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Stunning news! I've just received a lovely email from Ken MacLeod letting me know he'd be publishing four more of my poems for the Human Genre Project! HOORAY!The new poems up are:Stones (on Chromosome 2)The Illustrated Lady (on Chromosome 6)Ogbanje (or 'Children who come and go') (on Chromosome 11)A Cause Célèbre (on Chromosome 21)As with the first of my poems he published, Ondine's Curse, I've written about a specific disease which relates to a defect/mutation on each of the respective chromosomes.Of these four new poems, the one I got most engrossed in writing was Illustrated Lady. I wrote this one about Julia Gnuse, who is the most tattooed woman in the world (95% I think, covered in tattoos). She didn't just get all the tattoos for fashion though -- Julia has porphyria, a disease which makes her skin super-sensitive to sunlight and blister/scar if over-exposed. I thought this was a very interesting way to sort of reclaim her body from the disease.Sorry, rambling! Please do go check out the poems, and the wealth of new writing Ken has already added in the past few days.I posted here last time about the submission requirements. There is no deadline thus far, so do send some in now if you fancy it!OH! I ought to mention also, next Thursday, 27 August, 7pm, Ken MacLeod is chairing a panel on 'Genetics and Identity in the Year of Homecoming', at the Edinburgh Book Festival. He'll be with genealogist and biologist Dr Bruce Durie, acclaimed novelist Suhayl Saadi, and writer, producer and former National Poet of Wales Gwyneth Lewis. Should be interesting. Get tickets from the book festival website while they last!
Guess what I received in the post?! Guess! You'll never guess, I'll just tell you. 
Amazing artist & illustrator Lucy Roscoe, of The Book Tree Press fame, has just sent me a hardbound artist's-book copy of our collaboration for the DUO project from last February (May?).
Her book goes along with my poem, Pigeons, and is her interpretation of the poem, in pressed/embossed card paper, hand-set typography, and beautiful renditions of pigeons in various states of... pigeon-life! I wish I could explain better how she made it. She told me once but I can't remember the technique... She uses found objects - lace, different cloth materials, tape - to make the shape of the birds, then does some sort of hard pressing to get it to stick out/in like that. I seriously, seriously, love this kind of stuff.
I've already posted here about the DUO collaboration book available for sale at blurb.com.
And here with the poem and her original prints, ages ago.
But this is different. This is ridiculous. Lucy is an artist like I've never seen! The book is small, fits in one hand. She was right about needing to feel it, hold it up to the light, to really appreciate it. I see it's got a '1/6' on the back, so perhaps there are only a few others in existence, but definitely head over to Lucy's site to see if you can't find something for sale or if you have a project in mind. She's great!
ALSO!
I'll use this as a very clever excuse to tell you about the next DUO reading, which will be this coming Wednesday, 26 August, at none other than the Edinburgh International Book Festival, at 2.30pm, Peppers Theatre. My coursemates and I will be reading our collaboration pieces, along with what will surely be a brilliant digital slideshow of the artists' work. Come see us if you're in town!
A big day tomorrow! As part of the West Port Book Festival, I'm reading twice in the same day!
First at 2pm at Main Point bookstore for the textualities.net 'Concise Ceilidh'. I'll be reading alongside Valerie Gillies, Robert Alan Jamieson, and a big handful of other excellent writers. More information here at the WPBF website: http://westportbookfestival.org/news/2009/08/13/the-concise-ceilidh-explained/
Then at 6pm at Peter Bell bookstore for the Anon reading. About this event, from the website: 'Showcasing poets who feature in the latest issue of Anon, the anonymous submissions poetry magazine, as well as those who have appeared over past issues, this event will also introduce the winner of the first Anon Poetry Competition. A sparkling mix of poetry old and new – with special guests.'
About the (second annual!) Festival: The aim of the West Port Book Festival has been to offer free events to a diverse audience who share our passion for books, bookshops and fun. We have also been creative, dipping into the dressing up box, casting our eye around for new talent and transforming local shops into intimate, innovative venues.The pavements of the West Port have always been imprinted with the memory of conflicting footsteps. Specialist shops sell clothes and painted canvasses; strip joints show unlikely silhouettes in black and pink; secondhand bookshops entice bibliomaniacs. These shops set the stage for poetry readings, bookbinding workshop, and talks from famous interesting writers and flaneurs! Everything is free (but ticketed)!
