You Must Write As If Your Life Depended On It

Addition to Great Works

2011-07-09T11:01:00.000Z

I have returned the poems of mine previously on the site, with improved coding where necessary. I have also added a page explaining and linking to the complete set of texts that compose "In the Dirt of the Post-Lyric: A Collaborative Cycle by Robert Blake, Connie Beauchamp, Gerri Dixon, Simon Gregory, Mark Hall, Erwin Hass, Tina Hyett, Emma Liukunas, Mikaela Moriarty, Peter Philpott, Bradley Tabor & Spencer Termott", a curious piece of work I think you may find.

OK, so what is happening with modernpoetry.org.uk then?

2011-06-20T16:25:00.000Z

1. The Meeting

For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
'Tell them I came, and no one answer'd,
'That I kept my word,' he said.
I suspected it might come to that: leaving me curiously light-hearted, after a quiet and nostalgic afternoon in Cafe Oto. I can do as I wish as it were. So, when not looking after Ianthe, recovering from looking after Ianthe, assisting in looking after Ianthe, and other things on occasion too, a small step into the 21st Century (not the Century of the Internet, but more likely of the Mobile or the Handheld Device (sounds like a dildo, but there we are, that's progress for you), plus some further plans

2. Poetry Readings in London Now Mobile

I've just created a mobile-friendly version of the Readings in London webpage, with the next month's readings, with details stripped down, but all links and crucial stuff like time, place, cost, names still there. It should be readable on any phone able to access the internet. Try it at www.modernpoetry.org.uk/mobilepoetry.html. I've altered the title of the page to Poetry Readings in London: nothing else entitled that, so we'll claim it.

I would really like as much feedback as possible from anyone who uses the page on a mobile or PDA. I'd also be interested in anyone accessing the more web-oriented Poetry Readings in London webpage, which I think ought to be quite usable on many tablet devices, maybe larger PDAs. Both versions have a link for phone numbers, tho' obviously that ain't going to work on anything without a SIM.

I've thought of trying to turn the page into a self-contained App - that seems beyond me at present I'm afraid, and might well need more complicated updating than the present webpages. We'll see. I need to buy the Golden Wonder Book of Easy Web Applications and carefully read it.

But please do respond if you use the pages on anything smaller than a laptop, especially a phone. I fantasise it could even be useful to check locations etc, and to have access to What's On whenever & wherever.

3. And Beyond?

After I've replaced my work on Great Works, with a complete text of In the Dirt, using a different host for the pages than previous - get some lists. I'll ask, initially those who have expressed interest in the MPorgUKCollective , to send in a list of bestest books etc in last so many years, and publish 'em. Await news!

Then, late summer redo & update links. I shall request suggestions & corrections.

What Is To Be Done with modernpoetry.org.uk

2011-03-07T17:28:00.001Z

I have been assured by a number of people how very useful they find Great Works and modernpoetry.org.uk in their own exploration of Contemporary British Innovative Poetry, or in helping others explore the terrain. Well, good. That’s what I want. Now, I have lain Great Works into a quite quiet state for the present (however long that may be); but I would like if possible to further develop modernpoetry.org.uk (MP for short), and make it more useful. And I feel this will need to be a collective effort.

MP is a compendious resource for anyone wanting to understand Contemporary British Innovative Poetry (just poetry after this – you know what I mean and what I don’t). The site concentrates on online resources as these are universally accessible, and it is itself a website (duh!) It isn’t an academic resource (though if it is useful, excellent), so I underplay the academic contexts for much poetry. I have moreover some reservations about the recent increasing importance for supporting poetry of the academic world (on a level of principles and strategy, not the individuals concerned). I aim always at a model user of the site who isn’t in close contact with academic institutions and resources. That strikes me as important. It may well become more important as the current regime’s HE policy increasingly cuts in and the English Higher education system is lopped down to fit their nightmare visions.

Another important element in the site that I want to ensure is its broad church interpretation of poetry. I’m happy with any and all offspring (legitimate or not, adopted, or even just abducted) of the British Poetry Revival and its antecedent 1950s modernists. And their offspring etc etc. We are all sealed of the one tribe, so far as I am concerned. Anything between highly informed and cute as lace pants takes on the post-avant and a Writing Degree Zero basal modernism I’ll accept. Anything to avoid narrow and negative definitions that exclude what may have some promise, power or interest, and could possibly contribute to as varied as possible gene-pool for poetry. (Hybrid vigour beats specialised adaptation every time in my book of biological metaphors.)

Now to the nub. The site gets bigger and bigger. The volume of worthwhile poetry is ever-increasing at an even faster rate. (Hurray!) My time and energy are, though, unfortunately being taken up by other things in ways I hadn’t fully prepared for, apart from I’m just feeling fed up after ten years heavily devoted to doing websites. I think, more importantly, that if MP is to carry on effectively, it needs to be a more collective, less personal enterprise. Not just my take and presentation, but something better.

What, in my opinion, the site needs is a wider range of input for continuingly useful links and lists, a wider and more informed input on books etc, and indeed consideration of what other sorts of material could be included on MP, eg should there be more details on individual poets? more lists of publications?? I have I am well aware a total blind spot on online video material, and am not very interested in audio for that matter – pure text or pure performance are what engage me, not mediated versions – and am well aware that this limits what I draw attention to or can usefully comment on, in a way that excludes many internet users. The site would also benefit from a considered use of social networking and mobile phone technologies – would these be of any use in reaching its audience and how? And should there, could there, be reviews? Lists of books published? And is it all too London-centred? Is MP keeping up with what is really happening? Is it actually compelling and attractive enough (sufficiently “sticky” as a site, as it used to be said) for its target audience? I am undoubtedly way too old to do this as well, and there may well be too much now purely historical material. So, how then to include you, dear reader?

I propose to set up a Modernpoetry.org.uk Collective, for both users and those willing contribute material and ideas or help in production. I see this existing on several layers of contact and commitment:

Actual face-to-face contact – meeting every two months, say, (initially, inevitably, in London). Turn up and contribute. We’ll vary the times and locales; but let’s start with my beloved Café Oto in Dalston (April 3 – details at end). Anywhere else with space, good ambience and wifi would be equally suitable, but let’s start here.
The inevitable Facebook Group. It is a nice open format, so let’s use it. Already set up as Modernpoetry.org.uk Collective.
But not everyone loves the time- & privacy-consuming monster. There is also now a modernpoetry.org.uk blog, at http://modernpoetryorguk.blogspot.com. If you want to post rather than comment, email me on peter@greatworks.org.uk or Facebook, and I’ll formalise the permission. Comment is open, and I will put up if requested email or postal contributions, and will endeavour to coordinate material with that on the Facebook Group page. Please use either of these for suggestions, contributions, comments etc

Let’s see then how this all pans out. At the very least, feedback will be obtained. I hope people willing and able to contribute, in whatever way, will be able to do so, and roles will be defined as they develop. I suspect it’ll be up to me to conduct the orchestra for a while – but ideally a spontaneous and confident collective improvisation can replace that metaphor by one more appropriate to our poetry.

Two technical points to end with. I have altered the copyright on most of the pages on the site (excepting the autobiographical material) to a Creative Commons License, meaning, to quote the Creative Common website (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ – altered punctuation etc), “You are free to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work – and to Remix –to adapt the work – under the following conditions: Attribution – You must attribute modernpoetry.org.uk to Peter Philpott (with link) –; Noncommercial – You may not use this work for commercial purposes –; Share Alike – If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.” So, really, feel free to go ahead and reuse and remake anything from it.

Second point is to note that MP has been produced by me coded in not totally kosher Transitional XHTML, with the aid of Dreamweaver. This is technology I am reasonably confident with. It is a rather dated and unprofessional approach nowadays. Suggestions and assistance to make things easier to add and update, and also to give less of an amateur hobbyist visual style would be also greatly appreciated. Personally, I find a lot of cute and cool design gets in the way of legibility and clarity. On the other hand MP’s style may repulse or bore its would-be audience. MP’s availability for a range of platforms also needs to be considered, as it looks as though smartphones, e-readers and tablet computers are all now entering the electronic data ecosystem, and may well need to be catered for if the site is not to become obsolete. Informed input on these issues would be appreciated.

Details of Open Planning Meeting at Café Oto, 3.00-5.30ish (no music there that night so might be able to stay a little later), Sunday April 3. (Yes, other meetings will need to be in the evening, in the week, I know.) Address is 18-22 Ashwin St, Dalston, London E8 3DL, tucked in behind at Dalston Junction (where the Balls Pond Road/Dalston Lane crosses the Kingsland Road, immediately on the North-East quadrant). Transport really is easy: regular buses from Liverpool St Station (242 & 149), the West End, Waterloo (76), London Bridge (149). Two Overland stations a step away: Dalston Junction interconnecting with Underground at Whitechapel and Highbury & Islington, Dalston Kingsland at Stratford and Highbury & Islington. Bicycle racks. Good food & drink. Nice place. But apart from enjoying the unrivalled amenities, just to get a sense of what anyone that enthused to attend feels about the site and what is to be done. I really am serious about problems carrying on with sole responsibility for something that ought to be not personal, but collective.

Updates to modernpoetry.org.uk

2011-03-03T11:57:00.002Z

To inform the world that I've just updated the various lists and checked the links and added some more material to modernpoetry.org.uk. I hope it's all useful. And it's on a Creative Commons licence now as well. Comment on the blog or email or whatever with any responses, suggestions etc.

Further announcement coming shortly about its future.

New Great Works

2010-12-29T12:40:00.003Z

To announce the final (certainly for a while and in this omnium gatherum form) Great Works, containing

Paul Holman, THE MEMORY OF THE DRIFT: Book Six: A WALKING AGE
Ralph Hawkins, The Poems of Abakan Tartar
Maximilian Hildebrand, Kylix Poems + four poems
Daniele Pantano, Translation from the German of Seventy Eight Early Notes for a Biography of an Unknown Swiss Poet
Julie Sampson, four poems
David Bircumshaw, eight poems
Rupert Loydell, four poems
Adam Fieled, from Equations
Miffy Ryan, Dwelling + Death Rattles
Jennifer Cooke, five poems
Catherine Daly, Surplice
Stephanie Jane Robinson, Ballad of the Reading Jail
Mark Smith, five poems
sean burn, from honeysuckled
Angela Gardner, five poems
Susan Adams, five poems
Mark Dickinson, from Shadows of the Sea
Matt Bryden, four poems
Sam Howell, five poems
Chris Hardy, Short of Luck on Short Street
James Price, four poems and a drawing
Martin Stannard, five poems
Gareth Farmer, Rise to Order
Bobby Larsson, Limerick Swing —
S J Fowler, nine poems
Gerard Greenway, three poems
Austin McCarron, seven poems
Sophie Mayer, three poems
Stephen Emmerson, Power Pollution + THUD
Anthony Mellors, from Bent our of Shape
Sarah Ahmad, seven poems
Reeti Roy, five poems
Robert Atherton, six poems
Glenn R Frantz, Bridge / Lawn / Solarium
Arthur Coleman, five poems
Nicholas R Scott, The Prison Series + the Pie Series
Harry Godwin, poem for P. Philpott, read at Xmasing the Line, 3/12/09

Enjoy it all!

I will post more on plans, especially for modernpoetry.org.uk and the availability of material in ebook reader format in the new year.

Two Readings, One Pamphlet and an Ebook

2010-10-15T17:45:00.018Z

Just to announce some entry of my own writing into this cold world:

The New Openned Poetry Reading Series, Wednesday October 27th

7.30, at Corsica Studios, 5 Elephant Road, London SE17 3LG (nr Elephant & Castle tube). Free admission.

Readings from Tim Atkins, Allen Fisher, Sarah Kelly, Jonny Liron & Nat Raha

+ a simultaneous reading from RHUL Poetic Practice students + Jennifer Cooke + Jow Lindsay + Peter Philpott + Posie Rider + Carol Watts + Tessa Whitehouse

Book Launch: Chris Gutkind, Peter Philpott, Harry Ross, Thursday November 4th

7.30, upstairs at The Camden Eye, 2 Kentish Town Road, London NW1 9NX (nr Camden Town tube). Free admission. A The Knives Forks and Spoons Press Book launch.

Chris Gutkind + Peter Philpott + Harry Ross

New Pamphlet from The Knives Forks And Spoons Press:

To The Union — short sequence written between the two Shearsman titles (Textual Possessions and Are we Not Drawn ...); £5

E-book on Issuu.com, published by The Red Ceilings Press

kaddish, by Emily Howard, Mark Cobley and Simon Howard, guest contributors Richard Barrett, Peter Philpott and Tom Watts, edited by Simon Howard, originally published as Part 2 of Plus-que-Parfait.

Unsolicited Testimonial for modernpoetry.org.uk

2010-08-25T17:58:00.004Z

Best UK poetry site
I’ve yet seen
says Ron Silliman on his blog!

Request for help on updating modernpoetry.org.uk

2010-08-22T19:03:00.003Z

I've been updating modernpoetry.org.uk over the summer, with gradual uploads as I have done so. I'd really appreciate any suggestions on two aspects:

Video and audio material, especially video material. I really find this curiously difficult to respond to, much as I enjoy attending actual readings/performances. Were YouTube to cease to exist, I would be every unmoved. (It's my punishment for having to police classes of media students who were meant to be working, but preferred to catch up on those fascinating skateboard accident, skateboarding dogs and hypertrophied gonad clips that modern technology as so benevolently showered on adolescent males). So, any suggestions as to what may be the actual best clips online and any sites with a lot of accessible good material (not recorded in my listing on modernpoetry.org.uk) will be greatly appreciated and assistance duly recorded. I'm aware this is a hole in the site's coverage I ought to fill; but I can't on my own.

List of Anthologies, Literary Histories & Critical Texts. What have I missed out that would interest and illuminate? I haven't access to a university library, so I really can only sample a fraction of what's published. Anything I need to add? There must be surely.

In general, indeed, any additions, corrections and emendations to my listings on the site will be greatly appreciated.

Completion of Pistol Tree Poems

2010-06-24T21:52:00.003Z

This remarkable and highly enjoyable epistolary sequence between Peter Hughes (mainly from Norfolk) and Simon Marsh (mainly from Italy) has now reached its end point, number 106, with an exchange of monostichs. Pick up the new poems here, or start at the beginning there.

Nearly There!

