Gap Filler Poetry

Hello. I haven't posted in a long time because I've written 40 000 words this year, not counting reviews and poems. The idea kind of scares me. But I just got an email from my friend Micah, who is organising this really cool event in earthquaked Christchurch, called Gap Filler, where there are poetry readings and all kinds of awesome stuff in the vacant spaces left by quake damage. More details here. If it all goes well, I'll hopefully take part when I'm down for xmas-new years times.

Thank You For Telling Me Vodka is a Ponsy Drink

I Went and saw Xiu Xiu play last night. It was really great. You should buy their albums. The show made me all swoony like a schoolgirl. I got emotional. My medication was making me shaky. I talked to them afterwards, and made a dick out of myslef I think. But they were really nice. I talked to Angela about how music and writing destroy ego and Jamie about how other people's horrible stuff can make your horrible stuff feel less, becuase there's less lonelyness, some kind of community..... I'm not sure. I'm typing maybe kind of like Ariana Reines with some kind of naïveté and direct sentences, because I don't know how else to say things at the moment. I really like her writing but don't normally write like her. I hope it doesn't make me sound like a dick or a hipster. I don't understand the idea "hipster". The people who would be them hate them. It confuses me. I don't have enough money to be one I think. This writing is going nowhere. I really like Xiu Xiu anyway. Here are links to some of the songs they played.

Grey Death
Dear God, I Hate Myself
Chocolate Makes You Happy
Save Me, Save Me
Sad Pony Guerilla Girl
Fabulous Muscles
Crank Heart
I Luv the Valley Oh!
Boy Soprano

A PELT A SHRUB A SOIL SAMPLE has sold out

Yes, that's right. I'm both happy and sad to say that there are no more copies left. That is, until someone want to reprint it. I would, but I'm poor. However as the previous post attests, there's more stuff coming......

Forthcoming

Ok so I've got three things forthcoming. My latest volume, /K/:HAVEDONEWITH will be out by the end of the year (hopefully) from June Gloom, a new micropress in Christchurch run by the wonderful Timothy J Andrew. I would trust anyone with a tattoo of Arthur Rimbaud with my life, trusting him with my work comes naturally. The book is a long poem drawing from a mutilated text of Artaud's "Pour En Finir Avec La Jugement De Dieu".

I'm also publishing a small volume, tentatively entitled Draft from "Birds" as part of my (BA) Honours dissertation in an edition of 26 hand-lettered copies. I'm not sure how much they'll cost yet, but if you're interested chuck me an email.

Lastly, I've been asked to take part in the latest Dusie Kollektiv, which is really awesome, I'm a big fan. Susana Gardener is one of that rare breed of super-awesome people. I've got a manuscript lined up called Tempral Maze Denture. I'm proud of that title.

So stay tuned. I may have quietened down on the blogging front, but there's still things happening.

More on Unemployment

Last k-punk link. I promise. More on unemployment, that I hope will be appreciated by any who have had experiences like mine last year - Incidentally when I had the resources to blog at a rate that I liked. Long-term unemployment sucks, and is, by its very nature, demoralising and worse, psychologically damaging (and, as Mark points out, ontologically alienating). A piece I particularly like:

"For a number of reasons, during my twenties I believed then that I was unemployable - too feckless to do either manual work or retail, and nowhere near confident enough to do a graduate job of any kind. (The ads for graduate jobs would fill me with despair: surely only a superhuman could do the job as described?) I won't deny that eventually getting employment was important - I owe so much of what I am now to getting a teaching job. But equally important was the demystification of work that gaining this employment allowed - "work" wasn't something only available to people who belonged to a different ontological category to me. (Even so, this feeling wasn't rectified by having a job: I had a number of depressive episodes when I was convinced that I wasn't the sort of person who could be a teacher.)

"But surely the importance of Virno and Negri's work is to have undermined the distinction between work and non-work any way. What precisely counts as non-work in post-Fordism? If, to use Jonathan Beller's phrase, "to look is to labour" - if, that is to say, attention is a commodity - then aren't we all "contributing", whether we like it or not? As Nina argues, "[i]t is as if employers have taken the very worst aspects of women's work in the past – poorly paid, precarious, without benefits – and applied it to almost everyone, except those at the very top, who remain overwhelmingly male and incomprehensibly rich." In these conditions - in which unemployment/underemployment/perpetual insecurity are structurally necessary, not contingent accidents - there's more case than ever for a benefits saftey net."

More k-punk: Morrissey and Unemployment

"Is there anyone who has caught the agony of this state of worklessness better than Morrissey? The useless jouissance of refusing what was anyway impossible: "No I've never had a job/ because I've never really wanted one" "No, I've never had a job because I'm too shy" ... I do sometimes think that the implicit political position in those handful of early Smiths songs was one of the most powerful of the 80s. Singing "England is mine and it owes me a living" at the time of 3 million unemployed and the Miners Strike ... Rejecting the masculine destiny of Fordist worker at the very moment when that destiny was being denied to the working class ("No, we cannot cling to the old dreams any more") ... Rejecting, that is to say, all of those working class homilies about the dignity of labour"

CYBERNETIC POST-CAPITAL

It's been a while since I've posted, I know - in my defence I'm writing 20 000 words a semester of coursework, no counting all the (too much) variousness I do on the side.

It's also been a while since I've linked to k-punk, and too long since I've read. Straight off I found this, which looks very cool - I wish I was in the UK.

Accelerationism:

This one-day symposium will think through the implications of accelerationism in the light of the forthcoming publication of Nick Land’s Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007 and Benjamin Noys’s The Persistence of the Negative.

More here. Along with an awesome picture of a cyborg.

From an essay on Johnson's RADI OS, drawing on Steve McCaffery's Levinasian Poethics

Steve McCaffery, in his description of John Cage’s mesostic poems, coins the term “parasitography” as a descriptor, describing the work as “utterly dependent [on the host text] for its existence”(217). I dispute the implication that the “parasite” does not contribute to the “host”, that there is an unfair exchange that is detrimental to the "host". The paragramatic reading strategies enacted by the like of Cage, Jackson Mac Low and Ronald Johnson illuminate heretofore elided textual potentialities already existent within the texts they draw from. In this way the relationship can be described more accuratly as symbiotic. This release of potentiality is most obvious in RADI OS, or other physically enacted works of performative reading such as Tom Phillips “treated Victorian novel” A Humument. The partner texts, such as, for example Paradise Lost and RADI OS , begin as Same to one another, yet through the process of excision or etching, the newly formed RADI OS gains alterity from its progenitor, without violent disinheretence – indeed, the poem functions as a loving tribute while still maintaining its difference. Furthermore, as a reading of Paradise Lost, it contributes its own (albeit idiosyncratic) interpretative work to the corpus of possibility that constitutes the possible responses to the poem. Johnson’s RADI OS performs and makes physically manifest these processes through its literalisation of erasure, thus enacting the process of its composition. Through the differentiation of the poem from its parent-text RADI OS gains its own alterity, while at the same time maintaining its obligation to the Otherness of Paradise Lost and its polysemy.

