You Must Write As If Your Life Depended On It

(1) Great Works 14 Online

New are the following:

* Jeffrey Side, seven poems
* David Chaloner, three poems
* Richard Makin, eight poems from Rift Designs
* Hannah Silva, seven poems
* Scott Helmes, two poems
* Christopher Barnes, six poems
* Lucy Harvest Clarke, three sonnets
* Richard Barrett, two poems
* James Price, three poems
* Aidan Semmens, three poems
* John Gilmore, two excerpts from Head of a Man and three Etudes
* Kenny Knight, six poems from The Honicknowle Book of the Dead
* Ben Stainton, four poems
* Ron Singer, The Shiny Pants Brigade
* Charles Freeland, six poems
* Caleb Puckett, three poems
* Mary Michaels, three prose poems
* Boris Jardine, five poems
* Michael Egan, three poems
* Tomas Weber, two poems
* Alan Baker, from The Book of Random Access
* Rufo Quintavalle, two poems
* AnnMarie Eldon, five poems
* Mendoza, poems
* Joseto Solis, from The Ingredients of Oneself
* Tina Hyett, poems from In the Dirt
* Spencer Termott, THE MATCHING TYE SET (from In the Dirt)
+
* Richard Makin, St Leonards - most recent episode still being written! Will be up in a day or so (but I was desperate to get the New Year, then March, now April issue out before Yet Another Month)
* Peter Hughes & Simon Marsh, Pistol Tree Poems

(2) Forthcoming Sunday at the Oto

“poetry and music with the post-avant crowd for your Sunday afternoon pleasure”

Third Sunday of the month, 3-5 pm, Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8 3DL £4 entry.

May 17: Bleeding Heart Narrative + Andrea Brady + Carol Watts

Two poets and a musician: pictures out of fragments, explorations of limits of meaning & melody: out of this world, and in this world at the same time. Music & poetry get deconstructed, cleaned off, and put together again, differently. Defamiliarisation never sounded this good as you chill out with Sunday afternoon cakes and ale.

Bleeding Heart Narrative is the solo project of Oliver Barrett, comprised principally of haunting cellos, repeating piano melodies, hushed vocals and layers of otherworldly sounds.

Andrea Brady is a high energy, politically engaged and breathtakingly inventive poet, whose language mashes and reworks our present public and private languages.

Carol Watts is also a poet and university teacher, whose poetry explores a range of worlds, creatively manipulating language and meaning in innovative ways to focus on our position here and now.

for further information:

• MySpace
• Facebook Group: Sundays at the Oto

(3) Developments with Sundays at the Oto

Sundays at the Oto is coming to a close, to fit in with Cafe Oto's requirements - basically to be a cafe in the daytime, a venue only in the evening. I would like to continue SatO on a slightly different basis, and welcome suggestions how to do this successfully. It would have to be an evening event, not necessarily the same day of the month each time. to match the Cafe O requirements. I would like to carry on there as I think it is an excellent venue, welcoming and flexible with a very good atmosphere. I would like to continue with poetry and music - especially as this mix helps with two goals I have for the events: people attend who are not already part of the Crazy World of Avant-Garde Poetry or whatever it is; and there is a challenge, which can be accepted or quite happily not, for poets to go beyond reading, and present their work as performance or utterance.

I am open to suggestions and comments as to programming, arrangements etc.

I would also welcome anyone who might want to get involved with the project. It is probable I am just too old to fully engage with upcoming & bubbling up scenes & individuals (or so my paranoia tells me, and it should know)- it would be good if there were someone involved for whom this is all fresh & expanding. Probably useful, as well, if there were some contact with HE - this looks like the game plan for Alternative British Poetry's survival and indeed growth.

So - put comments here or on Facebook or MySpace, email me (peter@greatworks.org.uk), or best of all talk to me at the next event.

My thoughts at the moment are to encourage more non-cognoscenti (incognoscenti?), by giving out more information on the poets (like the info at arts cinemas), which could also be available online beforehand.

Labels: Sundays at the Oto, updates