2010-06-14T21:51:00.003Z

Peter Hughes and Simon Marsh's long poetic and epistolary dialogue, Pistol Tree Poems, is now almost complete, with only a couple more to go, then the rest is silence. Read the new ones on Great Works now.

New Pistol Tree Poems

2010-06-01T09:12:00.002Z

As summer burgeons, more of Peter Hughes & Simon Marsh's Pistol Tree Poems as they rush to their climax. Online now on Great Works, including a brief elegy for David Chaloner.

Updated Links

2010-05-19T11:21:00.004Z

The Links page on Great Works, and also the Quick Links index page, and the equivalent Links to British Avant-Garde Poetry Sites and Quick Links pages on www.modernpoetry.org.uk have been newly revised and updated.

On the Links page: approx 189 online magazines and e-publishers, 202 writers' homepages and blogs, 36 audio and video sites, 75 print publishers and magazines, 28 readings &c, 71 resources: foci of information, 8 bookshops and booksellers, 27 personal sites.

From 3:AM Magazine to zimZalla, via foffoffof: Asemic Writings Letters and Marks and your gaze does not meet my gaze, all is here!

(And there's been a recent Pistol Tree Poems addition too.)

More Pistol Trees!

2010-05-06T09:14:00.001Z

With astonishing alacrity, Peter Hughes and Simon Marsh have now produced numbers 88 & 89. Enjoy!

Great Works through the Year

2010-04-28T21:16:00.003Z

As the year goes on, my plans slowly begin to clot. The recoding of some pages of Great Works has been completed, removing some very old layouts that no longer worked, and recasting as well all the business end of the site (links etc) in superior code, with some features for greater ease of use and to counter accessibility issues. www.modernpoetry.org.uk has suffered the same fate. Very little difference will be noticed: still all embarrassingly clumsy in appearance and concept.

I have begun updating the links (for both sites). "I may be gone some time." I will upload the pages as I amend them weekly, to counter the inevitable obsolescence of such an activity.

Later this year will follow a final "edition" of Great Works in its present form, and a revision of the modernpoetry site.

I won't carry on with either, certainly not in their present form, after the end of this year. Ten years of Great Works have ended up by wearying and nauseating me; and contemporary avant-gardish poetry as a social/cultural institution has evolved into something that is best dealt with by younger, hipper, cooler etc etc persons and coteries (eg Openned), especially with access to academic networks and status. A 1990s hobbyist accumulation of homepages will probably put people off rather than involve them.

Both sites are archived by the British Library. I will keep them online through next year at least to allow their cycle of downloading a copy of the site to record their final glories. Great Works may carry on in a different form; or might not.

Fresh Pistol Tree Poems

2010-04-28T21:14:00.001Z

The latest batch of the Pistol Tree Poems epistolary exchange between Peter Hughes and Simon Marsh are now online, numbers 86-87.

Two Good-Looking Events in the London Word Festival

2010-03-16T11:12:00.005Z

Thu 18 Mar: SHAD THAMES, BROKEN WHARF
by Chris McCabe
with Bleeding Heart Narrative and Jack Wake-Walker
Introduced by Iain Sinclair

The history of the Docklands is that of a city building upwards, from the monstrous bunkers of the docks themselves to the glass pillars at Canary Wharf. Whenever the means of profit-making have changed, Docklands has always been prescient and protean in its survival instincts. The success, and failure, of the current financial centre echo the creation of the original docks: control of local communities for global trading, the hegemony of private investors and monolithic architectural statements of presence.

Set in a pub that has stood on the site since the sixteenth century, Shad Thames, Broken Wharf eavesdrops on a conversation between three characters – Echo, a middle-aged woman who has lived her life in the area; Blaise, a northerner who finds resonances with the more familiar docks at Liverpool; and the gregarious landlord, a Londoner with ‘the knowledge’. Breaking into the dialogue, The Restructure is a sinister, all-knowing Public Service Announcement with ‘advice’ to share with anyone who’ll listen…

Shad Thames, Broken Wharf is a newly commissioned work by acclaimed poet Chris McCabe that spans centuries of changes across the Docklands, allowing past ghosts to be heard above the white noise of the polemical present. With accompanying tipsy folk melodies from Bleeding Heart Narrative’s Bartokian piano, strings, synths and sample set, and film from Jack Wake-Walker, Shad Thames, Broken Wharf resonates with what the Docklands might mean. Cult London author, poet and filmmaker Iain Sinclair introduces the performance with a special reading.

Performed by Tracey Wilkinson, Luke McEwen, Chris McCabe and Paul Henderson.

A London Word Festival Commission

chris-mccabe.blogspot.com
bleedingheartnarrative.wordpress.com
www.iainsinclair.org.uk

Jamboree ⋅ £8 adv / £10 door ⋅ 8pm
Jamboree
Cable Street Studios | 566 Cable Street | Limehouse| E1W 3HB
www.myspace.com/jamboreemembersclub

Sun 28 Mar: LEAFCUTTER JOHN: BRIGGFLATTS REWIRED
+ Peter Finch + MacGillivray + Hannah Silva

“Brag, sweet tenor bull…”

Intrepidly inventive folk, jazz and electronic musical inventor Leafcutter John decodes epic Modernist poem Briggflatts for the digital century in a brand new commission.

Briggflatts Rewired takes Basil Bunting’s extraordinary and intensely musical poem as the starting point for a new, electronically-enhanced composition. In an event that explores the interplay between sound, voice and textuality, Leafcutter John is joined by acclaimed Welsh poet and performer Peter Finch, haunting Highland musician MacGillivray and startlingly effervescent wordsmith Hannah Silva.

Born in 1900, Basil Bunting was imprisoned as a conscientious objector, lived in Persia as a British spy in the 40s and later worked as a journalist in his native North East. Briggflatts, a poetic autobiography which celebrates the culture and language of Northumbria, was published in 1966 and belatedly announced Bunting as one of the great Modernist poets alongside T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.

A member of Mercury-nominated avant-jazz collective Polar Bear, Leafcutter John is a multi-talented musician, songwriter, remixer and artist whose work marries the best cadences of folk with the expressive utility of samples, mixing and field recordings. He has released four albums, the latest of which is The Forest and the Sea (Staubgold Records), and builds many of his own electronic instruments from scratch.

Peter Finch is a Welsh writer and critic who is famed for his declamatory poetry performances. An expert on the arcane and obscure corners of twentieth-century poetry, dada and the history of the small press, in the 60s and 70s he toured with sound poet Bob Cobbing. More recently he is known for psychogeographic investigations of Cardiff. He has published more than twenty-five books of poetry.

MacGillivray sings haunting tales from the frontier, of wolves and hunters, love lost in the wilderness. A favourite on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction and The Verb, her album Wolf is inspired by the strange lurch of Gaelic ‘lining out’, drawing on words by Robert Burns and Hugh MacDiarmid. MacGillivray has supported The Fall and performed alongside the writers Iain Sinclair, Brian Catling and Alan Moore.

Hannah Silva is a writer and performer whose distinctive style combines the physicality of theatre with energetic, fast-paced poetry. Her recent works include You Said/I Said with percussionist Alexis Kirke; Panopticon, a darkly humourous investigation of language, belonging and Britishness; and Boat on the Water, a poetry/dance/theatre performance set on a yacht in Plymouth.

Briggflatts Rewired is a London Word Festival Commission and is presented with the kind permission of The Basil Bunting Estate, Bloodaxe Books and Stream Records

www.leafcutterjohn.com
www.peterfinch.co.uk
www.myspace.com/macgillivray
www.hannahsilva.co.uk
Stoke Newington International Airport ⋅ £6.50 adv / £8.50 door ⋅ 7pm
Stoke Newington International Airport
Unit F | 1-15 Leswin Place | Stoke Newington | N16 7NJ
www.stkinternational.co.uk

Fresh Pistol Tree Poems. and Pistol Tree Poems Refreshed

2010-03-16T10:35:00.003Z

The latest batch of the Pistol Tree Poems epistolary exchange between Peter Hughes and Simon Marsh are now online, numbers 82-85.

Note that the sequence is one of the range of pages I have been recoding from HTML to XHTML, which should make them more accessible to mobile phones and PDAs (and correcting a lot of earlier clumsinesses in coding). I would be very interested in any feedback from anyone who ever accesses the site from such devices rather than a PC or laptop.

Present Plans, Great Wordwise & Diversely Deedful

2010-01-30T20:05:00.005Z

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.

Public Domain Defined and Defended

2010-01-30T20:00:00.002Z

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.

New Pistol Tree Poems for Kenny Wheeler's 80th Birthday

2010-01-14T11:20:00.003Z

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.

The Voice of Harry Godwin, brought to you by the wonders of modern science

2010-01-08T18:54:00.000Z

(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

The Voice of Harry Godwin at Diverse Deeds, December 16

Peter Philpott's podcast

Search Engine Added

2010-01-08T16:11:00.002Z

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,

Reading at Crossing the Line, Thursday January 7, with Trevor Joyce

2010-01-05T22:50:00.002Z

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.

Diverse Deeds, December 16

2009-12-10T16:55:00.003Z

Wednesday, December 16: Angela Gardner + the voice of Harry Godwin + Mendoza + Nat Raha + Michael Zand
(note slight change of line-up)

Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8 3DL.
doors open at 7.30; start at 8.00; end by 10.00; entry £6 (£4 concessions).

This event links the visiting Australian poet and artist Angela Gardner with readings and performances from a group of young and innovative London poets.

Angela Gardner is an Australian poet with a prize-winning reputation in her own country: 2006 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for Parts of Speech, (University of Queensland Press, 2007) and 2004 Bauhinia/Idiom 23 Prize). Her new book, Views of the Hudson has been published this year in the UK by Shearsman. She already has an international status as a visual artist. Her poetry is often highly visual, always quick, inventive and engaging. She also edits an online poetry magazine, foam:e, and jointly runs Light-trap Press, publishing artists’ books. This is her last reading in Europe before she returns to Australia.

Harry Godwin, Mendoza, Nat Raha and Michael Zand are all poets in their early 20s now (or until recently) based in London. They are part of the exciting innovative poetry scene based around creative writing courses in London and poetry events like Openned, Crossing the Line and Sundays at the Oto. They have so far only had small pamphlets published, mainly from Harry Godwin’s Arthur Shilling Press, or appeared in small magazines and websites. They are playful, inventive and wonderfully original, with strong elements of performance in how they present their poetry. There some fine photos of all of them (+ other fine folks!) on Marcus Slease's blog, after the recent Crossing the Line event.

More information on:

www.myspace.com/diversedeeds

Facebook Group - actually not much use yet as F*c*book is failing to allow me to make links

Great Works 15

2009-11-30T18:41:00.003Z

Finally produced, after innumerable aeons seem to have passed, is the latest Great Works. The new material is from:

Niall Quinn     three texts
Mark Goodwin & Nikki Clayton     Of Died
Andrew Taylor     four poems
Daniel Andersson     two poems
Nick Wayte     two poems
Mark Cobley     seven poems
Simon Howard     two sequences
Aidan Semmens     three poems
Michael Egan     five poems
A A Walker     two Terminations
Richard Parker     QS
Antony John     three poems
Adam Fieled     from Apparition Poems
Mark Cunningham     five poems
James Mc Laughlin     seven poems
Ross Leese     two poems
Christopher Barnes     six poems
Les Wicks     five poems
Alex Houen     two poems
Nicolas Spicer     five poems
Graham Burchell     five poems
Chris Brownsword     two poems
Stuart Kenyon     Silent Return
Iain Britton     five poems
Thomas Mulhall     nine poems
Cliff Yates     five poems
Nathan Thompson     four lipogram sonnets from A Haunting
Jon Clay     five poems from Here
Alasdair Paterson     from On the Governing of Empires
Tony Cullen     two poems
Steven Ruel     nine texts
William Garvin     four poems
James Price     six poems & three drawings
Simon J Charlton     The Distance of Dreams
James Davies     four poems
Gareth Durasow     four poems
Paul A Green     Astral FM & three short texts
Mike Ruddick     BOUNDARIES
Johan de Wit     ten Statements
Mark Hall     Into the Pits (In the Dirt of the Postlyric: A Collaborative Cycle : Part 5)
Connie Beauchamp     THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE GAME (In the Dirt of the Postlyric: A Collaborative Cycle : Part 6)
(+ latest update of Pistol Tree Poems)

"The perceptive reader will soon notice that all the poets with new writing in this issue appear to be male. This is largely, but not wholly, an accidental circumstance" is how my text on the homepage begins. I shall shortly write at a more length here about the issues I feel circulate around my unease (and also my ease) over all this.

Or you can personally upbraid me remorselessly tomorrow at Diverse Deeds, introducing Francesca Lisette, Sophie Robinson & Roshi reading & performing at Cafe Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8 3DL. Doors open at 7.30; start at 8.00; end by 10.00; entry £6 (£4 concessions).

Diverse Deeds - Now a Diverted Deed

2009-11-23T22:16:00.003Z

First, apologies if you've already picked up this information, but I need to keep pushing out the message:

Change of Line Up for December 1

as a consequence of Eríin Moure's recent illness:

Tuesday, December 1: Francesca Lisette + Sophie Robinson + Roshi

Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8 3DL.
doors open at 7.30; start at 8.00; end by 10.00; entry £6 (£4 concessions).

This new series of poetry and music performance events continues with three young innovative female artists. They each take up and push the boundaries of lyricism into something rich and strange.

Francesca Lisette is the young poet responsible for the Chlorine readings in Brighton. She is a fierce and powerful poet, full of original, delightful and frightening collocations of language and a melody desperately holding itself together despite the strain. Francesca Lisette is currently studying at the University of Sussex. Her work has appeared in Axolotl and Invisibly Tight Institutional Outer Flanks Dub (Verb) Glorious National High Violence. Her poem Tarorchid is forthcoming from Grasp Press.

Sophie Robinson combines highly original and effective performance techniques with powerful and moving linguistic lyricism cut in with a mastery of media practice. Her work has been included in the important anthologies The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (Reality Street, 2008) and Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century (Bloodaxe, 2009). Her new book a was published by Les Figues Press earlier this year. She has run creative writing workshops for both children and adults in the UK and Italy, and has read and performed in the USA and Ireland as well as frequently in this country.

