Birdbook II/Coin Opera II update!

So a brief update is very much in order on our next two books, Birdbook II: Freshwater habitats and Coin Opera II. To accompany this, I've tried to find an image that captures both projects.

Birdbook II is very nearly ready to go printerwards. We've received a foreword from the fantastic Tim Birkhead, proofing has been done and it's just minor tweaks to go. For the uninitiated, this is the second book in a series of four, in which we aim to gather one poem and one illustration for every species of British bird. Each book covers a group of habitats. Volume II is looking great, helped in no small part by the return of Lois Cordelia, who has once again provided her beautiful artwork for the cover.

Coin Opera II, our second anthology of poetic tributes to computer games, is looking good too. With cover art by the very talented Mike Stone and a whole bundle of computer game-themed formal Easter eggs (including what may be the world's first set of 'boss' poems), this is going to be a mighty power-up from our initial micro-anthology, back in 2009. A foreword from Uncanny X Men writer and video games journalist Kieron Gillen, a spot more collaging and rearranging, a good old proof and it'll be off to press before you can say Hadouken.

More updates to come. Stay tuned!

Don't forget you can follow us on Twitter.

Submission Accomplished!

Check out Submission Accomplished, an article K's written for the fantastic Young Poets Network on submitting to magazines. Comments appreciated!

Tickets please! Fuselit: Contraption is out at last!

After a long, long time under tarpaulin, attended by sinister figures in black, we unleash upon you, the public, not only a gorgeous new website, courtesy of Jon's tireless graftery, but also Fuselit's 17th issue, Contraption!



Available to read online, or as a free (or pay-what-you-want-if-you-like) download for your Kindle or e-book reader, as well as in its traditional paper/card/ribbon/unicorn toenail hand-made format, it's a modern marvel!

Head to www.fuselit.co.uk for a closer inspection.

The Boar reviews 'Confronting the Danger of Art'

Award-winning university newspaper The Boar has reviewed Ian McLachlan and Phil Cooper's 'Confronting the Danger of Art' thus:

"Imagine a world in which artistic expression is suppressed and condemned by the government. Not too difficult, is it, considering the cuts we have suffered in recent years. Both wonderfully relevant therefore and also intriguing in its portrayal of the thing is Ian McLachlan's 'Confronting The Danger Of Art', a short poetry pamphlet that talks about how to survive an influx of creative types and their work in the style of a 70s nuclear safety information booklet. It is a marriage of ideas that does not sound quite as effective as it actually is; the poetry within providing a hilarious and searing look at the way people do sometimes treat the arts, and how it is a slippery slope potentially towards more totalitarian views ... perfectly crafted and delightfully witty."

Buy 'Confronting the Danger of Art' here, and make an old alchemist marginally wealthier.

Fuselit/Sidekick Books Selected Poems at the V&A

Much like St Gundebert, we're very much looking forward to 21 February. Unlike St Gundebert, we don't get an entire day dedicated to our work, and nobody, to my knowledge, prays to us on a regular basis.

So why are we stoked? Fuselit and Sidekick Books, in collaboration with Selected Poems, are all set for a night of poetry-based frolics to launch Fuselit Contraption and celebrate our ramshackle brand of collaborative poetry!





As well as Jon and K, Dr Fulminare's ambassadors for the night will be:
•the winsome and whimsical Chrissy Williams, whose collection, The Jam Trap, is due in March from Soaring Penguin;
•Department for Public Safety spokespoet and co-author of the recently released report, Confronting the Danger of Art, Ian McLachlan;
•schmoove raconteuse and crafter of poetic contraptions, Sophia Blackwell;
•Fuselit and Birdbook formal firestarter, M.P. Dean.

Come down and say hello!

Facebook event here. Past events have hit capacity, so get in quick.
Follow Selected Poems on Twitter.

It's National Poetry Day

We've had our heads buried in so much work that I didn't pick up until three days ago that the theme for National Poetry Day this years is games.

What an oversight! Especially as one of the projects we've been trying to draw together is Coin Opera 2, a whole anthology of poems about computer games, and especially as we're only just past the 40th anniversary of the first coin-operated video game being installed at Stanford University (Galaxy Game, if you're wondering).

