A note on: Writers Kingston poetry films back online

After an inexplicable struggle with youtube deletion, which has led me to archive every video i have on my youtubes for the stores of the National Poetry Library, I am happy to say the Writers Kingston Online poetry films - over 40 of them commissioned this year - are back in the land of the semi living online world. Worth checking a set of new ones now up, from Sylee Gore, Stephen Sunderland, Charlie Baylis et al. And this, from the legendary Bohman Brothers… https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2LmXtC6HArB9k2QSLWQGJA/videos

More on the series https://www.writerskingston.com/online

Published : Light Glyphs by David Spittle

Really happy to be one of 10 respondents in a new book of interviews conducted by David Spittle and published by Broken Sleep books, entitled Light Glyphs https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/david-spittle-light-glyphs

“Light Glyphs is a series of interviews with filmmakers on poetry, and poets on film. Featuring interviewees such as John Ashbery, Iain Sinclair, Lisa Samuels, and Guy Maddin, this intriguing set of interviews delves into the connections and shared interests of creatives behind the camera, and holding the pen. Light Glyphs seeks to explore 'ways of thinking, writing and seeing opened to new and changing possibilities [...] or in where the light escapes and how it obscures, in what is missing from the frame or smudging the lens.' I’ve been reading and following this series for years, David is a brilliant poet and am really pleased to be in such company. Our chat covered my film The Animal Drums amongst others thing.

A note on: Video interview with Michelle Moloney King for Beir Bua

This was a lovely, off the cuff video interview / podcast / chat with the Irish poet and editor Michelle Moloney King for her Beir Bua journal, in its new youtube channel. We chatted about asemic poetry, high and low art, authenticity and loads of other stuff. Michelle is exactly the kind of person I’m lucky to be able to meet through poetry, someone who has found their own way into it and won’t give up their own way of things, and is original for that fact.

Do go follow beir bua too, it’s a great magazine https://beirbuajournal.wordpress.com/

A note on: Soundings #6 with Sharon Gal

The Soundings project comes to an end for the time being this October with the 7th instalment and the end of the Hubbub residency and I've had an extraordinary time collaborating with 6 artists so far, the latest being Sharon Gal, a major figure on the London experimental music scene since the late 80s.

This is a work I'm very proud of. Sharon's work has been a real influence on me, so it was brilliant to work so closely with her developing a series of performances, embedded in some unusual and industrial / suburban hidden spots of west london, for film. Again working with Ed Prosser, who has filmed most of soundings to great effect, we spent a brilliant day roaming from Kilburn to Kensal, along the grand union canal and into wormwood scrubs, playing with soundscapes, found sounds and instruments. We utilised the possibilities of film, performing in scenes of a sort, to create something original in the edit. Such a privilege to have this opportunity, and once again responding to materials given by Wellcome Library in response to prompts given by Hubbub curators.

Exhibited: Manners Maketh Man, my commission for Graz Forumstadtpark Glory Hole series

So happy to have been commissioned by the amazing pioneering Forumstadtpark in Austria, curated by the equally groundbreaking Max Hofler, to produce a videotext work, part of their Glory Hole series. This series has been going for years and involves a video with text projected against the side of the Forumstadtpark itself, blown up like a bat signal, in the middle of a huge, beautiful park in the middle of the city. Loads of people see it, and for my work, which runs throughout April, this is true as its being screened while a film festival goes on. Really i had fun making it too, they promote my kind of work. You can see all the glory hole commissions here : https://vimeo.com/forumstadtparkgraz, some great ones, and my edition, the 31st, below

A note on: collaborating with Tereza Stehlikova on a film about Willesden Junction

For nearly a year I've had the pleasure to collaborate with the artist Tereza Stehlikova, who works in moving image. Our collaboration is about an area of London where we both live, in separate ends, enclosing, one of the few spaces I've really felt as home. Willesden Junction, Wormwood Scrubs, the Grand Union Canal, Kensal Green cemetery... And so far, all we have done is talk, allow the exchange of ideas to be as it should be, exploratory in friendship as well as ideas.

We recently began shooting the film, urged into action because of the plans to completely redevelopment this brilliant, beautiful, industrial, rarely-visited part of London. The Old Oak Development will be one of the biggest in the cities modern history, thousands of new flats, and people. What we are witnessing, the places I walk everyday, will disappear forever.

