You Must Write As If Your Life Depended On It

Request for Help in Updating modernpoetry.org.uk

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Sun, 04 Mar 2018 14:18:00 +0000

I have finally made some progress in my plan to make www.modernpoetry.org.uk more current. Initial work has been done on the list of Links to British Innovative Poetry Sites. I have completely updated “Resources, lists and other foci of information”, “Online magazines, magazines online, e-publishers and other assemblages of writing” & “Writers' homepages, blogs etc”. If anyone is willing to cast an eye and make suggestions over this, I will message, email or otherwise send a copy. This really needs to be a collaborative exercise. There is a vast amount more now going on than there was at the beginning of the decade, far more than one old bloke living outside London can grasp. I’d also appreciate people emphasising which websites they feel are really useful, important amazing or just bloody good in their own way.

I’m conscious of a real wave of activity by younger poets, often performance-based. (Sharp intakes of breath I can hear). A lot that is really exciting is happening with a rebirth of this performed poetry, I hope resting it away from the sterility of Slam into more innovative forms. Stuff that’s non-normative. And too of blends of poetry with art activities as performance or indeed artefacts/processes involving language. All good – potentially another great explosion of poetic genetic variety. This is bursting out now, and will change things. So it’s a good point to try and sum up this scene before it mutates and grows into something maybe quite different. Tragic if it doesn’t.

So if you want to assist in drawing up a mapping of the present state of British Innovative Poetry to update modernpoetry.org.uk – let me know by whatever means, and I’ll involve you. I do need assistance, will ensure it is credited, indeed may well pass on the website to anyone who wants it after this project is completed.

Amos Weisz, Worksongs

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 09:43:00 +0000

To announce the forthcoming event publicising Amos Weisz’s posthumous selected poems, Worksongs. There’s an event at i'klectik near Waterloo on November 4 as a launch. Great Works has just been refreshed, with the translations and original work by him published on it foregrounded. More of his poems will follow on a weekly basis until the launch event, and the book will be available from Great Works shortly. You are unlikely to know Amos Weisz’s work – he had a small self-published booklet, and these texts on Great Works. I’ll put up an Amos Weisz Facebook page shortly, do an event page for the reading etc, with more of his writing on Great Works.

It is a serious poetry, written through his life, and with engagement with a range of contemporaries and other influences. It also is situated in Amos's own psychological space, one of woundedness and extremes, in which a birthright is fought with and fought over. It is never easy or something as stupid as seductive, but can switch from the finest gallows humour to disgust and abjection in an instant. The verbal creativity and level of semantic activity is constantly astonishing.

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 12:30:00 +0000

Well, hoopsy-doopsy-dooh, and here we are. Who'd have believed it? Great Works slowly lumbering to its feet again. This blog making utterance after such long silence its jaws have nearly fused together. Rumours posted of a Great Works Editions book to come, even if it's only of old Philpott's lucubrations. This shall carry on!

Addition to Great Works

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 11:01:00 +0000

I have returned the poems of mine previously on the site, with improved coding where necessary. I have also added a page explaining and linking to the complete set of texts that compose "In the Dirt of the Post-Lyric: A Collaborative Cycle by Robert Blake, Connie Beauchamp, Gerri Dixon, Simon Gregory, Mark Hall, Erwin Hass, Tina Hyett, Emma Liukunas, Mikaela Moriarty, Peter Philpott, Bradley Tabor & Spencer Termott", a curious piece of work I think you may find.

OK, so what is happening with modernpoetry.org.uk then?

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:25:00 +0000

1. The Meeting

For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
'Tell them I came, and no one answer'd,
'That I kept my word,' he said.
I suspected it might come to that: leaving me curiously light-hearted, after a quiet and nostalgic afternoon in Cafe Oto. I can do as I wish as it were. So, when not looking after Ianthe, recovering from looking after Ianthe, assisting in looking after Ianthe, and other things on occasion too, a small step into the 21st Century (not the Century of the Internet, but more likely of the Mobile or the Handheld Device (sounds like a dildo, but there we are, that's progress for you), plus some further plans

2. Poetry Readings in London Now Mobile

I've just created a mobile-friendly version of the Readings in London webpage, with the next month's readings, with details stripped down, but all links and crucial stuff like time, place, cost, names still there. It should be readable on any phone able to access the internet. Try it at www.modernpoetry.org.uk/mobilepoetry.html. I've altered the title of the page to Poetry Readings in London: nothing else entitled that, so we'll claim it.