So even though we were utterly unprepared, we couldn't let the whole thing just pass us by. Insanely overambitious as it was, I accelerated a little side project that was intended as part of Coin Opera 2 and have spent the last few days staying up late to try to finish 41 short poems, one for every year since the unveiling of Galaxy Game, each based around a game released that year. Oh yes, and they each subscribe (with some room for manoeuvre) to the most pointlessly difficult form I've ever invented.

I crawled across the finish line last night at around 3am, and hence today I am shattered and broken, but able to digitally publish the whole sequence. It's called Treasure Arcade and you can download the full pdf from the Sidekick Books site. In the mean time, here are are a few of my favourites:

1976
Colossal Cave Adventure
You are in a twisted lip.
You are on a lip of ledge, a little twist of ledge, before a deep pool.
You are in a pool of passages, an inverted brain, a cave-cool lap.
You are lip-deep in a loop of cool lip, on the brain’s ledge of sleep.

1982
Dig Dug
Hori Taizo! How dare
you dig up my land again! You plan it as if it were a night-time raid,
arrive with your makeshift harpoon and a tank of oxygen-rich air.
But there are no dragons buried here. Go spade your own hectare.

1985
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
In bed, Carmen smokes
a red cigarette, claws for her red knickers, leaves reedy red marks
across your back. The dawn is meat-red, and there is even beauty
in how she stokes the cabin fire to red sparks, her hair slightly sooty.

1990
The Secret of Monkey Island
We who went a-roving,
lean for the sweet trade, all of us foundered on the garnet-haired governor,
her brazen calico, who left each heart a capsized coracle, each body
run through with loving, every rum cove and ravener drunk for her custody.

1993
Gunstar Heroes
Me and my brother
mixing rare gunpowders – letting the various chemistries breathe.
The shafts they’ve bored are veined with rails and heck-deep,
but we were born to scupper. We seethe with colour and lack of sleep.

2009
Muramasa
I’m thinking of our shared
furious flush in a mountain spring that steamed like boiled radish
the second time we met, me with my memory a shorn stem,
you with your girlish bottom bared and reddish, each wound a diadem.

2010
Angry Birds Seasons
Night and day and night,
they blitzed the weakest joins of the house, leaving it scare-torn
and clotted with powder down, us scrummed, half shaken apart.
Rage made them bright. Greed had drawn us like an applecart.

Do a young poet a favour ...

... and tell them about the Foyle Young Poets Awards!

An amazing opportunity and exciting kick-off point for young writers, this free competition recognises talented poets between the ages of 11 and 17. On top of the prestige, the prizes can be found here.

I wish I'd known about the FYP awards when I was a slip of a thing. Now I shall live vicariously through all the fresh-faced poets out there - write, ye scurvy dogs!

Deadline is 31 July 2011 - spread the word!

Poetry 2011 - Initial thoughts

These are just some of the poetry books Kirsty and I have bought so far this year, and there's a whole load more coming over the hill. Donut released a bristlingly good clutch of them early in the year, while Salt and Bloodaxe are deploying first, second and sixth books by many high quality young(er) and old(er) poets over the spring and summer. This isn't some kind of feverish shit-at-the-wall mentality either - some of these books contain work written, honed, performed and published in journals over the span of a decade or more. Some of them are also simply beautiful objects, with months of work going into the presentation.

Some of these books I'll hopefully be reviewing in full in the coming months over at Irregular Features. My initial feelings about them, having read only a few in detail, are largely positive. Much of the poetry is dark, dense and slightly loopy, mining the idiosyncrasies of our shared culture deeply - these are books to make your brain drunk.

I am concerned, however, about how difficult it sometimes seems to find a poet's 'character' beneath the initial impression that they're very good at what they do. This is partly a problem with blurbs, which I just don't feel work hard enough to distinguish themselves from one another, and which are often the entry point for the reader. When I dip into so many books in quick succession from the same cultural hotbed, I tend to want to envision the authors as members of a superhero team. What are their individual powers and what does it mean for the team dynamic? That's partly because superheroes are so easy to explain to people. We've just come from the new X-Men movie, and I could tell you, say, that Banshee is the one with the supersonic scream, Beast is a genius scientist with apelike strength and catlike agility, Mystique can assume other forms etc. You'll get the gist, and maybe already know which one interests you the most. In an era of unprecedented choice, when people, you might think, would almost rather have decisions made for them then expend the effort of weighing up a plethora of possibilities, the problem of too many talented poets is one that manifests itself in continued low readership. People crave the 'good old days' of poetry because there were only half a dozen they had to have any opinion on. That is the be all and end all of 'greatness' - climbing to the forefront of the public conscience.

