Ongoing notes: London Calling (rob & Stephen's continental adventures…)

Back home from the UK & very glad for it; as brilliant as it was, I have to admit I'm completely exhausted. Jennifer Mulligan was nice enough to pick us up from the plane, & we went straight to Pubwells, after we left Stephen in his daughter's arms, over there in Westboro. Did I tell you about the nine gin & tonics I had on the plane home? We took plenty of pictures; give another few days before I go over to Stephen's house & post them from there. We met a number of extremely interesting people while we were there, including that young Edmund Hardy, who runs the collaborative blog Intercapillary Space (we had a good night of pub-hop with him), & spent some worthy time with Lawrence Upton, who currently runs Writers Forum, & spent a very interesting evening with Nova Scotian poet John Stiles & prairie poet/playwright Kim Morrissey, both of whom live now in London. Another Canadian poet (born in the Netherlands but raised here) that we met at the London reading with Christopher Gutkind, but his first poetry collection from Shearsman only arrived in the mail today, so I haven’t had any time to look at it yet… Why is it every time Stephen & I travel, we meet someone we didn’t know before who grew up in Montreal? (it happened in Ireland too, in Cobh, I believe. Or was it Galway?) In Cardiff (which we didn't know not only the capital of Wales but the student drinking capital of the UK) we read in the foyer of the Wales Millennium Centre, which seemed a Welsh version of Ottawa's National Arts Centre, showing all the important large plays & such, & then us, with local poet J. Brookes, a very interesting micro-publisher. From my previous note, too, spent the first proper London evening at the Crossing the Line series with David Miller, jeff hilson (I misspelled his name in my previous note), & plenty of interesting others. How can we thank any of them enough? Here are some of the publications & folk I picked up along the way…

David Miller, jeff hilson, Maurice Scully & Crossing the Line: Both Miller & hilson were nice enough to give me copies of their recent Reality Street publications. This is an impressive series, with previous publications by Lawrence Upton, Denise Riley, Peter Riley, Maggie O'Sullivan, Fanny Howe, Allen Fisher, Barbara Guest, Anselm Hollo, Robert Sheppard, Nicole Brossard as well as two UK reissues by Lisa Robertson.

Co-organizer of the Crossing the Line reading series & talented host, David Miller has been publishing books of poetry & fiction since 1975 with presses such as Stride, St. Martins Press, Burning Deck, paradigm press, Wild Honey Press & Singing Horse, among others, including his more recent Spiritual Letters (I-II) and other writings (2004) with Reality Street. An interesting series of prose-sections, I look forward to getting deeper into what Miller has been up to all this time.

He arrived at the door at five in the morning, with an
expectation of some desperate action on your part. – I'm
not angry, he said in an angry voice when you stood there
unharmed. A landscape of reddish hues, hard by the sea.
Inscribe in outline a dwelling, a tomb – a city of dwellings
and tombs. The bones of a sparrow or mouse beneath the
decorations and charms; the charred bones of a small
child. As you walk along the littoral, the movements of
your gaze may result in unexpected 'wipes' of colour. A letter
that answers your accusations: unsent, it's kept in a cupboard,
its eyes open in the dark. You retrace the confidences, too:
the beatings her first lover gave her for his pleasure, his
rejection of her when she was pregnant by him. Gainsay a
concern with persuasion or display, elegance or finesse, as
well as the formulas of ruin. Place another sheet alongside
the first: move across, reflecting upon, engaging with, in
places canceling. An amateur, I write, rewrite – for the
sake of what remains invisible in the showing-forth.

Co-organizer of the reading series with Miller, hilson is the author of three chapbooks & one larger trade poetry book, stretchers (2006); he recently finished a doctorate on the work of Louis Zukofsky, & teaches alongside Canadian poet Peter Jaeger [see my review of his SALT book here] at Roehampton University. Built out of three long poems, stretchers works the stretch of London & language, incorporating a lot of found material & other strange sources.