I would really like as much feedback as possible from anyone who uses the page on a mobile or PDA. I'd also be interested in anyone accessing the more web-oriented Poetry Readings in London webpage, which I think ought to be quite usable on many tablet devices, maybe larger PDAs. Both versions have a link for phone numbers, tho' obviously that ain't going to work on anything without a SIM.

I've thought of trying to turn the page into a self-contained App - that seems beyond me at present I'm afraid, and might well need more complicated updating than the present webpages. We'll see. I need to buy the Golden Wonder Book of Easy Web Applications and carefully read it.

But please do respond if you use the pages on anything smaller than a laptop, especially a phone. I fantasise it could even be useful to check locations etc, and to have access to What's On whenever & wherever.

3. And Beyond?

After I've replaced my work on Great Works, with a complete text of In the Dirt, using a different host for the pages than previous - get some lists. I'll ask, initially those who have expressed interest in the MPorgUKCollective , to send in a list of bestest books etc in last so many years, and publish 'em. Await news!

Then, late summer redo & update links. I shall request suggestions & corrections.

What Is To Be Done with modernpoetry.org.uk

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 17:28:00 +0000

I have been assured by a number of people how very useful they find Great Works and modernpoetry.org.uk in their own exploration of Contemporary British Innovative Poetry, or in helping others explore the terrain. Well, good. That’s what I want. Now, I have lain Great Works into a quite quiet state for the present (however long that may be); but I would like if possible to further develop modernpoetry.org.uk (MP for short), and make it more useful. And I feel this will need to be a collective effort.

MP is a compendious resource for anyone wanting to understand Contemporary British Innovative Poetry (just poetry after this – you know what I mean and what I don’t). The site concentrates on online resources as these are universally accessible, and it is itself a website (duh!) It isn’t an academic resource (though if it is useful, excellent), so I underplay the academic contexts for much poetry. I have moreover some reservations about the recent increasing importance for supporting poetry of the academic world (on a level of principles and strategy, not the individuals concerned). I aim always at a model user of the site who isn’t in close contact with academic institutions and resources. That strikes me as important. It may well become more important as the current regime’s HE policy increasingly cuts in and the English Higher education system is lopped down to fit their nightmare visions.

Another important element in the site that I want to ensure is its broad church interpretation of poetry. I’m happy with any and all offspring (legitimate or not, adopted, or even just abducted) of the British Poetry Revival and its antecedent 1950s modernists. And their offspring etc etc. We are all sealed of the one tribe, so far as I am concerned. Anything between highly informed and cute as lace pants takes on the post-avant and a Writing Degree Zero basal modernism I’ll accept. Anything to avoid narrow and negative definitions that exclude what may have some promise, power or interest, and could possibly contribute to as varied as possible gene-pool for poetry. (Hybrid vigour beats specialised adaptation every time in my book of biological metaphors.)

Now to the nub. The site gets bigger and bigger. The volume of worthwhile poetry is ever-increasing at an even faster rate. (Hurray!) My time and energy are, though, unfortunately being taken up by other things in ways I hadn’t fully prepared for, apart from I’m just feeling fed up after ten years heavily devoted to doing websites. I think, more importantly, that if MP is to carry on effectively, it needs to be a more collective, less personal enterprise. Not just my take and presentation, but something better.

What, in my opinion, the site needs is a wider range of input for continuingly useful links and lists, a wider and more informed input on books etc, and indeed consideration of what other sorts of material could be included on MP, eg should there be more details on individual poets? more lists of publications?? I have I am well aware a total blind spot on online video material, and am not very interested in audio for that matter – pure text or pure performance are what engage me, not mediated versions – and am well aware that this limits what I draw attention to or can usefully comment on, in a way that excludes many internet users. The site would also benefit from a considered use of social networking and mobile phone technologies – would these be of any use in reaching its audience and how? And should there, could there, be reviews? Lists of books published? And is it all too London-centred? Is MP keeping up with what is really happening? Is it actually compelling and attractive enough (sufficiently “sticky” as a site, as it used to be said) for its target audience? I am undoubtedly way too old to do this as well, and there may well be too much now purely historical material. So, how then to include you, dear reader?

