A note on: Performing at the Whitechapel Gallery for the New Concrete Launch

A really ambitious program curated by Chris McCabe and Victoria Bean, editors of the anthology the New Concrete, for the launch of the book at the Whitechapel Gallery on July 25th. Over three hours of kinetic poems and performances - screenings, readings and more. It was a really generous, communal atmosphere, good to see old friends and meet quite a few poets I have long admired but had yet to encounter in person.

I really wanted to follow my more conceptual performances at Tate Modern and Cafe Oto recently with something similarly performative and distinct, and thoughts of how one might perform a concrete poem led my to Lego. I had only the specifics of the ideas on the morning of the performance, so after rushing to a Lego shop and dropping more money than Id thought Id need to on the bricks, I had only one chance to practise making the letters, in a coffee shop next to the gallery itself. In the end, it went nicely, I managed to stay within the 4 minute limit.

The New Concrete anthology: launch at the Whitechapel Gallery - July 25th

This is the most significant anthology of concrete poetry of my generation. I'm delighted to be included, and alongside many friends / peers - Antonio Claudio Carvalho,  Marco Giovenale, Tom Jenks, Sarah Kelly, John Kinsella, Anatol Knotek, Márton Koppány, nick-e melville, and Jörg Piringer  & legends like Vito Acconci, Augusto de Campos, Henri Chopin, Bob Cobbing, Ian Hamilton Finlay https://thenewconcrete.wordpress.com/about

"The New Concrete is a major new anthology of visual poetry edited by Victoria Bean and Chris McCabe and published by Hayward Publishing (July 2015). The book represents visual poetry published from 2000 to the present day and suggests ways in which the original concrete movement of the 1950s and ’60s has been built upon, developed and redefined by subsequent generations of poets and artists." You can buy it here http://shop.southbankcentre.co.uk/the-new-concrete-visual-poetry-in-the-21st-century.html

The anthology will be launched in a full whack 5 hours programme at the whitechapel gallery on July 25th http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/events/new-concrete/ I'll be performing "Join us for an afternoon of film and live performance showcasing some of the most exciting work in this field. The event brings together some of the most celebrated poets and artists working at the intersection of visual art and poetry."

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

London Art Book Fair - reading for Akerman Daly

Poetry reading at London Art Book Fair

Sunday 28 September, 3pm - 4pm, Gallery 8
Free, no booking required.
 
Akerman Daly presents performative readings by a selection of artists from the poetry of Fabian Peake. Peake and guest artists Phyllida Barlow, Fiona Banner, Clover Peake, Steven J. Fowler, Jess Flood-Paddock, Maria Zahle, Giovanna Coppola will read from his new collection Loose Monk.

Akerman Daly will be at the London Art Book Fair 26–28 September 2014. Preview 25 September 6–9pm. 
http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/218/product_id/2091

Modes of Aberrant Research - next week at the Whitechapel Gallery

Very excited to be part of this event with brilliant artists, and I'll be reading my experimental story MueuM for the first time in public after it was White Review prize nominated this year.

Performances coming up this August at the Whitechapel Gallery Performance: Modes of Aberrant Research Thursday 7 August, 7pm  An evening of deviant anecdotes, radical storytelling and narrative segues through archives, collections and institutions. Through experimental fiction, multi-media performance and voice-driven texts, five artists and writers, including SJ Fowler, Patrick Coyle, Holly Pester and Kreider + O’Leary,  examine the subject’s status as agitator, witness and unwitting member of memory institutes.   £8.50 full price (£4.25 members price). Book now

Petrarch & this summer's events

Please join us on June 28^th at the Rich Mix Arts Centre for an exploration of the work of the poet Tim Atkins and the launch of his collected Petrarch from Crater press. The entirety of one of the most remarkable poetic projects of our era will be brought together for the first time in a 400 page book, as we take a rare chance to celebrate one of the most brilliant and generous living British vanguard poets in Tim Atkins. http://www.craterpress.co.uk/

The reading will feature well over a dozen poets reading from Tim’s Petrarch works, including Peter Jaeger, Philip Terry, Andrea Brady, Marcus Slease and Jeff Hilson, and the man itself of course. http://www.richmix.org.uk/whats-on/event/petrarch--a-celebration-of-tim-atkins/

& if anyone's kind enough to come …

 June 5^th: I’ll be performing and conducting workshops in Riga, Latvia for the Totaldobze projecthttp://www.totaldobze.com/ curated by Kaspars Lielgalvis, followed by readings in Vilnius and Talinn, in a minitour of the Baltic.

June 16^th: For the Generative Constraints Committee via Royal Holloway, I’ll be performing / speaking about violence (& poetry) at the CC4C http://creative-collaboration.net/ in Kings X, alongside Sasha Roseneil, chaired by Prudence Chamberlain, in an evening called 'About the Stand-Off’ from 6.30pm.

June 20^th: I’ll be speaking about the Enemies project before reading in the evening at the Midsummer Poetry Festival in Sheffield. http://www.midsummerpoetryfestival.co.uk/ 6.30pm onwards

June 24^th: For the remarkable Translation Games project I’ll be leading workshops with Ricarda Vidal on transmedia translation at the Guildhall school, Barbican, as part of the Cultural Capital Exchange conferencehttp://translationgames.net/?page_id=346

June 25^th: As part of the Science Museum’s amazing Exponential Horn installation, I’ll be performing a new conceptual / soundart / noise piece at the Museum, to be recorded by Resonance FM & the BBC. 7pm onwards.http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/exponentialhorn

June 26^th: I’ll be reading at the Bookart bookshop in Old St. London, http://www.bookartbookshop.com/ to celebrate the incredible POW series edited by Antonio Claudio Carvalho, which was recently completed. Lots more info on the series here by Chris McCabe http://chris-mccabe.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/pow-final-series-perrone-melville-vas.html 7pm onwards

June 27^th: I’ll be reading as part of the BAMS international Modernism now! conference, at the CC4C introducing & reading from the modernist poets who have influenced my work http://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/events/ies-conferences/ModernismNowThe program is called ‘Make it Now: A Modernist Reading by Four Contemporary Poets’ and begins at 7.30pm.

 

July 3^rd: Very happy to be curating a celebration of the great Czech avant garde writer Bohumil Hrabal through the Czech Centre London, at the Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury, which will feature brand new commissions from Zoe Skoulding, Sarah Kelly, Stephen Emmerson, Marcus Slease, Tom Jenks & others. More to come. http://www.thehorsehospital.com/

July 9^th to 17^th: Auld Enemies – a cross nation collaboration, a tour of Scotland with six poets writing in rolling pairs and inviting locals to Camarade – Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Orkneys, Shetland. Much more to come… Supported by Creative Scotland.

July 26^th: Auld Enemies in London. At the Rich Mix Arts Centre a collaborative poetic celebration of Scottish contemporary experimental poetry and the events and works of the Auld Enemies tour. http://www.richmix.org.uk/whats-on/event/auld-enemies--the-enemies-project-scottish-poetry/

August 7^th: At the Whitechapel gallery, I'll be performing my short story MueuM, which was up for the white review prize this year, readable here http://www.thewhitereview.org/fiction/mueum/ alongside Holly Pester, Kristen Kreider and Patrick Coyle.