Got home from the London Poetry Festival on Tuesday afternoon. It was a great gig! Being one of the five Poets in Residence, I read four nights in a row at the massive Waterloo St John's Church, just a short 10 minute set, but it was still quite exciting and stressful being 'on' for four nights. Buckets of excellent up&coming and established poets came through for the event from Dover and Glasgow, all the way to New Jersey! I'm still seriously exhausted from all the weekend shenanigans though.As a celebration of the London Poetry Festival reaching its 5th year, the festival director Munayem Mayenin put together a special edition book, which is available from the London Poetry Festival website.
The book features all the Poets in Residence, as well as past PiRs and readers at the Festival. 64 writers in total, I believe. And I've got a whopping five poems in! [Tower of Silence, Sugar Sculpting Little Tokyo, The Pit, Jackfish, and Castle Rabbits, Edinburgh.]So do grab a copy if you can. I think the Poets in Residence will receive half the profit from each book sold. I wait with bated breath for my poetry winnings.Also, some lovely news! Poet JoAnne McKay bought one of my new handmade Poetry Pets (working title) - a Robot (to go with my poem 'For Your Love of Robots'). My first sale! She's also commissioned me to make a second one as she's got two twin boys who will love them very much.
More about this as I get our proper website sorted. Watch this space.
Just got my contributor copy of The Golden Hour Book Volume II. It's lovely!! It's thick and short and fits in the hand just perfectly. Cover and interior art is by Magda Boreysza, who also did all the new art on the walls at the Forest Cafe!
The Golden Hour book V.2 is the second in its series, following volume one, available here:http://www.theforest.org.uk/golden-hour-bookThey've not yet got a dedicated page up for the second volume, but Forest Publications is launching it's own website soon, here:http://forpub.com/It's looking pretty swanky already -- I'm looking forward to new content!Anyhow, sorry. The Golden Hour books showcase musicians and writers who have performed at the monthy Golden Hour cabaret show at the Forest Cafe. I performed at the Golden Hour last December (Christmas special!), and they've decided to take on two of my poems, Lunch, and Dragon Sculpting, for this volume. It's very exciting!
Also, this volume, as with the first, is loaded with an accompanying CD of music in the back, featuring musicians who've played The Golden Hour since the last volume. Tunes = rad.
I believe the official launch will be in September at Blackwell's, but you might be lucky enough to snag an early copy at the 'Festival special' Golden Hour this Wednesday, August 19, at 8pm. FREE!
This just in! I've got my contributors copy of Fuselit: Mars, and it looks AMAZING!I love magazines like this -- that take the extra effort to create a unique and interesting product. They've played with different papers, burnt artistic holes, hand-sewed the book bindings, glued on shiny stars, and that's not even started on the content!
Each issue of the magazine has a different theme. Fuselit very kindly accepted my poem, Martial Arts, for their Mars themed issue:
Every issue of Fuselit is handmade and comes with a tiny cd of music, and usually some sort of other creative project. For example, this issue came with a booklet called Telemorphics, which seems to be translations of writing made by doing computer translations (an alien language?) on an original text, then translating them back into English poetry/creative writing. Interesting concept!
Also, the magazine itself, albeit A6 tiny, is full of games and even has a fold-out comic book in the middle! The rest of the pages are chock full of poetry, short stories and art. How did they pack so much awesome into something so small???!Definitely go check out Fuselit's website, and see if you can't pick up a copy of Mars or other back issues while they last.Their next issue is themed TILT. The next after that is themed JACK and they are accepting submissions for it as we speak!
My poem, Only Child, is published online on the Westwind Journal website. I'll copy it below, but do go have a look at the new Winter 2009 issue, as well as the quality back issues available online at their site.Only ChildThe cars on Gilbert Boulevard start and stop at the crosswalk— a muffled honk and the peel of tires. Inside, hamsters spin in their cages on squeaky wheels. I sit on an orange swatch of carpet— the one in the patchwork design that I call ‘Mars’. Not the brown bit, ‘California’, or the avocado ‘swamp’. With the door shut, clutching a Barbie doll in each hand, I make believe the blonde doll is the big sister of the one which looks more like me. She chaperons her plastic sibling to the blue patch, ‘ocean’, and they spend hours swimming together in silence. _ _About Westwind:Westwind is the Undergraduate Literary Journal for the University of California, Los Angeles. When I was an undergrad at UCLA, I did the layout and design for Westwind for three years. It was my first time watching how a magazine operated from the inside, and my first time teaching myself how to use design programs (InDesign, Pagemaker, & old school Quark, among other things!) to produce a quality book.Anyhow, I never submitted to Westwind as a student, feeling it'd be a bit nepotistic for me to contribute to a magazine I was a member of, but now that all my mates have graduated from UCLA, I thought I'd give it a shot & see if I had a winning chance of being published by my alma mater. What exciting news! ---------------Only Child, first in Westwind, Winter 2009, 08/01/2009.
