sun

sun

in the morning
the sun
was milk.
through
the day fog
swallowed
and leached it
out again.
darkening
to a bank
of white
nothing
and night.

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hello 2009

It's been a pretty busy year for santiago with the hope that 2009 will be even busier. Characteristically though the year will start with a hiatus. From midafternoon santiago will on his way to visit family for New Year and won't be able to blog or answer emails until sometime in the afternoon or evening of Saturday 3rd. Unless something comes to me in the next hour or so this is probably the last post of this year, so have a peaceful and safe new year and I hope to see you out braving the cold as soon as possible.

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the frog - a 100 word novel

Once Kirsty tried to work out how long she spent paused. Staring at something or concentrating on a job or decision that others might not even think of.

Mowing thick grass once she heard a cruch and stopped the mower to move the stone or stick. Instead she saw a frog its two front feet chopped off lying on its back in the stream bleeding gently. She stayed a long time trying to work out whether to kill it or not and how.

Moments when time pauses have no boundary she realised. She could not measure and add them up.

.

watertight

watertight

the end terrace
opened and pinned
untouched
under scaffold
for five years
like a shattered leg
is finished
now in months.

if it was
not raining
the walls
would warm like skin to the sun.
but roof tiles
shine
with symmetry.

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the garden shed - a 100 word novel

Simon sat in his garden shed and told himself the story of every item there. How he learned to hang onions and the weather when he picked these. The smell of the rusty hedge clippers whose cracked wooden handle used to nip his hands. His discussions with friends before settling on which string to buy. And although most of the objects were useless now their weight of meaning felt like the only thing keeping him down. That if he got rid of them he would finally drift slowly off the ground leaving his whole life behind as he rose higher.

.

the magic trick

the magic trick

it
was heaps of coloured
powder. colour
and powder
- the texture -
both important.
I made smooth
spoon moulds in flour.

.

age

age

I cannot remember
the wet clay
of breathing through
a cold the
hallucinatory nights the
frustration of being
unable even to
lie still. worse
is being able
to remember then
being well when
nothing has an
effort or cost.

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a wednesday

a wednesday

it is a day
when the frost
is so hard
everything becomes
brittle.
cars
trees
railings
will all
snap
with a barely
resisting plik.

there is snow
but it is like
the fog
froze
into dust.
I hold up
my fingers
they have turned
to ice
so that I can
see through them.

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blister - visual poem

derek bailey 2 - visual poem

towel - visual poem

It's hard to say if this is a total failure or simply not bold enough. An attempt a various discontinuities of texture and use of unpleasing shapes it obviously shouldn't be beautiful. As it is it's just a bit meh.

silence stalls

silence stalls

silence stalls speak again
stalls speak again silence
speak again silence stalls
again silence stalls speak
silence speak stalls again
stalls again speak silence
speak silence again stalls
again stalls silence speak
silence again stalls speak
stalls silence speak again
speak stalls again silence
again speak silence stalls

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500th post - kim and the snow - a 100 word novel

It did not snow. Kim looked out of her window every morning. She wore her coat to school.

Kim stood in the garden with her arms outstretched until she started shivering. Then she stood until she stopped shivering. Ice formed a fur up her fingers across her face and down her coat. The ice froze through her skin until she was ice until she was no longer cold. And then Kim started to tremble and then slowly at first snow poured from her hands and from her hair and flew into the sky before it fell again.

In the morning it snowed.

.

cycle lane

cycle lane

the cyclist stops
and falls
in the deep
sand on
the path on
top of
the river bank
flood defence
slowly and quietly

taking his feet
off the
pedals to touch
the ground
and slow himself
a child
rushes downhill rocking
anxiously from
stabiliser to stabiliser

two cyclists wait
in flourescent
jackets ahead of
the cars
at the junction

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mr lord - a 100 word novel

Every day James watched Mr Lord from the end house in the village walk past slowly, leaning as though he wanted to drive the stick he used into the tarmac of the road. In summer he sometimes wore slippers and always stopped to wave when he saw James dodge out of sight behind the curtain. James wondered why the old man had to walk so slow when it was so much fun to run. At twenty seven James's knee could barely manage stairs and when he visited home he would stop and talk to Mr Lord, not yet a pensioner.

