Itch Away blog

Hello everyone.  Finally, itchaway.net is up, as is the new blog.  The site will carry on being developed over the coming month as I finish content.

This blog is now finished.  It will remain here, but from now on, the new blog is at http://blog.itchaway.net (or http://itchaway.net/sections/iablog/ if you prefer).  Please update your bookmarks and your links to the new blog.

Please also remember that this means the feed address has changed. To subscribe to the new blog, click on the big orange feed link in the left-hand side of itchaway.net. Oh, and tell your friends.

J

But in the meantime, I f**king love Christmas.

Earlier this year, I was invited to take part in a project, responding to the painting / text work of artist Beth Ames Swartz.  This work is itself a response to and incorporation of Du Fu poems (ancient Chinese poetry, see Wikipedia entry here for fast track knowledge) and I wrote two poems in response to her exhibited paintings, two procedural works using fragmentation techniques to harness the already fragmented qualities which are the result of the translation process.

The book launch is tonight.

I have also made an online digital work as part of my contribution.  Dead and in this Painting can be viewed here.

See Beth Ames Swartz’s paintings online here.

I received a comment on the blog today which, though I’m not entirely happy with it (for the reasons outlined below) I have approved. I want people to be allowed to say whatever they want here, as long as its relevant and not hateful.

I sent the author a personal email to follow up, which is as follows:

Hi there

Thank you for your comment on my blog.  I will be approving this for publication, but feel (out of a sense of responsibility for my blog more than anything) that I will have to also place a note in – under my name – acting as a disclaimer. I have no ‘loyalty’ or official affiliation to BBK per se, but do respect the institution which, in my world, promotes a more than healthy programme of debate around contemporary poetics.

I’m keen for my blog not to become a battleground for people’s personal political concerns, particularly when those concerns have nothing in common with the post content (were you in fact interested in this – your search for “Birkbeck Blog” suggests you were perhaps more interested in a way to vent spleen).  I am all for COMMENTS, and would not have written to you about this if you had perhaps weighed in with a constructive comment rather than merely posting a link to a site. You surely realise how close you are to being a comment spammer, so I needn’t force the issue there.  However, since I am fairly sure you are not a robot, and have not said anything explicitly hateful, I’ll publish the comment.  I would ask that you perhaps revisit the site and elaborate on your experiences and warranted such Googletrawling and link-dropping, though.

Kind regards

John

With a star-studded lineup.  More info from Openned.

As you can see by the paint and non-working links, I’m redecorating Itch Away. The site is down, as I try to create a new one. It’ll be up soon once the paint is dry, but it’ll be before the end of November.

Thank you thank you!

Image by Virginia Konchan

Virginia Konchan has submitted to the ongoing Public Figures submissions.  Check out her entry here.

See also the other submissions, as well as the Public Figures project (itself ongoing, of which this is one setting).  Consider sending Lauren a submission of your own!

More info through from Stephen Mooney:

the next TALKSTALKSTALKS will take place on Wednesday 12th November, The Council Room, Birkbeck, Malet Street, WC1, 7.30

Stephen Willey
Documents of Collaboration: The poem in Song and Opera

This talk will also be the launch of a new work:

Portmanteaux///Document
by
Edward Nesbit///Steve Willey

A fragment of the work as it exists in performance is available on the Openned website.[http://openned.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/03-track-03-2.mp3]

An additional document of the work will also be added to the Openned website in due course.

The TALKSTALKSTALKS series runs periodically on Wednesdays at Birkbeck, and is curated by Professor Robert Hampson of RHUL.

You should be subscribed to the HOW2 Postcard blog, but in case you’re not, there is a new post by Julia Bloch up on the site, at http://how2postcard.blogspot.com.

Check it out.  I’ve also finally tackled the rather nasty formatting of that blog, and plan to attack the other one soon.  Please contact me if you notice anything awry.

As usual, you can follow the link on the right of the Postcard blog to find out how to submit your own postcards.

Firstly, no I do not frequent the Daily Mail website. I found this on Digg, if you must know.

But this is amazing, startling, and wonderful.

On another note, I am working towards a painful migration over to another Wordpress install, to see if it’s even worth attampting.  You may start to see strange things happening to this blog.  It might disappear, then reappear.  It might become nude and then redress itself.  I might have to close it down for a week or two.  Bear with me.