Roshi is an exponent of “stunningly beautiful Welsh-Iranian torch song electronica“ says Mixmag. Born in Wales to Iranian parents, Roshi Nasehi is a singer-writer who presents her own evocative songs alongside sometimes quite radical interpretations of the Iranian songs she was brought up listening to. Her songs reflect her origins, influences and experiences in a personal and unique way accompanied by unusual piano or keyboard arrangements – they are reflective, melodic and quirky – her voice airy and tender but possessed of an inner power. When she interprets Iranian song it is in a personal style bringing a contemporary twist combined with an authentic understanding of context and language.

Roshi, with her band, or alone at the keyboard is a regular and welcome live performer especially in London, developing a loyal following. She has a new CD coming out in October, The Sky and The Caspian Sea (with Pars Radio, her band), of both original and traditional Iranian songs. She has performed on Radio 3’s The Verb poetry show, and at Diverse Deeds’ predecessor, Sundays at the Oto.

Diverse Deeds MySpace and the Facebook Group will be fully updated over the next couple of days.

Richard Makin, fukhart

2009-11-18T17:35:00.002Z

this is the writing of a man
who has a problem with visions
(i.e. none)
the arhythmical structure is down to stress
this writing has not been dashed
off in two minutes
in fact I think it took him a very long time to do
most of the words involve fluctuations of press
take the words
professional
soldier
little
this indicates someone burning the canal
at both ends
(which takes an awful lot of oil)
someone under a great deal of pressure
there are many mistakes
could it be the writing of a man who is simply not
very good at spelling
the runes are transposed
see where he’s set down two i’s
each with two dots
this is the act of a man who has visionary problems

Blowing Own Trumpet & Banging Own Drum

2009-11-16T21:56:00.003Z

(1) Alarmingly positive review by Peter Gillies of Are We Not Drawn ... on Stride website.

(2) I can also flag up my participation in the project in their own words, curated by John Clark, with an exhibition of "words and objects written and made in response to works of art", at Bank Street Gallery in Sheffield.

Diverse Deeds Deeds

2009-11-03T17:22:00.003Z

Both the Diverse Deeds Facebook Group and MySpace now have full details posted of the December 1 performance by Caroline Bergvall, Erín Moure and Roshi. The Diverse Deeds Facebook Group now has a set of links posted to online material by and about all three performers; on MySpace they are more integrated into the text (though not as many links used).

Pistol Tree Poems

2009-10-26T12:19:00.002Z

The two latest of the Pistol Tree Poems by Peter Hughes and Simon Marsh are now uploaded, taking us from the escape strategies of bivalves on the beach (here, maybe periwinkles for once), to the golden age of Norfolk art — "it's as if Heine were just around the headland / trolling for zander & listening to / some local country music / from the days of Tory happiness / when donkeys wore high hats".

Pistol Tree Poems

2009-09-28T17:26:00.002Z

The two latest of the Pistol Tree Poems by Peter Hughes and Simon Marsh are now uploaded: "the turkey rissole moon / will light / the sinusoidal sky / till dawn", whilst "here in the U.K. they're knitting poems / to celebrate the centenary / of the Poetry Society", even though ". . . what is / human about humans may be logos / but life remains the slow construction of a home / in unspeakable tide & hunger/"

First Diverse Deeds: Sean Bonney, Grapefruits & John James, September 24

2009-09-22T10:35:00.005Z

explore innovative poetry and music in performance

roughly monthly at Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8 3DL

doors open at 7.30; start at 8.00; end by 10.00; £6 (£4 concessions) entry

The inaugural event for this new series of poetry and music performance events matches Sean Bonney and John James, two of the most exciting and energetic readers/performers of innovative poetry, with the new improvising duo, Grapefruits.

Sean Bonney has acquired a totally justified reputation as a poet and performer. His work is urban, political and therefore angry. The diverse voices of the streets and alleys of London come through in glorious waves of creative language, affirming through its rejection al nice acceptances. “Like getting a telephone call from the barricades, the Paris Commune.” That important! Most recent books: Baudelaire in English (Veer Books, 2008) & Document: Poems, Diagrams, Manifestos July 7th 2005 – June 27th 2007 (Barque Press, 2009). Sean Bonney runs yt communication with Frances Kruk and lives in London.

Grapefruits is the improvisatory duo of Oliver Barrett (Bleeding Heart Narrative) on cello, and Max Bondi (multi-instrumentalist and Tartaruga Records founder) on piano. Occasionally utilising a variety of percussion and electronics alongside the core of cello and piano, Grapefruits create extended improvisations that drag fragments of melody from swirls of sound and texture. building up cities of sound to live within: compelling listening.

John James has been writing poetry since the 1960s. You can get most of his work in his Collected Poems (Salt, 2002). John James is a legendary poetry performer: direct, energetic and totally alive. His writing combines quick witted and ever alert verbal invention with a masterful relaxation and humour, and political and cultural passion. Sometimes urban, sometimes rural – always full of actual, delightful and obstreperous human life. This a rare London reading from the Cambridge-based poet.

“John James is an extremely enjoyable and charismatic poet. His work is like a vigorous breath of fresh air, full of variety, humour and surprise. It has a strong sense of lyricism and energy, a striking mixture of the experimental and the immediate that brings to mind the work of Mayakovsky or the New York poets of the 1950s and 60s.” The Guardian.

for further information:

MySpace Page for Diverse Deeds

Facebook Group: Diverse Deeds

Very Latest Pistol Tree Poems

2009-08-28T21:55:00.002Z

The most recent pair of Pistol Tree Poems, the collaborative dialogic sequence between Peter Hughes (mainly from Norfolk) and Simon Marsh (mainly from Italy) is now posted on Great Works here. They're coming thick and fast! "it was Beethoven who first observed / the road to Rotterdam was paved with chub" Sheer verbal pleasure.

Latest Pistol Tree Poems

2009-08-25T21:43:00.003Z

The most recent pair of Pistol Tree Poems, the collaborative dialogic sequence between Peter Hughes (mainly from Norfolk) and Simon Marsh (mainly from Italy) is now posted on Great Works here.

Diverse Deeds' Diverse Deeds

2009-08-25T17:38:00.003Z

Not very diverse really. But I can announce there are now both a Diverse Deeds MySpace Page and a Diverse Deeds Facebook Group. You are welcome to join or frequent them.

Completion of St Leonards

2009-08-20T10:19:00.002Z

The final episode of Richard Makin's sequence St Leonards is now posted on Great Works. The complete text will be published later this year by Reality Street Editions. But read it now!

New Book: Are We Not Drawn ...

2009-07-08T09:59:00.004Z

Just available from Shearsman, a 100 poem sequence: Are We Not Drawn ...

"Are We Not Drawn ... takes off from a palindrome quoted in Anne Michael’s novel, Fugitive Pieces: "Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?" Drawn onward; but trapped in repetition and mirroring. The mirrors are now fractured: each line breaks under the strain, as voices and images pour in. Verbal repetitions, starting with the words of the palindrome, give some sorts of paths through, continually evolving and shifting. A work of naïve realism, then, capable of recording how gardenias, Inca mummies and the iron mines of West Somerset determine our days. Just listen to what you are being told ..."

There are also TV crime drama (CSI or Raising the Dead - which do you prefer?), the roads into Essex, our catastrophic environmental degradation, memories of poems about Ed Dorn, old hymns, seaside trolleybuses along The Esplanade, and whatever else I was told to write. And another cover with a photo of Minehead Beach (though it's no more about there than here).

£8.95! A mere snip. ISBN 9781848610248. Ideal holiday reading.

Penultimate St Leonards

2009-07-08T09:39:00.001Z

The penultimate St Leonards has just been uploaded, XXXII. Enjoy it!

Updates to www.modernpoetry.org.uk & Great Works Links

2009-07-08T08:48:00.002Z

I've just gone over again, checked, updated and added to the material and links on www.modernpoetry.org.uk. The site needs much more doing to it and a total redesign, but, well, maybe. The Links section on Great Works has therefore also been appropriately updated, with all the British links checked etc as part of this process. and a couple more non-British sites added. More will be done on this!

THE POST AVANT-GARDE:umm, what is this?

2009-06-22T21:28:00.006Z

(For ease of access, I've put here the text of what are two pages on www.modernpoetry.org.uk as a single blog posting. The plan was to have produced this and link it to some of the Sundays at the Oto online listings, so that the phrase I use as if humorously in the tagline, “poetry and music with the post-avant crowd for your Sunday afternoon pleasure” could be explained, and, indeed, I hope, justified. Just never got round to writing it. Have now, when possibly too late. Never mind. Enjoy!)

Yes, that’s an understandable reaction to the phrase. The quick response is that the post-avant refers to poetry (and other arts) that are working past the realisation that what were deliberately transgressive “avant-garde” activities are now totally accepted and encouraged by critical, academic and funding institutions. (Visualise Damien Hirst and his income; any art college degree show; etc). So any art which wants to still, ah blest impulses! do something actually new, and to challenge and redefine the nature of art (or poetry or whatever) has to begin to play some pretty subtle cute games that go beyond — but can make use of all of — previous avant-garde practices.

In terms of poetry, by my reckoning the term post-avant, if it’s to be useful, explores the authorship, coherence, performance of the text (or indeed what text?), and happily uses (look, they’re not shocking, they’re our inheritance now) any of the ways poetry has innovated in the last century (or past five hundred years). So, yes, it’s a continuance of that avant-garde or modernist impulse, but one that is aware there isn’t going to be a revolutionary artistic utopia nor a wonderful movement to always better and more modern stuff — there’s only coping with the shit we’re in, the complicated inescapable language shit we’re totally in. Disabused, but not disabled, and abusive yet.

The term was first used by the German cultural critic Peter Bürger, who in his little book, Theory of the Avant-Garde tried to present a statement about the nature and status of avant-garde art at the beginning of the 1970s. His emphasis was on art rather than literature. He was trying to update the great German sociologists of culture of the first half of the Twentieth Century Theodor Adorno and, especially, Walter Benjamin. Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is in many ways the model for Bürger's book (and essential reading for anyone interested in Modernist art).

Bürger sees the great avant-garde movements of the first half (essentially the first quarter) of the Twentieth Century, "the historic avant-garde", as having ended, and ended in failure, in that essential to their project was the transformation not so much of art styles, but of the whole of life. The repetition of their gestures and devices by contemporary artists he labels "neo-avant-garde" or "post avant-garde". He is pretty cold-blooded about this:

To formulate more pointedly: the neo-avant-garde institutionalizes the avant-garde as art, and thus negates genuinely avant-gardiste intentions. This is true independently of the consciousness artists may have of their activity, a consciousness that may perfectly well be avant-gardiste. It is the status of their products, not the consciousness artists have of their activity, that defines the social effect of works. Neo-avant-gardiste art is autonomous art in the full sense of the term, which means that it negates the avant-gardiste intention of returning art to the praxis of life. And the efforts to sublate art become artistic manifestations that, despite their producers' intentions, take on the character of works of art.

This is rigorous stuff! What he means is that by repeating the gestures of the original avant-garde, the neo- or post avant-garde are cutting these away from any role as demolishing the illusion or chains of art, and instead turning them into just more tricks in the artist's repertoire. Even if they think they are genuinely questioning the nature of art, they aren't: art exists as a social institution which will embrace the work they produce. Think Banksy in Bristol Art Gallery. Think Tracy Emin at the RA. Think Damien Hirst's multi-millionaire status. These people are the art establishment: they cannot make genuinely radical gestures, merely profitable or careerist ones. The art is just about art, just part of this complex social institution, which will include at this point all possible styles and techniques. "The total availability of material and forms characteristic of the post avant-gardiste art of bourgeois society" is the phrase Bürger uses to point this out, and with this his art critique matches the theoretical position of post-modernism: everything has "always already" been done, so the cultural state we are in is one that includes all possible styles.

And this is just inescapably so of contemporary art. Any art not recognising this is basing itself on delusion.

And poetry? Well, the often academically and poetry-as-a-career successful Language Poets have become essentially establishment figures in USA, tenured and feted, almost comparable to the various BritArt figures¹. But in Britain — hardly so on any similar scale. Indeed I did like to feel that by some miracle British Innovative Poetry² had preserved some "avant-gardiste" identity through its desperately marginal situation in the 1980s and early 90s.

I'm no longer so sure. There has been an increasing shift since 2000 of British Innovative Poetry's nature as a social institution. It had been a poetry produced by some people who worked in higher education, many who had a degree or whatever; and many without university education. But I find that more and more the bases for British Innovative Poetry have come to be universities and higher education colleges, and that the poetry itself is now fully integrated into the academic curriculum, whether as traditional literary studies or as creative writing. The forthcoming Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry signals this process with absolute clarity. Since the majority of those involved in this academic journal (taking editorial team and editorial board) are poets, indeed excellent poets, there is an elision between the writing of British Innovative Poetry and its study in higher education. Marginal it isn't any longer, but a component at last of a fully fledged element of the Ideological State Apparatus³. Some success.

So, not as glamorous as BritArt. But secure within an institutional base at last! Therefore, no longer in any conceivable way. "avant-gardiste".

OK, that's the general theoretical basis, using Bürger's phrase. British Innovative Poetry is now a post-avant movement.

End of story? Nahh, nothing's that clear cut, of course.

The term post-avant is used by a number of poets and critics (mainly US-based) to label trends in (mainly US-based) contemporary poetry. Thus one can talk of post-avant poets, poetry and poetics. On one level one is talking, I'm talking, about writers conscious of their position as necessarily "post avant-gardiste", and with this consciousness playing through their writing. Those that aren't are ignorant, living delusory existences as would-be avant-gardists, traditionalists, whatthefuckists.

Tighter than that there have been attempts to use post-avant as a label for a school. The locus classicus here (to offset my swearing with some Latin) is the American poet and critic Reginald Shepherd's 2008 blogpost
"Defining 'Post-Avant-Garde' Poetry" (enlarging on an earlier post by him, "Who You Callin' ‘Post-Avant'?" on the Harriet blog of the (American) Poetry Foundation.

Three quick things to note here, by the way. The term had been in use earlier, though not necessarily well conceived (Shepherd indeed refers to satirical uses of the term). The term existed and was used online heavily, and is linked with and used by online communities of poets extensively. (I am not going to chase earliest usages — let some poor drudge get a research grant for this.) It has now been used in print (academic) publications, but it is interesting and symptomatic that its use came in via online communities and networks (and see comments on Ron Silliman below). And lastly, the uncertainty and clumsiness over spellings and hyphenations. "Post-avant" is widely used as a solution, and I shall normally do so (unless quoting).