I propose to set up a Modernpoetry.org.uk Collective, for both users and those willing contribute material and ideas or help in production. I see this existing on several layers of contact and commitment:

Actual face-to-face contact – meeting every two months, say, (initially, inevitably, in London). Turn up and contribute. We’ll vary the times and locales; but let’s start with my beloved Café Oto in Dalston (April 3 – details at end). Anywhere else with space, good ambience and wifi would be equally suitable, but let’s start here.
The inevitable Facebook Group. It is a nice open format, so let’s use it. Already set up as Modernpoetry.org.uk Collective.
But not everyone loves the time- & privacy-consuming monster. There is also now a modernpoetry.org.uk blog, at http://modernpoetryorguk.blogspot.com. If you want to post rather than comment, email me on peter@greatworks.org.uk or Facebook, and I’ll formalise the permission. Comment is open, and I will put up if requested email or postal contributions, and will endeavour to coordinate material with that on the Facebook Group page. Please use either of these for suggestions, contributions, comments etc

Let’s see then how this all pans out. At the very least, feedback will be obtained. I hope people willing and able to contribute, in whatever way, will be able to do so, and roles will be defined as they develop. I suspect it’ll be up to me to conduct the orchestra for a while – but ideally a spontaneous and confident collective improvisation can replace that metaphor by one more appropriate to our poetry.

Two technical points to end with. I have altered the copyright on most of the pages on the site (excepting the autobiographical material) to a Creative Commons License, meaning, to quote the Creative Common website (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ – altered punctuation etc), “You are free to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work – and to Remix –to adapt the work – under the following conditions: Attribution – You must attribute modernpoetry.org.uk to Peter Philpott (with link) –; Noncommercial – You may not use this work for commercial purposes –; Share Alike – If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.” So, really, feel free to go ahead and reuse and remake anything from it.

Second point is to note that MP has been produced by me coded in not totally kosher Transitional XHTML, with the aid of Dreamweaver. This is technology I am reasonably confident with. It is a rather dated and unprofessional approach nowadays. Suggestions and assistance to make things easier to add and update, and also to give less of an amateur hobbyist visual style would be also greatly appreciated. Personally, I find a lot of cute and cool design gets in the way of legibility and clarity. On the other hand MP’s style may repulse or bore its would-be audience. MP’s availability for a range of platforms also needs to be considered, as it looks as though smartphones, e-readers and tablet computers are all now entering the electronic data ecosystem, and may well need to be catered for if the site is not to become obsolete. Informed input on these issues would be appreciated.

Details of Open Planning Meeting at Café Oto, 3.00-5.30ish (no music there that night so might be able to stay a little later), Sunday April 3. (Yes, other meetings will need to be in the evening, in the week, I know.) Address is 18-22 Ashwin St, Dalston, London E8 3DL, tucked in behind at Dalston Junction (where the Balls Pond Road/Dalston Lane crosses the Kingsland Road, immediately on the North-East quadrant). Transport really is easy: regular buses from Liverpool St Station (242 & 149), the West End, Waterloo (76), London Bridge (149). Two Overland stations a step away: Dalston Junction interconnecting with Underground at Whitechapel and Highbury & Islington, Dalston Kingsland at Stratford and Highbury & Islington. Bicycle racks. Good food & drink. Nice place. But apart from enjoying the unrivalled amenities, just to get a sense of what anyone that enthused to attend feels about the site and what is to be done. I really am serious about problems carrying on with sole responsibility for something that ought to be not personal, but collective.

Updates to modernpoetry.org.uk

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 11:57:00 +0000

To inform the world that I've just updated the various lists and checked the links and added some more material to modernpoetry.org.uk. I hope it's all useful. And it's on a Creative Commons licence now as well. Comment on the blog or email or whatever with any responses, suggestions etc.

Further announcement coming shortly about its future.

