The Other Room

The Other Room 3rd birthday & launch of The Other Room Anthology 3; would love to see you there. 6th April 2011, The Old Abbey Inn, Manchester, M15 6AY, FREE entry Ken Edwards, Carrie Etter, Alec Finlay & Derek Henderson (live stream) Ken Edwards is the editor and publisher of Reality Street. He has had numerous books and pamphlets published including: Good Science: Poems 1983-1991 (Roof Books, NY, 1992), No Public Language: Selected Poems 1975-1995 (Shearsman Books, 2006), Songbook (Shearsman, 2009). Carrie Etter is an American poet based in the UK. Her first collection, The Tethers, was published by Seren Books in June 2009 and in 2011 Divining for Starters was published by Shearsman. She is the editor of the important Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets and is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing for Bath Spa University. Alec Finlay is an artist, poet & publisher. Born in Scotland in 1966, he now lives in the North-East of England. He is author of countless collections of poetry and has had exhibitions in a wide range of venues including The BALTIC, The Yorkshire Sculpture Park and most recently at Leeds Art Gallery as part of The Northern Art Prize. His publishing includes the pocketbooks series, platform projects, bookscapes, morning star and web-books. More at www.alecfinlay.com Derek Henderson is alive and well in Salt Lake City. He is co-author, with Derek Pollard, of Inconsequentia (BlazeVox). An erasure of Ted Berrigan’s sonnets, Thus &, is out now from if p then q. www.otherroom.org

50 Heads Revealed

I thought that this would just be a blog that pointed to Phil Davenport's review of my book of 2006 50 Heads,
http://intercapillaryspace.blogspot.com/2011/03/never-to-have-compromised-with.html
which I would illustrate with an image from the installation of one of my texts at the Dubai Drawingspace (above). At the last minute, I thought of adding one of my favourite 50 Heads poems; then came the surprise. On opening the folder, I uncovered maybe another 8 'Heads' poems that I decided not to include because the structural mathematics of the whole only required 49. I had completely forgotten these existed - as my dad jokes the upside of Alzheimer's is you are always making new friends. So here is a new Head:

Distance
0. How long ago it was. Closeness is measured by how many
fluents change. The place and the placing matter little and for
clarity, for order, for certainty. When sweat can move you
through the air, stochastic on the way, the heresy lays inside
dedication to the vertical axis – instructions for measuring
some significant item symbolising pry loose separation.
Counterintuitive, a day alone through the eyes of people not
here. Their demand that maps serve as aids for accurate
travel is fairly recent, the geometry of in-between precision is
less important than connection. Like the space, is there one
thing? Renormalisation avoids these infinities, steel glass,
music of voices extended to their Hill sphere, sanitary in a
good way, sterile in a good way, implying in a good way
infinities that interchange this/that/them/there/not here.
You never lose the accent, whereas formulas that are 'true'
blanket intuition, authentic to its provenance. Rejecting nature,
the theory cannot prove its own consistency, upward,
concrete editing of the gaps in between the geometry
of scaffolding,ephemeral, celebrating construction and noise:
A plea to somewhere else plus: 1

Designing the Text Festival exhibitions

The festival exhibitions are rapidly taking shape!

Copenhagen

Although Copenhagen was a short holiday, I managed to take in some exhibitions. All three of the spaces I saw were worth the visit just for the spaces themselves. The most enjoyable was Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, a delightful architectural experience, really impressive Eypgtian and Roman collections and beautifully curated.
http://traveldk.com/copenhagen/dk/highlight/ny-carlsberg-glyptotek
The only irritant in the visit was a rather clumsy pink plastic interpretation/response to some of the Roman sculpture by Louise Bourgeois called “Nature Study”. Oddly when I look at a photo of it now http://www.flickr.com/photos/15434282@N00/4927611588/ I quite like it, but in the context of the brilliant set piece curating of the Roman gallery it inhabited it was annoying in its location. Bourgeois wasn’t so impressive either at Kunstforeningen GL Strand, Copenhagen. Given my previously expressed complete disinterest in anything to do with children and distaste at the desperate romanticism attached to pregnancy, a show of endless paintings of pink bellies, lactating breasts and baby shapes, it is difficult to imagine a show which I would find less interesting.
Also at Kunstforeningen GL Strand, Copenhagen was “Wax – Sensation in Sculpture”;

http://www.glstrand.dk/English/udstillinger_aktuel.htm it featured people you’d expect in a survey of contemporary wax sculpture, Maurizio Cattelan, Elmgreen and Dragset, Robert Gober, Gavin Turk, etc., but it was also a vaguely disappointing show. The work itself was nicely shown in good spaces – maybe it was the wax pretext itself which proved a little thin.

The last show I saw was Gil & Moti: Totally Devoted to You at Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen http://www.kunsthallennikolaj.dk/en/ Nikolaj Kunsthal is an old church converted to an arts centre. Gil &
Moti had installed a series of documentation style installations from recent projects. Such as the record of their wedding and honeymoon in Rotterdam complete with the honeymoon bed; a project opening pen-pal relationships with gay arabs documented with the letters and watercolour portraits of these friends; a project where they set out to help Muslim immigrants establish themselves in their new lives. The totality of the show was an intensely positive affirmation of humanity.

I only slotted in one meeting while in the city, that was with Malmo-based dancer/choreographer khamlane halsackda, discussing possible projects.
http://www.khamlanehalsackda.com/#/photos/4539419260

But never mind the art, Copenhagen is a great city – if you visit also go to Ruby http://www.worldsbestbars.com/city/copenhagen/ruby.htm