.

and walks

and walks

morning
muted to
a stage set

and you are
grown above
it

.

count

count

the rhythm
under the bridge
of
train wheels
bang and roar
is
aeroplane's steely
growl back outside
and
no change
between the two

.

ice

ice

ice skins
the road
cars and
roofs the
colour of cloud
like a
brief frown
an echo
of something

.

blue

blue

buildings sky
and cloud
ice
into grey
mist
brown black
bricks
and windows
nearer

gates and
roofs older
buildings
painted wood
pale
grey blue
and
unpainted fence
around

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leg - visual poem

1-4 - visual poem

ladder - visual poem

oyster - visual poem

Three more experiments with this particular shade of ink to come. I'm not really convinced that I've found anything that really suits it yet. But I have plenty of time to find out, and another three inks received for christmas to play with too.

On a more boring subject, although it won't be apparent to anyone, I've started to rationalise my tags (I think they're called labels here) down from 46 to what I think is going to be 23 barring occasional names. It should make searching for posts a lot simpler and clearer. At present I've completed around 112 back to the beginning of September this year.

the crayon - a 100 word novel

Stephen's most valued possession was a red crayon from a set of crayons given to him for his sixth birthday by his mother. He still had it when he was twenty three, and was hurt and upset when his partner Joanne used it to write him a note. In turn she was upset by the thought she had hurt him. He told her it was not important, that she had no way of knowing. Even so she bought him a replacement crayon. From then on until he died Stephen included a red crayon in every birthday present he gave Joanne.

.

fish - a 100 word novel

At her grandfather's for dinner after Christmas when she was ten or eleven Sian noticed he put some of his fish to one side before he ate. She asked him why and he told her that if you gave something back for everything you took from nature it showed your respect. From then on she always left a small part of every meal. Later on she also learned to give something whenever she was hurt. So when her grandfather died she cut off some of her hair and buried it. The act was more calming to her than the adult rituals.

.

the orange - a 100 word novel

Laura liked oranges. Despite the occasional sharpness, despite the drudge and mess of peeling them, despite having to spit out the pips. She liked to show off to her grandson Carl by peeling the skin in a single spring with a knife. Then she would lay the segments out for him on a plate while he told her whatever came into his head. Sometimes he would peel the orange himself. When he was eight he managed for the first time to peel the orange in one strip. He laid out the segments and gave them to Laura. 'For you Grandma.'

.

doors - a 100 word novel

Charlotte's whole life felt like different doors. Stretching for the handles when she was too small to reach. Listening behind doors to adults - and later to her friends. Slamming of petulant lovers. Most of all she liked the physicality of doors. The tangible presence of gloss paint. The variety of handles, hinges and other practical or decorative features. She loved the simple mechanism of doors.

Her grandparents' house had hinged wooden shutters that folded into recesses on either side of the windows when not in use. When Charlotte visited with her parents she was always allowed to close these shutters.

.

harold pinter 1930-2008

Nobel acceptance speech
Guardian obituary
Wikipedia

.

adrian mitchell 1932-2008

I have nothing useful to add. The links below are mainly obituaries from people who actually knew Adrian Mitchell.

http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/titlepage.asp?isbn=1852248432
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/adrian-mitchell-poet-and-playwright-whose-work-was-driven-by-his-pacifist-politics-1208517.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/dec/21/adrian-mitchell-obituary
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/22/poetry
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/dec/23/adrian-mitchell-john-burnside
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7794815.stm
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/adrian-mitchell-poet-and-playwright-whose-work-was-driven-by-his-pacifist-politics-1208517.html
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=16758

A link to my review of Adrian Mitchell at Manchester Literature Festival two months ago.

