A note on: Sampson Low Pamphlet series and Maria Celina Val

This Thursday, December 3rd 2020, will see the 13th edition of the Sampson Low Writers Kingston Student Pamphlet series. It’s supported by Kingston University and its designed to evidence the remarkable contemporary and innovative poetry being written by current and recent Kingston University Creative Writing students, with beautifully designed pamphlets each featuring a suite of poems, most often on one theme or in one style, by a solo author. https://www.writerskingston.com/sampsonlow

Low key, it’s one of my favourite editorial projects. I get to work with poets early on in their writing, support them in their own originality, and the results have been amazing. It’s perhaps not had the recognition outside of the university and community around Writers Kingston that it deserves, with 12 debuts out of 13 pamphlets, 12 young women too, all so so high level in their quality, production and conception. The work standard is so high, and the 13th issue is remarkable. Maria Celina Val is an artist + poet + architect and her ‘children draw fivefold stars’ is really such a unique book of visual poetry. I mean, it’s quality is way beyond me, the design, the care, the samples above show. Please buy it here https://sampsonlow.co/2020/11/23/children-draw-fivefold-stars-maria-celina-val/

I have to thank Sara Upstone and many others at Kingston Uni who support this project, my idea, and it also has to be said that Alban Low is a gem. A rare thing. So generous, consistent, reliable, professional, insightful. I’m not being hyperbolic. That’s why we have an event celebrating his press this thursday, for the launch, please come by https://www.writerskingston.com/sampsonlowcelebration/

Kakania Berlin - May 9th : 7.30pm at Österreichisches Kulturforum

7.30pm at Österreichisches Kulturforum Berlin kulturforum berlin: kulturforumberlin.at 
ree Entry - May Monday 9th 2016
Stauffenbergstraße 1, 10785 Berlin. T: +49 30 202 87-114 E: berlin-kf (at) bmeia.gv.at

Very happy to announce that the Kakania project will debut in Berlin, with six new literary performance commissions from contemporary artists, each of whom will present a work that celebrates / responds to a figure from the Habsburg era. The event is free to attend if you're in Berlin, please share with friends in the city if you're not http://www.theenemiesproject.com/kakaniaberlin

Book your place here: http://www.kulturforumberlin.at/veranstaltung/kakania/

Max Höfler on Ludwig Wittgenstein
Maja Jantar on Lou Andreas Salome
Stephen Emmerson on Rainer Maria Rilke
Tomomi Adachi on Josef Matthias Hauer
Ernesto Estrella on Gustav Mahler
Ann Cotten on Otto Neurath

This is the first of two Kakania events that will take place in Berlin in 2016, supported by Österreichisches Kulturforum Berlin and follows six events, a symposium, two publications and over fifty new artist commissions in London from 2014 to 2016 thanks to the Austrian Cultural Forum. www.kakania.co.uk 

About Kakania

There has been no one city's culture, at one singular time in modern history, more widely influential on contemporary thought than that of Habsburg Vienna a century ago. A time so densely constituted with intellectual revolution in fields as diverse as poetry, fiction, journalism, music, composition, philosophy, psychology, art … that it seems it can often only be evoked through a wistfulness that belies the melancholy, the energy and the seismic change that constituted it.

With Kakania, decidedly contemporary, avant-garde, original works of text and art are presented in an attempt to be as complex and genre testing as the works, and the people, they are responsive to. This is a project where the past, and our understanding of it, is not be refracted through historical analysis, but the creative process, and one that is utterly contemporary. Kakania is an opportunity for audiences to discover the Habsburg era in a wholly new guise, as our era.

ENTER+ Repurposing in Electronic Literature at Kingston Uni

Had a grand day at Kingston Uni with Zuzana Husarova, my fellow TRYIE collectivist, visiting from Bratislava and Maria Mencia, who teaches in the media dept with a focus on E-literature, sharing some found text poetry, and discussing reappropriation and technology. Most importantly this special seminar with Maria's students and the wonderful Mariusz Pidarski also presenting his work (an amazing adaptation of Bruno Schulz into videogame format amongst that), was the launch of a journal which seems to be a brilliant summation of much of the pioneering work Maria and Zuzana have done, exhibiting in Kosice as well as commissioning a myriad of articles. I read from Minimum Security Prison Dentistry and Recipes, couching my use of found text as a way of actualising my poetic engagement with the world of language around me, emphasising my work as the result of a refractive, reflective process, rather than an originary one, right to the roots of that thinking, and that the use of the language of the internet is a necessary engagement with the language world I live in. Moreover, it is a very specific language world, one that is founded on community and generosity but is in fact the ultimate example of the ethical notion that what a person does when no one is looking is who they are, morally, as people on the net are regularly awful en masse because they are relatively anonymous. So my use of net text is really an ethical injunction, attempting to show we need new tools of discussion to tackle new realms of language, and how throwaway it can be. I also emphasised how this wasn't a strict practise, but blended ambiguously with other writing methods and approaches. I finished by reading some trolling text, my poem Black Pepper Enchilladas, which finishes with fuck you, fuck you all.= We all then had crisps and a long pleasant chat about the potential of technology and spying and such.