshop at the creativity zone on Queen Quay the next day I directed the writing of collaborative pieces based on the words 'Songs', 'Of', 'The', and 'Sea', using a variant of the exquisite corpse technique. The weather was fabulous and there were lots of activities going on along the quay, all of which meant that our workshops were a little poorly attended despite the great work put in by Catherine McGrotty of the Verbal Arts Centre. In the afternoon Nick Chapman of Speaking Volumes - the organisation that managed the tour - as well as Maureen Roberts and myself were briefly interviewed on site by BBC Radio Foyle. Maureen and I read a poem each on air.
The 'Literary Deathmatch' of the next evening took place in a fun and appropriately tongue-in-cheek atmosphere at the Verbal Arts Centre. The final was contested by Saradha Soobrayen, Gerður Kristný and Maureen Roberts - with Maureen going on to 'win' comprehensively. As for me, I was duly eliminated in the first round.
We finished in time to make it to Jubilee Gardens and witness the Rain of Poems. It was a breezy evening, ensuring that the tens of thousands of poems dropped from the helicopter onto the large crowd below got dispersed over a fairly large area of central London, initially missing their target altogether - but following multiple positional adjustments we were treated to the experience of flickering cards with poetry dropping down on us and turning us into children scurrying not away from but towards these bombs, and fighting over scraps of words on paper. (Many poets were lucky enough to find or be given the cards displaying their own poems; if anyone happens to have come across one of those with my poem on it I'd appreciate at least an image of it!) A wonderful event, captured by the cameras of Casagrande:
On to Wednesday, and the experiment of the Poetry Bench, for which I read to a closely gathered audience of 5 or possibly 6 people for around 15 minutes. It was a rather unexpected pleasure to be interrupted between (and even during) poems to provide further contexts, and to be coerced into a dialogue with the group as if I was reading for them in someone's living room.
There were several other projects I got involved in during the week, such as the making of a one-off handwritten edition of all visiting poets' anthology-featured poems on paper made from fibres from around the world. Films were made of each of us reading these poems, for the Poetry Library archive. On another morning I joined several others in making a recording for 'A Call to Poetry', a sound installation to be broadcast on the Southbank Centre's Riverside Terrace until the end of the Festival of the World in September (the idea was to record poems in as many languages as possible, so I chose to read 'Το Πίσω Περβόλι' from Spitting Out the Mother Tongue, which is the one poem in the collection entirely in the Cypriot dialect of Greek).
Each visiting poet was given a 'buddy', a London-based poet with the responsibility of easing us in or making introductions. My 'buddy' was Dean Atta, who among other activities co-runs the 'Come Rhyme With Me' spoken word series on the last Friday of every month in north London, and to which he invited me on Friday 29 June to listen to his other guests as well as do a short set. The vibe was relaxed and friendly and I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. Attending it meant that I had to forgo tickets to the festival's main gala reading featuring all the Nobel laureates and so on, but I'd say it was worth it...
By the end of Parnassus I was full to the brim with poetry, and exhausted by talk, debate, new encounters, general excitement and lack of sleep - but wonderfully content. My concerns about the tone and meaning of the festival were extinguished before they even had a chance to take hold: there was a clear understanding that each of us was present as an individual poet, not necessarily tied to the nation they represented - with the organisers going as far as describing its ethos as anti-Olympic in its refusal of the bombastic, the materialistic, the prescriptive. Beyond that, the atmosphere was overwhelmingly positive. I felt none (or very little) of the competitiveness that often accompanies groups of poets performing at the same venues, and was treated to some really excellent work of diverse types. I met many brilliant, committed and energetic poets, editors, translators, publishers etc and left with renewed vigour and optimism about what can be done within the discipline we call poetry.
*
For the Poetry Parnassus tour I arrived in Derry on the evening of Wednesday 4 July - and for my workshop at the creativity zone on Queen Quay the next day I directed the writing of collaborative pieces based on the words 'Songs', 'Of', 'The', and 'Sea', using a variant of the exquisite corpse technique. The weather was fabulous and there were lots of activities going on along the quay, all of which meant that our workshops were a little poorly attended despite the great work put in by Catherine McGrotty of the Verbal Arts Centre. In the afternoon Nick Chapman of Speaking Volumes - the organisation that managed the tour - as well as Maureen Roberts and myself were briefly interviewed on site by BBC Radio Foyle. Maureen and I read a poem each on air.