.

new blog

Despite a slow rate of submission over at god is a sloth santiago has decided to launch a new blog - insult blog will cater to all your random verbal abuse needs. Frankly I'd be fucking amazed if no one else has had the same idea but I'm too lazy to research it properly.

.

on how to get your fat ass down to a decent poetry reading

June next year is very far away but already santiago feels like The Other Room could be quite interesting - what with appearing alongside proper published poets what do teaching and stuff - Allen Fisher and Ceri Buck. It's going to be like some Visigoth turning up and trashing the place - I hope. Obviously it'll be sound poetry but whether that will be mainly percussive or feedback or vocal layers or something without any technology or found sounds or what isn't possible to say at present. Be there if you can.

If you can't then please make the effort to be there for 4 February 2009 with Richard Barrett, Patricia Farrell and Lucy Harvest Clarke and for 1 April 2009 with Tim Atkins and Phil Davenport. All readings start from 7pm at The Old Abbey Inn on Manchester Science Park - map here you lazy fucks.

I will keep boring on about this for as long as the nights keep happening. You have been warned.

.

ooh, excitin'

This will probably be the last gratuitous backslapping post here for a long while. The traffic this year is not only higher than previously, but as of today total pageloads, unique vistors, and returning visitors are higher than the previous three years combined.

There are a few more posts to come this year - santiago is in Manchester alone over xmas and the three days in work next week are likely to be quiet - as are the three days the following week.

.

catherine's house - a 100 word novel

When Catherine got tired of moving every six or twelve months after university she moved into the first floor of a derelict house. From a single room with no services she reclaimed the house in around three years.

After her death one of her daughters discovered faint writing in pencil on the reverse of a piece of wallpaper. Slowly she and her sisters removed the rest and were able to collect and transcribe most of the text of an autobiography of their mother's life between the ages of thirteen and thirty two. Then they buried the transcript in the garden.

.

snow - a 100 word novel

As a child Dean tried to count snow flakes falling. He tried to photograph scenes in his head to count at leisure. He would end up staring so hard that the scene dissolved and he forgot how to see. He learned how to induce this this blindness but remain aware of what was around him so he could walk safely. Other children called him Zombie but Dean learned to hear things they would never notice. His first successful composition snowfut kamera consisted of an orchestra gently rubbing the bodies of their instruments or blowing on them as silently as possible.

.

coming in 2009 - mutapoem live

Coming soon

In March 2009 mutapoem live event

from the online world to the real world

If you would like to participate then contact Matt Dalby

& I will provide you with more details

mattdalby (at) hotmail (dot) com
07743 304 111

More information soon here and at mutapoem
http://mutapoem.wikispaces.com/mutapoem

Not just poetry but prose, film, visual art, drama, sculpture, live art and more are welcome

.

ephvv - sound poem

One of the ideas behind the structure of this piece came from a comment on another piece by Matt Welton who suggested that adding in another pitch part way through was a step toward conventional structure. Add to that the visual piece ephv below which came about through experimenting with textures and there you have new sound poem.

ephvv

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ephv - visual poem

cumnber - visual poem

slurr - visual poem

gibber

Just for the hell of it here's what I wrote during the course of Per Verse last week - and I wrote some of this pretty quickly. Other than the odd mark or crossing out this is exactly what was written - wayward punctuation and capitalisation and all.

Had an idea yesterday from both Carol Watts + Scott Thurston about pieces that could be read in a few different ways (I suppose Tony Trehy's long line was in there too). But had nothing concrete other than short lines + segments essentially ripped off of Scott. But maybe also a little of the summer's minimals. //take place//green glass glasses gel light//under take//take over//walls are only there to be climbed over//lightness//mercurial//change//lies are//don't start that shit again//