…the sawing man I fear for his legs
red white red white and he has years
this road they will dig it and widen the pave
tho it is not oxford street it is said
the rich must now walk on that side too
for graffiti there's dogshit it's a kind
of writing can be scried an inventory
taken of say colour consistency and
I won't have this neighborhood
fears of a mass break-in nor pay
for inside when you can have sound
from over there (where was angry)
the phrase "phenomenological night"
and hedges such as do you know
what I mean the word hedge is new
and used everywhere by ladies like
albert ayler's music for circus and
as in hedge-school and hedge-bird
and hedge-priest as in hedge-bantler
on the right or wrong side of the
hedge takes a sheet off the hedge or
is on the hedge regardless of others
the hedge-creeper he's a creeper crept
into a hedge for the hedge-police
would catch him for his creeping and
the hedge of hawthorn was a cloak
to hide the creeper gone aside from
the straight way the shifter and shuffler
his means of protection as in the dancers
bottom right of bosch's garden their blind
owl-headed dance buried in a tusked bug
schal or schil rind and quarrel these
briars and brambles will protect you…

When in London, I read with Dublin poet Maurice Scully, who was reading from his collection Tig (Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2006). They even had to hold the reading up a bit, since (as they said) he was coming from a "long way away." (how could I not make fun? oh, yes, Dublin sure is far away from here…). Another poet with a wide publishing history going back about twenty-five years (most of that time he's been working on a single project called Things That Happen, said to be complete with this new volume), Scully works the long movement, long poems that move & move along in visual ways that weren't as obvious to me, the listener, during his two sets.

[PICKING PERSIMMON]

distinctly through
the night air trains

through otherwise
silence – contact –

toy-like parallel
movements where machinery

clocks into place.
listen I saw what

I meant you saw
& the sunny external

world slid past over
yr shaded spectacles

& for the sake of
the rhythm I suppose

of the train on its
track you smiled.

it all takes you back.

under an intimate
intense cone of light

on a page on a desk
among books in the night

to return upturn upset
visit obsessive hating

obsessed teaching the
cocky ignorant well-to-do

offspring of the European
upper echelons to

limp along in something
like an intelligible

legible béarlagar
tax free on the button…

I always liked being there
that dark & haunting house

off the South Circular
at the canal end where

colossal mirrors
spread out their

cloth ducks in flight
across a wall

oranges & lemons
& the bells

of St Clement's &
the strangeness

of flickering eyes
that are blind –

oh movements
continuous &

formal forgive
us our futures!

& loneliness.
& affection

that atom
incandescent

in the tune
the train's

shadow flickering
over the fields

mountains passing
(a city, distant)

gull-spots wheeling

a child nearby
at the window

where the world
tracks past a

very young child
so happy so

taken aback
she sings…

For info on Reality Street, check out their website or email info@realitystreet.co.uk. For more info on Shearsman Books, check out here.

frances kruk, Sean Bonney & Yt Communication: Days away from finishing her PhD dissertation while I was there was Calgary poet frances kruk. Hers is exactly the kind of relationship I want with any writer in another place: she helped promote the reading, & introduced herself by handing me a small stack of publications (I gave her a bunch back, of course). Had I only spent more time talking to her, our interaction would have been perfect! She handed me three items, including her chapbook clobber (June 2006), all produced by kruk & Sean Bonney's Yt Communication. An ex-pat from Calgary's filling Station crew, kruk's work fits along the lines from much I have seen of (as Bowering has called it) the "Calgary renaissance."

how raisins crawl and bump
about maggoty in sifty
oats and bran plump wrigglers
horny for milk mouth gaped to gulp
spoons excitable on milled silt
almost
soft
as a neck i would roll my face
into chew the chords from a whole
bowl full mulchy. silk crushed
in cheeks i toggle in pagamas
crumbs between my toes hairy in distress:
the fogged morning kitchen. Shall I Open

confetti grains snow
court yard dust fruit
benediction rolls, tickles
nipple sharp on glass