Here's a big chunk (my ellipses and two brief comments) of the crucial bit of Shepherd's definition:

The phrase "post-avant poetry," which was either coined seriously by Ron Silliman or parodically by Joan Houlihan, is bandied about quite a bit in the online poetry world. (I've never seen the phrase in print, an indication of how separate the two realms often are, though many people participate in both.) It's used with the assumption that "we all know what that is," but the term is rarely defined. . . . I hope that this too-broad discussion is not taken as a substitute for discussing actual poets and actual poems.

"Post-avant" (as in, "post-avant-garde"—insider groups love shorthand) poets can be described as writers who, at their best, have imbibed the lessons of the modernists and their successors in what might be called the experimental or avant-garde stream of American poets, including the Objectivists (especially Oppen and Zukofsky), what have been called the New American Poetries, particularly the Projectivist/Black Mountain School and the New York School(s), from Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan to John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara, and the Language poets (including such poets and polemicists as Charles Bernstein and Ron Silliman), without feeling the need (as so many other poetic formations have) to pledge allegiance to a particular group identity (the poetry world is full of fence-building and turf wars) or a particular mode of proceeding artistically. As poet Elizabeth Willis writes in her artist's statement in my anthology Lyric Postmodernisms, "part of what's so interesting about the current moment is its refusal of an overtly oedipal relation to literary traditions on either the right or the left, and a willingness to construct and invent not only new kinds of poetry but new ways of reading."

These poets don't form a movement, let alone a school, but something more like a set of tendencies. . . .

Poet and editor Rebecca Wolff writes of the work in her journal Fence, a home of the post-avant (along with such journals as Boston Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, New American Writing, Verse, and Volt, and such publishers as Ahsahta Press, the University of California Press, the late lamented University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series, and Wesleyan University Press) [note the academic bases established here — PP], such writing "intentionally blurs the distinction between 'difficulty' and 'accessibility,' preferring instead to address a continuum of utterance." Though many of these poets have projects and even systems (the book, as distinct from or even opposed to the individual poem, is important in much of their work), there aren't a lot of programs. There's much prose writing and thinking about poetry, and there are many, many blogs (this is a very wired "generation," and much sense of post-avant poetic community is produced online), but not many manifestoes. (Flarf, which poet Kasey Mohammad has defined as "intentionally bad poetry that involves Google search text results," a deliberate anti-poetry based on what Dan Hoy has called "poetics of awfulness as a style," is probably not "post-avant," but I don't understand it well enough to discuss it.) And no doubt I've missed a lot—there's a lot to miss. [difficult not to label flarf as typically post-avant — PP]).

That's quite broad, but useful. Notice reference to Ron Silliman, whose very full, informative, informed and widely read blog (started August 2002) has used the phrase extensively, and been responsible for much of the spread in its use. Silliman, one of the original group of Language Poets in the 1970s, uses the word favourably — this tends to be the poetry he values, as opposed to the wonderfully named "School of Quietude" (in British terms, mainstream poetry), characterised perceptively by him as poetry which imagines it is just poetry, belonging to no school. "Perhaps the most significant power move that the SoQ makes is to render itself the unmarked case in literature — it's poetry, or perhaps Poetry, while every other kind of writing is marked, named, contained within whatever framework its naming might imply." But:

I prefer post-avant precisely because the term acknowledges that the model of an avant-garde — a term that is impossible to shake entirely free of its militaristic etymological roots & that depends in any event upon a model of progress, i.e., teleological change always for the better — is inherently flawed. The term however acknowledges an historical debt to the concept & recognizes the concept as temporal in nature — the avant-garde that interests me is a tradition of consistently oppositional literary tendencies that can be traced back well into the first decades of the 19th century, at the very least. The term also has an advantage in being extremely broad — Tom Clark is post-avant & so am I — nobody gets to lay claim to it.

That's nice. I can use this. But it is also a tremendously broad term, which does seem to stand in for ‘stuff what I like' with Silliman. (I do simplify a more nuanced and complex analysis of the US poetry scene here. Read the blog!)

Two American poets and critics with I think more precise and usable senses of the word than Silliman are Kent Johnson and Adam Fieled. Johnson's contributions to an online discussion on a 2003 debate on Joan Houlihan's website Boston Comment on "Avant, Post-Avant, and Beyond" are extremely interesting and challenging. He started, responding to a general question on the status of avant-garde American poetry, by invoking Bürger, as I have, and then to discuss the implications of the institutionalisation of the Language Poets, who fit Bürger's criteria for a (failed) avant-garde to a tee, with their Marxising discourse boldly relating their Steinian⁴ poetic practice to the workers' struggle.

Language poetry, along with its various second-generation satellite formations, now stands as an experimentalist, but respectful and loyal, opposition within the Parliament of Academic poetry. The "post-avant" is the mode that ambitious young MFA'ers [postgraduate creative writing students — PP} study; it is the creative writing "style" scores of publishers are seeking; it is the aesthetic pedigree rising numbers of awards are prizing; it is the criticism and theory that prestigious university presses are publishing; it is the "subversive poetics" the current President of the Modern Language Association has made her reputation promoting.

Using Bürger's criteria, he indicates how the teeth have been drawn. He suggests that the distinction between Silliman's wide Post-avant and the School of Quietude (or whatever) is a false one: two sides of the same coin, nether really radically questioning the nature and role of poetry. What he calls for is a querying of authorship, which is where he ends up:

Following Pessoa's lead⁵, then, one possible challenge for future "experimental" writing will be to discard the ritualistic shackles of private authorial ownership and adopt imaginative vehicles sufficiently capacious to that force.

Of course, were this to happen to any significant degree, staunch resistance would no doubt come from all quarters of official verse culture—from those, that is, who have a stake in maintaining the status quo, "traditional" as well as "avant-garde."

Now that is an interesting call for a revaluation of fundamentals in poetry, a genuinely possible "post-avant-gardiste" position. Johnson's own work indeed involves this. His recent Shearsman book, Homage to the Last Avant-Garde, is one that has helped me reconsider my own poetic practice.

Adam Fieled, who I have published in Great Works, has in some ways a more traditional sense of the positive possibilities for a genuine post-avant poetry that escapes the dreadful triple tree of recuperation, normalisation and institutionalisation. His critical blog, Stoning the Devil, and his poetry blogzine, P.F.S. Post: Maximum Post-Avant, I both recommend passim. But I'll refer to a posting by him on the Australian ezine Cordite Poetry Review, "Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Abstract Morality In Post-Avant Poetry". He finds her work exemplary, both as post-avant practice, and, interestingly, as often diverging from the merely contemporary cool that is the routinised, toothless post-avant Johnson was savaging:

What DuPlessis does share with her post-avant cohorts is an overriding concern with poetic "process" and the scruples necessary to "use" it without abusing it. The essential moral issue . . . is whether poetry itself is a worthy endeavor in an oppressed, corrupted, oppressive and corruptive world. The "process" of creating poetry is there to be "scrutinized", "put on the spot". Poetry and poets themselves are given no kind of free ride; "true", penetrating gravitas must be earned through long and meticulous labor.

This all seems very concrete, and it is; abstraction enters the picture when words begin to appear on the page. There, "process" demands that language "have its own way" to a certain extent; nose-on-the-face inquiry would be too egocentric, the flip side of the "epiphanic" coin. Words go where they want to go; if they are not presented in a self-serving way, "there can still be a game" ([Roland} Barthes, [The Pleasure of the Text] 4)

Fieled is calling for a post-avant of rigorous total poetic selfless self-awareness, a delicate business (as his recourse to scare quotes shows!), but again, suggesting a route out of the "bad" (to borrow them) post-avant:

The answer seems to be that the poet's "I" must act as a verb, rather than a noun; the "I" must be a searching-for-a-self, rather than an assumed constant. The self is perceived as "dynamic" rather than "essential" ([Lyn] Hejinian [The Language of Inquiry], 203), a process rather than a stabilized, identifiable element. As such, post-avant poets look to poetry for a way to question the established values of socially constructed identities; poetry becomes a means whereby complacence is transmuted into a quest for moral, social, aesthetic, & personal justification.

. . .

The theory determining this method is that by taking out the "I", the post-avant poet can develop a more comprehensive view of the human condition as it exists in the world: in politics, art, social groups, countries & histories of art, politics, social groups and so on. In addition, by eschewing the epiphanic "I" (who usually has a sermon of some kind to deliver), the post-avant poet is free to cultivate a unique relationship to language, which often takes the form of a kind of interrogation.

The poet "looks into words", divines for the sub-texts that hover around linguistic structures and nuances. In this process, language itself, and the manner in which it determines our lives, becomes the focus of scrutiny. Part of the function of poetry is seen to be the enumeration of the "word-as-word", achieved by a scrupulous & detailed assault on linguistic convention.

I've taken out some attempt to draw in Romantic poetic discourse here. That's his take on the post-avant. But you can see how a poetry genuinely questioning identity may be posited.

This is a challenging operation. The Boston Dialogue piece quoted from above was set up by Houlihan after a posting of hers on her site, "Post-Post Dementia: How Contemporary American Poets Are Denaturing the Poem"⁶, sparked a lot of controversy. I can see why. She completely fails to at the fence with a number of what she labels mockingly "post-post" or "avant-avant-garde" poems. Embarrassingly, she falls into the trap of comparing poems to the utterances of people with strokes or dementia, that old Entarte Kunst play. "To question the established values of socially constructed identities", to repeat Fieled's phrase, at their most raw and basic, and inescapably human, is a tremendously worthwhile project. (The poem Houlihan most mocks is actually a little over-worked for my taste!)

So, I am, optimistic little soul that I may be, positing the possibility of something other than, more than, the institutionalised minor games that the post-avant can all too easily be seen as. Some kind of questioning stance towards the nature of poetry may be maintainable. There may be a "bad" post-avant, the inescapable fashionable mish-mash; but may be there can be a "good" post-avant, which attempts nevertheless⁷ the continuing radical questioning of poetry and language. It will need to be fully self-aware and to be totally questioning of its foundations. It will not provide comfort for anyone.

Is it doable this side of the Atlantic? Why not?

1 I'm assuming any British audience will not have escaped BritArt. But you may well have escaped Language Poetry. Quick summary of American poetry in the second half of the Twentieth Century follows. The 1950s and 60s (coming out of the 40s) were a hugely creative time in American poetry, with a vast welling up of a variety of poetic practices (like the more well-known art and music scenes in this time). The Confessional poets were very influential in mainstream British poetry. The Beats provided an exemplar for the British Poetry Revival of the 60s, together with input from more self-aware movements like the New York School, San Francisco Renaissance, Black Mountain Poets, even let's not forget, Deep Image. These latter movements, which have played a major role in helping form Innovative British Poetry, tended at the time to be more marginal to mainstream American literary culture than the Confessional poets. By the 70s, apart from the ever-reborn New York scene, they were running out of impetus (and many of the main players of that generation died relatively young). The Language Poets presented from the 70s and early 80s a widespread attempt at a culminatory avant-garde poetic, rigorously focusing on total involvement with language itself (ie not self, world, anything that language refers to), buttressed often with heavyweight theoretical, often Marxising, positions (especially in the onomastic periodical L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E). Many of the poets concerned have had success in establishing themselves in American literary and academic institutions. If you want to find out more — I've used here the names which Wikipedia uses for what are quite useful starting-point articles.

2 For what I mean by this, please visit my website www.modernpoetry.org.uk.

3 1. All ideological State apparatuses, whatever they are, contribute to the same result: the reproduction of the relations of production, i.e. of capitalist relations of exploitation.

2. Each of them contributes towards this single result in the way proper to it. The political apparatus by subjecting individuals to the political State ideology, the 'indirect' (parliamentary) or 'direct' (plebiscitary or fascist) 'democratic' ideology. The communications apparatus by cramming every 'citizen' with daily doses of nationalism, chauvinism, liberalism, moralism, etc, by means of the press, the radio and television. The same goes for the cultural apparatus (the role of sport in chauvinism is of the first importance), etc. The religious apparatus by recalling in sermons and the other great ceremonies of Birth, Marriage and Death, that man is only ashes, unless he loves his neighbour to the extent of turning the other cheek to whoever strikes first. The family apparatus . . . but there is no need to go on.

3. This concert is dominated by a single score, occasionally disturbed by contradictions (those of the remnants of former ruling classes, those of the proletarians and their organizations): the score of the Ideology of the current ruling class which integrates into its music the great themes of the Humanism of the Great Forefathers, who produced the Greek Miracle even before Christianity, and afterwards the Glory of Rome, the Eternal City, and the themes of Interest, particular and general, etc. nationalism, moralism and economism.

4. Nevertheless, in this concert, one ideological State apparatus certainly has the dominant role, although hardly anyone lends an ear to its music: it is so silent! This is the School.

It takes children from every class at infant-school age, and then for years, the years in which the child is most 'vulnerable', squeezed between the family State apparatus and the educational State apparatus, it drums into them, whether it uses new or old methods, a certain amount of 'know-how' wrapped in the ruling ideology (French, arithmetic, natural history, the sciences, literature) or simply the ruling ideology in its pure state (ethics, civic instruction, philosophy). Somewhere around the age of sixteen, a huge mass of children are ejected 'into production': these are the workers or small peasants. Another portion of scholastically adapted youth carries on: and, for better or worse, it goes somewhat further, until it falls by the wayside and fills the posts of small and middle technicians, white-collar workers, small and middle executives, petty bourgeois of all kinds. A last portion reaches the summit, either to fall into intellectual semi-employment, or to provide, as well as the 'intellectuals of the collective labourer', the agents of exploitation (capitalists, managers), the agents of repression (soldiers, policemen, politicians, administrators, etc.) and the professional ideologists (priests of all sorts, most of whom are convinced 'laymen').

Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)", Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

4 Gertrude Stein. Early Twentieth Century writer who did what the present avant-garde do without the theoretical bullshit — it was personal bullshit with her! Try her great work Tender Buttons.

5 Fernando Pessoa, great Portuguese Modernist poet, famous for his use of poetic personas (heteronyms), with varying viewpoints and styles, for most of his major poetry.