meaning just takes me round in circles//

Fuck that - something about walls mirrors windows hardness reflections blocks ghosts of course in the mind no explanation meanings always running away - what the fuck old glass tv screens tink teeth + nails pixels amorphous shapes in the brain expressing one thing through another when actually you're after something else but anyway there might be another way to do it - screaming + banging + painting with my hands + feet to see if I can find the place it stops being poetry if maybe someone might says hold on a fucking minute what is this but being ready anyway because when people say 'we like tis' you say 'ok, well try this then' and go a little further OR when they say 'what is this shit?' you say 'hey fuck you' + push back twice as hard. always the only person who's holding you back because of this and and and and. hold tight. let go. get high. fall apart laugh + sing + all that shit. some things are just too fucking easy to be fun any more + who needs it who needs it? fragments. always forever trying to escape from meaning thats what this is trying to write off habit get down all the thoughts and outrun myself but my brain's always faster than my pen, the only thing thats faster is my brain on E the speed I can go then voice almost as quick but the thing is sometimes my unconscious brain and unconscious pen already got there + I don't consciously realise until I get caned + my voice stubs a toe on it. the scariest thing there is truth - that could be a commonality between ecstasy and my 'poetry' if that's what it is - that each is an attempt to scare myself into something I didn't mean to saw or do but I'll regret it if I don't and hope to fuck there's an accident along the way too so you might learn something and because thought is not language and language is not thought and there's a degree of estrangement maybe greater in my case but who knows? but (but again - why the fuck is that coming up so fucking often?) anyway, but but get away from this self reflective horseshit. Get back + read that Harvey Milk article especially for his policy + ideas on regeneration - it has to be community not buildings + business. Castro Street. what was that? this was racing off in pursuit of something or other until I got derailed by the poets coming back + having to make some kind of sense - or at least feeling that way drop the self light out in pursuit of what creeps up from somewhere you weren't looking the dreams where you run faster than you ever can run along rooftops or down endless stairs and mountainsides skipping from limestone pavement rock to rock not only can you not see where you're going you're not in control of your own momentum so out of control it's marginal there's any difference between running and stumbling choosing to jump and falling or flying but the best thing not organising anything all accident and contingency for once forget about precaution skin warming so thick you want to rub it off on someone else any way you can - run yourself into realisation of what it is you're scared of and whether you need to worry about it. and you think why am I sitting this way it makes my back hurt puts people off I need to come closer to the fire show I'm listening to the stories because I'm interested dress in butane benzene cast iron wax indie songs we don't really like but they're the closest we can get + I need my coat but I don't want to wear it a kid taking a trike down to the shops she won't ride back, get bored of mum or dad will have to dangle from their hand walk back with her exploring off in other directions all the way because it looks very different from that angle security climbing up the verge + because it's bright find the abandoned toy that becomes more loved than anything bought - shit, this'll be the 8th page tonight, all crap but who fucking cares - the self is the centre but unconsidered and warm and liberating because of that not the confinement pretence pain bullshit it turns to later wouldn't it be great to be a gibbon, orang-utan swinging leisurely or quickly drop from branch to branch. liana vines rocks upward down that motion bilateral symmetry without that human right/left split, one sided bias uncertainty wouldn't it be great to fuck your fear of heights crawl up the side of buildings live the city in 3 dimensions instead of feet and eyelevel and places to go crossing road looking out for trams and that's supposed to be perspective you don't actually know where you live so busy holding on to it you never get your shit together to enjoy it. go on give yourself a break. I have set light to my shirt by accident in a long time - and that's a shame, it's kind of a loss but you get back there sooner or later. accelerate I ought to do this more ink it + blood beforehand I thought I heard someone say. tattoos? I don't really know I might have misheard

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other news

Is anybody else starting to get a headache?

Just so you realise that other shit happens in Manchester - here's a bunch of stuff I didn't manage to get to lately. There are no soccer matches or tribute bands:

Poets & Mash
The Cabaret formerly known as Bucket
Vaudeville

Disgraceful really.

Just because it's on my document of links for this set of posts and I haven't used it yet, can't remember when I meant to use it, and because I'm about to link to if p then q, here's a free link to another of Manchester's experimental poetry magazines - Parameter.

