... recently in manchester (and bolton)
Right last time I reviewed something it was the last Freed Up (which returns in February) just before I performed at Poets and Pasties. So I've managed to attend - and miss - quite a lot of events. I'll start - obviously - in the middle with startrunning D - the fourth of 12 events across 12 months with funding from the Arts Council.
There were some well-established names performing - Dominic Berry, Rod Tame and Jackie Hagan to name a few, several other familiar names, and some less experienced - including myself. Regular readers will have noticed a sound piece called decline which was my contribution. This 'reading' of a poetry collection involved me playing a book using microphone and LoopStation. Although it's quite the furthest I've ever strayed from conventional 'poetry' in performance it was easily the best-received to date. There were a few people I was unfamiliar with too - which I always enjoy. Kriss Foster (who also featured at Per Verse - see below) played some songs and managed to be funny without being irritating or whimsical - tricky when you're dressed as a leopard. A friend and collaborator of Andy N (who organised the night with Gary Morris) Kylyra had sent poems via CD which on the whole went down well despite the absence of visual presence.
Look out for the next Poets and Pasties event - which I guess is likely to be early in 2009 - it should be fun.
per verse
Because chronology is for cowards I'm going to ignore The Other Room briefly and skip straight across to Conor Aylward's Per Verse at TV21 last week. Now I missed the Per Verse Christmas party last year so I made sure to get there this time round. As you might expect if you're familiar with Conor's performances or Per Verse back whe n it was a monthly concern then there was a seat of pants feel to the night at times. Right from the beginning in fact when first act up - performance stalwart Gordon Zola - inadvertantly trashed the mic at the beginning of his set rendering the rest of the night unamplified.
There were serious and serio-comic poems from usual suspects Dominic Berry, Rod Tame, the always wonderful Gerry Potter, and featured poet Jackie Hagan who closed the night, and has performed some really good stuff lately. Jackie's work has become a lot stronger and more focussed - possibly because it's simpler or at least seems that way. I'm not sure whether her slightly diffident performance persona adds to the effect or detracts from it, but hopefully she'll get plenty of opportunity to develop it even more in the coming years. Gerry Potter did a sequence of three connected poems which I'd describe as a queer Dylan-esque rewriting of Waiting for Godot if I wanted to be mischevious and misleading. Kriss Foster popped up again doing a different set of songs, and was still funny. Also funny was Puppetual Motion with Pico (the sponge) who was excellent back at Vaudeville 100. There's no point describing the act - you really have to see it - but there was a great return session later on built around an Elmo puppet.
I managed to fill around 9 pages of my notebook with what looks like amphetamine-fueled ravings but are in fact stone cold sober ravings - I'll post them at a later date. It was a very enjoyable night although for fairly different reasons than The Other Room the night before. That night manages to be an interesting introduction to unfamiliar writers, a recontextualising of writers you may only have seen on the page, and an affirmation that there's poetic life beyond the major publishers, broadsheet newspapers and Radio 4. Per Verse by contrast has more in common with events like Vaudeville and almost wilfully flirts with complete collapse - this is a good thing.
the other room
You really really must go to The Other Room while it still exists - though I hope it's around for a while yet. Pretending you were there later on won't cover your shame when expectant grandchildren ask for stories of the cutting edge of contemporary poetry back in the golden age. You Have Been Warned. Next reading Wednesday 4 February 2009 with Richard Barrett, Patricia Farrell and Lucy Harvest Clarke. Be there. 7pm on.
For those ingrates who couldn't be arsed coming out on one of the coldest nights of the winter so far on a day that both Manchester's soccer clubs played at home here's what you missed. Scott Thurston, Tony Trehy and Carol Watts read, and for my money fitted together well - I don't know how planned or haphazard these groupings are but the readers at each night tend to complement one another in interesting ways.
Starting with the abstract - my initial impressions were of walls and squares and grids - of poetry that had been broken up, distilled and reassembled in new and exciting ways. But there were differences in the abstract impression if each individual - Scott seems to assemble his walls from hand-dressed stone - Tony creates patterns that slip in and out of focus - and Carol's poems have by far the most fluid surface of the three. To be a little more specific, Scott's words appear carefully chosen and stipped of all unnecessary ornamentation - although it's a very different style and probably less marketable it is reminiscent of Matt Welton. I like it a lot although it's a lot more work than I'd want to put into a poem - but I'm a lazy dilettante and Scott's a proper poet. Tony's words may be equally well chosen but appear to be piled on top of one another much more haphazardly - given his disclaimers about the performance and the contexts for which the pieces were written they were in some ways the most performable pieces of the night. Carol's words appeared to be carefully chosen and carefully place - but with musicality a part of the structural scheme in a way that it wasn't with either of the others.
