A brilliant event, but a challenging one to curate and perform at, purely because the task of doing a 45 minute sound poetry improvisation with legendary figures Phil Minton and Jaap Blonk, along with Audrey Chen, while also introducing and helping others was a stretch. Worth it though.

Asha Karami visited from Netherlands and gave a great performance with Joanne Dixon, as did many of the other supporting poets, and always it’s like going home to work with Isa and Eduard at Iklectik. https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/netherlands-2022

What I am most proud of in my work is its range. My curiosity had led me to practise multiple poetry methodologies at the same time, at what I hope is a high level. I see textual and semantic poetry as one element of many, with visual, asemic, collage, sound, collaboration, photo, film, curatorial, pedagogical etc… They are all branches of the same tree. I choose always my method as well as my subject. And this collaboration, in terms of sound poetry, is one of the high points for me, and likely always will be. To work with Minton and Blonk at the same time connects me to a lineage which isn’t just about their decades of work, but also how they draw from two traditions, arguably – improvised vocalisation and sound poetry – and fuse them. I feel like working with them now, in my mid thirties, will give me scope beyond what I know is possible in improv sound poetry for a long time to come, if I keep doing it of course.