Illness and commitments away from puter are my excuses for my interwabsence of late. Appropriately, my recent hiatus comes the week before I give a workshop to my MA group about the importance of blogs for practice and self-enquiry (hmm, on practically every level, it would seem). What a role model.
Not that I need to be. The Small Publisher’s book fair was a triumphant weekend for the RHUL Poetic Practice group. When I arrived, I came to a table containing varied, GOOD work - impressive from a group only into their 3rd week on the course
It showed that these students were already engaged with writing prior to joining the course. Hopefully this event showed them that their enthusiasm (I mean that in the least patronising way possible) is not wasted.
Which has right royally fucked up the order in which this post was supposed to unfold. Much has happened in the last week - I’ve discharged at least a tonne of mucus from my now peeling dry nostrils.
The Veer Away launch presented an opportunity to put a couple more notches in my poetry bedpost. Not that I shagged a poet - god forbid - but I did watch / listen to a few. And the Veer Away mag launch was well-attended by contributors, who read if they were there. I was interested to see Ulli Freer, whose shuffling rhythmread reminded me that he has more skill than mere Bowie lookalikes. Jow Lindsay’s reading employed a half-bad American accent. I’d seen videos previously of Jow performing another text all scotch, but it doesn’t take long to realise that these are more than mere gimmickry, though tis much fun. The mag as a whole seems to contain a varied and high-quality tenderloin of work. It’s baked pretty well too - guess they were funded by some body.
Jow pointed out a non-offensively critical viewpoint with regard to my own reading, noting that its clearly visual element is lost in translation. This is a problem indeed, and one I don’t think I can resolve. The double-page I have in Veer Away is a textual assemblage, a printed kind of montage of text, image, iconography. The visual muddling and working out of strategies is part of the process of reading it. Reading it out load to an audience, I guess, somehow undermines this very important aspect of the work. Still, I think it’s still enJowable as long as someone sees the rest later.
Saturday’s reading was kind of meh but ok. Over too soon because read so fast, which was the intention, although I hadn’t quite accounted for it quite so extremely. Still, who am I to steal the limelight and overrun? Thankfully, Steve Willey had enough info in his circuitboard to rescue the rest of us. Reading last, he carried us through so we filled the timeslot without looking like pussies. Rosheen I’d never heard read before - she has an excellent reading voice for her own work, I think.
Jow has also won first prize by spotting two references to Charlie Brown in my readings in one week (separate pieces of work). Yes, Jow. It was a kennel. I thought everyone knew that. Mind you, I had no idea that beagles smoked cigarettes. I suspect they will be glad about the recent rise in age limits for smokas.
Ok, that’s it for now. Seeing as Veer Away is free, I’ll get up the section I contributed on this blog in the next day or two (you-gotta-pad-a-blog-post-or-two).
Hang Tough, hang the DJ, who revolves it.
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