Readings webjournal

Raul Zurita's 'INRI' Launch @ Birkbeck (Wed 3rd March 2010)

Booklaunch of Raul Zurita's book INRI, published by Marick Press.

Reading by Raul Zurita, with translation by William Rowe.

Followed by refreshments.

Date: Wednesday 3rd March,
Time: 8pm
Venue: The Council Room, Birkbeck College Main Building, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX.

All Welcome

Directions: the Birkbeck Main Building is sandwiched between Malet Street and Torrington Square, and the main entrance is on the Torrington Square side, at the Senate House end of the square/plaza.
Click this link for a map.

Raul Zurita, winner of the Chilean National Poetry Prize, is one of the best known poets of Latin America. His work is part of a revolution in poetic language, that began in the 1970s and sought to find new forms of expression, radically different from those of Pablo Neruda. The challenge was to confront the contemporary epoch, with its particular forms of violence, including violence done to language.   INRI is distinctive in that it does not speak out of individual sorrow, though this is not missing from the text, but seeks, rather, a new space, out of which love might be asserted as prime human reality, a space which might give birth to a different type of society.
Zurita is the author of Purgatory (new translation published by California UP) and of Anteparadise, among many other books.

William Rowe is Anniversary Professor of Poetics at Birkbeck College, University of London, and his translations of Latin American poetry include 5 poets in the Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry in Translation and Cesar Vallejo Poemas (yt communication).

Raul Zurita  - INRI
Translated by William Rowe

Paperback,  Pages: 120 
ISBN 10: 1-934851-04-3,  ISBN 13: 978-1-934851-04-3 
USD $14.95 + Shipping

INRI responds to the need to find a language for an event that was kept hidden and excluded from official records in Chile: the fact that the bodies of the disappeared were thrown out of helicopters into the mouths of volcanoes and into the sea. In order to bring this event, that was neither seen nor heard, into language, Zurita invents a form and language capable of bringing it into the present. The one place where these unspeakable acts might be registered is in the landscape of Chile: the mountains, desert, and sea. There the event might begin to be touched, heard, and finally seen. When there are no places from which to speak, ‘the stones cry out’. INRI is written as poetry without regular lines or metre. In the tradition of Whitman or Ginsberg’s Howl, it works with long breaths and large blocks of meaning: intensities that overrun the usual measures of speech and syntax. To read it is to experience a strange force pulsing through the language, breaking apart its usual channels, and opening unseen and unheard zones.

http://www.marickpress.com/index.php?/inri

XING the Line Veer event (Wednesday 15 February 2012)

BECKY CREMIN & ALAN HALSEY @ XING THE LINE

Wednesday 15 February 2012

Upstairs at The Apple Tree, 45 Mount Pleasant, WC1X 0AE, 7:30-11:30pm
£5 waged, £3 unwaged

Becky Cremin & Alan Halsey

Becky will be reading from her new Veer book "LAY'D" and Alan will be launching his new Veer title "Even if only out of"

See:

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/cprc/publications/Veer_Publications/BurnerVeer010

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/cprc/publications/Veer_Publications/Veer046

Congressional Medal of Honour for Professor William Rowe

Professor William Rowe has been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour by the President of the Peruvian Congress for his outstanding and widely recognised contribution to Peruvian culture as teacher, critic and translator.

Professor Rowe has produced classical works of criticism on the novels of Jose Maria Arguedas and the poetry of Cesar Vallejo. He has translated the work of many poets from Peru as well as from other Latin America countries. His recent poetry in English was collected in The Earth Has Been Destroyed (Veer Books, 2009).

William Rowe is the Anniversary Professor of Poetics in the Departments of Iberian and Latin American Studies and English and Humanities. This is a major recognition of his outstanding contribution to Latin American Studies.

