VIEWING ROOM PLYMOUTH COLLEGE OF ART

The Viewing Room is an exhibition at The Gallery, Plymouth College of Art, by The Library of Independent Exchange, Plymouth. The exhibition aims to explore the role of the book within contemporary creative practices. It's a really excellent display of different kinds of books and book works related to creative practice in the visual arts and it has a new wing for poetry. The library is based in Plymouth but doesn't currently have permanent premises. This is a superb developing resource for the city of Plymouth that should be supported by those who care about the interaction of art, design, writing and books. There is at present only a brief chance to look at an aspect of their work. Well done Christopher Green and Mark James, co-directors of the Library of Independent Exchange.
The exhibition runs from Monday 6th February to Friday 24th February.
Associated events are: A bookbinding masterclass, by Tom O'Reilly, Wednesday 15 February;
Writing for Liars, A free workshop led by poet, teacher and essayist John Hall, Wednesday 22 February 2-5pm;
Textually Active: Performative Presentations, Wednesday 22 February 5.30-7pm;
LIE Director's Desk, Free drop in session led by co-director Christopher Green, Friday 24 February 9-5pm.
Places for talks, events, workshops are limited and booking is essential. To book phone 01752 203 434 or email infoservices@plymouthart.ac.uk

NEW EDITION OF FALSE MEMORY

My best known book False Memory has just been published in a new edition by Shearsman Books of Bristol. I'm really grateful to Tony Frazer for a great job on the production. The first version of this book was 6 out of the 11 poem sequences, published by Geoffrey Young's great USA press The Figures in 1996. Then Ken Edwards' Reality Street published Data Shadow in 2000. The complete book was first published by Salt in 2003. Now we have had the opportunity to make some minor corrections and include a new introduction that was specially written for this edition by Robert Hampson of Royal Holloway University of London. The cover photo of False Memory is 'Ancient, White Dwarf Stars in the Milky Way Galaxy', taken by Hubble Space Telescope, credit to NASA and H. Richer (UBC).

DARTINGTON SPACE RESIDENCY

The Japanese Garden at Dartington is a fine place to sit and empty your mind. I'll be there for a lunchtime break each day this week.

Among those awarded Space residencies, I've met Emmalena Fredriksson, a Swedish dance artist who lives in Falmouth. She's working on a new performance called The Living. Also documentary photographer Alice Carfrae and theatre performers Viva Voce are working together on Tin Girls, a theatre piece about the lives of trafficked women. I already knew the excellent Plymouth writer and theatre maker Hannah Silver who is developing her 'political play on words' Opposition.

There is information about the residencies and sharing of new work here.

RESIDENCY AT DARTINGTON SPACE

February 5th to 9th I have a residency at Dartington Space studio 3, to work on a new performance based on Only More So. The book is non-narrative prose with no dialogue and not made for performance in any sense, so it's an interesting experiment. Each day I have the studio to myself and can get on with concentrated work. For a start I'm exploring memory as a theme in the book. I have various performance bookings through the year so it is a good opportunity to prepare in advance.

ONLY MORE SO - UK EDITION

Only More So is just published by Shearsman Books of Bristol. We launched the book with a reading at the University of Notre Dame in London, 1 Suffolk Street, very near Trafalgar Square. THANKS to Notre Dame in London for providing the generous reception and the beautiful venue. It was a pleasure to read with my friend Peter Robinson who has been working for years in Japan before taking up a chair at Reading University. Peter read from his new book The Returning Sky, also published by Shearsman. The cover of Only More So is based on a photo Fimmvorduhals Iceland, 1997, copyright by John S. Webb.

WORKS ON PAPER

At the apex of modernism in the early twentieth century, Bury in Lancashire was the world centre of industrial paper manufacture. Works on Paper is a serial poem looking through the history and language of that technical innovation and place of trade. The poem was written in 2008, first performed at the Text Festival in 2009, and letterpress printed on 130 gsm Hahnemuhle old antique laid by Richard Parker in October and November 2011, limited to 100 copies at £4.
Works on Paper is Crater 15 published by Crater Press, London and Brighton.

THE BURY POEMS

The Bury Poems was published in 2011 by Apple Pie Editions.

Contents
Works on Paper, Tony Lopez
6 Poems, Robert Grenier
Extract: Northern Soul, Ron Silliman
0, Geof Huth
Viaduct, Carol Watts
1 am made of desire, Philip Davenport
Stripped, Philip Davenport
Foody, Holly Pester
HEAP, Holly Pester
Footnotes
For The Bury Poems, Tony Trehy

Philip Davenport's Apple Pie Editions published this hardback collection of work related to a number of Bury Art Museum commissions set up by the Text Festival curator Tony Trehy. The book includes a good reproduction of one short sequence '6 Poems' of Robert Grenier's four-colour hand-drawn poems that are best presented as colour plates. If you haven't seen Grenier's colour work this is a useful point of reference. Ron Silliman's 'Extract: Northern Soul' is actually a tiny extract that was made into a neon poem exhibited at the Text Festival in 2011. It figures in the book as a series of 15 photographs by Philip Davenport of the neon manufacturing process including a double spread with the text. The neon is now installed in Bury tram station. I would have liked to see some more of the Silliman poem. Carol Watts contributes a sequence 'Viaduct' that is based on a fatal road accident near Bury in 1840 involving a horse. The poem uses contemporary sources and material from the Bury archives to dramatise a collision of mechanical industrial and animal worlds. The book also includes photos by Julia Grime and Steve Walton, and drawings by Darren Marsh.
    My poem sequence 'Works on Paper' is broken up arbitrarily and distributed through the book, out of the composed order, with one section used as a half-title and another as back cover copy.
    Ron Silliman's recent chapbook Wharf Hypothesis (published by Lines, NY) is a sort of 'Stranger in a Strange Land' poem describing a train journey in England taken at the time of the Text Festival 2009 and including the 2-3 lines turned into a neon mentioned above. I like the no-nonsense descriptions, Bury Market appears as "off-brand tack / in vast quantity" which it mostly is. The fresh food wouldn't look remarkable to an American, though you wouldn't find that selection of Lancashire produce anywhere else. It's good to read a poem you could argue with, that has a point of view. I'm looking forward to the rest of 'Northern Soul'.