Tony Trehy rather disingenously prefaced his readings by saying that his poems weren't written for performance (which appears to be true) and that they were not performable (which was patently bollocks). Not only were they performable but the performance of some of them would have gone down well at something like Vaudeville where generally speaking volume goes down better than concepts. I'm thinking particularly of the long poem with no line endings written for a gallery that was printed on a massive concertina on paper that Tony wrestled with to comic effect. The words in all the poems were assembled in great congested groups - sometimes thinning out - and often evading conventional meaning/sentence structure/poetic language. The performance itself was probably the most outgoing and performance-y of the three - if Tony hadn't rehearsed at least some it beforehand I'll eat my cat.
That said Carol Watts seemed entirely comfortable and at home reading - and read well - at least partly aided by the musicality of her poems. I don't want to overplay that side of her writing - the poems are dense with images and meanings or potential meanings - the language often very rich. I was going to say that the poems remind me in some ways of Pascale Petit but I'm not sure that's true. The similarity I suppose in the accumulation of images and detail. The poems are quite novelistic - pack in a lot of information in a way that is reminiscent of other writers - but with a character of their own. Perhaps more than either Scott or Tony, Carol's poems appear to refer to a wider world of objects and events and people - as well as to a world of concepts and language and structures. But as with most of the readers at The Other Room I'm not as familiar with Carol's writing as I'd like to be - but there are a few pieces online that you should be able to track down. What I may do this time and in future is read as much of the work as I can after posting my initial thoughts and then post modified reactions later on.
In much the same vein, but for those of you who insist on living in that London the last Openned reading before Christmas is on Wednesday 10 December, 19:15 in the basement of The Foundry, London, EC2 - featuring Tim Atkins, Edward Nesbit, Holly Pester, Marcus Slease, Cole Swensen, Stephen Willey and the final extract from Openned's video interview with Allen Fisher (who will be reading at The Other Room next year - more later). Again if you're able to attend but don't make the effort I've got no sympathy.
startrunning D
For a change this wasn't a poetry event. But as you might have come to expect from santiago's dead wasp it was an art event with a bias toward sound art. From their own leaflet 'startrunning is an independent, artist-led project with a focus on bringing together and developing an array of interdisciplinary arts practice.' There will be 12 events on a monthly basis for one year to 'present and experience challenging work in unique environments'.
I'm ashamed to admit it but although the four artists featured in this event I went to are mainly based in Manchester and Salford - the other being from Sheffield - I only really knew the work of one.
D the fourth event took place at Manchester's Sandbar - a likeable if in places perishing cold pub just off Oxford Road. Personally I far prefer it to the new Trof across the road. But getting back to the art - two of the pieces of work I didn't really check out in any detail so if you'd like to comment on them here please do. They were the piece Essonido #1 by jack of none an artist collaborative - the only online link for whom relates to the work of a range of artists for Under Construction an exhibition at Manchester Victoria Baths in summer 07. If their piece was the object that hung in the lower, stone floored seating area, and looked superficially like a junk sculpture or something you might see in the Castlefield Gallery (personally I think that's a good thing before someone gets up on their hand legs and complains) then I did see it and hear it. I didn't however pay a great deal of attention to it - mainly because I'm very shy and while there are people sat underneath something I'm not going to wander round gazing at it. The other piece I didn't really check out other than in passing - again because I'm more comfortable staying in one place or with friends - was Daniel Staincliffe's Hoover Machine. This is 'an interactive mechanical sculpture designed to record ephemera in its environment' that ran on an area of decking set aside for smokers. The superstructure appeared to be made from wood and I believe it could be moved around the space to film objects beneath it - again anyone who knows anything more please let me know.
D the fourth event took place at Manchester's Sandbar - a likeable if in places perishing cold pub just off Oxford Road. Personally I far prefer it to the new Trof across the road. But getting back to the art - two of the pieces of work I didn't really check out in any detail so if you'd like to comment on them here please do. They were the piece Essonido #1 by jack of none an artist collaborative - the only online link for whom relates to the work of a range of artists for Under Construction an exhibition at Manchester Victoria Baths in summer 07. If their piece was the object that hung in the lower, stone floored seating area, and looked superficially like a junk sculpture or something you might see in the Castlefield Gallery (personally I think that's a good thing before someone gets up on their hand legs and complains) then I did see it and hear it. I didn't however pay a great deal of attention to it - mainly because I'm very shy and while there are people sat underneath something I'm not going to wander round gazing at it. The other piece I didn't really check out other than in passing - again because I'm more comfortable staying in one place or with friends - was Daniel Staincliffe's Hoover Machine. This is 'an interactive mechanical sculpture designed to record ephemera in its environment' that ran on an area of decking set aside for smokers. The superstructure appeared to be made from wood and I believe it could be moved around the space to film objects beneath it - again anyone who knows anything more please let me know.