MJ Weller's 'Beat generation Ballads' & Sean Bonney's 'Baudelaire in English (2nd Edition)' will be launched at The Blue Bus (15th March 2011)

Tuesday 15 March 2011

The Blue Bus is pleased to present a poetry event, with Sean Bonney and M J Weller.

This event wil feature the launch of MJ Weller's Beat generation Ballads and the 2nd edition of Sean Bonney's Baudelaire in English, both from Veer Books.

The Lamb (in the upstairs room), 94 Lamb’s Conduit Street, London WC1, 7:30pm

Admissions: £5 / £3 (concessions).

This is the forty-seventh event in THE BLUE BUS series.

MJ Weller is writer, artist, poet. As Mike Weller he is well known for his comic and zine art published last three decades 20C. Running own 'visual associations' imprint and Home'Baked Books press 2000s and twenty-ten Weller has produced printed chapbooks and digital bookworks Space Opera: The Artist’s Book, Madeline My Love in Death And Fancy, S Club 7 vs the Anti-Capitalists, Beowulf Cartoon and bookwork installation, Slow Fiction: twenty-three tales in a box. His HomeBaked poetics are dedicated to permanent artistic revision, making each title different in re-format or printed edition.

Sean Bonney has written, among other things, For the Administration (Crater, 2010), 5 after Rimbaud (Grasp, 2010), Document: Poems, Manifestos, Diagrams (Barque, 2009), Baudelaire in English (Veer, 2008) and Blade Pitch Control Unit (Salt, 2005). His long poem The Commons will be published later this year. He lives in London, and also at www.abandonedbuildings.blogspot.com

Voiceworks 2012 concert performance at Wigmore Hall (Wednesday 23 May 2012)

Voiceworks 2012 Performance

The culmination of the Voiceworks 2012 programme will be performed live at Wigmore Hall on Wednesday 23 May 2011 at 17.30.

The performance lasts 45 minutes and is free to attend – do come, listen and support.

This is the sixth year of this unique collaboration between poets from the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre at Birkbeck, and composers, singers and instrumentalists from Guildhall School of Music & Drama. New works for voice are created from a long process of exchange, improvisation and practice between October-May, and the resulting songs are a sign of the vibrancy and creative potential of a new generation of work. Many previous participants have gone on to collaborate on projects in Britain and internationally, or have developed their practice in new directions because of their Voiceworks experience, and it’s a chance to encounter their work first, here.

The performance is free to attend, but tickets need to be booked in advance (this is very simple to do, and costs nothing). 
See the Wigmore Hall website here for more information on booking. 

A recording of the Voiceworks 2012 concert will be subsequently published on the voiceworks.org.uk website.

This digital project, led from the CPRC Birkbeck with Guildhall colleagues and partners Wigmore Learning is funded by the AHRC.

Click here and here for more details

Voiceworks 2011 free concert at Wigmore Hall (Thursday 26 May 2011)

Voiceworks 2011 Performance

The culmination of the Voiceworks 2011 programme will be performed live at Wigmore Hall on Thursday 26 May 2011 at 18.00.

The performance lasts 45 minutes and is free to attend – do come, listen and support.

The performance is free to attend, but tickets need to be booked in advance (this is very simple to do, and costs nothing). 
See the Wigmore Hall website here for more information. 

A recording of the Voiceworks 2011 concert will be subsequently published on the voiceworks.org.uk website.

This digital project, led from the CPRC Birkbeck with Guildhall colleagues and partners Wigmore Learning is funded by the AHRC.

Click here for more details

Voiceworks 2010 concert performance (Thursday 20th May 2010 @ Wigmore Hall)

Voiceworks goes live!

The culmination of the Voiceworks 2010 programme will be live streamed from Wigmore Hall on Thursday 20 May at 18.00.
The performance lasts 45 minutes and is free to attend – do come, listen and support.

The performances are free to attend, but tickets need to be booked in advance (this is very simple to do, and costs nothing). 
See: http://www.wigmore-hall.org.uk/whats-on/productions/voiceworks-25340 for more information. 

