That J.K. Rowling lawsuit, 100 word review

‘Harry Potter plagiarism lawsuit could be billion-dollar case, says claimant’. The only real question to be answered is who’s the most transparent hustler here. Is it the family of a deceased multiple bankruptee whose claim to plagiarism amounts to ‘protagonist has to overcome a series of problems’ (presumably they’d be sueing Homer, if he was still alive and a billionaire)? Is it the lawyers, greedy for a high-profile case, who have shamelessly encouraged them? Or is it J.K. Rowling and her publisher for flogging such an unimaginative hodge-podge of hoary old narrative devices and stock characters?

Branding, 100 word review

What would convince you to trust an ever-changing assortment of dull-but-devious individuals whose sole raison d’être is to wring enough money out of the population to buy another fat fucking house? Answer: branding. The keystone of marketing. A brand, after all, is just like a name, except that it belongs to nothing more substantial than a vague constellation of shapes, colour schemes and mass-produced clutter. But people place their confidence in brands - feel safe with them - possibly due to an inability to find the same meagre security and consistency in other people. How rubbish is that?

Tilt Sneak Peak

 

Forgive me for being a day late but here, as promised, is what Fuselit: Tilt looks like. We've made eight so far and we're going at a pace of four a day. I can't type too much today though because I've done in my arm misusing the punch. Ow.

Tilt Update

Sorry - the last post was really, really boring. More something for me myself to refer to later. Here's a quick Tilt update:

We've had a few upsets with typos and things and had to print out some pages multiple times, but today - literally as soon as I click 'Publish Post' - we are punching and binding, bagging, burning, sticking, folding and enveloping. Our front room is a mess of equipment and paper. We are excited about being so close but wary too - because of all the hiccups and setbacks so far. We were receiving submissions for this issue almost nine months ago. Believe me, we are very aware of how long some people have been waiting for this and it does get to us!

I'll post a picture of a finished issue up on the blog tomorrow.

Personal Manifesto, part 1: Outwards not Inwards

I'm not sure how I feel about manifestoes. On the one hand, it seems like formulating one, privately or publicly, is a necessary part of the process of becoming focused and of defining your personal efforts, which is especially important when spending so much time on something that is neither a hobby or a business. On the other, every time I've attempted to write one down, it has come out wrong - either inaccurate or over-confrontational.

This morning, the thought occurred that the problem was down to my trying to pinpoint an individual position in relation the world's, as opposed to against itself. In simpler terms, instead of writing: "This is how I intend to differ from everyone else", I should be writing: "This is the route I intend to take, as opposed to others which remain open to me." I don't believe this robs the manifesto of its ability to be revolutionary or morally arresting but it puts it on a far more realistic scale.

So part 1 of my own manifesto - since I think it's best to write these things down as and when they feel important - is that as a poet - and as far as I am a poet (and if I'm a pretender, then equally so) - I want to face outwards not inwards. By that I mean that I don't want to set my sights on the inner world of poetry and what it takes to impress and ensconce oneself there (although, if I'm honest, I sometimes feel a burning need to do just that, so that I am authenticated in some way) but on engaging with everything outside of that inner world. That notion is, I think, the basis for a lot of my ideas, while staring at the sea of high-achieving, already-established poets in catalogues (whether ones I admire or ones I find dull) is the basis for so much anxiety and ill feeling.

That doesn't mean I won't read poetry books or won't engage with them as a reader; rather, I will treat them as part of that external world, rather than as achievements I want to match.

So that's that part. I'll see what else comes up in the future.

Univocalisms, 100 word review

Raymond Queneau came up with some hugely compelling ideas for original literarature in his time, but sometimes there was more art in the concept than any possible execution. Such is the case of the univocalism, a poem which only uses one vowel. As far as poetry is music, it is the sound of someone incessantly hammering the same piano key. What’s its appeal? Only that it is a striking example of something that appears to require much greater skill than it actually does, so that as the spoken word equivalent of ‘is this your card?’ it goes down a storm.

Introducing Irregular Features!

The inestimable Dr Fulminare of (he of Sidekick Books fame/infamy) begs to alert all merchants, mountebanks, bards and footpads to his latest experiment, Irregular Features, a sporadically updated, peer-reviled journal of poetry goings-on, in which the following reactions and imbalances may or not occur:

• Things to Make and Do - games and guides to coerce you into such unatural practices as generating 10,000,000,000 pantoums in but clicks, using fridge magnets to constuct your own poetry blurb, folding your own stanza-stimulating origami swift, crafting the images of famed poets from dots and much more.
• Poetry Top Trumps - pit the varied talents of Ted Hughes, Frank O' Hara, Getrude Stein and Giorgos Seferis against each other in a duel to the (probably car-crash or oven-related) death, with further metersmiths to be added.
• Woe's Woe - a directory of suffering, for when 'blue' won't cut it and 'out-of-sorts' is too infuriatingly non-specific to pinpoint exactly what kind of pain you are feeling. You will be introduced to such diagnoses as Faughstalkery, Lentopression and Repustress and before long, Dr F vouchsafes that you should be able to accurately diagnose misery at a good ten paces!
  
• Plus Articles, Reviews and Interviews with poetry types, as the benevolent Doctor permits.

