READING FOR VISUAL POETICS

I was in London March 20th for the private view of Visual Poetics at the Poetry Library in the South Bank, I met Paula Claire, whom I'd seen on film at The Other Room in Manchester when I read there last year. Also Liliane Lijn who is known especially for her revolving poetry machines: I featured a photo of one of them in my review of the ICA show Poor Old Tired Horse in a much older blog post. Liliane Lijn was set up with a table and chairs to play her poetry game with a set of word cards. A group of participants were dealt a hand of cards and then took turns to add a word card to a text developing on the table. This was something like fridge magnet poetry and the vocabulary was generic poetry words.
     There was a reading by exhibition participants, including: Victoria Bean, Wayne Clements, Paula Claire, Stephen Emerson, John Gibbens, Giles Goodland, John Hall, Alan Halsey, James Harvey (read by Matt Martin), Sophie Herxheimer, Gad Hollander, Julie Johnson, Sarah Kelly, Liliane Lijn, Tony Lopez, Matt Martin, and Gavin Selerie. I particularly enjoyed Paula Claire's audience participation performance of 'Gun Law'; Giles Goodland's witty prose poem made of phrases including 'hand' and words that sound like hand; John Hall's reading from Interscriptions, his very fine collaborative Word and Image book with Peter Hughes; Alan Halsey's fully theatrical persona reading from his White Writing through a magnifying glass, doubtfully repeating the words and word fragments, turning the page around to follow the indistinct and partly erased text; Matt Martin's hilarious poem made of just acronyms. It was a great set of readings. I'm hoping to hear the recordings made by The Poetry Library soon. THANKS to the curators Chris McCabe and David Miller and all the staff at the Poetry Library for making the event go so well.
     It was my first sight of Visual Poetics, apart from photos, really good to see it. Apart from the wall display and screens, there was a lot of work that had been gathered and shown in display cases and relevant material from the main collection was also put out. There is a review of the exhibition in One Stop Arts here. Thanks to Lucy Lopez for the photos.