Published : Time of the Wolf in Poem Atlas' Refraction online exhibition

Very cool to be in this online exhibition which celebrates the Streetcake Magazine writing prize, of which I’m a patron and is hosted by Poem Atlas, which is doing great things with sculpture or 3d poetry. https://www.poematlas.com/refraction

This poem-brut lo-fi concertina is a deliberately aberrant pop-up book page. It combines found material, abstract painting, stickers of three different origins, or packs, and is part of an ongoing exploration of the possibilities of collage and an experimental poetry of humour. It is taken from the book 'Come and See the Songs of Strange Days : poems on films' (Broken Sleep Books 2021)

A note on: Lexicon, performing at Marsden Woo - March 16th 2016

Such a beautiful experience, to curate a night of new poetry and performance responding to Alida Sayer's magnificent exhibition at Marsden Woo Gallery. We did it all on quite a tight timeframe, really through my friendship with Marsden Woo curator Siobhan Feeney and an immediate passion I felt for Alida's work. She is interrogating, in sculpture, what I am interested in digging into in poetry - language, its instability, its material qualities, its graphic glypic abstraction. So I asked Giovanna Coppola, Fabian Peake, Iris Colomb and Christian Patracchini to come and see the work and we all presented this on a really enthusiastic evening, on March 16th (2016), in the gallery. You can see all the performances www.theenemiesproject.com/lexicon

For my own performance, I have become increasingly interested in improvisation, in speech rhythms and crowd responses, and in breaking the 4th wall with readings and performances. In this case I spent quite a bit of time working out certain parameters, concepts, that I would adhere to, but deliberately, strictly, ignoring the 'content' I might produce. In this case, I pretended that I was performing only for to-be-edited youtube vignettes, like some televisual curator, highlighting Alida's exhibition. I hoped for it to be humorous but not flippant, and people seemed engaged anyway, so I was pleased I took the risk.

I would highly recommend visiting www.marsdenwoo.com and checking out www.alidasayer.com

A note on: my Neurocantos poems in Rebecca Kamen's exhibition in Virginia

One of the most generous collaborative relationships of my last year in writing and correspondence, Rebecca Kamen is a groundbreaking artist and scientist. Very generously she has included poems from my Neurocantos series into her latest exhibition, poems based on her correspondence to me as founding text that formed the base of a sequence of works. 

You can read more about the Continuum exhibition below, at the Reston Arts Centre in Virginia. The exhibition runs from December 1st 2015 to February 13th 2016. http://restonarts.org/exhibition/rebecca-kamen-continuum-2/ 

As part of continuum, two editions of prints of the Neurocantos are included in the exhibition program, framed for display.  Alongside the exhibition's primary sculptural elements, there is also a soundscape, created by Susan Alexjander which involves my reading from the text and a series of 3 moving poem fragments as video projections from 2 of the Neurocantos poems alongside a Cajal quote. You can my intro in the exhibition catalogue below.

The NeuroCantos has also been part of Rebecca's presentation at an international neuroscience symposium, honoring the legacy of Santiago Ramon y Cajal  at National Institute of Health on November 4th 2015.  

A note on: OVADA, Brook & Black & a visit to Oxford on November 6th 2015

I was very generously invited to participate in a Symposium on collaboration in Oxford thanks to artists Brook & Black, whose exhibition Arkitektoniske Kramper made collaboration with Christina Bredahl Duelund and Natascha Thiara Rydvald was opening at OVADA. 

Really a beautiful day discovering people's work and listening to insights on the collaborative process. Lovely too to share the stage with longtime collaborator / friend, Tamarin Norwood, and to feel the unity of the scene in Oxford. That, and the hospitality and enthusiasm, was palpable. 

The large scale sculptural exhibition, which closed last week, was quite stunning and what an extraordinary space OVADA is. Do visit / support both the artists and the gallery if in Oxford. More info here. http://www.ovada.org.uk/arkitektoniske-kramper/

Wildermenn have passed, to dredge again

The impetus for making new work is firmly on the process for me, Ive been explicit about this in interviews etc.., and so the impetus behind being part of a collective, like the Wildermenn, is in the collective process. Our first exhibition is in the past, it ran just under a week at the House gallery in Peckham, and speaking in strict creative terms, it was a joy. I shouldve done more, a lot was put on the other members, but the concepts we had originally, to make the gallery an environment, covered in detritus, centred by an immense beastly sculpture made of river mess, came to fruition, and it gave us an excuse to cross practises, as we had intended. On this side of things, it was a great success, it happened, and it is partly for the greater process anyhow, to continue on, forward, to be active in new uncomfortable realms. At times, on the practical side of things, it was too uncomfortable. Working exhibitions from the ground up in a city like London can be thankless, it can feel like it is all for yourself. We had a lovely special view, plenty of people, but it felt exhausted at times, the end of the year. Which it was. There'll be another Wildermenn exhibition in 2014, I am sure, and so many lessons that needed learning will be in effect. & the work remains. it speaks for itself, hopefully.

Sarah Kelly - Ways of Describing cuts as Pulped paper sculpture

Dear friend, poet & paper maker, Sarah Kelly has turned her skills to our collaborative book http://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/waysofdescribing.html and pulped it. This is the essence of the poets practise as artist, which I suppose I am currently exploring in sound and performance, returning back to materiality, interrogating the ground on which language sits. As ever Sarah's foray is authentic, gentle and beautiful.