The other two artists did pieces that were primarily sound-based. Hervé Perez created a soundscape/piece of music from found sounds with his laptop. I'm not sure how many if any were from Sandbar - the write up mentions 'sacred places' - so it may be they all came from other locations. Either way the piece was fascinating - and despite featuring sounds like creaking doors and the ambient sounds of spaces it avoided sounding either narrative or like an orphaned soundtrack - either of which would have had my attention wandering. Although he was last on - on a Sunday at the end of November - he had a full space for pretty much the entirety of the performance. I'd like to check out more of his work - and I'd recommend you follow the link. He also utilised some more conventional electronic/laptop sounds within the performance - although without the incongruity with other sounds that sometimes occurs. I suspect that perhaps the performance - both its shape and reception - depended to an extent on the location and that many of his performances exist within a specific time and location. But I'm saying this with very little evidence either way.
Finally if you don't already have an idea what Gary Fisher does then frankly you haven't read enough santiago's dead wasp. For this performance he mic-ed up some metal bars in the space and with effects pedals including LoopStation played them. He built up some phenomenal noise (including some great feedback in places) - I don't presently see anything on his profile relating to this - although it may be on one of the other MySpace pages he has. Percussive, noisy, site-specific, and I know that somewhere film from a couple of different cameras exists. I know because one of them was mine which I've currently loaned to my friend Helen who complained that she was finding it hard to get anything done after completing her film degree. Although the video function is very limited I thought it was something she could use more effectively than me.
poets and pasties
Although on the night I thought the turnout was a little disappointing on reflection given that the venue was away from the centre of Bolton and it was the launch event Poets and Pasties was actually pretty well attended. The fact that Bolton Rugby Club is such a cavernous space - I'm sure it must seat similar numbers to Matt & Phreds which hosts Dominic Berry's similarly named Poets & Mash. Despite slightly smaller numbers than better established nights the atmosphere was really good and hopefully will be preserved in future nights.
Although on the night I thought the turnout was a little disappointing on reflection given that the venue was away from the centre of Bolton and it was the launch event Poets and Pasties was actually pretty well attended. The fact that Bolton Rugby Club is such a cavernous space - I'm sure it must seat similar numbers to Matt & Phreds which hosts Dominic Berry's similarly named Poets & Mash. Despite slightly smaller numbers than better established nights the atmosphere was really good and hopefully will be preserved in future nights.
There were some well-established names performing - Dominic Berry, Rod Tame and Jackie Hagan to name a few, several other familiar names, and some less experienced - including myself. Regular readers will have noticed a sound piece called decline which was my contribution. This 'reading' of a poetry collection involved me playing a book using microphone and LoopStation. Although it's quite the furthest I've ever strayed from conventional 'poetry' in performance it was easily the best-received to date. There were a few people I was unfamiliar with too - which I always enjoy. Kriss Foster (who also featured at Per Verse - see below) played some songs and managed to be funny without being irritating or whimsical - tricky when you're dressed as a leopard. A friend and collaborator of Andy N (who organised the night with Gary Morris) Kylyra had sent poems via CD which on the whole went down well despite the absence of visual presence.
Look out for the next Poets and Pasties event - which I guess is likely to be early in 2009 - it should be fun.
per verse
Because chronology is for cowards I'm going to ignore The Other Room briefly and skip straight across to Conor Aylward's Per Verse at TV21 last week. Now I missed the Per Verse Christmas party last year so I made sure to get there this time round. As you might expect if you're familiar with Conor's performances or Per Verse back whe n it was a monthly concern then there was a seat of pants feel to the night at times. Right from the beginning in fact when first act up - performance stalwart Gordon Zola - inadvertantly trashed the mic at the beginning of his set rendering the rest of the night unamplified.