Apparently Sean Bonney has a trade poetry collection with SALT that I would LOVE to be able to see; apparently his performances around London are legendary. I got copies of his Document: hexprogress (May 2006) and their small magazine hick moth: yt communication bulletin (July 2006). Just seeing these three publications, I would think this lad would fit in perfectly in any part of Calgary, Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, or various other places around the country, where strange little publications get made. The magazine includes work by Adrian Clarke, Marianne Morris, Lara Fuckerton (a pseudonym, perhaps?), Sophie Robinson, Steve Willey, Keston Sutherland, jUStin!katKo, & visuals by Canadian lads derek beaulieu & daniel f bradley.

what the eye might see
is split open as imagination
sighs nipple back and lick
she in new brown shoes
rock and shred in equal
ideas of the depth of
the city, runic and blistered
cheeks are red as global
virtue is a trap zombie
right now. extract more cars
and shower with songs of
tremor ditch. you walk it
from its rosy gawking walls
will conduct you. your menu
opens out into city square
incident is hot tail, jump-start
celestial earth, make terror swab
as globe interior, her eye
talks up such split sunrise
to wake up this morning
and wake up this morning

*

and if they bite you
you need poison and fast
anxiety wire: take him hostage
fading red globe inside his
muscle stolen, think of him,
he is my neighbour. I
have fed him and how
there is nothing more but
we will trade, he is
call out tenant shift, is
image fixion, is burst droplet
to explain our bad intention
tongue from neck to what
his name is Simon Stylites
and his neo-bite is fatal
image, as the thought persons
merge, the Circle Line on
orgy level, now wash your
hands dry. then at Aldgate
attach a split panty shift:
clasp and lick. kill Blair. (Document: hexprogress)

This is someone I need to keep an eye on (to see what he does next in his writing, of course). For more information on these little publications "made in hackney," email them at ytcommunication@yahoo.co.uk

Lawrence Upton & Writers Forum: The afternoon after my Crossing the Line reading, Stephen & I dropped in on a Writers Forum workshop, which was absolutely thrilling! Upton, one of the premiere UK concrete/visual poets, also kept Writers Forum as a workshop/publisher going after the death of its founder, Bob Cobbing, just a couple of years ago. Imagine workshops running since 1952 & still going; Cobbing's widow, Jenny, was even there, & read a few pieces. matt martin & Jamie Wilkes, two local young fellers, even read some things that Stephen & I thought particularly brilliant & mind-blowing (we decided that they + Upton should all be writing pieces for us to consider for future issues of Poetics.ca…); unfortunately, I forget which was which, so I couldn’t even tell you which did the brilliant pig sound poem (I made sure to give him Max Middle's contact information), or which one did the postcard pieces that I would LOVE to turn into a chapbook (what is a boy to do?). Upton gave me a copy of his Mutation (London: Zimmer Zimmer Press, 1977).


mighty lonely
where it and he stood


he fingered Peggy
then unity alone

this depression ordered an idea


but of all who bobbed
I dealt her out from Rome


how they accept it!
and cowardly too (Mutation)

I even bought copies of two older Writers Forum publications (some of the few that Upton had brought with him), bob cobbing & robert sheppard's CODES AND DIODES (1991) & Peter Ganick's cafe unreal (1994). After hearing these names for years, these are only the second publications each I think I now own by Upton, cobbing & Connecticut poet/publisher Ganick; what's taken me so bloody long?

"as is said
as seep through the elicits
anon dry front l i p heal
and journey l a s t o r g a n"

"diverse non sequin
a r r e s t no hail
appreciably turned into"

"what are share, announce
is deplorable artifact, ultra range
textured and of itself,
listen, like that"

"j u s t when n e e d e d"

"how else? that"

"concept orchestra,
spent an ideal,
that cribbed row
textile, some
animal's essence"

"divergent siphon
newer lace orange"

For information on anything Writers Forum-ish, email Upton at lawrence.upton@britishlibrary.net

Kim Morrissey & John Stiles: They took Stephen & I out for drinks one night, without having met each other previously (even though they'd both been at the London reading). A pub, some Indian food, & then another pub. What is it about the British & bar hopping? Toronto folk do the same thing; is it just me, to be happy in one place the whole evening? (& at the end of every night, it seems, Stephen & I getting to Eva at the hotel bar…)