New Great Works

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 12:40:00 +0000

To announce the final (certainly for a while and in this omnium gatherum form) Great Works, containing

Paul Holman, THE MEMORY OF THE DRIFT: Book Six: A WALKING AGE
Ralph Hawkins, The Poems of Abakan Tartar
Maximilian Hildebrand, Kylix Poems + four poems
Daniele Pantano, Translation from the German of Seventy Eight Early Notes for a Biography of an Unknown Swiss Poet
Julie Sampson, four poems
David Bircumshaw, eight poems
Rupert Loydell, four poems
Adam Fieled, from Equations
Miffy Ryan, Dwelling + Death Rattles
Jennifer Cooke, five poems
Catherine Daly, Surplice
Stephanie Jane Robinson, Ballad of the Reading Jail
Mark Smith, five poems
sean burn, from honeysuckled
Angela Gardner, five poems
Susan Adams, five poems
Mark Dickinson, from Shadows of the Sea
Matt Bryden, four poems
Sam Howell, five poems
Chris Hardy, Short of Luck on Short Street
James Price, four poems and a drawing
Martin Stannard, five poems
Gareth Farmer, Rise to Order
Bobby Larsson, Limerick Swing —
S J Fowler, nine poems
Gerard Greenway, three poems
Austin McCarron, seven poems
Sophie Mayer, three poems
Stephen Emmerson, Power Pollution + THUD
Anthony Mellors, from Bent our of Shape
Sarah Ahmad, seven poems
Reeti Roy, five poems
Robert Atherton, six poems
Glenn R Frantz, Bridge / Lawn / Solarium
Arthur Coleman, five poems
Nicholas R Scott, The Prison Series + the Pie Series
Harry Godwin, poem for P. Philpott, read at Xmasing the Line, 3/12/09

Enjoy it all!

I will post more on plans, especially for modernpoetry.org.uk and the availability of material in ebook reader format in the new year.

Two Readings, One Pamphlet and an Ebook

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 17:45:00 +0000

Just to announce some entry of my own writing into this cold world:

The New Openned Poetry Reading Series, Wednesday October 27th

7.30, at Corsica Studios, 5 Elephant Road, London SE17 3LG (nr Elephant & Castle tube). Free admission.

Readings from Tim Atkins, Allen Fisher, Sarah Kelly, Jonny Liron & Nat Raha

+ a simultaneous reading from RHUL Poetic Practice students + Jennifer Cooke + Jow Lindsay + Peter Philpott + Posie Rider + Carol Watts + Tessa Whitehouse

Book Launch: Chris Gutkind, Peter Philpott, Harry Ross, Thursday November 4th

7.30, upstairs at The Camden Eye, 2 Kentish Town Road, London NW1 9NX (nr Camden Town tube). Free admission. A The Knives Forks and Spoons Press Book launch.

Chris Gutkind + Peter Philpott + Harry Ross

New Pamphlet from The Knives Forks And Spoons Press:

To The Union — short sequence written between the two Shearsman titles (Textual Possessions and Are we Not Drawn ...); £5

E-book on Issuu.com, published by The Red Ceilings Press

kaddish, by Emily Howard, Mark Cobley and Simon Howard, guest contributors Richard Barrett, Peter Philpott and Tom Watts, edited by Simon Howard, originally published as Part 2 of Plus-que-Parfait.

Unsolicited Testimonial for modernpoetry.org.uk

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:58:00 +0000

Best UK poetry site
I’ve yet seen
says Ron Silliman on his blog!

Request for help on updating modernpoetry.org.uk

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 19:03:00 +0000

I've been updating modernpoetry.org.uk over the summer, with gradual uploads as I have done so. I'd really appreciate any suggestions on two aspects:

Video and audio material, especially video material. I really find this curiously difficult to respond to, much as I enjoy attending actual readings/performances. Were YouTube to cease to exist, I would be every unmoved. (It's my punishment for having to police classes of media students who were meant to be working, but preferred to catch up on those fascinating skateboard accident, skateboarding dogs and hypertrophied gonad clips that modern technology as so benevolently showered on adolescent males). So, any suggestions as to what may be the actual best clips online and any sites with a lot of accessible good material (not recorded in my listing on modernpoetry.org.uk) will be greatly appreciated and assistance duly recorded. I'm aware this is a hole in the site's coverage I ought to fill; but I can't on my own.

List of Anthologies, Literary Histories & Critical Texts. What have I missed out that would interest and illuminate? I haven't access to a university library, so I really can only sample a fraction of what's published. Anything I need to add? There must be surely.

In general, indeed, any additions, corrections and emendations to my listings on the site will be greatly appreciated.

Completion of Pistol Tree Poems

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:52:00 +0000

This remarkable and highly enjoyable epistolary sequence between Peter Hughes (mainly from Norfolk) and Simon Marsh (mainly from Italy) has now reached its end point, number 106, with an exchange of monostichs. Pick up the new poems here, or start at the beginning there.

Nearly There!