I managed to fill around 9 pages of my notebook with what looks like amphetamine-fueled ravings but are in fact stone cold sober ravings - I'll post them at a later date. It was a very enjoyable night although for fairly different reasons than The Other Room the night before. That night manages to be an interesting introduction to unfamiliar writers, a recontextualising of writers you may only have seen on the page, and an affirmation that there's poetic life beyond the major publishers, broadsheet newspapers and Radio 4. Per Verse by contrast has more in common with events like Vaudeville and almost wilfully flirts with complete collapse - this is a good thing.
the other room
You really really must go to The Other Room while it still exists - though I hope it's around for a while yet. Pretending you were there later on won't cover your shame when expectant grandchildren ask for stories of the cutting edge of contemporary poetry back in the golden age. You Have Been Warned. Next reading Wednesday 4 February 2009 with Richard Barrett, Patricia Farrell and Lucy Harvest Clarke. Be there. 7pm on.
For those ingrates who couldn't be arsed coming out on one of the coldest nights of the winter so far on a day that both Manchester's soccer clubs played at home here's what you missed. Scott Thurston, Tony Trehy and Carol Watts read, and for my money fitted together well - I don't know how planned or haphazard these groupings are but the readers at each night tend to complement one another in interesting ways.
Starting with the abstract - my initial impressions were of walls and squares and grids - of poetry that had been broken up, distilled and reassembled in new and exciting ways. But there were differences in the abstract impression if each individual - Scott seems to assemble his walls from hand-dressed stone - Tony creates patterns that slip in and out of focus - and Carol's poems
To get a little more detailed on your ass it was pleasing to note that what I'd previously observed about Scott's poems in the last if p then q - that they could be read in a number of directions - appeared to be true. It raises some fascinating questions about where the sense lies in a text, how we read and understand texts, and what role ambiguity and even contradiction play in the meaning of texts. In a sense a reading of those particular poems was a kind of temporary closing of the texts - utilising only one of the potential readings. And yet of course as readers we can choose to reassemble any text we choose in any way we chose - as we learn from William Burroughs, Roland Barthes, Oulipo, Tom Phillips and countless other sources. Not only would I like to go back to the original texts but I'd like to hear the performance again - in fact the same goes for all the poets. With Scott more than the other two it's harder to find a reference point for the poem - to find a way in to understanding the work. If he hasn't read at the Bolton Octagon series of readings it's about time he got invited. All of this might make him sound forbidding and difficult and sterile - which really isn't the case - the poems are compelling and well worth reading even if you don't give a jumping fuck about how texts are understood.
Tony Trehy rather disingenously prefaced his readings by saying that his poems weren't written for performance (which appears to be true) and that they were not performable (which was patently bollocks). Not only were they performable but the performance of some of them would have gone down well at something like Vaudeville where generally speaking volume goes down better than concepts. I'm thinking particularly of the long poem with no line endings written for a gallery that was printed on a massive concertina on paper that Tony wrestled with to comic effect. The words in all the poems were assembled in great congested groups - sometimes thinning out - and often evading conventional meaning/sentence structure/poetic language. The performance itself was probably the most outgoing and performance-y of the three - if Tony hadn't rehearsed at least some it beforehand I'll eat my cat.
That said Carol Watts seemed entirely comfortable and at home reading - and read well - at least partly aided by the musicality of her poems. I don't want to overplay that side of her writing - the poems are dense with images and meanings or potential meanings - the language often very rich. I was going to say that the poems remind me in some ways of Pascale Petit but I'm not sure that's true. The similarity I suppose in the accumulation of images and detail. The poems are quite novelistic - pack in a lot of information in a way that is reminiscent of other writers - but with a character of their own. Perhaps more than either Scott or Tony, Carol's poems appear to refer to a wider world of objects and events and people - as well as to a world of concepts and language and structures. But as with most of the readers at The Other Room I'm not as familiar with Carol's writing as I'd like to be - but there are a few pieces online that you should be able to track down. What I may do this time and in future is read as much of the work as I can after
Also at the night - although again friends and family weren't able to come along - I did talk to Richard Barrett (formerly of Quit This Pampered Town which appears to be on a kind of hiatus) who will be reading at the next event in February. He's a very approachable man and a regular attender of The Other Room - track down and read his work AND come along and see him read next year. Changing subject - because this was the sort of night I have to take time to process I wrote fewer notes than I did at Per Verse - which actually is a bit of a shame because words are proving a bit of an irritation at present - I'm happier with mewling and puking. So yeah, another excellent evening.
In much the same vein, but for those of you who insist on living in that London the last Openned reading before Christmas is on Wednesday 10 December, 19:15 in the basement of The Foundry, London, EC2 - featuring Tim Atkins, Edward Nesbit, Holly Pester, Marcus Slease, Cole Swensen, Stephen Willey and the final extract from Openned's video interview with Allen Fisher (who will be reading at The Other Room next year - more later). Again if you're able to attend but don't make the effort I've got no sympathy.
.
Comments
Tony Trehy