Dr Fulminare requests contact with any sharp-witted types who, upon spying this literary litany, feel they too may wish to contribute ingredients, or, tangentially, anyone with staunch amounts of scentless sulphur for sale at a reasonable rate. Contact him through the Devil's Wiretangle at drfulminare@googlemail.com

Stephen Bayley versus Germaine Greer, 100 word review

Feminist Greer laid into egomaniac Bayley for his book ‘Women as Design’ on account of it being a misogynist pervathon. Bayley hit back that Greer was guilty of as much in her 2003 book about ‘The Boy’. Thing is, ‘The Boy’ is actually a worthwhile subject - Greer is specifically discussing that which is between a child and a man. Bayley’s subject is over-scrutinised. Plus he’s all cart-before-horse, his central premise being that it’s aesthetic taste that informs his fetishisation of bums and tits, rather than the other way round. Greer challenges lazy cultural stereotypes; Bayley intellectualises them.

Doctor Who, the Tennant Years, 100 word review

Armed with legendarily third-rate (and now charmless) BBC special effects, Russell T. Davies' 'Great Idea' was to transform the Doctor from an eccentic, brilliant and jammy scientist into an all-gurning, all-shouting action hero with a penchant for self-aggrandising speeches. Then he set about coaxing unconvincing performances from even the most experienced actors and filling every scene with either (a) the sound of an orchestra giving birth, or (b) a guest appearance from a past-their-best comedian. This wasn't so much Doctor Who as Doctor Who's psychotic stalker, having killed the object of its obsession and started parading around in its skin.

English justice, 100 word review

The judiciary tirelessly maintains the tradition of hearing the strongest possible argument from both sides, and attends to the endless task of making incremental adjustments to legislature so that the law, correctly interpreted, operates as a massive and intricate moral machine. Three problems: (1) the expense and duration of a case, together with room for error, ensure the party in the wrong always has far less to lose; (2) it’s all wholly inadequate for dealing with parties who are equally steeped in folly; (3) the ushers redistribute the water left in everyone’s glasses at the end of the preceding day.

The Real Global Warming Disaster, Christopher Booker, 100 word review

Publishers must know they’re onto a winner with exposés of ‘the great climate change fraud’. But you only need to look at the language on the back and inner covers of the book to understand the agenda.  Booker is concerned with ‘the costly bill’, threat to ‘the Western way of life’ and ‘rollback of the industrial age’. This is the fightback of the terminally self-interested - incredulous that they should have to forego luxury and wealth for any reason under the sun. Sadly for Booker, many of those who agree with him would never come within spitting distance of a bookshop.

Lego Batman, Wii, 100 word review

Some people think gaming should be about the challenge. Others prefer stress-free fun. Traveller’s Tales Lego games are expressly designed for the latter. You can’t ‘die’ and you’re unlikely to get stuck on any part of a level for a significant amount of time. Instead, the emphasis is on using charming Lego renditions of famous heroes and villains to batter everything in sight and collect bucketloads of woot (with deviations into simple puzzles). Sounds repetitive, but the huge roster of characters, amusing special moves, colourful comic book levels and super-gadabout vehicles keep the grin plastered to your chops.

About that Tilt...?

Yes indeed - where is our friend Tilt?

The latest development is this:

Since the spectacular failure of the postal service to deliver our tool, we've trekked out to Greenford not once but twice in order to secure a different one. Rest assured that it will be worth it - the wait for you, the voyage for us - 'fact, it'll be yummy.

So what could possibly be the hold-up? Well, old faithful, the Lexmark laser, has decided to print in lousy quality only, despite a plentiful and expensive toner supply. So tomorrow, after work, I'm going to go get the files printed by proper people with real printers. Then we can get to work.

Assuming all goes well at the printer's and we get back the copies ok, we hope to be sending out issues within the week to patient subscribers and contributors, and then to good supporters who're purchasing single issues. Thanks again for bearing with us, everybody!

In the meantime, if you've a curious mind and wish to see Fuselits past, as well as a treasure trove of other poetry, all for free, do head down to Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank and make yourself at home in the Poetry Library. Our entire back catalogue is there - to my knowledge this only exists in a couple other places - one of them being Jon's personal library/shoebox.

Bleach: Dark Souls, DS, 100 word review

Best beat’em up on the DS? Probably. But even better for those who have flirted with the property it’s licensed from. Like me, you might not have read any Bleach before encountering the game - your interest being aroused instead by the pedigree (developers Treasure are responsible for classics across nearly every platform of the last fifteen years). But get to know the characters a little, and it’s even more fun pitting them against one another. Four-way matches, extravagant costumes, screen-swamping special moves, lovably pompous fight-talk, plus a story mode - all makes for an engaging five-minute bash.

Mimesis 6

I'm months late to report on this, but since Mimesis is on hiatus for the time being, it's as good a time as any to recommend issue 6. I say 'recommend' - does it count as a recommendation if I'm in it? I've nothing financially to gain from it, after all.

In any case, I'll recommend it in two senses. First of all, I recommend you read my article When to Mischief: In Search of Burlesque in Contemporary British Poetry, which is published therein, so that you can talk about burlesque poetry with your friends and titter condescendingly when they ask: "Is that poetry about girls with tassles on their boobs?" "No, no, no," you will scold, and go on to explain about the roots of the word, how Virgil suffering a travesty led to The Rape of the Lock and why burlesque techniques still represent an intriguing and under-appreciated side of contemporary British verse.

I also recommend picking up a copy of Mimesis 6 because it contains two superior essays (by Luke Kennard and Robert Archambeau) as well as an international array of poetry, including a new piece by Paul Muldoon and four 'dictionary' pieces by Richard Moorhead (more of which are published in the latest Horizon Review).

Oh, and get you skates on - nearly all back issues of Mimesis have sold out.