Aesthetica: At the Airshow

Great news in my Inbox today! An email from Aesthetica Magazine:

Dear Aiko Harman

I am writing to let you know that you have been selected as a finalist for the International Aesthetica Creative Works Competition. Category: Poetry, Title of piece: At the Airshow was highly commended by the judges. Congratulations on this massive achievement. We had over 3000 entries this year.

A few more details:

• Winners from each category will be announced just before publication.
• As a finalist, you will receive a complimentary hard copy.
• The Aesthetica Annual will be available from Borders nationwide on 1 December and from www.aestheticamagazine.com
  

Again congratulations on your success!

Best wishes

Alexis Smith
Aesthetica Magazine

HOW COOL IS THAT!

I'll post again with pictures once my complimentary copy arrives. Do go check it out at Borders in December!  It should be available to buy in the Aesthetica Magazine shop by then as well, in both digital and hard copy.  AND BETTER STILL, I just found out my good friend and colleague Kate Charles has also been selected as a finalist, so there'll be even more good stuff inside - I guarantee it!

Just as an aside, I'm not usually much up for submitting to prizes since they tend to include a hefty reading fee, but this year Aesthetica offered a discounted submission rate for students, so I gave it a go.  I'm really appreciative of magazines and contests that offer cheaper (or free!) rates, especially to students, and am happy to support when I can.  Aesthetica is a great-looking magazine, and I can't wait to see the contents of the Creative Works annual.

Edit:  Another colleague, Russell Jones, also shortlisted!  Check him out!

And of course, get your copy of the Aesthetica Creative Works Annual today!:  Shop

Letting Up: Pause - available now!

Hello!  I posted a short while ago about a music/lyric collaboration I did with my good friend Mike Lee, of Letting Up Despite Great Faults.  And now I just wanted to post again with pictures, as - WOOHOO! - I've received a couple contributors copies of the CD, as well as a stack of Letting Up stickers!

Above: on the left are the front and back of the stickers; on the right are the front and back of the cd. The cover image is by Rhiannon Adam.

This one shows the CD and the insert - they've written all the album lyrics onto a single side of the insert, which I think gives an interesting read!  It's like the album tells a story which you can hear along the way.

See the bits I wrote for Pause, in the middle!!  "..i blew into it, i dreamed it real..."

On the bottom right of the insert below the tracklist is a list of all the contributors; I'm so chuffed to get a mention in there!

As before, please support Letting Up by ordering their album:

From InSound: click here! (just $9.99!)

From Amazon.com: click here!
From the iTunes store: click here!

Open Magazine: Things You Can Learn How To Be, etc

Things are happening fast these days!  Open Magazine has just published my poem, Things You Can Learn How To Be (by doing a search on the internet), in their weekly update, with promise of three more poems in the forthcoming weeks. You can read Things You Can Learn How To Be here.

I'm quite pleased about this.  You see, a couple months ago, one of the writers for Open Magazine (Michael Barnett) gave me some of the best literary compliments I have ever received, in his review of the London Poetry Festival:  Open Magazine | London Poetry Festival. I hadn't met him at the festival as far as I know, so didn't expect this at all!  Too kind.

He mentioned in the review that one of the poems he'd heard me read, At the Airshow, wasn't available online - well that's because it hadn't been publish anywhere yet!  So I sent it and a couple others along to Open, and they've kindly accepted them into their Poetry Corner.  I'm glad At the Airshow will have its chance to shine at a magazine I know enjoys it.  I'm looking forward to seeing it up there in a couple weeks!

Until then, please check out Things You Can Learn How To Be, and the other new content online at Open Magazine.  I saw an article about the Poetry Society and National Poetry Day in there! 

I suppose I should mention, Things You Can Learn How To Be is a list poem, of true things I discovered people have searched for on the internet.  I went to the Google main page and typed in 'How to be...' and the auto-complete function started to show me what it thought I was searching for.  Things like 'How to be a vampire' and 'How to be anorexic' came up first.  Isn't it strange and interesting all the things people want to be?