The first live streaming of Voiceworks 2010, courtesy of the AHRC and Plushmusic, can be accessed at our new voiceworks.org.uk site which will launch on the same day. It will later be available by podcast. This digital project, led from CPRC with Guildhall colleagues and partners Wigmore Learning is funded by the AHRC.

Click here for more details

Voiceworks 2009 - Free concert at the Wigmore Hall (Thursday 7th May)

Voiceworks 2009 collaborations between the CPRC Birkbeck and Guildhall School of Music and Drama:

There will be a performance of the Voiceworks 2009 compositions in the Wigmore Hall on Thursday May 7th, at 18:00 (for 45 minutes)
- this is free to attend, but will require that tickets are booked in advance (this is very simple to do, and again, costs nothing).

See: http://www.wigmore-hall.org.uk/whats-on/productions/voiceworks-23314 for more information.

This is the third year of this collaboration between CPRC Birkbeck poets and Guildhall composers, singers and musicians.

Voiceworks 2009 participants are:

William Rowe & Francisco Coll Garcia
Sean Bonney & Jane Hebberd
Steve Willey & Edward Nesbit
Holly Pester & Joshua Kaye
Nancy Jones & Marcus Barcham-Stevens
Marianne Burton & Alastair Putt
Charlotte Newman & Aaron Holloway-Nahum

all welcome

The new Veer journal ('veer off') is now available

015 Veer Journal 2 – 'veer off' - featuring the work of over 60 leading poets available now

Veer Publication 015 [ISSN: 1758-4140]
The second in the occasional Veer journal series focusing on unconforming writing,
veer off collects current writing from a selection of outstanding contemporary authors.
A4 size. 232 pages. October 2008. £6.00

veer off will be available at various upcoming CPRC events, and by post.

Veer Books launch at 'Crossing the Line' (October 2nd 2008)

XING THE LINE: Veer Booklaunch

Thursday 2nd October

Sean Bonney (Baudelaire in English), Johan de Wit (Up To You Munro), Piers Hugill ('Ways Through a Field': 13 Lyrics), Stephen Mooney (DCLP) and Jow Lindsey (OCTOPUS PUKE & other songs & tales, by Francis Crot et. al) will be reading from their recently published books, as well as from the new Bill Griffiths book (The Lion Man and others).

7.30 THE LEATHER EXCHANGE

15 Leathermarket Street, London Bridge, SE1 3HN.

£5 / £3

Veer Books shortlisted for the Michael Marks Publishers' Award for Poetry Pamphlets

Veer Books, coming out of the activities of the the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre (CPRC) Birkbeck, has been shortlisted for one of this year's Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets!

Michael Marks Publishers’ Award

Books of 36 pages or less are where new poetry often first meets its audience – slim volumes allow readers to savour a concentrated gathering or carefully paced sequence of poems. Poetry pamphlets can be exquisitely designed, with striking visual qualities that form a strong part of the meaning of the book as a whole.

Small press publishers have been at the forefront of developing new audiences for poetry through such attractive and innovative publications. The publishers' shortlist announced by the British Library and Poetry Book Society (award for a UK publisher of poetry in pamphlet form, on the basis of their publishing programme in 2009) is:

• HappenStance Press
• Oystercatcher Press
• Templar Poetry
• Veer Books

Richard Price, Head of Modern British Collections at the British Library, commented:

“Pamphlets are the real thermometer of new poetry - these are the only UK-wide awards of their kind and this shortlist shows us the great range of approaches and ambition of modern poetry in Britain. If there’s a theme this year it’s the remix, the mash-up of history, time and place – like Bladerunner or Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, there’s a retro futurism in many of these which opens the door to non-poetry audiences without giving up any of the poetry. The shortlisted poets have all risen to the challenge of what a pamphlet can be, fusing both physical and visual form with poetry.”