6 I think this is the satirical use of post-avant referred to by Shepherd above.

7 If "always already" is taken as the mantra of postmodernism, I'd like "nevertheless" as the koan of the post-avant.

POETIC SPECIATION AND DIVERSIFICATION; Or, Why I am Alarmed at the Role the Academic Environment is Playing in Contemporary British Innovative Poetry

2009-06-16T14:00:00.003Z

I like using an analogy made by Andrew Duncan to explain the disparate heterogeneity of contemporary British poetry: the SciFi topos of centuries-long space-missions, venturing out from the home planet to reach different stars, and establishing their own separate lineages and cultures. These increasingly diverge from each other and become unable to intercommunicate.

I’d prefer to tweak this into a biological analogy, which I find more precise and powerful. I was exploring this in more detail, when I encountered the American-published but largely British-content magazine Hot Gun!, which got me thinking about a specific aspect of the adaptations being made in contemporary poetry. I’ve ended up by not dealing that much with the magazine, though this piece of writing started as a response to it: Instead I have ended up with a rationale in the present environment for my own activities in attempting the dissemination and nurturing of poetry.

I have, though, maintained this overall extended metaphor, or act of intellectual modelling, of evolution and poetry, for two reasons. I think its biological basis enables it to cope extremely well both with process and change, and also with the fuzzy logic & probabilistic distribution of how actual systems operate. I do find myself considering poetry as system, both a pure artistic one, working out the inherent logic of material and form, and also, of course, a cultural or social system, interrelated to all other human activities.

So, to start with the basics. Think Darwin: life forms spreading across a world reach a fresh range of habitats (new continent, archipelago, city, whatever). They spread, move across it as they find their own good places. As to who ends up where: some occurrences will be largely inescapable, some will be totally contingent. The life forms adapt to their new ecological niches (indeed as they do so, define these niches), and therefore change, tending to communicate and breed only within themselves, in their new communities. Speciation occurs. Interestingly, different species may even end up with similar adaptations (and phenotypes) when they encounter similar environments, but will not interbreed despite such physical resemblances. Genotype, or lineage, is all.

So it is with poets. The social/economic/technological changes since the mid Twentieth Century have opened up fresh cultural habitats, even as others have degraded and become unviable (eg commercial poetry publishing and distribution). Some lineages occupy dominant roles in the ecosystem at different times. There are lots of accounts of all these. The poetry I am most concerned with, and that I imagine, gentle reader, you may be too, if you’ve encountered this piece, we shall call British Innovative Poetry. We can trace its gene pool back to some writers in the 50s and the 60s, largely inspired by their American and European peers, and importing their genes into British poetry, thus challenging the then-dominant lineages in British poetry. These themselves represented the deliberate stripping of those adaptations to the Modern World British poetry had been making through the first half of the Twentieth Century. One might have expected the non-regressive poetry to have readily occupied the prime ecological niches, but that would be to forget both that British literary culture in this period was a degrading environment in which survival by clinging to the last dwindling resources was the most common response, and the sheer defensive ferocity of the then-dominant species (which themselves were relatively newly-established, despite fabricated genealogies). Since that point British Innovative Poetry has largely occupied until recent years very minor and unstable ecological niches, lacking in major sources of nutrition, and cut off from access to wider environments, eg the back room in a pub, or essentially private networks of aficionados and cultists.

Meanwhile, the larger cultural environment changes continually: the dominant species, adapted perfectly to what is, always finds it difficult to cope with what this changes into. The Internet is an obvious case here: imagine a whole new continent in which a David Attenborough figure can enthuse over a rampant plethora of different organisms, bearing many differences from those on other continents (like those of paper). If I go into Waterstones to look for Modern British Poetry – it is an arid desert, occupied by a few very low-level and undifferentiated life-forms. But if I google “modern British poetry” or “contemporary British poetry”, I find a much more differentiated range of poetic life forms, and with access easily made to Innovative British Poetry. This suggests the Internet is matching our poetry’s needs better even than the mimeo-revolution small presses of the 1960s and 70s.

Now, another interesting phenomenon of our times I can fit into this metaphor, is the increasing role of an academic environment in supporting poetry of our genus (or family, phylum, whatever). This is linked with, I believe, a whole range of different factors that have come together:

The rise of new focuses of literary studies: Creative Writing, Performance Writing, Poetics and Poetic Practice as academic disciplines are all excellent environments for poetry fascinated by linguistic innovation and experimentation and reared in close location to theory.

British Innovative Poetry has developed since the late 1960s in tandem with trends towards theorising in literary studies (and across the whole gamut of humanistic studies indeed). The establishment of a theoretical basis is one of the conditions which encourages survival in the academic environment (like gills in the sea or legs on land – you can manage without, but it’s easier with). The undefined and unreflective nature of much mainstream poetry acts against it here.

Cambridge. (Sorry!) Like some kind of master set of genes that just, well just does, give a sense of superior life efficiency or dominance, any lineage involving this place boosts its possessor’s chances. (That’s what gets paid for, after all.) As British society increases in its inequalities, the training ground of the social elite simply attunes its products best of all for current high level social/ecological niches.

American connections and examples. I would say these give both access to major sources of nutrition, and other boosts to biological success. The rise of MFA programs and the earlier success of the Language poets in attaining academic positions represent earlier parallel evolutionary trends.

Moreover, what may be overall most important for the ecology of poetry is that academic niches also give excellent reproductive benefits. This is basic. Fresh poets of our genus (or whatever etc) can be spawned wholesale, with careful control moreover in the academic process that their genotype does not suffer too many mutations (a major problem with poetic genetics).

This has all come together in recent years to encourage a major ecological breakthrough for British innovative poetry! The success of other poetry lineages in seizing the dominant ecological niches is potentially reversible. We can outbreed them with true offspring, and have a solid ecological basis at last. We are the future dominants! The coup by which the small shrewlike creatures typified by Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin seized the lush pastures in the early 1950s can be reversed at last. Indeed critics are already fabricating a whole new fossil ancestry for us (typified by Joseph Macleod and Lynette Roberts). (Unlike biological organisms, there do seem to be survival benefits to poetic organisms in believing they are part of a long-standing and successful strain).

Am I serious? Hmm. Am I happy at this state of affairs? The poetic ecologist has no emotions, merely records what is there and how it all interrelates.

But the poet is a bit alarmed.

The reasons for my alarm, other than my general pessimism and paranoia coupled with a painfully acquired expectation of failure always, can be dealt with by referring to Hot Gun! It is a neat little mag, elegantly and engagingly produced, from New Haven, CT (ie Yale) with some fine poets, almost (all?) British. Unfortunately, I found myself very unmoved by it, once I’d got over my initial pleasure at the very cool appearance. This may well reflect problems with my responses, so I won’t go into detail with what stuck in my craw – and did so to my surprise and against my expectations. There are poets included, like Jow Lindsay and Andrea Brady, who usually bring me great joy. But, in this mag, I found a certain poetic monoculture that drained excitement from them. The similarities blurred the poems, the procedures used became obvious and expected. I was not challenged. Delight was lessened by monotony. “Is that all there is?”

Now, one of the quasi-academic essays, Emily Critchley on “Women in Language Poetry”, I found more useful and interesting. She presents a careful and accurate critique of much Language writing, and defends other writers who may be less publicised because of qualities like tentativeness and openness. These writers are female – the more successful ones male. Critchley links qualities as writers with gender, and indeed with gender politics:

the female Language poets pursued the heterogeneity, subtlety and openness that now characterizes third wave feminism and which I hope will come to be the more lasting legacy of this complex literary era. ‘The thing to demand was, and remains, heterogeneity,’ as Hejinian puts it, ‘– weird and wonderful and multiple ways of being women, and of being men, and of being human, and of being animal – or why not, riverbanks or saxophones or horticultural supply houses.’

Now this is the game I want to play, or the life I want to live, being invoked here. It is a good piece of writing, useful to me as a poet, recovering what may be valuable from the Language poets. In it, moreover, the academicisation inherent in their poetry is pinned onto the board for all to see:

The low frequency of theoretical work that initially accompanied the poetry of the female Language writers may have meant that they were at first taken less seriously by their male peers – an anxiety that several of the language poets seem to have grappled with throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, perhaps explaining their belated critical output.

To be taken seriously is to be a successful secretor of secondary discourse, rather than a good poet.

This is obviously a major problem for the poet in the academic environment: the primary purpose of poetry is less important than the poetically secondary purpose of producing academic material.

There is a complex relationship in all poetic movements (or genera), on the relationship between poems and discourse (whether explicit manifestos, essays or whatever). Poetics is not necessarily inherent in the poetry – it requires procedures for it to be made manifest and explicit. There can indeed be interesting mismatches between poetry and its attendant discourse. However, what the Language poets did was to up the stakes to the max in unreadability and academicisation (and I do hope you dislike this word). The advanced theoretics winning the male poets their academic status was mainly bullshit which obfuscated the actuality and origins of their writing, but bigged them up good to their lasting (so far) benefit. I think this is to do with their relationship to the academic environment they so successfully engaged with, only secondarily with gender. The gender differential may well relate to gender bias within the academic community at that time, rather than be absolute or essentialist.

So, I’m sure you can get my drift here. My assumption is the on-academic one that poetry has survived as a cultural activity through its relative ease of access, and its direct relationship with human needs involving the range of functions language plays in our lives. It is readily produced, readily consumed. It is at root unspecialised. There’s plainly a form of it, or range of forms of it, I feel, as I daresay you do, important and worthy of survival and further development. Its value is that it is also at root unspecialised, highly variable and adaptable. Even British Innovative Poetry must be approachable on terms that don’t necessitate academic training and in places that are separate from higher education.

It seems dangerous to me that the academic ecological niche is becoming so important. I have overheard people commenting that they needed to do an MA to become a writer. This fills me with despair.

This is despair not aimed at the individuals concerned, nor their current activities. The Editorial Team of the imminent Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry is a veritable dream team: Robert Sheppard and Scott Thurston (editors), with an editorial Board of Peter Barry, Caroline Bergvall, Charles Bernstein, Andrea Brady, Ian Davidson, Alex Davis, Allen Fisher, John Hall, Robert Hampson, Romana Huk, Elizabeth James, Tony Lopez, Anthony Mellors, Peter Middleton, Ian Patterson, Marjorie Perloff, William Rowe, Keith Tuma and Tim Woods (13 Professors, 7 Doctors in total – 4 of whom are American academics). I have published, or presented in performance, at various times ten of these people, and all others whose poetry I know I would dearly love to publish or present.

Interestingly there is a lack in the listing of names for this journal of several individuals I have published/presented involved with academic Creative Writing courses (BA and MA), eg Jeff Hilson, Tim Atkins, Lesley Mckenna, Keith Jebb, Simon Smith. All superb poets whose work I am proud to have published or presented. I keep publishing work by their students also – these courses appear to do what they do superbly well, and are plainly aiding a significant creative moment in British poetry. Believe you me, all those named here (and others who might be), this is not a personal concern, not a criticism of your academic or poetic activities: “Lord, I am not worthy” etc.

It is alarm at this change in the mechanisms by which British Innovative Poetry sustains itself as an institution. These changes, I suggest, will necessarily alter the nature of the poetry, and of the poetic community, and of entry to it. We are being set up for being a poet as being perceived as requiring somehow graduate entry, indeed possibly postgraduate entry. Now, I have been professionally employed in such professional education, having done some work at Harlow College on the BA in Journalism, and played a major role in setting up a Postgraduate Diploma in Magazine Journalism (the first with accreditation from both the NCTJ and PTC). There are debates within journalism over practical versus academic training, but plainly as a way of ensuring starting journalists acquire necessary skills and knowledge bases such courses play a major role, and the traditional days of local papers hiring bright lads straight from school do not match the nature of journalism as a contemporary profession. And even then, they were sent off on block release for training at colleges, like Barry MacSweeney at Harlow (just before my time).

But with regard to poetry, I don’t see academic courses, whether “practical” (ie creative) or theoretical (more traditional literary studies), as playing the role of the genuine training courses I have mentioned, nor needing to be for the continuing reproduction of poetry. It would be absurd. Poetry isn’t important because it is the subject of academic study. In no way does it depend on academic study. It is important because it is a fundamental human relationship with language (like music is with sound-production, art with mark making, dance with movement). Poetry as such is as unstoppable as sex. It will take place!

It’s how it’s done is always the issue. Specifically, it is the fate of the lineage of contemporary British Innovative Poetry that is uncertain. Having the academic environment as a main base seems to me to be a trap, for a large number of reasons:

The poetry will be there at the mercy of the utterly reductive target-culture which dominates all aspects of British education, and distorts everything within education. Their values within our education system, that dominate and form it, are totally antithetical to anything related to innovative poetry. All those involved may well be at present fighting this off, I’m sure they are. It’s as futile as trying to fight a major climatic change.

The poetry will be there at the mercy of a higher education system which is drastically underfunded, and about to face both pressures to charge students more, and major funding cuts (oh, and with an emphasis on employability and practical, ie money making, applications). Creative writing (or whatever) is undoubtedly cheaper than physics or engineering; but, well, if a cost-benefit analysis is applied by someone not involved, where are we?

It will be subject to the vagaries of intellectual fashion and internal politics within universities.

Discourse about poetry will be placed as central, rather than poetry itself, and necessarily and inescapably both discourse and poetry will be valued which require further academic processing above poetry (and discourse) which do not.

Perceived barriers – which indeed are ultimately class barriers let us remember – will be placed in the way of would-be poets.

The poetry will probably end up tending towards a very clever but empty reproduction of formulas and phrases – precisely what is meant by academicism in poetry.

These things cannot be avoided. They may well only be minor factors at present, and I repeat my admiration for the work that is done creatively within Higher Education. And though I may be more dubious about the value of some critical writing to anyone other than another labourer in the academic vineyard, I’ve put myself down for a subscription to JBIIP. But those above are real constraints which the academic environment will impose over time. This is an environment with huge risks, which could greatly change the nature of Innovative British Poetry.

To return to my governing extended metaphor: a successful adaptation by our genus to the academic habitat would be a disastrous specialisation, dooming us to restriction to this apparently favourable habitat, and dependent on it for our survival (when it is inherently unstable and potentially about to degrade). We need a wider range of environments to flourish in to prevent this, and to allow us to retain the full potential of a more generalised lifestyle. This is especially true, as up to now, we have survived in the interstices, on the margins etc. This teaches good survival tactics, enables very generalised and adaptable body forms and a range of life patterns. I mistrust the changes that may occur if British Innovative Poetry becomes an appendage of the Ideological State Apparatus, to use the good old Althusserian phrase, rather than with an essentially oppositional stance towards cultural dominants.