The Syllabary: FuP 'June, July or August'

A quick note to tell you about The Syllabary, and to encourage you along to an event this Saturday at the Scottish Poetry Library.

Colin Fraser, editor of Anon, first introduced me to The Syllabary, as Anon 6 has an interesting interview with its creator, Peter McCarey, who talks about his project and a collaborative one with "Provisional Title" he has forthcoming.  Peter has very kindly invited us (and others) to write some of the first poems for the collaboration project, a collaboration that will one day have 2,200 poems/poets included (read: this could be you!).  I'll let the SPL's event invitation do a bit of the explaining, then I'll post my Syllabary poem below. 

Event details (copied from the SPL website):

Saturday 10 October, 7pm
at Scottish Poetry Library, 5 Crichton's Close, Canongate, Edinburgh

Peter McCarey's The Syllabary: Launches x 2
We're delighted to be hosting the liquid launch of not one but two syllabaries:
Syllabary 3.0, which has been test run on www.knot.ch all summer, and "Provisional Title", a syllabary whose 2200-odd cells will be written by as many different people. If you want to contribute, come along for your syllable and instructions, or come to hear the random rant.

In the phonetic context of Peter McCarey's Syllabary, some 2200 people will each be asked to write one poem for a given cell of the structure. The first poems have already been submitted. Should you wish to join in, ask the compiler (mccarey@perso.ch) to send you a random syllable. You should then write a short text – 20 lines max – that contains all the words in the cell you get; some cells contain only one word, others contain dozens.  Send a text file and an mp3 recording of your contribution to the compiler.

Free, all welcome

It should be a good event. He's asked some of the people who wrote poems already to read them at the event so you can hear a few samples as well. 

In the Anon 6 interview,  Peter explained the mechanics of The Syllabary:

The phonetic structure I mentioned above is set out in a 3-dimensional grid that contains a total of 3600 possible combinations of initial consonant, vowel, and terminal consonant.  About two-thirds of these cells contain at least one meaningful monosyllabic word; some contain up to fifty.  All the noises are read out, and I'm writing a text for each meaningful cell, based on all the relevant words.  The program meanders from one to another by alternating initial, vowel or terminal, one step at a time.

With this in mind, he assigned me the cell for 'FuP', which includes the words 'frump' and 'flump'.  I wrote the following poem for it:

[FuP] June, July or August

All the fat feral pigeons are pregnant,
stumbling around on the awnings,
drunk with eggs and summer.
One flumps to the pavement
like a slung burlap sack of seed,
foraging for dust, discarded chips or bugs
in the cracks, anything, lust-hungry.
Even an old frump, feathers matte
with crisp white bits, still coaxes
a crude lover who croons to her
on the plinth of a window ledge,
does his spinning dance on splintered legs,
puffs his plump body up before her,
and wins, in time for laying season.

The Syllabary also has audio recordings of each of the cells, so shortly you should be able to hear me reading the poem on the collaboration's site as well!  Exciting!  I'll be sure to link back when it's up.  In the meantime, do send Peter an email to ask for a cell for yourself.  It's a great challenge, with what will surely be an amazing result. 

---------------
June, July or August, first in The Syllabary, for Peter McCarey 2009

Mesostic: Interleaved project

Afternoon!  Got a parcel in the post today - my contributor's copy of the Mesostic Interleaved book by Alec Finlay!

His assistant has sent along two copies of the book, plus a sample of two of the bookmarks which came tucked in a wee library card-holder!  There were 100 mesostics for the project in total, all included in this book.  The majority where done by Alec himself and Ken Cockburn, but the other contributors are listed on the front page:

I sent them about a hundred mesostics to go with authors from their list, but they selected this one to use for Francis HUTCHESON:  'thus virtue must associate with pleasure, sin become pain'. 