Also announced is the shortlist for the Michael Marks Poetry Award:

• The Terrors, Tom Chivers (Nine Arches Press)
• The Titanic Café closes its doors and hits the rocks, David Hart (Nine Arches Press)
• Advice on Wearing Animal Prints, Selima Hill (Flarestack Poets)
• Devorgilla’s Bridge, Hugh McMillan (Roncadora Press)
• The Reluctant Vegetarian, Richard Moorhead (Oystercatcher Press)
• ballast: a remix, Nii Ayikwei Parkes (tall-lighthouse)

The winners of the two Awards will be announced and presented with cheques for £5,000 at a Readings and Awards Ceremony at the British Library from 6.30pm on 16 June 2010. The shortlisted poets will read from their work, the winners will be announced and the Award Ceremony will be followed by a reception to which the audience is invited.

For more information on the Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets and to buy any of the shortlisted pamphlets, click here

The final announcement will take place during the Readings and Awards ceremony at the British Library from 6.30pm on Wednesday 16 June 2010. Tickets (£6 / £4 concessions) are on sale now from the British Library. Tickets can be booked online at http://boxoffice.bl.uk, over the phone +44 (0)1937 546 546 or in person at the British Library.

Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets
The art of poetry - a compact universe in a pamphlet

The Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets is presented by the British Library in partnership with the Poetry Book Society and with the generous support of the Michael Marks Charitable Trust. In their second year, the Awards celebrate the importance of the pamphlet form in introducing new poetry to readers in the internet age.

Veer Books Launch / Writers Forum Celebration @ BBK (16th Dec 2009)

On Wednesday 16th December Veer Books will hold a Writers Forum Celebration Reading at which 3 new Veer Books will be launched:

017 Maggie O'Sullivan – ‘ALTO - London Poems 1975-1984’
Veer Publication 017 [ISBN: 978-0-9558763-7-0]
Maggie O'Sullivan's new book presents work from the 1970s & '80s: these powerfully constructed poems offer a place from which it becomes possible to exercise vital thought … rather than just to suffer life; to ride in sound and syntax the sinewy entanglement of material existence.
5.3x8.3” size. 68 pages. September 2009. £7.50

019 Johan de Wit – ‘No Hand Signals: the invisibility of language in poetry’
Veer Publication 019 [ISBN: 978-1-907088-04-9]
De Wit’s Statements invite us to explore the unfamiliar landscape of language seen from inside its pores and corridors. Be prepared for a journey into unusual places where the habits that get you through the language labyrinth stop working and other realities start to appear.
5x8” size. 184 pages. December 2009. £8.00

025 Jennifer Pike Cobbing – ‘SCRUNCH’
Veer Publication 025 [ISBN: 978-1-907088-10-0]
Jennifer Pike Cobbing’s stunning and extraordinary visual work has for too long remained unobtainable in print form. With SCRUNCH, the first of two collections, we present a startling selection of visual work that stretches over decades of innovation. This is a book long, long overdue, and features both visual poetry and visual composition in both black and white and vibrant colour.
A4 size. 120 pages. December 2009. £10.00

All three poets have had strong links to Writers Forum in the past and the present - they will be joined by Writers Forum Co-Convenor Adrian Clarke for this event.

Readers: Adrian Clarke, Jenny Cobbing, Johan de Wit, and Maggie O'Sullivan.

Date: Wednesday 16th December 2009.
Time: 19:30
Venue: The Council Room, Birkbeck College Main Building, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX.
All Welcome

These publications, and all other Veer Books, will be available at the Dec 16th Celebration, as well as at various upcoming CPRC Birkbeck events, or by post directly from Veer.
Contact Veer Books at veerbooks@gmail.com for more details.