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:51:00 +0000

Peter Hughes and Simon Marsh's long poetic and epistolary dialogue, Pistol Tree Poems, is now almost complete, with only a couple more to go, then the rest is silence. Read the new ones on Great Works now.

New Pistol Tree Poems

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 09:12:00 +0000

As summer burgeons, more of Peter Hughes & Simon Marsh's Pistol Tree Poems as they rush to their climax. Online now on Great Works, including a brief elegy for David Chaloner.

Updated Links

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Wed, 19 May 2010 11:21:00 +0000

The Links page on Great Works, and also the Quick Links index page, and the equivalent Links to British Avant-Garde Poetry Sites and Quick Links pages on www.modernpoetry.org.uk have been newly revised and updated.

On the Links page: approx 189 online magazines and e-publishers, 202 writers' homepages and blogs, 36 audio and video sites, 75 print publishers and magazines, 28 readings &c, 71 resources: foci of information, 8 bookshops and booksellers, 27 personal sites.

From 3:AM Magazine to zimZalla, via foffoffof: Asemic Writings Letters and Marks and your gaze does not meet my gaze, all is here!

(And there's been a recent Pistol Tree Poems addition too.)

More Pistol Trees!

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Thu, 06 May 2010 09:14:00 +0000

With astonishing alacrity, Peter Hughes and Simon Marsh have now produced numbers 88 & 89. Enjoy!

Great Works through the Year

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:16:00 +0000

As the year goes on, my plans slowly begin to clot. The recoding of some pages of Great Works has been completed, removing some very old layouts that no longer worked, and recasting as well all the business end of the site (links etc) in superior code, with some features for greater ease of use and to counter accessibility issues. www.modernpoetry.org.uk has suffered the same fate. Very little difference will be noticed: still all embarrassingly clumsy in appearance and concept.

I have begun updating the links (for both sites). "I may be gone some time." I will upload the pages as I amend them weekly, to counter the inevitable obsolescence of such an activity.

Later this year will follow a final "edition" of Great Works in its present form, and a revision of the modernpoetry site.

I won't carry on with either, certainly not in their present form, after the end of this year. Ten years of Great Works have ended up by wearying and nauseating me; and contemporary avant-gardish poetry as a social/cultural institution has evolved into something that is best dealt with by younger, hipper, cooler etc etc persons and coteries (eg Openned), especially with access to academic networks and status. A 1990s hobbyist accumulation of homepages will probably put people off rather than involve them.

Both sites are archived by the British Library. I will keep them online through next year at least to allow their cycle of downloading a copy of the site to record their final glories. Great Works may carry on in a different form; or might not.

Fresh Pistol Tree Poems

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:14:00 +0000

The latest batch of the Pistol Tree Poems epistolary exchange between Peter Hughes and Simon Marsh are now online, numbers 86-87.

Two Good-Looking Events in the London Word Festival

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:12:00 +0000

Thu 18 Mar: SHAD THAMES, BROKEN WHARF
by Chris McCabe
with Bleeding Heart Narrative and Jack Wake-Walker
Introduced by Iain Sinclair

The history of the Docklands is that of a city building upwards, from the monstrous bunkers of the docks themselves to the glass pillars at Canary Wharf. Whenever the means of profit-making have changed, Docklands has always been prescient and protean in its survival instincts. The success, and failure, of the current financial centre echo the creation of the original docks: control of local communities for global trading, the hegemony of private investors and monolithic architectural statements of presence.

Set in a pub that has stood on the site since the sixteenth century, Shad Thames, Broken Wharf eavesdrops on a conversation between three characters – Echo, a middle-aged woman who has lived her life in the area; Blaise, a northerner who finds resonances with the more familiar docks at Liverpool; and the gregarious landlord, a Londoner with ‘the knowledge’. Breaking into the dialogue, The Restructure is a sinister, all-knowing Public Service Announcement with ‘advice’ to share with anyone who’ll listen…

Shad Thames, Broken Wharf is a newly commissioned work by acclaimed poet Chris McCabe that spans centuries of changes across the Docklands, allowing past ghosts to be heard above the white noise of the polemical present. With accompanying tipsy folk melodies from Bleeding Heart Narrative’s Bartokian piano, strings, synths and sample set, and film from Jack Wake-Walker, Shad Thames, Broken Wharf resonates with what the Docklands might mean. Cult London author, poet and filmmaker Iain Sinclair introduces the performance with a special reading.