I certainly don't wish for a return to elitism and thoroughly disingenuous measures of quality. I'm glad there are so many skilled poets, and so many opportunities for them to be published. But overall, and as hard-working as the staff at our best presses are, I would like to see more done to solve the problem of surface uniformity. It's being addressed by some, certainly, but the issue needs more brains round the table. We talk of the 'pigeon-holing' done by the media and its ill effects, and worry about that obsession with the angle or the story, but in terms of snagging attention and create a viral outbreak of interest, it's an important weapon that the poetry culture could - maybe - seek to utilise more often.

100 Word Review: Lamb and Tyger by Jude Cowan

On this album, Jude Cowan’s vocals take a holiday from tiptoeing (and sometimes star-jumping) over ukelele and bestiality and apply themselves instead to revamping the poetry of William Blake, using a Hammond organ, a salting of Child Ballads and a hearty dose of Nick Cave. Less joyfully bawdy, more music hall meets ghostly choir, the arrangements are subtle and ludic, never overshadowing the original work Cowan so clearly enjoys. Out of time and place, Lamb & Tyger’s bitesize ditties (the longest is under four minutes) are like scattered pearls. Strange and soothing, and a great way to get into Blake’s work.


*****


For more Jude, head to www.myspace.com/judecowan

...and another May update

While John and Kirsty are slaving over a hot printing press, I shall be out and about reacquainting myself with London's stages and microphones. Specifically:

Friday 6th - Bingo Master's Breakout, London's premier bingo poetry karaoke night. This time, it's not just your bog-standard bingo poetry karaoke: this month it's Eurovision bingo poetry karaoke, and I shall be representing Greece. Now, I know what you're thinking: how will I be providing a unique slant on Eurovision bingo poetry karaoke? I'll be combining it with a Feltographic commentary: that is how.

Sunday 8th - Open Mic at the Hideaway, guest-hosting in Fran Isherwood's shoes. We welcome musicians, comedians, storytellers, poets, burlesqueteers and casual drinkers with nothing better to do in the Tufnell Park area on a Sunday evening.

Tuesday 10th - The Camden School of Enlightenment will have some storytelling, fetish lecturing, improv comedy and an interview with dead poet Stevie Smith, amongst other Jedi mindf---s. As usual, I shall be discharging my duties as Headmaster of Ceremonies.

Wednesday 18th - Touch Me I'm Sick, co-hosting again, with the most lovable Joe Campbell of R'n'B News fame. Three featured poets (TBA), and floorspot poemswapping (bring two poems: one to read yourself, and another to go in the champagne cooler for somebody else to read).

Mimesis Digital Chapbooks Relaunched

That renowned trinket collector Dr Fulminare has come across the winning entries from the 2009 Mimesis Digital Chapbook Competition and added them to his library of available texts at Sidekick Books. Since the Mimesis site has sadly disappeared for the time being, this is now the only means of accessing these fine mini-volumes by Ian McLachlan, Adham Smart, Jeff Calhoun, Alistair Noon and Carolyn Srygley-Moore. They're entirely free, and can be downloaded to Kindle or any other e-reader for reading whilst in transit.

peony moon, etcetera and Magma

Here are some recent additions to my ewok warrior belt of honour:

• Six poems at peony moon, Michelle McGrane's popular and active poetry previews site. Three are from Scarecrows, three from the forthcoming School of Forgery.
• Three poems at etcetera. These are all new, although the first is a radical rewrite of a poem I had published ages ago. This version is going to be slotted into Coin Opera 2, which will be out later this year.
• Five poems in Magma 49, edited by Julia Bird. One is available online via the link. I also read last week at the launch party for this issue, alongside one of my big influences, W.N. Herbert, whose verse "is manga made iconostasis" (his own words - you can see why I like him!)