National Poetry Day

It looks like it's going to be a big one. As well as the reading I'm performing at out in Titirangi, there's the lauch for the late Leigh Davis' collection Stunning debut of the repairing of a life at the at the University of Otago's Auckland Centre, 385 Queen Street, Auckland from 6.00–8.00 pm. At the Auckland City Library is a continuation of the "Million Poems for Matariki" project, with Selina Tusitala Marsh, last year's poet laureate Michele Leggott, and current Laureate Cilla McQueen.

And Christchurch - I haven't forgotten you! There's a reading at the University Bookshop, for the launch of Guarding the Cellar Door by Linda Connell, published by Steele Roberts, with readings by Roger Hickin, Tusiata Avia, my good friends Jeffrey Paparoa Holman and Micah Timona-Ferris, and writers from the School for Young Writers. I think there may be something at the central city library as well, but I could be wrong.

More events can be found here.

Reading at Lopdell House for National Poetry Day

I'm reading at this event alongside Selina Tusitala Marsh; Kevin Ireland; Raewyn Alexander; Doug Poole; Courtney Meredith; Mark Pirie; Janet Charman; Daniel Larsen and Ila Selwyn.

I will be reading from my forthcoming book /K/:HAVEDONEWITH, coming soon from June Gloom. I have special plans.

From the website:

This event is always a sell out so book early.

Hot mulled wine will be available.

This event is made possible with support from Creative Communities and National Poetry Day's sponsors, National Post and Booksellers New Zealand.

Venue: Top Floor of Lopdell House, 7.30pm, doors open at 7pm

Corner Titirangi & South Titirangi Roads, Auckland 0604

Entry: $10

Booking: phone 817 8087 x201 or call into the Gallery Shop.

Myung Mi Kim’s Penury

Two reviews in two days. I'm still on course-work mode, and need to relax. This one is Myung Mi Kim's Penury, a fantastic title by an amazing poet, published by the company with the best name ever: Omnidawn.

review of Bruce Russell's Left Handed Blows: Writing on Sound 1993-2009

I've just posted my (incredibly late) review of Bruce Russell's Left Handed Blows: Writing on Sound 1993-2009 over at Tarpaulin Sky. You should read the review, buy the book, then read it. It's very good.

Reviewers wanted!

Interested in reviewing for Tarpaulin Sky? In NZ, preferably Auckland? (I don't have much money for postage, so would rather deliver books by hand - though rest of the country would be good to, if you've got the right stuff....) Then give me an email!

Also, if you're looking for a flat, a couple of rooms becoming availible soon...

Steven Karl has good taste.

He's got my chapbook on his recomended summer reading list over at No Tell. Furthermore, he is not just a man of impeccable taste, but furiously great words as well. Both State(s) of Flux and (Ir)rational Animals are wonderful - and the former is one of my favorite book-objects as well.

This is not praise out of obligation! Buy his work!

LOUNGE 14

Just a reminder to all that I'm reading at LOUNGE 14 on Wednesay evening - 5:30, Old Government house , University of Auckland City Campus off Waterloo Quadrant. Come down!

particularly unconventional

I just got mentioned on Canadian Radio. Emma Healey, editor-in-chief of the Incongruous Quarterly, was asked on "Here and Now" on CBS's Radio One, about any "particularly unconventional" submission that they'd recieved - their mission is to "publish the unpublishible". She just emailed me saying that my submission, all 150 of Shakespeare's sonnets run through a bank or randomisers and algorythms, was "one of the first that sprang to mind." I'm very happy to have that dubious honour. Go Inconguous Quarterly!

COMA

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SEMIOTEXT(E) YOU ARE GOOD {GO HERE}



COMA BY PIERRE GUYOTAT

Long ago, in childhood, when Summer reverberates and feels and throbs all over, it begins to circumscribe my body along with my self, and my body gives it shape in turn: the "joy" of living, of experiencing, of already foreseeing dismembers it, this entire body explodes, neurons rush toward what attracts them, zones of sensation break off almost in blocks that come to rest at the four corners of the landscape, at the four corners of Creation.
—from Coma

Upcoming Readings

I will be reading at LOUNGE #14 Wed 26 May at 5.30 pm, at the Old Government House UOA City campus, on Waterloo Quadrant. Full details of that still to come.

I'm also reading on Friday July 30th at Lopdell House in Titirangi for National Poetry Day. the details of that too are to come.

I'm working on doing something interesting for both of them, so stay tuned.

Urs Alleman Interview!

The author of Babyfucker (translation recently published by Les Figues) interviewed by Elizabeth Hall over at the TSky blog.

It's a fantastic interview too, well worth reading. More than that, even.

New Reviews at Tarpaulin Sky

nick-e melville's Selections and Dissections reviewed by Stephen Nelson and Douglas Kearney's The Black Automaton reviewed by Micah Ling

.

The Kearney is great, I haven't read the melville yet - but I googled him and checked out some of his work and like it a lot.

A poem by me

is here. Thanks Charlotte!

HEGEMONY IS TRANCENDENCE

Amy is doing the good work of puctuation. She's breaking art. People probably don't like her [that bitch] becuase the ideas of the aesthetic the sacred the objective QUALITY get knocked about in the tussle. "I would publish more women/fags/indigenous writers if their wor was good enough" here's the page.
and what I said
bearing in mind I'm not quite here as it's 2am the day has been caffine and nicotine and milton and johnson with theory as a condiment

THUSLY:


God damn all this talk of “gender blindness”, “language over body” “quality” etc makes me ill.
“women can’t paint; women can’t write” [VW, to the lighthouse] I suppose that goes for crazies (and dykes can’t fuck w the heteronormative either)
it implies that vaginas get in the way of writing well if you look for quality and don’t publish girls
same agenda as assimilationism
erasure of difference
fucking easy if your on the side with the bigger stick (so to speak)
heh the biopower of writing
(necropower of erasure?)
FIT THE AESTHETIC

why is the aesthetic homogenising, a hegemony?
aren’t people who break that awesome?
Joyce, woolf, genet, guyotat, mansfield if she’d lived long enough
killed the novel – it comes out of the ashes something new, with blood on its face, and eyes aflame – what if that never happened?

all of this shows the fact that poeple get really uncomfortable about reading difference, reading
poems (or whatever) that aren’t mirrors (if I want that I’ll go to the bathroom)
I want poems to break me
(and amys do)

ignore this is the rant of a crazy if you want i should be asleep but no.
do i make sense myself clear? [cf end of preceding line]

I love you all.