I've highlighted the letters from Hutcheson's name for emphasis.  It's like an acrostic, but the letters can be from anywhere in the linking words, not just the first one.  These mesostics link to different authors or books in the library.  There is a mainly-Scottish or related-to-Edinburgh-University trend running between them, and the mesostics we made are for the surnames of authors. 

From Alec's bookshop, the Mesostic Interleaved book is:

100 mesostic poems composed on an eclectic selection of 100 authors. Published to commemorate the redevelopment of Edinburgh University Library (2009), Mesostic Interleaved is a poetic bibliography of eminent thinkers in the fields of Science & Technology, Politics & Economics, Languages & The Arts. Each page has space for writing your own poems and notes.

The project coincided with the re-opening of the University of Edinburgh Main Library.  There was a big christening event for it a few weeks back, where Ian Rankin amongst others spoke about their experiences with the library (back when he was an Edinburgh student!) versus what it's become today.  I'll not rehash an explanation of what the BBC has already covered.  The event was lovely though, and gave me a chance to see what had been done with the mesostics!  (A couple of my coursemates and I got involved with the project last November, so its been nearly a year in development for us!)

There is a huge mesostic poem carved into the stones slabs in front of the library, which you should definitely check out if you're ever on campus.  Also, Alec has had 50,000 bookmarks made up of the 100 mesostic poems in the set, which are free to take at the library.  It's not so easy though!  The bookmarks have been tucked into books at random in the library - you'll have to find one if you want it!  They're meant to be used for students to take notes on, so have plenty of blank space.  And on the back is a library barcode for the book related to the mesostic poem, if a student should be so curious. 

Also - the part I am most excited about - the mesostics from the bookmarks have also been printed onto the bright plexiglass bookshelf dividers, so far in the first floor HUB, but presumably next on the bookshelves (currently under renovation) on the 1st and 2nd floors.  You can see one of the HUB bookshelves below.  I'm so excited that something I've helped with will be around now as a part of the library for generations.  I feel like I've left my mark in a way!

Very exciting!

More info on Mesostics and Alec Finlay at:  http://www.alecfinlay.com/

To buy the book on Amazon: click here
And head here for the Library Information Services 'Art in the Redevelopment' news article:  A great explanation, with pictures!  - thanks Denny!

Pomegranate Iss.9: 'Golden Gai'

Good news!  I just found out my poem, Golden Gai, has been accepted for Issue 9 of Pomegranate magazine!  [Read the poem here: Golden Gai]

Quoting from their website, Pomegranate is "a free UK-based poetry ezine showing off the freshest poetry we can find." And by "fresh" they mean: "Well, usually it’s an adjective referring to fruit, but here we’re talking about poetry – young poets, new poetry. Pomegranate poets, bloggers and writers are mostly students in secondary school or at uni, and all under 30."

I think it's a really lovely zine & I'm always in favor of journals and magazines that want to give more opportunities to young people.  Each issue has a different theme; Issue 9's theme is 'Masque'.

I'm so pleased the editors chose to use Golden Gai.  Golden Gai is an area in Shinjuku, Tokyo near Kabuki-cho.   Golden Gai these days is a real hub for artists, writers, and 'intellectuals'.  It's a bit hard to get to, and doesn't look so nice on the outside, but is such an interesting and important part of Japan's history and culture... & it feels more 'untouched' and nostalgic of another time, than most of the neon-lighted areas surrounding it.  This tiny area is a huge hidden mecca of great bars and banter...  you do really feel like you've stepped into a secret world in Golden Gai.  I found a couple of good articles online about it which sort of capture the ambiance I was going for in my poem, here,  here and here.  Man I miss Japan...

Anyhow!  Apologies for rambling! 

The poem is available online to read here: 'Golden Gai' in Pomegranate

Please check it out if you have a chance, and definitely read the rest of the issue as well!  I saw a Jen Hadfield article in there!

I'm so pleased to be in such good company at Pomegranate this issue.