Performed by Tracey Wilkinson, Luke McEwen, Chris McCabe and Paul Henderson.

A London Word Festival Commission

chris-mccabe.blogspot.com
bleedingheartnarrative.wordpress.com
www.iainsinclair.org.uk

Jamboree ⋅ £8 adv / £10 door ⋅ 8pm
Jamboree
Cable Street Studios | 566 Cable Street | Limehouse| E1W 3HB
www.myspace.com/jamboreemembersclub

Sun 28 Mar: LEAFCUTTER JOHN: BRIGGFLATTS REWIRED
+ Peter Finch + MacGillivray + Hannah Silva

“Brag, sweet tenor bull…”

Intrepidly inventive folk, jazz and electronic musical inventor Leafcutter John decodes epic Modernist poem Briggflatts for the digital century in a brand new commission.

Briggflatts Rewired takes Basil Bunting’s extraordinary and intensely musical poem as the starting point for a new, electronically-enhanced composition. In an event that explores the interplay between sound, voice and textuality, Leafcutter John is joined by acclaimed Welsh poet and performer Peter Finch, haunting Highland musician MacGillivray and startlingly effervescent wordsmith Hannah Silva.

Born in 1900, Basil Bunting was imprisoned as a conscientious objector, lived in Persia as a British spy in the 40s and later worked as a journalist in his native North East. Briggflatts, a poetic autobiography which celebrates the culture and language of Northumbria, was published in 1966 and belatedly announced Bunting as one of the great Modernist poets alongside T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.

A member of Mercury-nominated avant-jazz collective Polar Bear, Leafcutter John is a multi-talented musician, songwriter, remixer and artist whose work marries the best cadences of folk with the expressive utility of samples, mixing and field recordings. He has released four albums, the latest of which is The Forest and the Sea (Staubgold Records), and builds many of his own electronic instruments from scratch.

Peter Finch is a Welsh writer and critic who is famed for his declamatory poetry performances. An expert on the arcane and obscure corners of twentieth-century poetry, dada and the history of the small press, in the 60s and 70s he toured with sound poet Bob Cobbing. More recently he is known for psychogeographic investigations of Cardiff. He has published more than twenty-five books of poetry.

MacGillivray sings haunting tales from the frontier, of wolves and hunters, love lost in the wilderness. A favourite on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction and The Verb, her album Wolf is inspired by the strange lurch of Gaelic ‘lining out’, drawing on words by Robert Burns and Hugh MacDiarmid. MacGillivray has supported The Fall and performed alongside the writers Iain Sinclair, Brian Catling and Alan Moore.

Hannah Silva is a writer and performer whose distinctive style combines the physicality of theatre with energetic, fast-paced poetry. Her recent works include You Said/I Said with percussionist Alexis Kirke; Panopticon, a darkly humourous investigation of language, belonging and Britishness; and Boat on the Water, a poetry/dance/theatre performance set on a yacht in Plymouth.

Briggflatts Rewired is a London Word Festival Commission and is presented with the kind permission of The Basil Bunting Estate, Bloodaxe Books and Stream Records

www.leafcutterjohn.com
www.peterfinch.co.uk
www.myspace.com/macgillivray
www.hannahsilva.co.uk
Stoke Newington International Airport ⋅ £6.50 adv / £8.50 door ⋅ 7pm
Stoke Newington International Airport
Unit F | 1-15 Leswin Place | Stoke Newington | N16 7NJ
www.stkinternational.co.uk

Fresh Pistol Tree Poems. and Pistol Tree Poems Refreshed

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:35:00 +0000

The latest batch of the Pistol Tree Poems epistolary exchange between Peter Hughes and Simon Marsh are now online, numbers 82-85.

Note that the sequence is one of the range of pages I have been recoding from HTML to XHTML, which should make them more accessible to mobile phones and PDAs (and correcting a lot of earlier clumsinesses in coding). I would be very interested in any feedback from anyone who ever accesses the site from such devices rather than a PC or laptop.