Bureaucratic Biopower

Compare this with the bureaucratic regimes imposed within the tertiary system (performance assesment, PBRF, continual justification of work in financial terms etc):

"At the core of Foucault's picture of modern “disciplinary” society are three primary techniques of control: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, and the examination. To a great extent, control over people (power) can be achieved merely by observing them. So, for example, the tiered rows of seats in a stadium not only makes it easy for spectators to see but also for guards or security cameras to scan the audience. A perfect system of observation would allow one “guard” to see everything (a situation approximated, as we shall see, in Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon). But since this is not usually possible, there is a need for “relays” of observers, hierarchically ordered, through whom observed data passes from lower to higher levels." (source - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosopy)

Good reference here at k-punk , also Mark Fisher's book Capitalist Realism: is there no Alternative? has a great breakdown of the culture of surveylance in bureaucratic institutions.

Abyss

I was looking through the Archives of one of my favorite bloggers, k-punk (aka Mark Fisher, who writes regularly for Wire, and is the author of a great little book called Capitalist Realism: is there No Alternative) trying to find a post on Margret Atwood, when I stumbled upon this piece. Well worth a look. "An abyss that laughs at creation"
. Great title, no?

Kristeva, Psychosis, Text.

“What Kristeva brings, in a manifold way, into direct relation with (the language of) psychosis is not the pre-oedipal abjection that is constitutive for the subject, but the post-oedipal modes in which the constituted subject strives to repudiate the repudiation that founds it and to seek out, once again, a connection with the corps maternel. For here, the jouissance of the primary process prevails against the reality principal of the symbolic order and thus entails the danger of a “psychotic” disintegration of ego and (paternal) world. To this extent, the literature of the “abject” – for Kristeva, the cardinal form of such second-order repudiation – is structurally psychotic” (Menninghaus, Winfried. Disgust: the Theory and History fo a Strong Sensation. Trans Howard Eiland and Joel Golb. Albany: SUNY Press 2003. 375)

Discussion regarding Pro-/Anti-choice groups, and reactions thereto (spurred by UOA Feminist Collective activity on Facebook

[Feminists UOA, of which I am a member, invites me to join group enititled "Anti-choice groups are NOT welcome at University of Auckland", with the sub-header "We don't want you so go away!!"]

Discussion that follows:

Ross Brighton 30 March at 13:29

While I agree with the sentiment, I'm not sure of the methodology - does censorship/antagonism communicate the kind of ethico-discursive stance that a group such as this exists to promote?

Such can lead to a cementing of positions; preventing, rather than promoting, progressive movement.

designating the university a site of conflict/contention has uncomfortable parallels to the designation of the procreative female body (or the female body in general, or the body in general) as such....

That's my stance at least

Feminists Uoa 30 March at 13:40 Reply

It is our university and we get to say if we want a group to affiliate or not. If we find it offensive we are permitted to vote against it. Just the presence of an anti-choice group at university will cause trauma to students. In my eyes that is reason enough to vote against them affiliating. We believe that the university should be a safe space for all students. Having an active anti-choice group on campus will make it an unsafe space for many people. They want to take away my rights to decide what to do with my body. No other club is trying to do that.

Ross Brighton 30 March at 13:52

Ok. If it's a question of voting then I'm totally in. It is a colonisation of the body, an assertion of proto-property rights in the name of "morality" (would an anti-gay group be permitted?).

Though I would hesitate to employ (discursive) violence against anything other than their (totalising) discourse (unless provoked by the same)

Ross Brighton 30 March at 13:53

May I post this discussion?

Feminists Uoa 30 March at 14:25 Reply

Sweet. I'd like to point out though that the person having this discussion is Alana (me).

Reply:

Questions

A Question for all the girl-poets out there: What are your feelings regarding writing and hysteria? I've just read a paper by Elaine Showalter ("Hysterical Narrative", in Narrative 1.1, Jan '93), that argues that it's association w "women's writing" is counterproductive, because of it's history of negative connotation and as a tool of oppression (the obvious counter-argument would be analogies with the "N-Bomb" and "Queer", etc). My interest in H. comes from my experience of the pathologization of the psychologically non-normative, reclaiming madness as a positive sight of production/expenditure, so I'm not totally clued up on gender here (though I wouldn't consiter myself normatively masculine.... but being a hetrosexual male this becomes a very foggy zone where there is no camp (no pun intended) - I've been both gay-bashed and straight-bashed - would you believe it?))

Any Thoughts?

Home & Away Poetry Symposium

H O M E & A W A Y 2 0 1 0
A Trans Tasman Poetry Symposium

	about
	HOME & AWAY 2010 at the University of Auckland your two islands seemed fragile and vulnerable. In humor, but also in a curious seriousness, I wondered if one might not extend oars from either side of each, and row them about in celebration of some appropriate festival (Robert Creeley, 1976)
Programme | Speakers | PDF version PROGRAMME Monday 29 March 7-8 pm Pot luck dinner at Michael King Writers’ Centre. Bring a friend and something to eat or drink 8-9 pm Michael Farrell and Jill Jones talk and read from their 2009 anthology Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets. Chair: Martin Edmond. Venue: Michael King Writers’ Centre, Mt Victoria, Devonport Tuesday 30 March 11-12 noon All Together Now / Kia Kotahi Rā. Poets and students from Poetry off the Page and Masters of Creative Writing make collaborative text for the digital bridge 12-1 pm Performances and shared lunch with students Venue: Pat Hanan Room (Arts 2, Rm 501. Cnr of Symonds St & Grafton Rd) 1.20 pm Welcome / Whakatau 2-3 pm Session 1 Jill Jones, ‘Poetry’s latitudes: “scope for thought and action”’; Ann Vickery, ‘Beyond a National Paradigm: Travelling Poetics.’ Chair: Brian Flaherty Venue: Pat Hanan Room Afternoon tea 3.30-4.30 pm Session 2 Martin Edmond, ‘The Fictional Genealogies of David Mitchell’; Nigel Roberts, ‘Expanding The List: Dave Mitchell in Wellington, Auckland and Sydney.’ Chair: Peter Simpson Venue: Pat Hanan Room 4.30-5 pm David Mitchell Live at the Globe. Film screening introduced by Genevieve McClean Venue: Pat Hanan Room 5.30-7 pm Launch of Steal Away Boy: Selected Poems of David Mitchell (Auckland UP) and David Mitchell nzepc author page Venue: Gus Fisher Gallery at the Kenneth Myers Centre, 74 Shortland St, CBD Wednesday 31 March 12.30-1.30 pm Lunch. Senior Common Room, Old Government House. Cnr of Princes St and Waterloo Quadrant 2-3 pm Session 3 John Newton, ‘You Kiwis are really eccentric, aren’t you?’; Ian Wedde, ‘the sound of one hand typing.’ Chair: Murray Edmond Afternoon tea 3.30-4.30 pm Session 4 Cath Kenneally, ‘Not revenge: eaten cold and its debt to Janet Charman’s cold snack’; Mark Young, ‘Widening the Community: Otoliths and how.’ Chair: Selina Tusitala Marsh Venue: Pat Hanan Room 5-5.30 pm Launch of Jill Jones’ Dark Bright Doors (Wakefield Press) and Mark Young’s Genji Monogatari (Otoliths) Venue: Old Government House Lounge 5.30-7 pm LOUNGE #12 at Old Government House. Featuring Serie Barford, Janet Charman, Michael Farrell, Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, Jill Jones, Jan Kemp, Cath Kenneally, Genevieve McClean, John Newton, Vivienne Plumb, Nigel Roberts, Ian Wedde, Mark Young. MC: Michele Leggott Thursday 1 April Day: Trip to Waiheke Island, tbc Early evening Planning for September symposium 7.30 pm Genevieve McClean’s Projector Project 2: poetry and film collaborations. Te Karanga Gallery, K Road

For more info visit the NZEPC

Variousness

Man, I think it's nearly three weeks between posts - the longest so far, at a guess. But moving, and starting postgrad work I think are good excuses.