Here's Tereza's post on our beginning https://cinestheticfeasts.wordpress.com/2016/03/31/nw10/

Upcoming: Nemici - Italian Enemies on November 7th at the Rich Mix

Really excited for Nemici, an Italian Enemies project, taking place November saturday 7th at the Rich Mix Arts Centre. It's one the most ambitious international Enemies projects we've done, with 24 poets in 12 pairs. I'll be collaborating with the amazing Alessandro Burbank, the Burby of Venetian fame, and all the collaborations will be intense and dynamic, so many crossing mediums as well as language, covering performance art and video especially. Poets and artists have travelled from all over Europe for this, should be magic. www.theenemiesproject.com/nemici

Month one in residency at the Hub: Wellcome Collection - February 16th 2015 {#4}

I've got my rhythm now, and finding my purpose amidst the immense possibility of the Hub. Somehow I assumed I would be able to land here and spark collaborations immediately, but what I've realised, being here a few days a week for over a month now, is that's not even desireable, even if it was possible. At root this is because it's still hard for me to comprehend the freedom we have to explore new work on our terms, the real space we have to create interdisciplinary works. Anyway, my work with the Hub is evolving into these areas:

- Some experimental classes that take my martial arts teaching and develop them as wholly process orientated practises, to emphasise the students knowledge of their own bodies possibilities, integrities and corporeal limits / potentials. That is to say these classes will be about motion, mental focus, muscle memory and not about harming other bodies, through the developed exercises and techniques that originate toward the product of hurting bodies. 

- Video art performance pieces of me training, hitting the punchbag so far, and which emphasise the rest periods between this exertion in order to create vistas of human perception when altered by this exertion. A long time preoccupation of mine, this is taking form for me in the realm of video, which is exciting, and at the moment I'm tinkering with making these pieces glitchy and kitsch.

- A new series of collaborative sound poetry performances, called Soundings:
"Soundings in the Reading Room is a series of collaborative avant-garde sonic art & sound poetry performances which will present site-specific writing, composition and performance that explores how noise and silence mediate the relationship between the city and the text, artwork or musical score. Receptive to the unique surroundings of the Wellcome Collection Reading Room, Soundings will be an exploration of the potential poetics of sound amidst city noise and the profound effect it has on our experience of restfulness."

This last one is really an extraordinary platform for me to work with artists I admire in a beautiful new space.

I also helped build a hammock and have made lots of new friends.

Reading American poets at the Whitechapel gallery with Chris McCabe amidst American cinema

This was a really lovely evening, expertly curated by the generous and eloquent Gareth Evans, putting myself and Chris McCabe into a program of some amazing contemporary American experimental cinema, reading American poets. The Whitechapel is always a good place to read, but to have cinema sit up close with poetry, and to be reading work like O'Hara and Starr Hamilton made it feel completely new to me. A very generous feeling between the filmmakers and film curator Jamie Wyld and us too, this is the kind of thing I'm always happy to be doing. 

Stateland: reading Feb 12th at the Whitechapel Gallery

So pleased to be reading some American poetry to tie in with this remarkable screening of contemporary American artist filmmaking. I'll be reading alongside Chris McCabe on the kind invitation of curator and poet Gareth Evans, smashing out some O'Hara & more.
http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/events/stateland-american-artists-filmmaking-now/

Screening some of the most creative and groundbreaking artist-filmmakers from the US; including Laida Lertxundi, Luciano Piazza and Ben Russell plus live poetry readings by Steven J Fowler and Chris McCabe. Curated by Jamie Wyld for Videoclub.

Thursday 12 February, 7 - 9pm Zilkha Auditorium

Reading at the launch of Coin Opera 2

I was very privileged to feature in the magical Coin Opera 2 anthology of video game poetry edited by Kirsty Irving and Jon Stone and their always beautifully rendered Sidekick books. Not only was the anthology full of great poets and poems but the whole enterprise felt fresh and valuable to me, this is what anthologies should be about, not a taxonomy but a commission, a chance for new work and collective community. I was even happier to get to read at the launch, held upstairs at the Four Quarters bar in Peckham, essentially the loft room of a fully functioning arcade. Pretty grand stuff. 

 Do buy the book here http://www.drfulminare.com/coinoperaii.php Here's my wee reading.  

Auld Enemies: a documentary on poetry, touring, Scotland & collaboration

What this means to me, Ross Sutherland's generous, technically excellent and warm hearted documentary of our Auld Enemies tour of Scotland, is quite significant. It's the most apt testament to what we did, in it's humour and flow and deference, and its so rare to have something concrete, something that will last, that somehow captures one of these poetry things I've been experiencing in the last year. So many times, like with my visits to Iraq, Mexico, Denmark, Venice etc.. in the last year, the experience feels so intense, so wonderful at the time that I know I'll remember it so fondly, and it'll be so significant to me, and yet there is only the work itself and the memory left. Which is a good thing. Yet when I confront this documentary, see what it stands for, for me, I am left feeling very grateful, very humbled that I might get to relive something very special, in the years to come, through it's being watched. 

Coin Opera 2

http://www.drfulminare.com  Allow me to heap enormous praise on Kirsty Irving and Jon Stone for the amazing job they have done with the coin opera 2 anthology. its not only exquisitely produced and really one the best looking books I've held in my hands in awhile but it is also full of really interesting work that has been very specifically tailored to the remit. The intro is also on point and the whole concept is very well fleshed out. Such a privilege to be asked to provide work for it, I love writing to task. I wrote poems on altered beast / donkey Kong / golden axe. really worth looking out for the work of ross sutherland, Harry man, chrissy williams and Hollyhopkins amongst others. they also produced, amazingly, next to the bios, individual video game old school character renditions of each poet that actually resemble them! Here's mine and the whole crew of them.