Right - at fucking last - I can tell you that I'll be reading at The Other Room on 3 June 2009 along with Ceri Buck and Allen Fisher. Follow the link to if p then q and scroll down for confirmation. I'm proper happy about it - although I already feel like an imposter - like I'm going to be some delinquent idiot fouling the path for the proper poets what are performing the same night. It should be great.

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forthcoming + stuff i promised

Well since so much time has passed since I promised to trail forthcoming events pretty much everything I had in mind has already gone - including this evening Lisa B's CD launch at Nexus which I signally failed to attend. Oh well, there's Vaudeville on Wednesday next week - and if you email me before Friday next week you could meet me on my works christmas lunch - which could be kind of cool. Otherwise the next things look like being in January - oh for the festive season to be over.

So stuff I promised to mention here:

In the comments on one of the posts (I think the world's most unhelpful poetry review) Mark Cobley thanked me for reviewing The Flaming Man and pointed my browser toward the second half of the poem, The Sad Bush which you can find here.


If you live in or know Manchester, or even if you're just interested in what goes on round here in terms of literature the take a look at Rainy City Stories. I know the proper Manchester blogs have already done it but I wear my tardiness like a badge of honour.

Finally for this section I'll do a fuller feature on next year's Bury Text Festival later, but for now just enjoy the link.

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... 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

posting my initial thoughts and then post modified reactions later on.

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.

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plic - sound poem

plic

This is the second sound piece tonight. Recorded first this is body sound - essentially beating myself up with a mic.

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sneeah - sound poem

sneeah

A new sound piece - one of two done tonight. This is ugly vocal sounds.

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derek bailey - visual poem

because sometimes i plan this shit

By way of a taster, and also to prove that I do plan things from time to time - like the title says. Over the weekend, probably starting tomorrow (Friday) evening, there will be at least four new posts. One will be reviews of recent events - including startrunning at Sandbar on 30 Nov - to which Gary contributed, Poets and Pasties, The Other Room, tonight's PerVerse, and a shout out for some of the things I missed. Another will be upcoming events - most of which I guess are going to be next year now. A third will be a kind of deck clearing exercise to mention/review/link to a bunch of stuff I've promised to cover over the last month or so, but haven't had time to get round to. And finally there'll be other news and bits and pieces that don't fit elsewhere. It's going to be epic, and possibly cause carpal tunnel problems.

The picture below is a sheet of the preparatory sketches for derek bailey, the visual poem in the post above.

the other room 5

It's that time again, Manchester's leading (and apparently only) experimental poetry night The Other Room is back. It's tonight (Wednesday 3 Dec) at 7 at The Old Abbey Inn on Pencroft Way in Manchester Science Park, not far off Oxford Road. If you're at all interested in poetry I'd recommend you get down there. This time Scott Thurston, Tony Trehy and Carol Watts are reading.

A review of this will get added to the backlog of things I need to get round to. One of which is mentioning next year's Bury Text Festival, organised by Tony Trehy. I know that Geof Huth is going to be there, and I'm sure I saw something that said both Robert Grenier and Ron Silliman are involved - I'll let you know when I've checked it out.

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backlog of blogging

There have been quite a few events and things lately that I've meant to blog about but simply haven't had the time. I'd also found it tricky producing stuff for uni, but in the last couple of days I've managed to pull together three conceptual-ish page poems, two sound pieces, and two visual poems for discussion at our next session tomorrow. Although since other people have work to discuss, and there is some actual learning to do it'll be a choice of one, or at most two of my pieces. If there are any interesting reactions then I'll let you know. There's also some exciting news that I've known about for a couple of weeks, but only recently saw confirmed.

Watch out over the next week or so as I clear my backlog.

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world aids day

It's shocking that I don't seem to have ever marked World AIDS Day here, although I have always intended to. Here are some useful links:

World AIDS Day
Terrence Higgins Trust
Wikipedia entry on AIDS
World AIDS Day Google search

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