In case those of you who have not abandoned me (dear readers, dear reader) did not know, I've moved to Auckland, and am now studying at the city's eponymous university. It's great. So far there's five hours of theory a week (three tought, the rest is a discussion group) and there may be more in the works.

I'm working on a trans-tasman semi-aleotory massively excessive (the source-text I've built through processing Home and Away scripts and Abel Tasman's Journals is over 150 pages) work that I'm hoping will be part of the digital bridge being constructed for the Home and Away symposium curated by the NZEPC.

I've also met, for the first time in the real world, Scott Hamilton, Jack Ross, and Tony Green, all of whom are good people (in my estimation at least, for what that's worth).

I've developed an unhealthy infatuation with Antonin Artaud.

Also, Amy King was good enough to send me copies of two of her books (both published by Blazevox), and they're awesome. I highly recomend them to anyone, especially those who like the kind of affect in Lara Glenum, Johannes Göransson, Kate Durbin and Kate Zambreno (And their theoretical work - I'm thinking graphorrhea (there's my Artaud obsession again - he was diognosed with such) , vomit, hysteria, excess of affect, general awesomeness....

Jaques Lacan treated Artuad during his 11 month stay at Sainte-Anne hospital in Paris (one of the five hospitals he was incarcerated in over the 8 year, 8 month period between September 30, 1937 and his release from Rodez in 1945. Artaud described him as a "filthy, vile bastard" (Curtosy of Clayton Eshelman's introduction to Watchfiends and Rackscreams: Works from the Final Period).

Helen Cixious isn't a fan of Lacan either:
"Here we encounter the inevitable man-with-rock, standing erect in his old Freudian realm, in the way that, to take the figure back to the point where linguistics is conceptualizing it "anew," Lacan preserves it in the sanctuary of the phallos (ø) "sheltered" from castration's lack! Their "symbolic" exists, it holds power-we, the sowers of disorder, know it only too well. But we are in no way obliged to deposit our lives in their banks of lack, to consider the constitution of the subject in terms of a drama manglingly restaged, to reinstate again and again the religion of the father. Because we don't want that. We don't fawn around the su- preme hole. We have no womanly reason to pledge allegiance to the negative. The feminine (as the poets suspected) affirms: ". . . And yes," says Molly, carrying Ulysses off beyond any book and toward the new writing; "I said yes, I will Yes."" ("The Laugh of the Medusa").

I saw Kate D. has started a Journal of Gaga Studies. I'm very, very impressed, and will contribute as soon as I am able.

Posts soon: Textual Body Politic: Hysteria, Abjection, Expenditure

Review of Myung Mi Kim's Penury

Review of Bruce Russell's Left Handed Blows: Writing on Sound

Swans: Abjection, Misogyny, Capital

New Action Yes

Here.

There are three poems by me.

Poetry NZ 40

is out now (available here), including my essay "Recent Developments in American Poetry" - covering the Gurlesque and related poetries, Flarf, and Conceptual Writing. Here is the section on Johannes Göransson:

"The phenomenon of grotesquery as a means of questioning gender norms and identity isn’t confined to women. Johannes Göransson is a male poet working in this field. He relies on the Julia Kristeva’s framework of the Abject, which centres on the othering, fracturing, exploding and mutilating the speaker’s body and consciousness through a regime of continual violence and transgression:

My girlfriend is gasping for air; she’s going catatonic
in this bargain bin of a winter, she’s scared of pigeons.
I own a shoddy collection of pigeon skeletons.
I never thought I would be able to fit so many
disparate parts in my mouth at once. (35)
and:
I keep mentioning my torso because I wish I were a zoologist. I wish I were a surgeon. Or Darwin. Or a ballet impresario in Paris. Or a mole in the ground. Or a reptile collector. Or 5000 accidents. Made of Swans. Or Darwin. Or an injury. Or going home in a wheelbarrow. Or moving into the Hotel Fuck. Or bleeding slowly into a silver bucket. Or plundering. Most of all I wish I were Darwin. (17)
Here the text becomes a battleground for competing desires and pulsions, the ‘so many disparate parts’ of language that emanate from the ‘mouth’ compete as vehicles for the assertion and explosion of self. The humanist distinction between human and animal, and the rationalist distinction between subject and object collapse as zoologist and mole become one and the same. Darwin is conjured as the archetypal destroyer of epistemologies and metanarratives (as in his impact on Judaeo-Christian cosmology). In this respect Göransson is a Darwinistic regressor, a user of the name as a vehicle for becoming animal. Being is discarded in favour of movement. The body, both personal and political, becomes the site of conflict and abjection as in the titles of some of the poems in the collection:
‘Shotgun Wedding in the Ribcage of the Bourgeoisie’ (9), ‘Ronald Regan Brought Me to this Country – Me and the Anti-Abortion Movement’ (29), ‘I Write Like a Girl, You Read like You’re in the Closet’ (68).
Such titles appear as interruptions to the flow of a longer poem reading like catch-phrases or shouted announcements as a result of their large, bold typeface, all-caps formatting or pop-up ads announcing what’s coming next on the network."

I'm looking for a flat in Auckland. If you can help, please email me. Any help would be greatly appreciated, and I have a large library if that's any incentive!

I think I'm going to call this piece "Revulsion in Poetic Language".

I find puns too funny for my own good.

RDU show

Here.

First Semester Research Proposal: Ariana Reines

I propose to write on Ariana Reines’ appropriations, weaponisation and redeployment of a hybrid of confessional and language-writing techniques against the semiotic and epistemological constructions of what Mark Fisher calls “Capitalist Realism”; largely dealing with inter-related questions of gender, selfhood, the body and power.