A Canadian poet living in London for seventeen years, prairie author Kim Morrissey is the author of the collections Batoche (Regina SK: Coteau Books, 1989) and Poems For Men Who Dream of Lolita (Coteau Books, 1992) as well as a number of plays, including her "black comedy about Freud," Dora: A Case of Hysteria (Nick Hern Books, 1994) and Clever as Paint: The Rossettis in Love (Toronto ON: Playwrights Canada Press, 1998). She gave us copies of her Rossettis play when we were there (which excited Stephen very much, I think), apparently she has boxes of them. When will come the other poems? I know she organizes various poetry events around London, including something for National Poetry Day on Thursday, October 5th (there should be a poetry week, she said; check out the website for it here) but where are her new pieces? When will be that third collection? I met her originally in Brenda Niskala's house in Regina back in 1998, when Brenda & I were late catching a plane… (but that's another story for another time).

Much quieter than Morrissey was Nova Scotian John Stiles, who still publishes in Canada, and hasn’t been overseas nearly as long. A new poetry collection from Insomniac Press came out recently, & I think he's published a book of fiction already, & there's supposed to be another one. A very nice lad; his parents were even at my London reading (I never got up the nerve to ask why). It's strange spending an evening with someone & realizing you still don't know a whole lot about them. Hoping very much to see him again.

Academi & the Wales Millennium Centre: I wasn't kidding when I called this building the National Arts Centre of Wales; just look at the program or the website & you'll see what I mean. It was pretty cool to see our names listed in their magazine, alongside a notice about Welsh author Niall Griffiths, author of Stump; we got to meet him when he read at the ottawa international writers festival in fall 2001; would have been good to see him again, but I'd forgot he was there… (see the schedule for the upcoming festival here, by the by). Thanks to poet Peter Finch (who couldn’t make the event due to a bad back), Stephen & I got to read in the foyer of this magnificent building with local poet, ex-pat Londoner Jonathon Brookes, reading from his self-published chapbook Nobby: Prince of Wales (The Profitless Press, 2006). A writer who refuses to move beyond the self-published, there is a lot to admire in the work of Brookes; the name of his publishing house reminds me of such other publishing houses as NMFG (no money for the government) that was run up in that Prince George, British Columbia in the 1970s by Brian Fawcett, or the Not One Cent of Subsidy Press that produced Ottawa poet Michael Dennis' poems for jessica-flynn in 1986 [read my note on him here]; what is it about the impulse to announce one owns belligerent independence? Brookes read from a number of smart, funny & formal without being too formal poems at the event (had Brockwell & I in the back in stitches), & it would have been great to get a couple of those posted. His Nobby is a strange play/prose work weaving elements of the Welsh language through a series of twisted characters I have only started engaging with. A very smart writer, & one I would certainly like to see more of.

Our reading host, Cardiff poet ric hool, gave me a copy of his voice from a correspondent (the collective press, 2001), a collection of his own poetry. Maybe I was lucky with who I interacted with, but the notion of throwing strange visuals & using space across the page seems much more prevalent in the UK than it does in Canada; it would be interesting to explore the reasons why (although difficult, I think, from over here).

The Fall

today's
flown
thoughts

you
your
phone

paged
with
messages

the instance
onward
finding

what
is
known

to be
the fact
makes

us
the incident
of process

as cork
severs
the leaf

autumn
full-coloured
vital

as bud
but changes
in defeat

a
year
in this

descent
acknowledges
height

the fall
camus
knew

I won't even tell you about getting to the pub after, & having the young local feller (who was extremely bright, & gave interesting tourist bits about various of the buildings around us) finally snapped when I told him I liked the band Coldplay; his friends had to pry him off me. Otherwise, a very positive night…

To contact Brookes, write him c/o 20 Princes Court, The Walk, Plasnewydd, Cardiff Wales CF24 3AU

& then we came home.