I also have one poem in the forthcoming issue of Brand. Stay tuned too for news of an event I'm doing called 'We Eat Poets'.

Days of Roses anthology launch

Days of Roses has made its mark as one of the most varied, constantly surprising and entertaining poetry nights on the London circuit. Co-hosted by Declan Ryan and Chris Horton, each night features a generous helping of poetry, storytelling and music, and while there are definitely house favourites, DoR introduces the audience to lots of fantastic new writers and musicians.

Dec and fellow poet Malene Engelund have now edited and put together an anthology to celebrate the acts who have played Days of Roses so far, and are going to be launching this rocket of delight on Wednesday 23 February at the Three Blind Mice, London, EC2A 4QW (lots of buses or nearest tubes Liverpool Street, Old Street or Shoreditch High Street). Just look for a big number 5 - it's a bit hard to spot at first but worth discovering!

The launch will feature readings from Jo Shapcott, Chris Horton,
Dec Ryan, Dominic McLoughlin, Gareth Jones, Liz Berry, Lydia Macpherson, Malene Engelund, Marianne Burton, Maximilian Hildebrand, Robert Selby and William Searle, as well as music from Fiona Bevan and Mr Dupret Factory and friends.

Copies will be available on the night with 15 different signed and numbered covers created by Ross McNicol and Amelia Newton Whitelaw.


Facebook event page here!

Talking About Poetry

As someone who tries, more than occasionally, to review poetry books, I've spent a lot of time - much of it in some sort of face-clutching intellectual agony - trying to work out how to best articulate my response to the work. 'Best' here meaning that people (a) know what I'm talking about, and (b) are able to believe me. The latter, you might think, wouldn't be a problem, but it is. With criticism, it really is. If you sound hazy when it comes to the details, inexact, or flood your prose with grand, overblown assertions and generalisations, you come across as a salesman or politician, not a critic.

And it's not easy to avoid. I know that. Poetry is hard to talk about. That may be (I think it is) one of the main reasons why it's regarded as 'difficult'. What's missing isn't necessarily a person's ability to enjoy poetry, but rather to explain their enjoyment - or the lack of it - in terms that allow them to hone in on what they like and block out what they don't. Pop music is conveniently divided into genres. Imagine if, instead, no one could instantly articulate the difference between, say, Hallelujah and My Name Is. Think of the perennial (albeit diminishing) distance between the younger generation, who are tuned into the latest terminology surrounding music, and the older generation to whom all modern sounds blend into one uncomfortable mash.

Even if we ignore genrefication (or rather, write it off as ultimately undesirable, for different reasons) the fact is that a wide range of people are able to comfortably discuss the differing qualities of film, fiction, art, computer games, television and comics, both in the national media and in every corner of the internet. They can debate it. They can rage about it. This is the kind of engagement that gives these arts the feeling of being public, of being owned by everyone, rather than elitist and out of bounds.

Meanwhile, on the poetry front, discussion is too often limited to 'the state of things' or general feelings about form, the 'mainstream', publishing, performing, et cetera. While there are many who will put their back into writing reviews, those reviews rarely elicit so much as a passing comment from anyone else, and then it will be: "Good review." Kirsty and I recently received a polite email back from a book blog saying they didn't feel able to review our books because they had no one who was properly able to engage with poetry. In the age of the internet, when a 15-year old can set themselves up as a film reviewer, a literary blog doesn't feel able to talk about our books. I'm not admonishing them - this is simply how it is.

And then I look at recent articles by prize-winning, much respected poets in national newspapers and realise the problem goes all the way to the top. This is Don Paterson, explaining what it was that made the winner of the inaugural Picador prize - which has received a ton of press coverage, by poetry standards - stand out against the shortlist:

"But there was something in Richard Meier's turn of mind, the precision of his ear, the quiet strangeness of his imagery, the tenderness and clarity of his address ..."

This is his new star, the future of his list, and this clutch of incredibly vague and cliched assertions is the best he can do? What does Richard Meier write about? What's his 'thing'? What sorts of techniques does he employ? The best Paterson can give us is 'something'.

Next comes Jackie Kay, in the wake of Jo Shapcott's Costa Book Award victory, explaining how poetry is enjoying 'a beautiful renaissance'. What is it, then, about Shapcott's book that tells us the event us truly upon us? 