The 'Literary Deathmatch' of the next evening took place in a fun and appropriately tongue-in-cheek atmosphere at the Verbal Arts Centre. The final was contested by Saradha Soobrayen, Gerður Kristný and Maureen Roberts - with Maureen going on to 'win' comprehensively. As for me, I was duly eliminated in the first round.
Tuesday, 12 June 2012
Reading for the World at the Irish Writers' Centre
This coming weekend I'll be part of the Irish Writers' Centre's Read for the World event, a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Centre - and an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for 'Most Authors Reading Consecutively From Their Own Books'. The current holder of this title is the Berlin International Literature Festival, with 75 authors.
For this marathon public reading lasting 28 hours, 111 authors have been scheduled to read in strict 15 minute slots from 10am on Friday 15 June all the way to 2pm on Saturday 16 June (Bloomsday). Audiences will be welcome at the Centre throughout, while the event will also be live-streamed on its website.
I'm scheduled to read from Spitting Out the Mother Tongue on Saturday 16th at 1.15am (British/Irish time).
For this marathon public reading lasting 28 hours, 111 authors have been scheduled to read in strict 15 minute slots from 10am on Friday 15 June all the way to 2pm on Saturday 16 June (Bloomsday). Audiences will be welcome at the Centre throughout, while the event will also be live-streamed on its website.
I'm scheduled to read from Spitting Out the Mother Tongue on Saturday 16th at 1.15am (British/Irish time).
Thursday, 24 May 2012
Spring Poetry Rain
For this event taking place in Nicosia this coming Saturday 26 May, large balloons filled with hundreds of copies of poems by 307 poets from 55 countries - including two of mine - will be placed along Ledra Street and Arasta Sokak to create a 'chain of connection' over the dividing line. The balloons are set to be burst at intervals, releasing the poems to fall 'like rain' on the public.
Devised by two cultural organisations operating on either side of the divide, Ideogramma and Sidestreets, and supported by the European Parliament office in Cyprus, Spring Poetry Rain will be broadcast live on the organisers' websites. It starts at 6pm local time (4pm British / Irish time).
Devised by two cultural organisations operating on either side of the divide, Ideogramma and Sidestreets, and supported by the European Parliament office in Cyprus, Spring Poetry Rain will be broadcast live on the organisers' websites. It starts at 6pm local time (4pm British / Irish time).
Thursday, 17 May 2012
Interview on CyBC's 'Εντέχνως'
Wednesday's (16 May) edition of Εντέχνως, an arts magazine programme broadcast each weekday evening on CyBC TV, featured an interview with me (conducted entirely in Greek, and beginning at around the 7:40 mark) about my work and activities. Remarkably, I didn't slip back into English too often...
Tuesday, 20 March 2012
Tuesday, 21 February 2012
OPEN Ealing readings on video
Below is a video of my reading at OPEN Ealing's highly-successful inaugural poetry evening on Wednesday 15 February.
Here are those by the other guest poets: Marcus Slease, SJ Fowler and Cherry Smyth.
And a couple from the open-mic session: Michael Zand and Amy Evans.
Here are those by the other guest poets: Marcus Slease, SJ Fowler and Cherry Smyth.
And a couple from the open-mic session: Michael Zand and Amy Evans.
Thursday, 12 January 2012
A new update on the Al-Mutanabbi Street project
Allowing for minor editorial interventions, the composition stage for my chapbook / artist's book Muses Walk has been completed. Sixteen new poems are, for better or for worse, written; I've also taken many photographs, some of which will contribute its visual element. I've now moved on to working out the design, before tackling production/printing issues.
In addition to being a response to the bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street (it was conceived as such, with the concept behind it discussed elsewhere) I view Muses Walk, which will be home-made and self-produced, as a sort of coda to Spitting Out the Mother Tongue - and the completion, at least for the time being, of my treatment of the conditions I grew up with and their implications. And though I'm only required to contribute three copies to the project (to be delivered by the end of March 2012) I intend to make 50 numbered copies of the book, with the rest made available for purchase at readings etc.
*
I'm currently in the process of putting together a reading/event in Dublin to mark the 5th anniversary of the bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street, on 5 March. Time and venue are confirmed, as are most of the participants. I'll be posting more on this next month.