To counter this academicisation I urge therefore a greater looking out for audiences for our writing that are not dependent on the Higher Education environment (even if they benefit from its presence). The role of reading series which address a wider audience than those already signed and sealed into the confraternity/consorority of poets is important, that present our work in ways which can appeal to those not already accredited or inoculated (there’s another metaphor going on here). Openned and The Other Room, with all their attendant activities, are the leaders in this. Contemporary writing is presented as enjoyable and entertaining, with access by those not already involved encouraged and built into the projects. This is what I tried to achieve in Sundays at the Oto. There should be more of this, with an encouragement always for those even vaguely interested to grasp some basic rules of our game, and lay themselves open to the direct experiencing of the fascinating and pleasurable operations of language involved. (If you need a bleedin’ degree to understand it – fuck it!)

There are threats here also. There is a commercial world of performance poetry in which essentially the audience domesticates the poets, who must produce solely the products the audience feels they have bought (easy humour and emotion, a couple of rhymes, maybe even a bit of competitiveness). This is an intensely dreary monoculture. There needs to be a careful control of the symbiotic balance between audiences and poets to ensure variety and development within our genus. I would avoid the commercial operators here, unless we really want to end up as one-trick performing ponies, zombie poet-entertainers (metaphor mix again!).

Access to publications is another need to encourage a wider habitat for us. Bookshops, to carry on with forceful language, are fucked, unfortunately, though books may not be. (Despite my online presence, I’m dubious about ebooks and ereaders, as being less satisfactory experiences – though obviously this may be my own lack of adaptability.) We are coping with this. I think all major publishers of British Innovative Poetry now have websites where their books can be bought (and indeed many operate through Amazon). What might be useful would be a site acting as a virtual online retailer, with links to the publishers’ sites, but with the possibility of drawing together the whole range of what is available, so that an interested person, for example, could simply check what is in print by Peter Riley or Andreas Brady, and order it from the publisher just like that. This should be doable, I would have thought.

So, I am not suggesting a replacement of the academic environment, in which indeed so many thrive – I am demanding the diversification of the conditions under which British Innovative Poetry is encouraged, encountered and allowed to flourish. We maintain hold of what we have, as it were, and venture further abroad. We must be grey squirrels, adaptable, robust, unspecialised and rapidly reproducing; not red squirrels, stuck with requirements for very specific habitats, ending up, yet again, merely with relict populations, too small to be viable. Diversification, that’s what I’m after. It’s an evolutionary winner.

More Pistol Tree Poems Now!

2009-06-10T11:22:00.002Z

With alarming alacrity they turn 'em out. Two more of Peter Hughes' and Simon Marsh's Pistol Tree Poems now online.

Serials Update

2009-06-08T09:30:00.003Z

Peter Hughes' and Simon Marsh's The Pistol Tree Poems and Richard Makin's St Leonards have both now been updated with their most recent episodes.

What Next for Sundays at the Oto?

2009-05-13T15:49:00.003Z

when it’s no longer Sunday

Sundays at the Oto is coming to a close, to fit in with Cafe Oto's requirement to be a cafe in the daytime, a venue only in the evening. I would like to continue something like Sundays at the Oto, but therefore on a slightly different basis, and welcome suggestions how to do this successfully. The following are my present thoughts (1-4 are non-negotiable, and represent both my & Café Oto’s requirements; the rest are up for consultation & amendment):

to carry on at Café Oto, as I think it is an excellent venue, welcoming and flexible with a very good atmosphere and a high profile

therefore to be an evening event, but not necessarily the same day of the month each time, as this cannot be guaranteed by Café Oto. Varying the day can also give the event more flexibility to fit with availability of poets

to continue with poetry and music - especially as this mix helps with two goals I have for the events:
- a) people attending who are not already part of the Crazy World of Avant-Garde Poetry or whatever we might want to call ourselves (I suspect many other reading series may be a little off-putting to those not already of Our Persuasion)
- b) a challenge, which can be accepted, or quite happily not, for poets to go beyond reading, and present their work as performance or utterance. Unlike some other series of music & poetry events, though, the emphasis is on the poetry

admission to rise to, say, £6, to allow greater expenditure on publicity (at present sole cost for publicity is for fliers, which I’m paying for), to allow payment of travel for performers outside London (I’ve personally paid this on occasion), and to pay for a sound engineer if the technical requirements demand it (a Café Oto requirement; and one event was a little disrupted by technical problems with multimedia). This will mean bank account etc!

evening timing to be doors open at 7.30, event starts at 8.00, ends by 10.00, giving time for both socialising afterwards & for out-of-towners (like me) to make their way to wherever. Strict timing, especially on start, to ensure this!

to give out more information on the poets (to encourage and support more newcomers to the avant-garde poetry scene) in the form of an A4 sheet on the poets (like the info at arts cinemas). This could also be available online beforehand, eg on www.modernpoetry.org.uk

to extend the publicity. At present this is done through:
- a) email list – taken from my initial guess at who might be interested from my address book, names added at events & performers
- b) announcements on BritPo and UK Poetry ListServs
- c) notifications on a range of websites that publish details of poetry events. Are there any I don’t deal with that I ought to?
- d) dropping fliers at a number of locations (cafes, bookshops etc) on the route from Stoke Newington Church Street down Kingsland High Road to Café Oto, and I’ve now started on the little nest of shops & cafes in Hackney on Victoria Park Road. This could be extended – more locations in Hackney? Hoxton/Shoreditch? anywhere in Central London? (And some fliers are posted to Poetry Library). Some obviously left at Café Oto
- e) dedicated MySpace page (main web presence) and Facebook group. I’m never sure these are active, cool or sticky enough
All of these can be built on; but I would like to consider, apart from extending the fliering, more notifications (possibly even adverts), and a small-scale carefully targeted PR campaign (ie press releases & invites to major launch event in autumn)

to act as a channel for a wide range of contemporary poets (of Our Persuasion, whatever that may be). I sometimes felt a little confined by my slogan invoking “the post-avant crowd”; but really, that should cover a wide & heterogeneous spectrum. (I hope you can visualise this!)

music too can be widened – I took on initially suggestions from Café Oto which were very wise ones, and there are close and fertile links between some poets and some improv musicians. All this can be built on. But I’d also like to widen the sound repertoire beyond what may be almost too automatic a link. Eg industrial/post-industrial music, often with a very limited and narrowly subcultural exposure in this country (bit like us, then)

branding will need to be altered. I’d like to keep existing weird mad dolls/puppets image & reuse. Name will have to change . Options seem to me:
- a) separate name, probably not referring to Café Oto this time
- b) use of one of my existing brands, either Great Works, or modernpoetry.org.uk. (Could even use both one of these & a separate name, as in “modernpoetry.org.uk presents ‘The Poetry Club of Dalston’”, or whatever)

to screw my courage to the sticking place, and apply for Arts Council (or whoever) money. (Could link with modernpoetry.org.uk here)

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

I would also welcome any persons who might want to get involved with the project. In my many bad moments I fear I may be getting too old for this game - it would be good if there were people involved for whom this is all fresh & expanding, and who can more readily network amongst the numerous emerging young poets. 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. If anyone can accept my basic vision of what I would like, and Café Oto’s requirements, (see 1-4 above), everything else is genuinely up for discussion & collective decision-making. There may well be a need for help with door arrangements – at present done by my daughter & her husband, but weekday evenings may not be as easy for them.

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

St Leonards 30

2009-05-13T09:03:00.004Z

Richard Makin's St Leonards now has section 30 posted, with fresh formal & thematic concerns, even as the text is likely to be moving towards its end

Updates on Both Great Works & Sundays at the Oto

2009-05-06T11:09:00.003Z

(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.

Next Sunday at the Oto + Update on Great Works

2009-04-17T21:53:00.002Z

(1) SUNDAYS 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.

April 19: Gagarin + Holly Pester + James Wilkes

Two poets and one musician: innovative performance and creative imagination unite them. Gagarin is a very experienced musician, blending the digital with the spontaneous. Holly Pester and James Wilkes are young poets who experiment with a whole range of ways of performing and presenting their writing.

(2) Richard Makin's St Leonards on Great Works

Most recent section uploaded! Meanwhile some, but slow progress on next issue.

Photos of Last Sunday at the Oto Up

2009-03-04T16:18:00.004Z

I've just posted 6 or 7 photos of the last (February 15) Sunday at the Oto, with images of Sarah Jacobs'and Richard Makin's performances, though regrettably none of the musician Dawn Scarfe & Mel Gough - in the low light, their photos turned out rubbish. + some of audince, and of bar, and of Hamish & Keiko.

On Sundays at the Oto MySpace, and on the Sundays at the Oto Facebook Group.

The Lynx Renewed & the Pistol Tree at its Nadir

2009-02-28T16:41:00.002Z

(1) The Links page of Great Works has been checked and expanded: approx 155 online magazines and e-publishers; 147 writers' homepages and blogs; 23 audio and video sites; 61 print publishers and magazines; 20 readings &c resources: 61 foci of information; 6 bookshops and booksellers; 20 personal sites. Feast yourselves!

(2) Fresh Pistol Tree Poems, which is now halfway through. After this the poems will get longer again!

Forthcoming Sunday at the Oto

2009-02-04T17:16:00.002Z

SUNDAYS 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.

February 15: Sarah Jacobs with Imogen Smith & Alex Walker + Richard Makin (art & language) + Dawn Scarfe & Mel Gough (music)

Art, language & music coming together. Sarah Jacobs is a sculptor making objects, performance, installation, books on paper, and books in electronic form. Her electronic piece Deciphering Human Chromosome 16: We Report Here uses text in a visual way to document the ethical, economic, political and philosophical polemics associated with mapping the human genome, and their changes through time. Richard Makin is a writer of fiction and poetry and a visual artist. Experience his language as a complex and haunting landscape to drift across. Carillon is an experimental sound performance by artists Dawn Scarfe and Mel Gough. Guitars are tuned to resonant nodes in cymbals to produce a rich bell-like sound. The aim is to investigate accents and textures within the spectrum of resonant sound in immersive and meditative live exploration. Expect from this afternoon completely new stances on language, music and performance!

March 15: Paul Taylor's Trombone Poetry (music + words) + Uru-Ana (music + words) + Mike Weller (words +)

April 19: Abi Oborne + Holly Pester + James Wilkes (words +)

Sundays at the Oto (mainly)

2009-01-23T11:29:00.001Z

OK, so I'm now on Facebook too, with a Group for Sundays at the Oto.

Minor tweaks made to coming lineup.

Superb event last Sunday - good poets and musicians only get better as they age! Gavin had not performed with the musicians for twenty years or so - but they hope to get together and do more. A booking is assured for the next year's run of events.

Sundays at the Oto + Serial Update

2009-01-07T10:59:00.002Z

(1) SUNDAYS 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.

January 18, 2009: Sue Ferrar, Sylvia Hallett & Stuart Jones + Frances Presley + Gavin Selerie

Sue Ferrar, Sylvia Hallett & Stuart Jones will provide a complex & skilled blend of improved musics, while Frances Presley (most recent book the wide-ranging, innovative and well-grounded Myne — New and Selected Poems & Prose 1975–2006 (Shearsman, 2006) + Gavin Selerie (most recent book: the erudite, gorgeous and inventive Lefanu's Ghost (Five Seasons Press, 2006) will read, separately, together, and with the music — just as it should be, yes?

Gavin Selerie performed his poems in the 1980s with improvising musicians, including Sue Ferrar, Stuart Jones and others, in the second performance of his text STRIP SIGNALS at the London Musicians Collective in 1986 – some of that text will be performed at this event. Gavin has published several major volumes of poetry, distinguished by their formal inventiveness and beauty, and their grounding in well-researched detail (eg of Anglo-Irish culture in Lefanu’s Ghost). Frances Presley’s poetry expands expertly too the resources of form and mode, with a particular attention in her writing to social and environmental contexts and consciousness. Despite their close association, these two poets rarely perform their poetry together, which will make this an interesting reading.

Stuart Jones has worked as part of Gentle Fire, Kahondo Style and British Summer Time Ends, and now works at Central St Martins, where his practice is mainly in installation or performative work, but also encompassing linear video and film, and often in collaboration with artists from other disciplines. Sylvia Hallett works both as a composer and as an improviser, and has had pieces performed in Britain and Europe. She has played in many international festivals since the late 1970s, working with several well-known and respected musicians, including Lol Coxhill, Maggie Nicols, Phil Minton, Evan Parker, and the groups Accordions Go Crazy, LaXula, British Summer Time Ends, The London Improvisers Orchestra, and the London Hardingfelelag. She also performs solo, (did a solo tour of Italy), and in duo with Clive Bell. She also works with dance and drama companies (including BBC Radio drama). Sue Ferrar plays violin in the London Improvisers Orchestra, and is also a member of London Contact Improvisation (with Guillermo Torres), and performs with Primal Fruitcake. She has worked with a wide range of musicians (eg on the CD A Boy Leaves Home Lol Coxhill , Sylvia Hallett, Evan Parker).

February 15: Sarah Jacobs + Richard Makin + Dawn Scarfe

March 15: Uru-Ana + Mike Weller + tba

April 19: Abi Oborne + Holly Pester + James Wilkes + tba

for further information: http://www.myspace.com/sundaysattheoto

(2)Serial Update

The most recent episode of Richard Makin's St Leonards is now online. I have alos taken the opportunity to repair some glitches & omissions (December wasn't a good month!)