Several things should be noted here. Firstly the political deployment of confessionalism (indeed the politicality of confessionalism itself, a la Plath) is nothing new, and also maintains a strong presence in pop music (and this is often complicated by either anti-realism or anti-naturalism: cf the Smiths, SWANS etc). Like poetry (until recently – though it could be argued that this is discursively still the case) , however, this is largely male-dominated. In this context a discussion of the function of SWANS’ misogyny as means of abjection of the male body, anti-masculinism, and capitalist critique would be pertinent, and the exploitative nature of this. Lydia Lunch would also be a useful touchstone. Secondly the similar treatment of langpo, and subversion of Perloff’s ‘indeterminacy’ and the project’s selfconcious ‘high art’ aspirations (or the academic estalishment’s territorialisation of langpo though interpretation and high art designation). On this point I would like to cite Johannes Göransson on kitch, aestheticism, and the hipster. Also worth mentioning here is the concept of the hybrid (through Göransson review of the recent American Hybrid anthology) and the differnect conceptions of this, and their relation to the political content of the work. I propose a difference between the Grotesque (and politically effective) hybrid and the Hybridization that occurs when the subversive is co-opted by the capitalist machine and rendered impotent (cf New Wave, what has (largely) happened recently with hip hop, ‘alternative rock’ etc).

I would also write on the context and state of the avant-garde impulse/project in this context, and its relationship to both popular and high culture, especially in light of the growing currency of the term ‘post-avant’, and what this means, both in terms of Reines’ work, and the wider poetic community.

The kind of socio-political project Reines pursues is shared by many younger contemporary poets, a large number of whom are active participants in the online poetics community and blogosphere (including Göransson, Lara Glenum and James Pate at Exoskeleton; Nada Gordon, Kate Durbin, Anne Boyer, Kate Zambreno, Danielle Pafunda, Sina Queyras etc), and there is a large network of cultural studies bloggers doing interesting work in aesthetics that is also applicable (Fisher being one, also Dominick Fox (whose Cold World I wish to use as a theoretical text for this essay), and Ben Woodward).

Further writing would be done of the relationship between Reine’s work and the aesthetico-political framwork thus explored and the body (largely feminine). This would involve the intersection of the body and the text, and the violence within, the relationship between violence, sex and childbirth; and the interaction between these, the creative process, and collage. I would also like to look at Reines in Performance, and the way this is linked to the presentation of her books.

Finally I would like to draw conclusions about semiotic warfare.

Kate Zambreno on the "rules of fiction"

"Oh, fuck you Joyce Carol Oates, fuck you and your Marilyn Monroe novel. Seriously, it makes me crazy when mass market authors get so uncomfortable about experimental or postmodern writing, writing that is about ideas, that is wild, political, plays with form,not meant to be consumed in a paperback at an airport bookstore. You know who's on this Guardian list, for the most part? People who write "fiction" who treat it as a "craft" who play cult to the sentence (looking at you, Zadie Smith) and the tired ideas of dead babies."


Also - I'm fling out at 10:30 tomorrow morning!

Wild Boys!

Now that I have your attention, who was it out there who wanted my Raymond Carver?

Leaving Party (of sorts) and other stuff)

As I am flying out for Auckland on next wed (24th), there will be festivities at Goodbye Blue Monday sat (20th) eve, followed by the Tiger Tones (who are leaving too - it's their do I'm highjacking) playing at midnight (i think).

I've got a b-day barbecue in the arvo, but will endeavour to be there 8-9ish.

These organisational skills are why I'm an academic, not an engineer or surgeon.


On another note, I'm on a radio show tomorrow night (all things being equal); The Dark, Camp and evil ATROCITY EXHIBITION, where I'll be poeticising and spinning tracks of wierdness. 1-3am fri morning (or thurs eve if you're anything like me) of RDU98.5.

Lady Gaga, Lady Lazarus

another reading of Bad Romance, to supliment Steve Halle's (link courtesy of Johannes).


This one starts near the end, or my idea of it does, with Gaga in the bedroom with a the guy on the bed, obscured by her advancing, dragging a train of polar bear fir behind her. She disrobes, and fire engulfs the bed (and presumably the guy), then the shot cuts to Gaga in profile, emenating power and glory, her head sillioetted against the rising flames.

My immediate thought:

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

(Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus")

And then a line earlier, which resonates with the posthuman construction that is (my conception of) Gaga:

You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

And Gaga's continual mantra of the competing pultions "I want your love ... I want your revenge" and "I don't want to be friends" ... If i may be permitted to project myself, this is the lack of self - the desire for complete posthuman trancenence of the "I", to become-other, reach out and touch the body without organs. "friends" is not enough, love has to be augmented with "revenge", "ugly", "dis(-)ease" (not that the negative aesthectic is neccessary in this specular world of fashion, striptease, etc - the oversize eyes of Gaga's 'baby' incarnation, the reptilian spine, the masks.... it is the excessive hypersaturation that is neccessary here - the symbolic regime of the Real must fall, and the "I" must be deterritorialized into a specular multiplicity (though that may be the Triazalam speaking - cures for one ailment (insomnia) cause others (hysteria in the writing of critical prose(and paretheses in parentheses in parentheses)))).

And with the continual statement of the specular, there is always the spectacle, and the image, and the concentration on the Gaze. And the Audience. The "peanut crunching crowd". Us.

(I've (still, I think) got an essay I wrote on Plath's LL for a 100 level paper - with a rewrite, I might post it here. What do y'all think?)

The Female Body is a Semiotic War Zone

Australia is insane. Via Boing Boing: "Australian Classification Board (ACB) is now banning depictions of small-breasted women in adult publications and films. They banned mainstream pornography from showing women with A-cup breasts, apparently on the grounds that they encourage paedophilia, and in spite of the fact this is a normal breast size for many adult women. Presumably small breasted women taking photographs of themselves will now be guilty of creating simulated child pornography, to say nothing of the message this sends to women with modestly sized chests or those who favour them."

The fascism of "Normality". This pathologises women for not adhering to 'morally' dictated codes over biology, and what is worse, pathologises both these women and those who love them.

I'm not pro- or anti- porn, as I don't have a strong understanding of the theoretical discourse surrounding it (and it tends to be mechanical to the point of farce), but this imposes even more stringency from the signifying regime that already governs value imposed on the female form from outside.

Late Resolutions / Aspirations or somesuch

In addition to my earlier post on awesome books people should buy, trade or at least read, I was thinking about stuff I'd like to write on. Reviewing Square Root was a great experience (I'd love to write more on the vehicle for the text as part of the text - because it is), and I'd love the opportunity to write more on vispo, as well as sound work, fringe/fluxus publications and basically anything that doesn't get the attention/respect it deserves (I'm thinking respect might be the wrong word there).

As with the Beaulieu, so with the Russell essay collection (review coming)- I want more theory books. I want to review stuff that will cha(lle)nge my thinking while i am thinking about it - dialogic criticism.

And, as many while by now know, I'm a pop-culture fiend. There may be posts coming on stupid big-budget horror films, sci-fi, hip hop and the like.

I want dialogue as well. Chip in. And if you know anyone who is publishing any of the stuff I've mentioned, email me, or get them to.