"... a rare thing, an uplifting book about death and mortality ..."

Okay, fair enough - Kay isn't attempting to sell us the book. This is only part of the picture, the rest of which will be built up over the course of the article:

"Christopher Reid's heartbreaking tribute to his wife ... Derek Walcott's remarkable White Egrets won the prestigious TS Eliot prize .... Carol Ann Duffy ... has reinvigorated the poetry world... a buzz in the world of poetry, showing that poetry is a force to be reckoned with ... the age of generosity is spilling out of the world of poetry ... the poetry pamphlets handsomely produced by ... small presses ... are flourishing ... Faber has just produced some extraordinary poets ... This might have to do with the poet's uncanny ability to speak for us and for our time ... From the pamphlet and the small press to the lit fest, new things are happening in the poetry world ... a proliferation of authentic and original voices, chiming with the voices of the entire population ... These readings are unique events, in the sense that they are electrifying ... There is no doubt about it, whatever the convergence of reasons and coincidences: poetry rocks."

She quotes others, including the Poet Laureate, to the same effect:

"People are coming at the poetry world from all different perspectives. Just last week I met a neurologist who said he had a great poetry reading group at work ... Poetry is very confident now, and it does feel like it should be a guest at the table."

Amid her article, there are some salient points about the rise of women poets and black poets. Why this isn't the subject matter of the whole piece is slightly beyond me, since the rest reads like a full page advert aimed at investors, hyping the poetry industry as a new mover and shaker. Figures are cited that supposedly prove an upswing in attendance and enthusiasm. The Picador prize is mentioned again, for no discernible reason except, perhaps, to reinforce the fact that people think it's worth mentioning. What is absolutely glaring in its absence is any articulation of what the poetry in question is actually doing; what it's embracing, rejecting, brawling with, studying, deconstructing, destroying, reinforcing. All that matters, apparently, is that people are 'getting it', even though neither Kay nor the Guardian can explain to us what exactly 'it' is.

The problem here is this: all these blandishments and upbeat noises cover up real issues, debate and conflict within poetry that, were the separate strands to find their voice, would be far more enticing to the average Guardian reader (and others beyond), since they invite negotiation and navigation. The soft sell results in nothing but the reader noting, perhaps with a warm feeling, that poetry is doing all right for itself, before moving on. The idea that these sorts of articles are, as presented on their face, news items is laughable; everyone involved knows it's vital publicity, but it's publicity done badly. Covering up the struggles within British poetry and passing it off as a happily united front is the exact opposite of what its advocates should be doing.

So why do they do it? One could ungenerously conclude that, given Duffy's surprising assertion that "there's little competitiveness in the poetry world" and Paterson's unsubtle put-downs of nay-sayers, that this is the old guard reinforcing their ivory tower by denying the existence of alternative poetries - or rather (this is more my theory) are guided by their own vision of a coherent, all-encompassing texture of contemporary poetry that naturally ignores the many ill-fitting jigsaw pieces.

But the best explanation, to my mind, is that people just don't know how to talk about poetry. They don't know how to make it a proper subject for discussion. So they flail around for figures and bold statements, hype up contests and events and name-drop, name-drop, name-drop, in the hope that all this will provoke someone else to kick off the real talking for them.

SaltPlus reading tonight!

Along with Roddy Lumsden, I'm co-hosting SaltPlus, a fantastic night of Salt poetry at the Phoenix Artist Club (same place as the Seance on Tuesday) tonight! Come along for an outstanding night of poetry. Here's the deal:

Salt Plus is a new monthly reading series featuring both poets on the Salt list and other poets, new and known.

The first event has sets from Liane Strauss, Mark Waldron and Chris McCabe. Three of those featured in the forthcoming Salt Book of Younger Poets will also read - Dai George, Kayo Chingonyi and Siofra McSherry.

7.30pm-9.30pm, Phoenix Artist Club, 1 Phoenix Street (nearest tubes Tottenham Court Road, Leicester Square).

Facebook event here!

2010 Retrospectacular / 2011 Plotorama

Happy new year to everyone, particularly those to whom I have not yet wished it.