Two Announcements: Great Works Issue 13 + Sundays at the Oto December 21

2008-12-16T12:25:00.002Z

(1) This Sunday, December 21: Sundays at the Oto

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

December 21: Frances Kruk + Jow Lindsay + Jonathan Styles

Christmas cake & ale

http://www.myspace.com/sundaysattheoto

(2) New Issue of Great Works Online

The new stuff is:

Adrian Clarke, from Eurochants

Natthan Thompson, three poems

Tim Fletcher, four poems

David Rushmer, two poems

Michael Jacobson, from Action Figures

William Garvin, six poems

Glenn R Frantz, four poems

Stephen Emmerson, five poems

Gareth Durasow, two poems

Peter Dent & Rupert M Loydell, Overgrown Umbrellas

Colin Harris, six poems

Paul Holman, THE MEMORY OF THE DRIFT Book Five: TARA MORGANA

Anna Smith-Spark, two poems

Sam Oborne, from a novel

Alasdair Paterson, from Noctivagator

Ian Pople, six poems

Stephen Van-Hagen, four poems

Stephen C Middleton, six poems

Catherine Hales, two poems

Norbert Hummelt, trans Catherine Hales, three poems

+ In the Dirt of the Postlyric: A Collaborative Cycle: Part 1: Peter Philpott

Part 2: Simon Gregory

Links will be checked & updated shortly (well, after Christmas)

St Leonards - Latest Episode

2008-12-04T22:08:00.001Z

The latest section of Richard Makin's St Leonards is now uploaded.

Sundays at the OtoComing this Sunday:

2008-11-15T19:24:00.003Z

November 16: Tom Lowenstein + Roshi Nasehi + Hannah Silva

Tom Lowenstein’s Ancestors and Species (Shearsman, 2005) brings back the voice of the Inuit, with accuracy, wit, wisdom & depth; Roshi Nasehi is an “exponent of "Stunningly beautiful Welsh-Iranian torch song electronica" sez Mixmag; and Hannah Silva? – "Her physical performances, fast-talking delivery and innovative use of cut-up text make her one of the most ambitious and entertaining poets in the country" sez The Times

December 21: Frances Kruk + Jow Lindsay + Jonathan Styles (music)

January 18: Sue Farrar (music) + Frances Presley + Gavin Selerie

February 15: Sarah Jacobs + Richard Makin + Dawn Scarfe (music)

Programming up to April now being arranged!

Regular Updates

2008-11-15T19:20:00.002Z

The most recent episodes of Richard Makin's St Leonards and Peter Hughes & Simon Marsh's Pistol Tree Poems are now online.

Reading Suddenly Arranged!

2008-11-11T22:59:00.001Z

As replacement for another poet:
Wednesday, November 19, 7.30 pm: Peter Riley & Peter Philpott at The Blue Bus: The Lamb, 94 Lamb's Conduit Street, WC1; £5 or £3

Sundays at the Oto

2008-10-17T08:07:00.003Z

Coming this Sunday:

October 19: Keith Jebb + The Mind Shop (music: Armorel Weston, John Gibbens and David Miller) + Wanda Phipps + Alyson Torns

Keith Jebb’s Hide White Space (Kater Murr’s Press, 2006) runs it all together, sort of digests it & throws it in our faces; The Mind Shop sing and play pure poetry; Wanda Phipps out of Brooklyn, NY, sings with her Band and in her poetry; Alyson Torn’s From the Lost Property Office: a quartet for Pessoa (Hearing Eye, 2006) plays a delicate game, but sets out to win

November 16: Tom Lowenstein + Roshi Nasehi (music) + Hannah Silva

December 21: Frances Kruk + Jow Lindsay + Jonathan Styles (music)

January 18, 2009: Sue Farrar (music) + Frances Presley + Gavin Selerie

Programming up to April now being arranged!

Len Up!

2008-10-07T09:47:00.003Z

New section of Richard Makin's St Leonards uploaded, showing a dramatic formal invention.

Also on Great Work's homepage is the list of contributors for the next issue (which I am starting work on even as you read this!) - Adrian Clarke, Peter Dent & Rupert M Loydell. Gareth Durasow, Stephen Emmerson, Glenn R Frantz, William Garvin, Catherine Hales, Colin Harris, Paul Holman, Michael Jacobson, Sam Oborne, Alasdair Paterson, Ian Pople, David Rushmer, Nathan Thompson, Stephen Van-Hagen.

Links Updated

2008-10-01T17:24:00.002Z

I've just uploaded the newly revised Links pages - all checked, functioning and uptodate (bar a couple that kept timing out, which may be ominous ...)

The equivalent pages on www.modernpoetry,org.uk have been updated also, and a couple of new references added to the Websites Useful for Understanding Avant-Garde British Poetry pages. I'll look at all the pages on that site shortly.

Now to await the imminent arrival of the next Len from Richard Makin, do the publicity for the next Sundays at the Oto, and get to grips with Facebook (ugh!)

Great Works 12 Now Published

2008-09-19T21:17:00.003Z

I'd like to announce that the just uploaded issue of Great Works contains the following new material:

Niall Quinn, three Phlebas poems (+ two mp3s of Niall reading other texts on the site)

Rupert Loydell, three poems

Andy Jordan, Inside Mary Millington

Amos Weisz, of mutabilitie + tinfoot

Johannes Jansen, trans Amos Weisz, Ditch of fragments/Registrations II

Sascha Anderson, trans Amos Weisz, Jewish Jetset

Stephen Emmerson, five poems

Lesley McKenna, Bodyscapes

Nicholas Spicer, Six Attempts at Sincerity

RG Gregory, three poems

Tom Lowenstein, The Poverty of Pots and Pans

Tina Bass, three poems

Christopher Barnes, seven poems

Ron Singer, Chapter 11

Alyson Torns, two poems

Charles Freeland, four poems

Michael Lee Johnson, four poems

Julia Sampson, three poems

Thomas Mulhall, seven poems

Alistair Noon, four poems

Juliet Troy, five poems

Peter Reiling, three poems and some prose

All the material on contemporary British poetry is transferred to www.modernpoetry.org.uk, which now has a proper homepage, and will be expanded. It includes a listing of readings in London. This means I don't have to remind you about the imminent launch of Sundays at the Oto, because you'll see it mentioned there. Do send details of any readings to me - at the moment I'm gleaning them as I can (which is why I'm only dealing with London).

The next stage (once I've just corrected an irritating little error on the homepage) is to redo the links. I also have to arrange for the publication of a posthumous volume of Amos Weisz's translations and other writing.

Beyond that, I aim at getting modernpoetry.org.uk onto a more professional basis - negotiating the nightmares of funding! (if any's been spared from subsidising the bloody Olympics).

Further Update

2008-09-08T09:01:00.002Z

Latest episode of Richard Makin's St Leonards now online. This should be the last tinkering before the new issue, later this month. (Assuming that trip to read in West Somerset (Porlock Arts Festival - deer-carving? poem-interrupting?) & inauguration of Sundays at the Oto don't run out of control, and I retain my retirement mental balance.

Updates & Upcoming

2008-09-01T09:28:00.003Z

The most recent episodes of both Richard Makin's St Leonards and Peter Hughes' & Simon March's Pistol Tree Poems are both now online.

At last, www.modernpoetry.org.uk has now been released to the world as a website, with the material giving background and information on contemporary British poetry transferred to it from Great Works. More will be come! There will be a publicised launch in the new year.

Sundays at the Oto is now set up and being publicised: “poetry and music with the post-avant crowd for your Sunday afternoon pleasure”, on the Third Sunday of the month, 3-5 pm, Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8 3DL — £4 entry. Sep 21: Tim Atkins + Isnaj Dui + Sophie Robinson. See you there!

St Leonards 20 + Sundays at the Oto

2008-07-12T13:10:00.002Z

St Leonards 20 now posted, after problems with different versions of Word leading to a corrupted text.

Plans well under way for Sundays at the Oto - every 3rd Sunday in the month (from September), 3-5, at Cafe Oto in Dalston: two poets and some music, at 4 quid entry.

Line up so far looks like (confirmed & settled persons only):
- Sep 21: Tim Atkins + Sophie Robinson
- October 19: The Mind Shop (Armorel Weston, John Gibbens and David Miller), Alyson Torns and Keith Jebb
- November 16: Tom Lowenstein + tbc
- December 21: tbc + Jow Lindsay
There will be Facebook group! (Heaven preserve us - it's come to this!!!)

Links Updated, Serials Current, and Plans for Reading Series

2008-06-06T17:58:00.004Z

All links have been checked and updated, including those on the New Readers Start Here pages, and some additions made to the lists of websites on British innovative poetry.

There are fresh texts in the two serial publications, Richard Makin's St Leonards, and Peter Hughes & Simon Marsh's, Pistol Tree Poems.

Now added to the site is a page listing the upcoming readings and other poetry events in London.

I am contemplating a reading series at Cafe Oto, taking place monthly on a Sunday afternoon: two poets (plus an open mike), possibly some music. Email me or comment if you feel this is either a bad or a very good idea!

Playground Photos

2008-05-16T15:41:00.002Z

A page of photos of The Playground now added: the publicity photos that were taken of us, and some shots of us (and other bands) performing at a venue in Bishops Stortford 9wall these with a lovely red glow).

New Episode of St Leonards + Peter Philpott on MySpace

2008-05-04T20:43:00.002Z

New episode of St Leonards uploaded today

and I've got a MySpace presence, replacing the "homepage" on Great Works, which I will use (with its blog also) to communicate what I'm doing. It has on it mp3s of me reading, will have some more photos and even a playlist.

Original texts by Monika Rinck Now added to Amos Weisz Translations

2008-04-10T21:37:00.003Z

I've just heard from Monika Rinck that her publishers are happy for the original texts to be displayed as well as Amos Weisz's translations, so these are now uploaded. I think this makes one's reading of the translations far more involved and precise. In this case, both Monika's poems and Amos Weisz's translations grow from their contact.

Updated Serials!

2008-04-05T09:41:00.003Z

Latest bits from Richard Makin's St Leonards, with a heavy Sadeian influence, and a little interchange between Peter Hughes and Simon Marsh amongst the Pistol Tree Poems.

Issue 11: March 2008 Now Online

2008-03-29T18:54:00.002Z

This is finally uploaded. It is huge. New material is:

John Welch, Yearn Glass
John Wilkinson, six poems
John Lowther, from Stoppages
Dave Rushmer, three poems
sean burn, trans literations
Daniel Andersson, In Time of Empire and Verse
Alistair Noon, At the Atlantic
Innocenza Istarte, eight poems
Michael Lee Johnson, two poems
Dean Nicholson, four poems
Mark Cunningham, five poems
Christopher Mulrooney, three poems
Andrew Baker, Epitaph of Reason
Charles Jason Lee, six poems
Norman Jope, six texts
Fish and Shushan, three poems
Lydia Towsey, six poems
Tom White, three poems
Steve Spence, three poems
Michael Egan, six poems
A Lee Firth, nine poems
Chris Paul, three poems
Richard Kostelanetz, Letter Links
Amos Weisz trans Monika Rinck, six poems
Lucy Harvest Clarke, seven poems
Kevin Doran, three poems
Mark Goodwin, four poems
Christopher Barnes, five poems
Chris Hardy, six poems
Adam Burbage, five poems
Sean Carey, three poems
Richard Barrett, two poems
Scott Thurston, from Momentum
Nick Wayte, two poems
Paul A Green, Voicemail
Iftekhar Sayeed, Engendered Space
RG Gregory, Proverbs of Hell (pdf file)

I hope to have the German texts of the Monika Rinck translations up shortly (waiting to hear from the publisher). I will also update the Links at least to the extent of adding fresh sites.

In the medium term, I have notified my present employer I want out in the summer, and plan to get the project for a major site devoted to publicising, explaining and exploring contemporary British poetry under way finally in the second half of this year. You may have noticed from the material linked to rather than hosted on Great Works I have possession of the domain name www.modernpoetry.org.uk. More will come of this!

News on submissions + latest episode of St Leonards

2008-03-07T09:52:00.002Z

First: I've regrettably had to withdraw my email address from the site, as a simple way of reducing the amount of material arriving. So much of it is excellent, and I want to publish it. Unfortunately, this year, I have changed jobs, and found the work at the new College far more taxing in terms of time (it's a longer journey to work, and I am teaching often radically different course - I'm having to work for my living again.) The sheer number of people I have already published also generates more and more "repeat business", which is greatly welcomed. But it means I have the largest ever amount of new writing to put online, and less time than for several years. I hope to have some cutting down of my work after the summer, so will then renew the open door policy which has for me always been central to how Great Works should operate.

I can proudly announce the
latest episode from St Leonards, now on the site. I should be seeing Richard Makin on Saturday in Cambridge, too.

And don't forget to check out the ever-increasing amount of material from my music days as part of The Playground.

Steady Progress Reported

2008-02-06T10:16:00.000Z

Despite the ill effects on my soul and body of my new job, Great Works rumbles on! The most recent episodes from Peter Hughes & Simon Marsh's Pistol Tree Poems (now up to #41), and of Richard Makin's St Leonards (now up to #15) are both online. The Playground material grows, with more mp3s being added as Dave Houssart digitises the original tapes. Coming soon - live at the Epping CentrePoint!

Lots of news!

2008-01-18T18:21:00.000Z

Apologies for delays in posting information - but here is a breakdown of major alterations since the last posting:

(1) New texts on the site:

Maurice Scully, two poems
Gregory Vincent St Thomasino, Elegy for Christopher Smart
Tom Jenks, six poems
Changming Yuan, two poems
Patricia Farrell, four poems
Steven Waling, four poems
Philip Hammial, six poems
Nick Wayte, two poems
Ron Singer, two poems
Chris Gutkind, Thinking
Tom Sheehan, three poems
Andy Jordan, The Mermiad
Tammy Ho, seven poems
Aishwarya Iyer, Reflections
Geoff Stevens, four poems
Janet Sutherland, two poems
Shahar Gold, two stories
Charles Freeland, three stories
T A James, two stories
Allison Boast, Crazed Dawn
Christopher Barnes, five poem
Alison Smith, two poems
Mark Goodwin, six poems
J Brooke, six stories
Niall Quinn, three Phlebas poems
Anthony Liccione, three poems
Simon Wright, A Fragmented Verticality
Thomas Harrisson, Review of Adriano Bulla, Ybo’ and Other Lies

(2) Fresh instalments of the Peter Hughes' and Simon Marsh's Pistol Tree Poems and of Richard Makin's St Leonards.

(3) Additions and revisions to the New Readers Start Here pages.

(4) The Links revised over the new year period (and also the versions on New Readers Start Here).

(5) Material from The Playground - when I was performing with Jon Slater & Dave Houssart in the late 1980s - is now appearing. There is a web version of a pamphlet we were going to publish, with my texts, and their images, plus mp3s of three of the texts being performed. A couple of mp3s have also been added to the A Year and a Day in the Dark Forest, where poems from this sequence were performed by us. More will follow, as more material is digitised.