Unrelated note - who was it out there who wanted my Carver books? 'cause they're yours if you want them.

Poem at Flowers of Sulphur

I've found a lot of work scribbled on pieces of paper while cleaning / packing for the move.

I'm not sure what to do with them.

Some I'll stick over at FoS, the first is there now.

Recent Books I Love.

I didn't do a "best of 2009" or any such thing, so here's something informal.
I love all these books massively, and highly recommend them to anyone.

Alan Loney - Day's Eye (Rubicon Press)
Susana Gardner - [Lapsed Insel Weary] (the tangent press)
Sandy Florian - The Tree of No (Action Books)
Brandon Downing - Lake Antiquity (Fence Books)
Myung Mi Kim - Penury (Omnidawn)
Bruce Russell - Left Handed Blows: Writing on Sound (Clouds)
Michael Steven - Bartering Lines (Kilmog Press)
Joyelle McSweeney - Nylund the Sarcographer (Tarpaulin Sky)
Lara Glenum - Maximum Gaga (Action Books)

I am currently reading, and loving, The Plot Genie by By Gillian Conoley (Omnidawn) and The Black Automaton by Douglas Kearney (Fence). Both are awesome.

Visual Works by John Wiese at Spratt's Medium

Need I say more?

Check them out.

Derek Beaulieu Review at Tarpaulin Sky

My review of √¯¯¯ is up now. It's shorter than normal, but I'm in the process of moving, so please forgive me.

Have a look.

More soon.

I'm moving to Auckland on the 24th!

"Last night I was thinking about [Lady Gaga]'s sexuality, and the relation of that to discources on evolutionary biology (God I can't believe how ridiculous that sounds, especially if taken out of context), such as Dawkins' dogma of the selfish gene, and how she destroys that (though not only her) - Fame is fetishised and sexualised (and sex is as well), but as means of self-erasure..."

[me in the comment stream over at Kate Durbin's blog. I'm quite proud]

Kate Durbin at Delerious Hem

Delerious Hem once again has it's "this is what a feminist [poet] looks like" forum up and running. Kate Durbin's contribution is especially good. "It is kind of this post-femme-something vomit of the medusa" (Kate Zambreno); "[she] brings in Plath and why she has to be dismissed: she is not disinterested enough. This is also related to why kitsch has to be dismissed: it is everywhere" (Johannes Göransson).

"Say melodrama is the gaudy arena in which teenage girls perform their angst—often in the garb of flamboyant (“aggressive”) and/or over-revealing fashions, and histrionic poetry—which is dismissed by society and the church, including, as these girls turn into women, the church of the academy. However, like Plath’s much-maligned insistences that her despair was on par with the Holocaust, melodrama is the teenage girl’s sadness on steroids.

Say nothing is more melodramatic—and pisses off Mom and Dad more—than claiming to be possessed by the Devil himself.

WHISPER: And the Ouija spells: A T T E N T I O N (Is not all feminist writing some form of noisy attention?)

Say, like the demon, the teenage girl’s body is unearned—and therefore claimed by everyone around her. Stigmata, lipstick mark of Cain’s slutty girlfriend, branded by parents, the government, Urban Outfitters and Teen Vogue. Is there any wonder that her body must turn itself inside out, must vomit upon the world in revolt?"

OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS: TARPAULIN SKY LITERARY JOURNAL (February only)

OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS: TARPAULIN SKY LITERARY JOURNAL

Hola and howdy, readers and friends,

During the month of February we will be reading submissions for the next paper edition of Tarpaulin Sky. We hope you'll give it a go, and send your best, as this is the only submission period for the magazine this year.

We're trying something new, too--well, new to us--the online submission manager. So you'll be able to keep tabs on the status of your submission throughout the process.

Also new this year are many of the journal's editors: Blake Butler and Joanna Howard editing Fiction; Laynie Browne and Karla Kelsey editing Poetry; and Sandy Florian and Lily Hoang editing "Other"; presided over by Editor in Chief Colie Collen, with all submissions shepherded through the process by Associate Editors Duncan B. Barlow, Jamey Dunham, and Christine Wertheim, as well as Assistant Editors Michael Tod Edgerton and Brian Mihok.

Please visit our guidelines for all the deets.

SEE YOU AT AWP DENVER?

We hope so. TSky authors and editors will be reading from new books and selling them as well, and we'll be joining our favorite presses for various kickass events: readings with Action Books, Apostrophe Books, Astrophil Press, Black Ocean, Featherproof Books, and Slope Editions, just to name a few. Events Coordinators Michelle Puckett and Megan DiBello invite you to keep on top of our events blog for forthcoming details.

IS YOUR BOOKSHELF NOT SO FRESH?

We can fix that. Subscriptions to Tarpaulin Sky Press's forthcoming Spring titles are still available--as are huge savings on forthcoming titles. If you're looking for some of the most exciting literature being published today, you may want to have a look at our catalog, or take a look at some of our forthcoming Spring 2010 titles: Traci O Connor's Recipes for Endangered Species, a book of short fictions that Brian Evenson calls "a marvelous debut. . . . moving fast enough that you could end up anywhere, Connor’s thought about every single word, every gesture, and she can turn each story on a dime" or Kim Gek Lin Short's The Bugging Watch & Other Exhibits, book of interlocking short fictions / prose poems that Joyelle McSweeney deems "twisted," and Norma Cole calls "Irresistible.... with its incantations of quantum teleology, its footnotes & sources.... it is a magnificent work." Also on the way, Joanna Ruocco's book of short fictions, Man's Companions; Shelly Taylor's book of interlocking short fictions / prose poems, Black-Eyed Heifer; and Emily Toder's poetry chapbook, Brushes With.

& Let us not forget the three chapbooks we just picked from the last reading period: Lara Glenum's The Hotling Chronicles: A Horror in Trans; Sarah Goldstein's Fables; and James Haug's Scratch. Plus forthcoming full-lengths-with-really-long-titles, Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them, and Johannes Göransson's Entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate

LOOKING TO SCORE FREE BOOKs?

We can help. We have Advanced Reader Copies of all Tarpaulin Sky Press's Spring full-length titles, and we have hundreds of review copies from other publishers, from Ahsahta to Vagabond. Want to review a brand new title from Fence Books? We got 'em. Burning Deck, City Lights, Dalkey Archive, FC2, Graywolf, Salt, Sarabande, Shearsman, Ugly Duckling? No problem. Or how about Counterpath, Dusie, Ellipsis Press, Essay Press, Subito? Or Canada's positively stellar BookThug?

Our Reviews Editors Ross Brighton and Jared Schickling read review and interview submissions all year long. Writers whose work is accepted for publication receive any two Tarpaulin Sky Press trade paperbacks of their choice. Send a brief cover letter and your previously unpublished review to reviews[AT]tarpaulinsky[DOT]com, and be sure to include "Attn: Review Editors" in the subject line. Click here for a list of review copies currently available. Publishers may send review copies to Book Reviews ~ Tarpaulin Sky Press ~ PO Box 189 ~ Grafton, VT 05146

Write some reviews, yo. Get paid. In books.