*
Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, an anthology of texts responding to the bombing, will be published by PM Press in June. It's edited by Beau Beausoleil and Deema Shehabi, and is now available to pre-order from the publisher's website.
*
Below is a video recording of a panel discussion on Al-Mutanabbi Street at Santa Cruz public library. It's introduced by Beau Beausoleil, who outlines quite comprehensively his reasons for initiating and curating these projects.
In addition to being a response to the bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street (it was conceived as such, with the concept behind it discussed elsewhere) I view Muses Walk, which will be home-made and self-produced, as a sort of coda to Spitting Out the Mother Tongue - and the completion, at least for the time being, of my treatment of the conditions I grew up with and their implications. And though I'm only required to contribute three copies to the project (to be delivered by the end of March 2012) I intend to make 50 numbered copies of the book, with the rest made available for purchase at readings etc.
*
I'm currently in the process of putting together a reading/event in Dublin to mark the 5th anniversary of the bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street, on 5 March. Time and venue are confirmed, as are most of the participants. I'll be posting more on this next month.
*
Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, an anthology of texts responding to the bombing, will be published by PM Press in June. It's edited by Beau Beausoleil and Deema Shehabi, and is now available to pre-order from the publisher's website.
*
Below is a video recording of a panel discussion on Al-Mutanabbi Street at Santa Cruz public library. It's introduced by Beau Beausoleil, who outlines quite comprehensively his reasons for initiating and curating these projects.
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
the poet was in the shack
The resulting text from my shack intervention at the Highlanes Gallery in Drogheda last Saturday - part of Thomas Brezing's exhibition 'The Art of Failure isn't hard to Master' - is now on the gallery website. Many thanks and congratulations to all who collaborated in composing this piece. Thanks also to the gallery staff. I enjoyed shacking up with myself for a few hours and interacting with the public from there.
Footage of my reading of the text after emerging from the shack has surfaced on YouTube:
Footage of my reading of the text after emerging from the shack has surfaced on YouTube:
Wednesday, 12 October 2011
It's a Wrap: UpStart poster giveaway party
To mark the close of the poster project and to raise funds for future projects, UpStart - the group that put art and poetry on the streets of Dublin during the Irish General Election campaign of February 2011 - is throwing a poster giveaway party on Friday 14 October at Block T, Smithfield, Dublin 7.
It'll feature bands, DJs, performances, speakers, screenings and a poster exhibition. And everyone attending will receive a wrapped poster - their own piece of UpStart history to keep.
Somewhere among it all I'll be reading from new work.
The entrance fee is 7 Euro (though it's free for contributors to the original project) and like all UpStart events it's BYOB. 7pm till midnight.
Saturday, 24 September 2011
Saturday, 6 August 2011
Herbarium reading
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Baghdad, 5 March 2007 (Al-Mutanabbi Street) at the Imperial War Museum North, Manchester
Exhibition continues until 31 January 2012.
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Christian Bök in Bury & London
Christian Bök will be making a couple of rare appearances in the UK over the coming week.
First, as part of the Text Festival in Bury, he will be performing at the Met Arts Centre along with Holly Pester, among others; this is on Saturday 30 April. Then, on Tuesday 3 May, he will be at Vibe Live on Brick Lane for the London Word Festival, with Luke Kennard and Maria Fusco. Both shows start at 7.30pm.
Below is a clip of Bök reading an excerpt from his book Eunoia, which consists of five chapters restricting themselves to the use of a single vowel; this is a poem/section from Chapter I (for Dick Higgins).
First, as part of the Text Festival in Bury, he will be performing at the Met Arts Centre along with Holly Pester, among others; this is on Saturday 30 April. Then, on Tuesday 3 May, he will be at Vibe Live on Brick Lane for the London Word Festival, with Luke Kennard and Maria Fusco. Both shows start at 7.30pm.
Below is a clip of Bök reading an excerpt from his book Eunoia, which consists of five chapters restricting themselves to the use of a single vowel; this is a poem/section from Chapter I (for Dick Higgins).
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
Friday, 31 December 2010
Thursday, 30 September 2010
Howl, the movie
Howl, the movie - a film composed from court records, interviews and the poem itself, and with James Franco as the young Allen Ginsberg - opened in cinemas in the US last week. I look forward to its European release.
There's a trailer on the film's official website. And an early review on Ron Silliman's blog.
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
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