I don't think I've had good reason to write a retrospective of a year before because nothing very much seems to have happened. But some time in mid-December, I started miserably trying to account for all the months that had drifted by, and realised that actually, it's been quite a good year for Kirsty and myself, as poets and poetry activists if not so much in our professional capacities. So I'm going to do a quick run through 2010, and then talk a little about our plans for 2011.

In January and February, we were still working on getting Cut Out & Keep off the ground as a regular online journal, as well as promoting the first two Sidekick Books micro-anthologies and putting together Fuselit: Tilt, in much the same way as we begin this year putting together Fuselit: Contraption. I found out a poem of mine had placed highly in the National Poetry Competition (although the ceremony wasn't until March), and after a lightning-quick weekend editing session involving (possibly) dozens of emails exchanged between me and Helena Nelson, my debut pamphlet, Scarecrows, was ready to go. The reception it received, coupled with the prize, doubled my confidence in a very short space of time and created some much-needed momentum. I was offered more readings in the next few months than I had been in my full and awful 27 years up to that point, and I still feel genuinely thrilled to have been able to do sets at events like The Shuffle, Days of Roses and the Torriano Reading Series. It all feels rather jammy, in fact.

National Poetry Awards ceremony. I'm the smuggest one.

In March, we were finally able to make Tilt available to buy, and reams of positive feedback followed, with initial demand far outstripping our ability to make a paltry ten or so copies a week. Kirsty appeared for a reading and interview on Sydenham Radio, while articles we published on Dr Fulminare's Irregular Features included ruminations by K on the endings of poems, and Chrissy Williams on her new job at the South Bank Poetry Library. We also dusted off our guitars to play a one-off gig called Suffering Jukebox, alongside other bands, including Dec Ryan's The Shingles, and it was there that a plan was hatched to put on a Leonard Cohen tribute night.

In April, said tribute night came to fruition, with poets and songwriters a-plenty, as well as NME/Guardian journalist Gavin Martin giving a short talk. But we spent most of April writing a poem a day in the much-maligned tradition of NaPoWriMo.

In May, Kirsty read at The Golden Hour in London, as part of its nationwide tour and we both took part in Roddy Lumsden's Lardermania event, writing and reading poems about food (I chose um ... 'tongue' and K went for ... 'ants').

In June, we went to Edinburgh for Happenstance's 5th birthday party and to be special guests at Rob Mackenzie's Poetry at the .... Happenstance, who published Scarecrows, went on to win the Michael Marks Publishers' Award, the only prize in this country for a pamphlet publisher. K had a poem published in the first issue of George Ttoouli and James Brookes' sumptuously produced Polarity and something of mine turned up in Dwang 2. I was also the Friday Feature poet one week in Todd Swift's well known Eyewear blog, and he said some flattering stuff about me.

So far, so good, eh? In July we went on holiday. Not for the whole of July, but that was the main achievement.

In Conwy with chums. Cheap hols ahoy!

August was something else. In August, we joined up with Days of Roses (Dec Ryan and Chris Horton) to celebrate Fuselit's 5th birthday (apparently a lot of stuff was being birthed in 2005 - Eyewear was also 5 this year) and to launch the 16th issue of Fuselit, Jack. It was a free event with cake, and we sold out of almost everything we'd brought to sell. Silkworms Ink published my e-pamphlet Thra-koom and Mercy's Twelve Angry Zines project included extracts from past issues of Fuselit, as well as new poems by Kirsty and me.

In September, Kirsty read versions of her poems in English and German to an audience of ninjas in at the first Kunoichi Taikai in Hannover. Then she went on to sell copies of Coin Opera and Obakarama to them at a little stall. She also read at Roddy Lumsden's Broadcast Old, New, Borrowed, Blue event, while I did my first of three talks about the more cerebral side of 1980s cartoons at Camden School of Enlightenment. After a lot of tinkering, we uploaded up a brand new site for Fuselit in anticipation of the coming change of format.

Technically, it's 'bujinkan', not 'ninja training' or 'ninjing'

October saw the release of the third Sidekick Books micro-anthology, Pocket Spellbook (which was originally supposed to be out in April/May). Scarecrows was reviewed favourably in Poetry London and Kirsty and I both contributed to the Liverpool Biennial Audio Guide released by Mercy. I made my third appearance in under-30s poetry e-journal Pomegranate, and both of us read at the insanely popular Clinic Presents.