GOT SOME NEWS TO SHARE YOURDARNSELF?

If you have something to say about a new journal, new book, new press, new reading series; and if said newness will be of interest to the people who read TSky Press's books or journal, or--better yet!--includes TSky Press authors or journal contributors; and if you'd like to share this newness and can do so in a way that includes some chewy content and few superlatives, then please send your brief shoutout, sidebar, or feature article to our News Editor Amish Trivedi at news[AT]tarpaulinsky[DOT]com

OKEEDOKEE

We're probably forgetting as much as we're including, but we hope you'll forgive us.

Send some work!

Cheers,

Christian Peet, Publisher
Colie Collen, Editor in Chief
& Editors, Tarpaulin Sky Press

Catalyst Open Mic

Catalyst's Poetry Open Mic Nights are returning in February 2010.

The first one is a little unusual with a slightly different date - for this month only we'll be on the first Thursday of the month (normally it's Wednesday). That means the date and details are as follows:

First Catalyst Open Mic for 2010
Thursday 4th February, 8pm entry is free
Al's Bar, 31 Dundas St Christchurch (behind Pak n' Save Moorhouse)

I'll try and make it this time, I've been slack/busy as all hell. And it'll be my last, as late feb it's Auckland bound for me!

Otoliths 16

Thanks to Mark Young:

planetX
Carlyle Baker


Otoliths rounds out its fourth year with another issue that maintains the journal's reputation for excellent offerings across a variety of disciplines & styles. Included in issue sixteen, the southern summer 2010 issue, is work from Thomas Fink, Satu Kaikkonen, Nate Pritts, Jane A. Lewty, Craig Foltz, Michael Basinski, Stephen C. Middleton, Márton Koppány, Arpine Konyalian Grenier, Raymond Farr, Jeff Crouch & Sheila E. Murphy, Joel Chace, Caleb Puckett, Philip Byron Oakes, Ed Baker, Tom Beckett interviewing William Allegrezza, William Allegrezza, dan raphael, Alyson Torns, Jeff Harrison, Grzegorz Wróblewski, Michele Leggott, PD Mallamo, Ray Craig, Mark Cunningham, Cecelia Chapman, David-Baptiste Chirot, Vernon Frazer, Helen White & Jeff Crouch, James Yeary, Robert Lee Brewer, Michael Brandonisio, J. D. Nelson, Scott Metz, Geof Huth, Corey Wakeling, John M. Bennett & Thomas M. Cassidy, Sheila E. Murphy & John M. Bennett, John M. Bennett, Rebecca Mertz, Felino Soriano, Cath Vidler, David Wolach, Carlyle Baker, Stu Hatton, Jenny Enochsson, Robert Gauldie, Rebecca Eddy, Joe Balaz, Bobbi Lurie, Andrew Topel & Márton Koppány, Hugh Tribbey, John Martone, J. Gordon Faylor, Evan Harrison, A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz, Bob Heman, Guillermo Castro, & sean burn.

maybe stupid and unrelated to anything

(curtsey of Reynard in the comment stream at HTMLGIANT)

Literal answers to rhetorical questions.

I also apreciate that this is hosted by a university.

A Collection of Essay's by Bruce Russell

Bruce Russell launched his book Left Handed Blows: Writing on Sound 1993-2009 tonight. It's really, really good - and not just in terms of sound, but culture in general; production, resistance, the possibility of radical action; the understanding of one's position within a semantic economy. There's a lot of material in there that is going to be very helpful to me - I'm writing on improvisation and text at the moment, and one of my intentions (they are various....) is to look more at artistic economies as wholes - media-centred distinctions are counter-productive (as Bruce states in the introduction to the show Towards a Cinema of Pure Means currently at the Physics Room gallery).

I've got a review copy - so a write-up is impending. I highly reccomend it - and anyone who is not familliar with Bruce's work should look into it - here's his Wikipedia page.

I was invited to join Flowers of Sulphur a while back. It's a poetry blog. I felt a bit bad as I hadn't got around to putting anything up there, but now I have. Check it out if you want.

(it's an endless sense of amusement for me that the spellcheck in blogger tries to correct "blog". and "blogger" for that matter.)

k-punk: Spectres of revolution

Great follow-up to the last k-punk link I posted.

"The terrain - the crashed present, littered with the ideological rubble of failed projects - is there to be fought over. And I believe that it can be seized by those who have been most deeply cooked in neo-liberalism and post-Fordism, not the French immobilisers, the nostaglic 68ers, the hay bale agragrians, or anyone else resigned to playing Canute to the rising tide of Capital. We can only win if we reclaim modernization."

Also: Records for Sale/Trade

Here:
The Creatures. Boomerang LP. VG+. Wild Things 2x7” VG. Miss the Girl 7”. G.

Siouxie and the Banshees. Tinderbox LP.G.

Dali’s Car. The Waking Hour Gatefold LP G+.

Peter Murphy. Deep LP VG. Cuts You Up 12’ VG. Holy Smoke LP VG. Should the World Fail to Fall Apart LP. Sleeve worn.

Einsturzende Neubauten. Haus der Leuge LP. Reissue. EX.

Sex Gang Chldren. Song and Legend LP. VG. Sebastiane 12”, sleeve v. Worn, record fine.

David J. Joe Orton’s Wedding 12”. VG.
Christian Death. The Only Theatre of Pain LP. Reissue. VG.

Tones on Tail. Pop LP. G-VG. There’s Only One! 12”. VG.

The Young Gods. L’Eau Rouge LP. VG.

The March Violets. Natural History LP. VG.

Fields of the Nephilim. Elysium LP. VG. Earth Inferno LP. VG. Fallen LP EX. From the Fire 10’. EX. One More Nightmare/Darkcell AD 10” EX. Psychonaut 12”. VG. Moonchild 7”.

Crypt of Kerberos Cyclone of Insanity 7”

These if someone makes a good enough offer:

The Nefilim Zoon 2xLP, with engraved disc VG+. Penetration 12”.

The Leather Nun Primemover 7”

Books for sale or trade.

As my moving to Auckland grows ever closer, I'm cleaning out. The amount of stuff I have to do, and stuff I've accrued, is scary. As such here is a preliminary list of books I have to get rid of. Please enquire for better grading of condition, or if you want anything. Make an offer. I've also still got copies of my chapbook.

Without any further ado:

Aeschylus. Oresteia. PB, good.

Baxter, James K. The Labyrinth. HB, 1st, DJ Sunned and chipped, otherwise fine.
__________. Ode To Auckland and other Poems. 3rd printing. Stain to back cover.

Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Hights. Small HB, w DJ, good.