(6) I am pleased to be hosting as part of this material Ken Edwards' essay Introduction: The two poetries, published in a slightly different form in Angelaki 5.1: Poets on the Verge, ed Anthony Mellors and Robert Smith (2000). This important essay has not previously been freely available on the Internet.

So - apologies for the delays in posting this information. But await further developments!

New Readers Start Here

2007-10-05T15:16:00.000Z

I am delighted to make public the New Readers Start Here pages on Great Works, which have taken much of this summer to produce. They are intended as a guide to those who encounter contemporary avant-garde/post avant-garde (or whatever) British poetry, and need some help in understanding it. Or in understanding why it is so culturally sidelined.

Access from the homepage, or directly at http://www.greatworks.org.uk/nrsh/nrsh.html.

More Updates to Great Works

2007-09-07T08:40:00.000Z

The latest section of Richard Makin's St Leonards, and two more poems from Peter Hughes & Simon Marsh's epistolary sequence, Pistol Tree Poems.

The material acting as an introduction to British avant-garde poetry has grown (of course), but is almost ready to upload. I will get responses from those who might be able to correct errors etc first, but it will be linked to the site within a month. I'll publish, though, the URL once the beta version is available on this blog (it will not be on a greatworks URL).

Updates to Great Works

2007-07-15T21:25:00.000Z

(1) New section of Richard Makin's St Leonards

(2) New poems in Peter Hughes & Simon Marsh's epistolary sequence, Pistol Tree Poems

(3) Removal, unfortunately, of the work by Chris Nelson, at his request

Now to get to grips with placing on the site a New Readers Start Here guide.

New Issue

2007-07-04T16:20:00.000Z

I have great pleasure in informing the world that the new issue of Great Works is online, featuring as new work:

Adrian Clarke, from Supplementary Blues
Glenn Bach, from: Atlas Peripatetic
Mark Dickinson, from The Speed of Clouds
James Davies, five poems
Alan Baker, VARIATIONS ON PAINTING A ROOM
James Harvey, four poems
Carrie Etter, from Divining For Starters
Claire Crowther, six poems
Paul Bramley, seven poems
Marc Stein, year two in london, january 2005
Colin Honnor, three poems
Ian Seed, six poems
Innocenza Istarte, ten poems
A S Morgan, Ink
William Garvin, five poems
Daniel Andersson, Moonlit Night (translating Hjalmar Gullberg, Månskensnatt
Arun Gaur, three poems
Tom Hamilton, five poems
Jeffrey Side, five poems
Michael Blackburn, LET'S BUILD A CITY
Martin Jack, five poems
Chris Hardy, seven poems
Tina Bass, three poems
Dean Nicholson, five poems

plus most recent instalments of:

Richard Makin, St Leonards
Peter Hughes & Simon Marsh, Pistol Tree Poems
Giles Goodland, The Brimston Worm (the climax!)

and from the Archives:

Catherine Daly, Six in a Mix (Odds)

I’ll also announce, for anyone in the West Country, that I’m reading with Tupa Snyder on Sunday June 8th at 5 pm, at Ways With Words Festival at Dartington Hall, near Totnes in Devon. In a yurt.

Small scale update

2007-05-13T11:14:00.000Z

2 small-scale updates:
latest monthly section of Richard Makin's non-narrative extended prose sequence St Leonards (to be published next year by Reality Street Editions), plus an addition to C Nelson's latest sequence, Nextup.

Sorry for delay in posting - work a nightmare, with all lecturers made redundant, and all ranked in a set of fake statistics based on newly appointed managers' assessments of our loyalty. I'm in the red zone, proud but threatened. The job gets in the way of Great Works, but it's nice to be able to afford a house to work in, food etc.

Update on Great Works and Blog

2007-04-19T10:48:00.000Z

Great Works
The latest episodes of Peter Hughes & Simon Marsh's Pistol Tree Poems are up. I've also altered the homepage: apart from a neater layout to the main text (this could end up looking professional one day!), I have added a list of "20 Crucial British Innovative Poetry Sites", to make it easier for those not already in any loops or coteries etc etc to pick up on what is happening. This is a part of my shift to a site that presents a lot of explanation about such writing. The next move will be to include material about the genealogy and history of this writing.

The Blog
This list (including Great Works, so 21) now on the blog both as posting and as part of the constant template. I have also added to the blog a listing of the 20 blogs I am aware of that deal with this writing.

About the 20 Crucial British Poetry Sites
This is my considered choice of 20 sites that would help anyone picture what is going on in contemporary innovative British poetry. These are the main publishers, what seem to me the main ezines, places with links and lots of material also, and a couple of the most useful blogs. I've put the cambridgepoetry.org site in in the hope people revive it somewhat - it was looking so good; and I've also, as it were, bet on Openned as a major centre of activity.

21 Crucial British Poetry Sites

2007-04-12T13:45:00.000Z

The Argotist Online – magazine & blog
The Archive of the Now – academic site & resource
Bad Press – publisher & epublisher
Barque – publisher
BEPC: British Poetry Revival – academic site & resource
cambridgepoetry.org – focus for information
Douglas Clark: British and Irish Poetry Sites – links
etruscan books – publisher
Great Works – ezine & links
Intercapillary Space – collective blog
Jacket – international (Australian-based) ezine, but heavy focus on UK avant–garde and its history
Litter – ezine
onedit – ezine
Openned – readings, epublisher &focus for information
poetrymagazines.org.uk – online archive
Reality Street Editionss – publisher
Shadow Train – ezine
Shearsman – ezine, epublisher & publisher
Stride Magazine – ezine & publisher
Terrible Work – reviews
West House Books – publisher & bookseller

Links and Updates April 12

2007-04-11T13:20:00.000Z

(1) The Links page has been updated. Every link has been checked, and a new category label introduced for those sites still accessible, but completely static. There are in total:

121 online magazines and e-publishers

94 writers' homepages and blogs

20 audio and video sites

39 print publishers and magazines

7 readings &c

33 foci of information

4 bookshops and booksellers

4 sites with music I like

10 unexpected sites

(2) Latest serial instalments of both Richard Makin's
St Leonards, and Peter Hughes & Simon Marsh's Peter Hughes & Simon Marsh, Pistol Tree Poems, are posted.

Great Works Issue 8 - at last!

2007-03-18T22:49:00.000Z

New Texts

Frances Presley, Learning Letters (poem)
John Welch, poems
Nick Wayte, 7 poems
Tim Keane, 3 poems
Lisa Zaran, 6 poems
Mark Goodwin, 6 poems
Tom Harding, 6 poems
Colin Fleming, Blinkered (prose)
Crag Hill, 4 poems from 7 x 7
M T C Cronin, 5 poems
Paul Holman, VICINAL (poem sequence)
Duane Locke, 5 poems (email to Damniso Lopez)
Nicholas Spicer, 4 poems
Nathan Thompson, 5 poems
Hannah Silva, 5 poems
Sarah Millward, 5 poems
Elias Siquieros, 3 poems
Robert Sheppard, Sudley House (text of performance piece: poetry)
Iftekhar Sayeed , PRESENT AT PLASSEY (essay)

Existing Serials

Richard Makin, St Leonards
Peter Hughes & Simon Marsh, Pistol Tree Poems

Texts already featured

Sarah Jacobs, Deciphering Human Chromosome 16: We Report here (hypertext sculpture; Richard Kostelanetz, Inserts-1 (visual poems); Richard Burns, Poems from The Blue Butterfly; Anjali Yardi, Pepper-and-salt Like Mary Kostakidis (poem); John Muckle, Poems; Guido Monte, Seven Poems; Robert Stanton, Eight Poems; Andrew Nightingale, Four Poems; Donna Bamford, Two Poems; Derek Harper, Three Texts; Stephen Mooney, from the District Line Project (poems); Srinjay Chakravarti, At the National Library, Calcutta (poem); Martin Jack, Four Poems; Leslie Wolter, Moon Madness (prose); James Wilkes, Two Poems; John James, At Château-Chinon (poem); Laurie Duggan, Thirty pieces (poem sequence); C Nelson, Brash (poems)

Featured texts from the Archive

John Welch, from the British Estate (poem sequence)
Paul Holman, In the Common Era (poem sequence)
Giles Goodland, from The Brimston Worm (serial publication of epic poem)

Links

Only minor updates - next job to do.

Great Works Update 15/11/06 v 7.01

2006-11-16T09:35:00.000Z

Updating of information on Giles Goodland, Paul Holman, Richard Makin & James Wilkes

Welcome Speech

2006-11-12T19:28:00.000Z

"Welcome to this blog! The title comes from a postcard I picked up at a Small Press Fair, which has on it the text I have used as this blog's title. Thank you, Jennifer Winters, for the phrase, from a postcard produced as part of the LLAW event curated by Brigit Mc Leer at the Bookartbookshop.

"The starting point for this blog is the plan for a website detailed in the very first post below, which I made publish earlier this year, to a mainly supportive response. The point of the blog is essentially twofold:

(1) to document publicly how this project proceeds

(2)to produce a space where I can make comment on the wider situation of 'contemporary innovative British poetry', separate from my website Great Works

"So, present state of play as far as I am concerned is not good. This is a reflection of my present circumstances rather than the chronic marginality of contemporary innovative British poetry. Two factors:

(1) a year when I've moved house, with all the stuff ensuing — my paper-hanging and painting skills are now finely honed, and then found myself engaged more fully than I had wanted on Union work at my place of (part-time) employment. This is a major drain on my time and energy, though I will be ending this by Christmas.

(2) a realisation:

"I left a truly dreadful negotiating meeting early on Thursday, in which a total breakdown and a formal state of dispute looked imminent, for the Launch Event for the wonderful Archive of the Now site. Thank you again Andrea Brady! A gathering of usual suspects, this time in an art locale (Jerwood Space in Southwark). Always humiliating to consider the sheer amount of money available for the art world.

"Fine, a good event, lost of people, across a range of generations and subgroups. Good readings as part of it — very successful. I was most struck by a return to form by John James — I had been disappointed by the later poems in the Collected Poems, but was very impressed by the solid force and power in the recent poems he read that night — and by Ian Hunt, a writer new to me, whose reading and texts impress me as, well, damned good. He's OK, as they'd say in a Howard Hawks film.

"What I did consider more negatively as I surveyed the gathered elect of contemporary innovative British poetry was the notion of who would be needed to get this projected website of mine off the ground and into a functioning locus within both real and webspace. I'm not sure it can be me is the problem. Wrong generation — too removed from the cool & the clever who are now doing the running, and never managed to become a part of the great and the good either. Just not a made man. I think my plan is good — but it wouldn't work if I tried to do it.

"Could be the stress of life at present is triggering my frequent mild depression & paranoia — it had been a truly shitty meeting earlier that day. Could be I had an insight. Hence this blog, where I'll try and work some of this out.

"Do post comments, or email me with any responses.

"I've also sworn a mighty oath to post something at least once a week. Maybe a poem, maybe a rumination or proposal, maybe whatever."

Inital Proposal for Website Acting as Information Source for Contemporay Innovative British Poetry

2006-11-12T19:05:00.000Z

I have been mulling over for while a specific proposal, which I would be very interested in public response to. It is to do with trying to extend the readership of contemporary innovative British poetry.

I take it as fundamental that this poetry (or poetries, probably more accurately) is an art which deserves as wide an audience as possible – like other forms of contemporary innovative art, many of which have a far more extensive exposure in the mainstream media and a wide following. At present, compared with other contemporary art forms, contemporary British innovative poetry has a quite restricted audience. There are some signs of an increase in this readership recently (increased attendance at readings, reviews in mainstream media etc). But it plainly has a small public presence, and one that often presents it as a minor and quirky activity (cut to footage of Jeremy Prynne on his bicycle).

I think it important therefore to try and extend the readership for this poetry. Given the state of the British booktrade, the Internet is the only place for this. This would also match with contemporary expectations about where to obtain information. I plan the following twofold strategy:

(1) To set up a website to act as an entry point into contemporary (and recent) British innovative poetry, through its collection of information and links to further information etc. This would need to be established with the co-operation of this poetry's publishers, and of those brave souls who organise readings and other events. It would not be a website aimed at rivalling any existing sites, but simply as a clearly identifiable first port of call, to send off those interested to other sites.

It would provide links to these websites (whether containing poetry texts, details of publishing activity, or other information), notification of new and forthcoming publications, and of readings and other events. (At present the main method of publicity for such events tends to be direct emails and postings on newslists – preaching to the converted) A blog format with newsfeed would be the best way to present news events like readings etc and new publications. There should be a small selection of work (or possibly links to work online elsewhere?), as text, soundfile or whatever – but just as taster. I would also want some background information to give a context for British innovative poetry since the 1960s. The site will need a relatively self-explanatory and memorable name, to use as its URL. I wouldn't see it as selling books – but as referring the interested directly to the publishers.

The website should be set up and functioning before the next step is taken – so that there is sufficient on the site to keep its audience. I would aim to have done this by the end of this year.

(2) The primary audience for this site would not be those who already know about this writing (though I hope it would be found of some use), nor indeed any academic or institutionally educational community, as there are already excellent academic sites established. It would be that elusive specimen, the interested reader – someone saying, "What's going on here? I'd like to read some more and find out some more. How can I follow up that review in The Guardian? Are there any events I could encounter this stuff at?" Of course, no one may ever say that (and it's not very convincing dialogue). But if people are not given easier access to this writing, they will never be in a position to even reject it.

The corollary of this position is therefore, to make sure this site is actively marketed to a wide range of people, as wide as possible. Whereas the costs involved in a website are nominal, this will need money, which will entail Arts Council grant applications, possibly sponsorship etc. It will be very advantageous in this to work with existing institutions with a wide remit, with the Poetry Library, the Poetry Society and the British Library coming to mind at first.

The kinds of marketing activities that could be engaged in could be:

advertising in selected mainstream media (eg Guardian Review),

leaflets & enclosures with mailings from relevant organisations

or in poetry or, indeed, art or music etc, publications,

and also available at a range of sites, such as art and music spaces.

A launch event to give a focus for initial publicity and media coverage would be very useful.

Plus of course links to suitable websites etc (including educational sites).

I would hope to apply for funding as soon as the site exists, for the marketing event to occur early next summer.