*** Lawrence Upton's 'a song and a film' will now be launched later in 2010 ***

Veer Books Launch @ BBK (24th July 2010) - Out To Lunch & Cris Paul

Saturday 24th July 2010, 7.00 pm
The Council Room, Birkbeck College Main Building, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7HX (entrance on Torrington Sqr)
Click here for a map link

026 Out To Lunch – ‘Smooch Tentet Resolve’
Veer Publication 026 [ISBN: 978-1-907088-11-7]
Bouncing out of the page, Out To Lunch’s brilliantly quirky Smooch Tentet Resolve explodes the confines of the page and the medium. This is a text where sharp, ratcheted language is propelled by a cartoon visuality that is thoroughly modern, invading as it does the 21st century territory of the poem.
5x8” size. 96 pages. June 2010. £6.00

027 Cris Paul – ‘stenia cultus handbook’
Veer Publication 027 [ISBN: 978-1-907088-12-4]
“Drawing on a long, and long-suppressed, tradition of visual and sound poetry (think Cobbing, think O'Sullivan, think Bonney), Paul's poems map out territories for survival by imagining new linguistic shapes. As one might expect, there's a strong element ofmagic to his writing – language is used both as spell and charm – but there's nothing New Age about it. It knows its targets and it's out to get them. No one is innocent: ‘A punch in the throat to both hapless and vanguard.’ This volume is a provocation and anecessity.” (Jeff Hilson)
A5 landscape size. 76 pages. April 2010. £6.00

Free Entry. All Welcome

Veer Books at the Small Publishers Fair (October 24th & 25th 2008).

Veer Books will be manning a stall at the upcoming Small Publishers Fair 2008, (October 24th & 25th 2008) at the Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1 - come and see us there.

We will also be presenting a reading of recent work at that event on Oct 25th, from 5:30 pm .

Veer Books will launch Bill Griffith's new book (The Lion Man and others), with readings from the book by Alan Halsey, Geraldine Monk, Ulli Freer, William Rowe, Sean Bonney, Stephen Mooney, and others.

This will be followed by individual readings to celebrate recent Veer publications by Sean Bonney (Baudelaire in English), Johan de Wit (Up To You Munro), Piers Hugill ('Ways Through a Field': 13 Lyrics), Jow Lindsey (OCTOPUS PUKE & other songs & tales, by Francis Crot et. al), Aodan McCardle (from Shuddered), & Stephen Mooney (DCLP).

The full schedule of readings is:

1.30    Royal Holloway Poetic Practice
           Readings
2.00    Cluster Arts Magazine Act Two
           Selected performances and readings
2.30    Kyle Schlesinger, Cuneiform Press
3.00    Launch: The Reality Street Book of Sonnets, introduced by Jeff Hilson
4.00    Vincent Katz reads ‘Barge’,
           a collaboration with Jim Dine
4.30    West House
           David Annwn and Martin Corless-Smith
5.00    Les Coleman
           The Cat Talked in Latin with Greek
5.30    Veer Books launch Bill Griffiths’ The Lion Man & others,
           and readings by Sean Bonney, Johan de Wit and others

please see http://www.rgap.co.uk/spf.php for more details.

Veer Books at the Small Publishers Fair 2011 (11th & 12th November 2011)

Veer Books will be manning a stall at the upcoming Small Publishers Fair 2011, (November 11th & 12th 2011) at the Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1 (11am to 7pm) - come and see us there.

Poetry presses include Poetic Practice MA at Royal Holloway University, Reality Street, West House, Shearsman, Veer, Etruscan Books, seekers of lice, & Litteraria Pragensia Books.