Brown, David Lyndon. Skin Hunger. PB, VG+.

Carver, Raymond. Catherdal, Elephant, What we talk about when we talk about love, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?. Vintage PBs. VG+.

______________. All of Us: The Collected Poems. PB, VG+.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness and other Stories. PB, VG

Danielewski, Mark Z. House of Leaves. PB, VG.

__________, Only Revolutions HB, 1^st (upteenth printing) EX.

DeLillo, Don. White Noise. PB, good.

Di Prima, Diane (trans). Seven Love Poems from the Middle Latin. Chapbook by the Poets Press. Stapled binding, spine worn.

Doctorow, EL. The Waterworks. 1^st Australian. Ex Libris. HB, w DJ. Good reading copy.

___________. Ragtime. Book Club ed. HB, WJ. Good cond.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. HB, binding loose.

Drumheller, Doc and Fox, Ciaran (eds). Catalyst 6. PB VG+

Eliot, TS. Collected Poems. HB, w DJ, EX.

Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. PB, worn.

Fitzgerald, F Scott. The Great Gatsby. PB, VG+.

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Mass market pb. Good reading copy.

Hall, Bernadette. Heartwood. PB, Good.

Heinlein. Robert A. Starship Troopers. PB. Worn, spine damaged.

Homer, The Iliad and the Odyssey. Trans. Chapman. PB, Good.

Hulme, Keri. The Bone People. PB, good cond. Winner of the Booker Prize.

Ihimaera, Witi (ed). Where’s Waari? Collection of fiction dealing with Maori identity. PB, VG+.

Joyce, James. Dubliners. PB, Good.

_________. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. PB, worn.

Kafka, Franz. The Trial. One of those fake leather fancy binding edition things. HB. Good.

Kramer, Samuel Noah. Sumerian Mythology. PB, Good.

LeBas, Jessica. Incognito. AUP, poetry, VG.

Lee, Corrine. Pyx. PB, Spine damaged.

Levertov, Denise. With Eyes at the Back of our Heads. PB, worn.

Martel, Yann. The Life of Pi. PB, good.

Maupassant, Guy de. Short Stories. PB, good.

McQeen, Cilla. Wild Sweets. PB, G.

___________. Soundings. PB, G.

Morrisey, Michael (ed). The Flamingo Anthology of New Zealand Short Stories. PB, VG.

Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. HB Lib binding. Fair.

Plato. The Republic. One of those fake leather fancy binding edition things. HB. Good.

Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. PB, good.

______________. Gravity’s Rainbow. PB. Good

_____________. V. PB, worn.

Sims, Laura. Stranger. Fence. As New (double up!).

Smith, Zadie. White Teeth. PB. Good reading copy.

Stein, Gurtrude. Selected Writings, ed. Carl van Vechten. PB, Good.

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. One of those fake leather fancy binding edition things. HB. Good.

Swenson, May. Love Poems. PB, Good, a bit rough.

Swift, Jonathan. Gullivers Travels. Small HB, good.

Taylor, Apirana. Soft Leaf Falls of Moon. PB, VG+

Tolkien, JRR. The Lord of the Rings. PB set in box. A bit battered, tear to edge of box.

__________. The Hobbit. HB, ex libris, no jacket. A bit bumped.

__________. The Silmililion. PB. Good.

Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. PB, VG+.

Undset, Sigrid. Kristin Lavransatter. PB, worn.

Virgil. The Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid. Trans. C Day Lewis. PB, worn.

Weaver, Donna Karen (ed). Caketrain 2 Fall/winter 2004. Good.

Wedde, Ian. Earthly: Sonnets for Carlos. 1st, v. scarce. VG+.

Graham Lambkin on A Journey Round My Skull

Three Posts, with art. 1, 2, 3.

Graham Lambkin is a multi-instrumentalist, artist and author. He fronted the wonderful and enigmatic Shadow Ring, of which a retrospective is now available. Follow the links, and get me one while you're at it.

More great things

This time by Kate Zambreno over at the new and fantastic Frances Farmer is my Sister. Title: "Tis Pity She's A Whore: The Prostitute in Henry Miller & Sade + Best Cinematic Hookers".

Very good writing (good? that's too moral. this is destructive. Evil. Which is better. I want to cut through things.)

Kate Durbin is right in her link to Johannes' article that I also link to in the previous post:

"I think I've mentioned this on my blog before, but Exoskeleton has by far been my favorite poetry blog since I discovered it last Spring (though Frances Farmer is climbing up there too..."

Johannes Göransson: Fasion, poetics, narrative and the politicality of aestheticism

Fantastic piece, as always. Johannes is fast becoming one of my favorite critics/theorists - in the "hip" and "inauthentic" world of the blogosphere. To poetry what Mark Fisher, Dominic Fox and Ben Woodward are to music. Excerpts:

"But I'm more interested - as everyone who reads this blog knows by now - in the use of fashion in this rhetoric, to suggest that there's a superficiality in poetry. This came out - as readers of this blog also knows - when Mark Halliday freaked out over Josh Clover's "lettrist jacket." Halliday was upset that Clover's poetry was not engaged in the real/genuine. Grieving one's father's death I think was Halliday's example. Or maybe that was my own wishful thinking because that's too perfect: "fashion" is the death of the father in some way, the end of patriarchy comes from multiplication, exchangeability, shallowness, flimsiness. That is a funny reading of Halliday. I'm pleased as pancakes."

***

"It seems Aesteticism is threatening. And this should explain why people are wrong when they assume aesteticism is apolitical. Or those who equate it with mere formalism."



Enough of that - read it.

At High Street Project

Two Events.

the first:
TAKEAWAYS

Various Artists
22 January - 13 February
Opening Reception: Friday 22 January, 6pm.

The Second:

Velvet Hour, Slit The Throat Of The Assistant,
IRD, Jack Hooker


















23 January, 9pm
84 Lichfield Street
Entry By Donation.

I'm contributing some visual works to TAKAWAYS.
Scans follow.

Also: Johannes Göransson on Aase Berg's Forsla Fett as Minor Literature

I'm annoyed I didn't see this post when it went up - Minor Literature is something I'm very interested in - and "Transfer Fat" (as the title reads in English) is (along with "With Deer") one of my favorite of Berg's collections. I can't wait for a complete English translation (there are selections in Remainland, which is available from action books).

bpNichol's Snore Comix 2

Thanks to Lanny for the link:

Full pdf of bp nichol's snore comix 2

My review of Stranger by Laura Sims is up now on the Tarpaulin Sky reviews blog.



It's a fantastic boook - if you want a copy you can buy it from Fence, or SPD, or other places too.



derik beaulieu review up soon, followed by Catherine Meng, and the latest Myung Mi Kim.

New at Spratt's Medium

Jared has just posted some new vispo by derek beaulieu.

New writing by me soon - including a review of beulieu's chapbook √¯¯, published by Default for the Dusie Collective year 3.