Present Plans, Great Wordwise & Diversely Deedful

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:05:00 +0000

For Great Works - I am doing a lot of refitting and updating at a technical level. The vessel is in dry dock, as it were. Having installed a search ability, I realise that some of the pages are unreadable by the search engine, as I put in when I first started no-robots statements, for no really good reason I can think of now. These early pages that still remain are also in a rather bad HTML that doesn't always display as I thought it would. So I'm redoing all of these in good XHTML, with consistent use of CSS and full accessibility (as much as the demands of matching poets' layouts allows this!). There is also a major blunder I made on the bulk of my existing XHTML pages that needs urgent correction, out of embarrassment rather than necessity I think, but it could impair access. For all this I am planning to use Dreamweaver, which I need therefore to get to grips with. This should basically partially industrialise actually making some of these corrections, but will require care also as it can give rise to pretty crap code too. So this will all take a while ...

Then to redo The Links (which should be a simpler, more batch process though via Dreamweaver). Modernpoetry.org.uk can at this point be restructured and redesigned.

Finally, to work on the next issue. My anxiety over the "all-male" issue seems to have been unwarranted - not a problem. I'm not sure therefore about the mooted all-female issue I promised to make amends, if amends aren't necessary - but I would love more contributions from female poets.

Amos Weisz's writing will figure in the next issue in any case, and I am also drawing up a volume which Great Works will publish (yes, on paper, print-on-demand) of a selection of his poems and prose. His mother is negotiating publication of his translations, including his Celan translations (which have Celan's son's approval), through a New York small press recommended by Suhrkamp Verlag.

I was expressing interest in various collaborative projects at the end of last year - I think I will have very little time for quite a while on these. I also have increased family responsibilities, which will be ongoing.

I will though write something on my considered response to, yes, the academicisation of poetry and The Journal. Also on micro-publishing - ie stuff turned out in tragically small editions, a trend I also don't feel happy with.

Diverse Deeds will almost certainly rest, possibly permanently. The formula, of an welcoming and inclusive event, combining innovative poetry with a little innovative music to encourage a sense of performance, in a relaxing and flexible venue, trying to build up an audience of both those already plugged into the innovative poetry networks and as many as possible who just thought it looked interesting (and by golly it is!), is a good one, which will prove a sure fire winner at some time. Cafe Oto, having given me crap scheduling, is no longer interested. My doubts about restarting elsewhere relate to, firstly my own sense of relief at not carrying on (and regret too!), and secondly the feeling that it really needs some bunch of cool young dudes/dudettes to get it going, certainly not a redundant granddad from Bishops Stortford.

Public Domain Defined and Defended

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:00:00 +0000

The Public Domain is defined and defended by The Public Domain Manifesto, against primarily Google and Hollywood, and the governments cravenly signing up to yet another big business agenda - YES, THAT MEANS YOU, MANDELSON!Could even be a worthwhile online petition to sign up to.

New Pistol Tree Poems for Kenny Wheeler's 80th Birthday

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:20:00 +0000

Pistol Tree Poems 78-81 by Peter Hughes and Simon Marsh are online today, celebrating the great jazz trumpeter Kenny Wheeler's Eightieth Birthday with nos. 80 and 81.

The Voice of Harry Godwin, brought to you by the wonders of modern science

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:54:00 +0000

(1) poem for P. Philpott, read at Xmasing the Nine, 3/12/09

A momentary lapse
of rain
A south westerly breeze
probably.
Dear Caroline, it's 2009
& Rosier couldn't read
tonight & so I
can't read. What's
commitment to 2000 &
niners anyway?

Re-Openned: A Hilson
rendition of Last Christmas,
The same Hilson of
Hilson's School of Poetry:
No Divas Allowed
(Dear Caroline, sorry, No Divas
Allowed)

There are no stars in LNDN
There are no stars under
clouds there are no
stars over Cathedral
City lights
But there are stars they
are just not our stars
they are very far stars.

 A momentary break in
the clouds.
Stars.

& rain.

& Bergval, in a rocketship to our hearts

(2) The Voice of Harry Godwin at Diverse Deeds, December 16, 2009

The Voice of Harry Godwin at Diverse Deeds, December 16

Peter Philpott's podcast

Search Engine Added

noreply@blogger.com (Peter Philpott) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:11:00 +0000

I've just added a Google-powered Search Engine to the Great Works homepage. This searches not only Great Works, but also www.modernpoetry.org.uk, and this blog. I will need to tinker with many of the earliest pages still in original coding over the next week or so. Apart from not liking how they display compared with my current pages, I also had, really rather mistakenly, put in some "anti-robots" metatags, which means they are unsearchable. I shall be correcting this,