November was almost too much for us. It was back up to Edinburgh for an experimental night of poetry, art installations, computer gaming and ... some sort of music (dubstep?) under the banner of Golden Hour vs Plastic Forks, while a weekend of intensive writing produced our collaborative, pseudonymous pamphlet No, Robot, No! There was also the second Camden School of Enlightenment, and we managed two in two months with the release of a fourth micro-anthology, Korsakoff's Paper Chain. Best forget we also nearly lost our luggage at Gatwick.

Finally, in December, About a Minute, the inaugural exhibition at The Gopher Hole opened, featuring six new poems by me as part of a piece called Staring Into Space. It's running until early February, so there's still a chance to catch it! Kirsty and I also turn up in the much anticipated Stop Sharpening Your Knives 4, edited by Jack Underwood, Sam Riviere, Nathan Hamilton and Emily Berry.

Retrospectacular over. Plotorama begins.

NOW, what of 2011? First of all, we'll be booking a venue for the official launch of the two micro-anthologies. That's priority 1. Priority 2 is getting our first full-size anthology, Birdbook I, to the printers. It's huge and scary, and no doubt still needs the last few errors knocking out of it by a thorough proofing. We want it out this month, since many artists and poets have been waiting nearly a year to see their work on the page.

At the same time, we're working towards a February release of Fuselit: Contraption, which will be brought out simultaneously as an e-broadsheet, and in a limited edition of 100 print copies. There's a whole truckload of extra stuff going into this issue, fingers crossed, that should see us increasing its cross-medium appeal and readership, while keeping the old spirit going. What's more, there'll be badges. Or stickers. One of the two.

In February, we're also appearing at this event, which means we're going to have to scrabble around for anything that might be considered 'love' poems. Some time around, before or after then, there'll also be the rescheduled Orbiting event, which sees poet Richard Evans coming up to London to headline a fundraising literary auction event. Kirsty and I will both be reading at that too.

After that, we'll be pushing to finish and print Coin Opera II, the full-size sequel to our first micro-anthology. Some amazing poems lined up for this one, some of which (as with those in Birdbook I) are already finding their way into collections and other scheduled publications.

Rather than continue with micro-anthologies, the next set of books we want to aim towards will involve full collaborations between poets and illustrators. Not a case of illustrations based on or inspired by the poems, but something more even-handed. I'm envisioning intense talks - editor, poet, artist - about the structual integrity of each pamphlet, deep into the night.

There are a couple more projects, as well as personal missions, that I'm going to keep quiet about for now, at least until they're set in motion. We've certainly got plenty to keep us busy, but I'm hoping there'll be a few more surprises along the way as well. Cheers!

Orbiting literary auction event tonight - amazing new lots added!

EDIT: This event has been cancelled and will be rearranged for early 2011! Unfortunately, the snowfall means performers outside of London can't make it in tonight.


 
Brave the snow tonight for a warm welcome at the fantastic Orbiting event at London's Poetry Cafe (nearest tubes Tottenham Court Road, Covent Garden, Leicester Square and Piccadilly Cirucs) - readings by top poet Richard Evans, Jon and myself and Goldsmiths alumni, as well as music by Tim Hoyte.

7.30pm start, £6/£4 concessions entry.

PLUS a literary auction, just in time for Christmas, of the following items (all in aid of the Clare Lewis Nest Egg Fund)! New items added today!

• Handwritten sonnet by Toby Littl with signed postcard
• John Cage manuscript
• Signed poem by Stella Duffy
• Edited A4 page from a recent James Miller novel: Sunshine State
• Handwritten poem ('Night Photograph' title poem of her first collection) by Lavinia Greenlaw
• Signed first edition of The Importance of Music for Girls by Lavinia Greenlaw
• Signed first edition of Maurice Riordan collection
• signed copy of Jackie Kay's Red Dust Road collection
• handwritten poem by Matthew Hollis
• signed copy of Tom Lee's of Greenfly, collection of short stories
• signed copy of Daljit Nagra's collection of poems, Look We Have Coming to Dover
• signed copy of Maura Dooley's collection of poems, Life Under Water
• signed copy of Stephen Knight's collection of poems, Dream City Cinema
• signed copies of Blake Morrison's And When Did you Last See your Father, and The Justification of Johann Gutenberg
• signed copy of Francis Spufford's memoirs, The Child that Books Built