At the fair this year we will be launching 6 new Veer Books:

038 Aodán McCardle – ‘IS ing’
Veer Publication 038 [ISBN: 978-1-907088-29-2]
Aodán McCardle’s long awaited first solo collection of performance work. A transcription from the recordings of performances from the last four years, this is uncompromising and unapologising experimental poetry that brilliantly engages the risk horizon of performance writing.
8.3” x 8.3” size. 80 pages plus CD. May 2011. £10.00

044 Simon Smith – ‘Gravesend’
Veer Publication 044 [ISBN: 978-1-907088-36-0]
‘As Simon Smith was never swayed by the three-colour gloss of Cool Brittania he now dismisses the doom-monger’s toll that says just by walking to the looted edge of the recession we will fall off into a sea of outraged mannequins. Unwilling to accept at face value the false belief that Graves-end is a necropolis for plague victims Smith walks it to find human movement amidst the detritus of the living. Far from the average poet of ‘place’ who attempts to bring the aleatory world into their privileged centre, he makes for the truth of the fringes. Gravesend is anti-media, it records what doesn’t sell. Smith is on a long-term project that is shifting with the sediments of the times, aware “history doesn’t repeat itself, people do’. (Chris McCabe)
16cmsx16cms size. 56 pages. November 2011. £5.00

046 Alan Halsey – ‘Even if only out of’
Veer Publication 046 [ISBN: 978-1-907088-39-1]
These poems were written 2008-10. They include some skips & charms against recession, Cicero’s reflections on New Labour, an alphabet, two sets of riddles, a quarrelsome symposium on Blake’s erotica, a tale of post-imperial commerce, recent discoveries concerning the lizopard, versions of Martial, notes on bubbles and additions to Lives of the Poets.
6x9” size. 108 pages. November 2011. £8.00

Burner 009 Johan de Wit – ‘Lord How And His Sandwich’
Burner Veer Publication 009 [ISBN: 978-1-907088-38-4]
Lord How meets, eats, and excretes. Ingestion, digestion, elimination are to convenience food what reading, comprehension, and forgetting are to convenient literature. Remember what it is to read, wonder at what it is to know, live in a persistent present of finding. Let Lord How’s Sandwich by Johan de Wit swallow you whole! (Wayne Clements)
A5 size. 40 pages. November 2011. £5.00

Burner 010 Rebecca Cremin – ‘LAY’D’
Burner Veer Publication 010 [ISBN: 978-1-907088-40-7]
Like white silk, this eye catches the screen at every turn: a slice through the eyeball revealing the edges of the unscreened visual. Physical is black movement in all dimensions, the book is not happy to sit in your hand.
A5 landscape size. 156 pages. November 2011. £8.00

Critical Veer 000 Esther Leslie – ‘Bouleversed Baudelairizing’
Critical Veer Publication 000 [ISBN: 978-1-907088-42-1]
In straight refusal of ideology-denial, this essay restores politics to the critique of poetry, and demonstrates the source of the radical in terror. Forceful and lucid readings of Sean Bonney and Anna Mendelssohn.
A4 size. 46 pages. November 2011. £3.00

The full schedule of readings on Saturday 12th is:

12.00 Poetic Practice MA at Royal Holloway: Jennie Cole, Emma Conway, Julius Hinks, Hazel McMichael, Rachel Porteret, Maximilian Richmond, Juliet Troy & James Waite
1.00 Etruscan Books: Nicholas Johnson: ‘Listening to the Stones’
1.30 Suryastra: David Elias presents’Delhicious’: the experience of Indian Street Food Culture
2.00 Shearsman Books: Jaime Robles & Laurie Duggan
2.30 Martha Hellion: Director of the M•H Centre for Research and Documentation of Artist´s Books, Mexico City
3.00 Road Books: Judy Kravis launches ‘Strangeness: a poem sequence of exotic elementary tales’
3.30 seekers of lice: ‘A Minor Poet of the 21st Century: 59 index cards in no particular order’
4.00 Reality Street & West House Books: John Gilmore, Richard Makin & Geraldine Monk
5.00 Litteraria Pragensia Books: David Vichnar & Louis Armand launch VLAK 2
5.30 Veer Books: Johan de Wit, Rebecca Cremin, Alan Halsey, Esther Leslie, Simon Smith, Aodan McCardle & Adrian Clarke

Admission is free to all events and readings