You Must Write As If Your Life Depended On It

For Great Works - I am doing a lot of refitting and updating at a technical level. The vessel is in dry dock, as it were. Having installed a search ability, I realise that some of the pages are unreadable by the search engine, as I put in when I first started no-robots statements, for no really good reason I can think of now. These early pages that still remain are also in a rather bad HTML that doesn't always display as I thought it would. So I'm redoing all of these in good XHTML, with consistent use of CSS and full accessibility (as much as the demands of matching poets' layouts allows this!). There is also a major blunder I made on the bulk of my existing XHTML pages that needs urgent correction, out of embarrassment rather than necessity I think, but it could impair access. For all this I am planning to use Dreamweaver, which I need therefore to get to grips with. This should basically partially industrialise actually making some of these corrections, but will require care also as it can give rise to pretty crap code too. So this will all take a while ...

Then to redo The Links (which should be a simpler, more batch process though via Dreamweaver). Modernpoetry.org.uk can at this point be restructured and redesigned.

Finally, to work on the next issue. My anxiety over the "all-male" issue seems to have been unwarranted - not a problem. I'm not sure therefore about the mooted all-female issue I promised to make amends, if amends aren't necessary - but I would love more contributions from female poets.

Amos Weisz's writing will figure in the next issue in any case, and I am also drawing up a volume which Great Works will publish (yes, on paper, print-on-demand) of a selection of his poems and prose. His mother is negotiating publication of his translations, including his Celan translations (which have Celan's son's approval), through a New York small press recommended by Suhrkamp Verlag.

I was expressing interest in various collaborative projects at the end of last year - I think I will have very little time for quite a while on these. I also have increased family responsibilities, which will be ongoing.

I will though write something on my considered response to, yes, the academicisation of poetry and The Journal. Also on micro-publishing - ie stuff turned out in tragically small editions, a trend I also don't feel happy with.

Diverse Deeds will almost certainly rest, possibly permanently. The formula, of an welcoming and inclusive event, combining innovative poetry with a little innovative music to encourage a sense of performance, in a relaxing and flexible venue, trying to build up an audience of both those already plugged into the innovative poetry networks and as many as possible who just thought it looked interesting (and by golly it is!), is a good one, which will prove a sure fire winner at some time. Cafe Oto, having given me crap scheduling, is no longer interested. My doubts about restarting elsewhere relate to, firstly my own sense of relief at not carrying on (and regret too!), and secondly the feeling that it really needs some bunch of cool young dudes/dudettes to get it going, certainly not a redundant granddad from Bishops Stortford.

Labels: Amos Weisz, Cafe Oto, Diverse Deeds, Great Works, Modernpoetry.org.uk, Peter Philpott, plans, update

The Public Domain is defined and defended by The Public Domain Manifesto, against primarily Google and Hollywood, and the governments cravenly signing up to yet another big business agenda - YES, THAT MEANS YOU, MANDELSON!Could even be a worthwhile online petition to sign up to.

Labels: copyright, petition, public domain

Pistol Tree Poems 78-81 by Peter Hughes and Simon Marsh are online today, celebrating the great jazz trumpeter Kenny Wheeler's Eightieth Birthday with nos. 80 and 81.

Labels: Kenny Wheeler, Peter Hughes, Pistol Tree Poems, serials, Simon Marsh, update

(1) poem for P. Philpott, read at Xmasing the Nine, 3/12/09

A momentary lapse
of rain
A south westerly breeze
probably.
Dear Caroline, it's 2009
& Rosier couldn't read
tonight & so I
can't read. What's
commitment to 2000 &
niners anyway?

Re-Openned: A Hilson
rendition of Last Christmas,
The same Hilson of
Hilson's School of Poetry:
No Divas Allowed
(Dear Caroline, sorry, No Divas
Allowed)

There are no stars in LNDN
There are no stars under
clouds there are no
stars over Cathedral
City lights
But there are stars they
are just not our stars
they are very far stars.


A momentary break in
the clouds.
Stars.

& rain.

& Bergval, in a rocketship to our hearts


(2) The Voice of Harry Godwin at Diverse Deeds, December 16, 2009

Labels: Crossing the Line, Diverse Deeds, Harry Godwin

I've just added a Google-powered Search Engine to the Great Works homepage. This searches not only Great Works, but also www.modernpoetry.org.uk, and this blog. I will need to tinker with many of the earliest pages still in original coding over the next week or so. Apart from not liking how they display compared with my current pages, I also had, really rather mistakenly, put in some "anti-robots" metatags, which means they are unsearchable. I shall be correcting this,

Peter Philpott & Trevor Joyce reading at Crossing the Line at The Leather Exchange, 15 Leathermarket Street, London Bridge, SE1 3HN
on Thursday January 7
at 7.30 (or maybe a little after)
£5 or £3

I will read from the recent Shearsman Book, Are We Not Drawn ..., and have copies for sale indeed, and from (if I produce a readable copy in time) a work in progress, Speculations.

Labels: Crossing the Line, Peter Philpott, reading