I'll bring the Lebkuchen - you bring the festive spirit! K x

About a Minute

I've contributed to this new and excellent exhibition, which opens today:

15 artists, architects, designers, poets and writers interpret the potential of a minute

About a Minute is the inaugural exhibition at The Gopher Hole, a new project space in Hoxton founded by aberrant architecture and Beatrice Galilee. For their first show, The Gopher Hole invited carefully chosen conceptual artists, architects, designers, poets and writers to respond to a premise – the idea that today, a minute is all we seem to have.

Increasingly hyperactive consumption of data, information and images has trained the brains of a generation to multi-task, skim, tweet, comment and status-update, but has eliminated the notion of patience or pause. The sheer volume of things available at the touch of a button or swipe of a finger has lead to a saturation point, where boredom and irritation arrives sooner than we may like to admit. Galleries are easy victims of the phenomenon. Visitors may spend a few moments to asorb an artwork, half-read a caption and move on. This leaves both curators and artists in a conundrum. How does one respond to the knowledge that no more than a minute may be spent with a painstakingly crafted exhibit? After all, it can take less than a minute for everything in the world to change.

Participants: Rachel Armstrong, Shumon Basar, Diane Cochrane, Economy, Glowacka Rennie & Robin Dutson, The Go West Project, Elaine W. Ho, Sam Jacob, Christian Kerrigan, Pedro Gadhano, Ralf Pflugfelder, Postworks, Jon Stone, Sunday Collective, Luke Wright

My contribution is 'Staring Into Space', a collection of six poems written to reflect the content and composition of about a month's worth of daydreams I noted down (or recorded on a dictaphone). Daydreaming can do strange things with time, including compressing it so that you conduct an entire fantasy narrative in the space of a minute or so. Visitors are invited to stand and daydream themselves, then record their daydreams in a book provided.

My favourites among the other pieces include a collection of 'translated' chairs (the originals were described using a minute's worth of words and the descriptions then used by architects as the basis for a new design) and a layered picture which visitors are invited to tear a piece from, causing a gradual decay over the course of the exhibition.

It's running from now until early February on Saturdays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, at The Gopher Hole, which is downstairs at El Paso restaurant near the corner of Old Street and Curtain Road. Nearest tubes are Old Street and Liverpool Street. Please go and have a look round!

No, Robot, No!

Earlier this year, Forest Publications approached Kirsty with a proposal to contribute to their very successful chapbook series. Kirsty isn't quite ready to publish a debut pamphlet yet, but we reached a compromise whereby the two of us would put our heads together to come up with a pseudonymous themed pamphlet. The end result was No, Robot, No, attributed to Eve Bishop and Roy Marvin, and it's available for a rather affordable £2 (with an extra quid for postage, I think). Both of us had already written a number of robot poems, most of which were previously unpublished, and we wrote four new collaborative poems specially for this collection, including a reprise of the 'domino' poem technique from Dr Fulminare's Bardgames.

"Two mysterious figures conspire to produce a mechanism of collaborative poetry on the subject of our anthropometallic friends. Whether in the guise of hairdressers, assassins, patients or pets, synthetic heroes and villains travel through this pamphlet in confusion and curiosity. From famous film and literary automatons to intimate portraits of the droid in the street, No, Robot, No! is a zoom-mode look at the everyday lives of superbeings."


“Such heroic nonsense!” – Megatron
“Oh, yes, that’s very good, I like that… Oh!” – C-3PO
“[tinny roar]” – Mechagodzilla

About the Authors:
Roy Marvin is a community service bot who writes poetry during his oil changes. He has only 500,000 more time blocks to work before he graduates from waste disposal to park patrol. He can’t wait to see his first real squirrel.

Eve Bishop is an ex-assassabot who collects boxes. At the time of writing she has 50,936 boxes.

Christmas Press Release

Since we've got Korsakoff out just in time for Christmas, I've whipped this up. Please spread far and wide if you are willing and able!