Duncan McGibbon’s poem, Unsound has been published in Kaktus, A Basle quarterly, edited this month by Victoria Fine, it carries writing in English with a poem by Jill Alexander Essbaum, whose book, Necropolis came out last year from Neonuma Arts.
Duncan McGibbon read in Bath on Wednesday 15th October 2008, 12.20-2.00pm
Scraps from a Dead Letter Drop: poetry and translations by Duncan McGibbon. Hosted by Nikki Bennett, Bath Stanza Rep for The Poetry Society.
Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution
16-18, Queen Square, Bath; 12.20-2.00pm
Visitors £2; Members / Students £1
soft drinks available, bring your own sandwiches
DIVERS is available from members of the workshop, a selection of whose poems are published in this 169 page paperback anthology, as well as from Aark Arts. (further information)
I have just published a review “Massa Day Done”: Sonny Jim of Sandy Point by S.B. Jones-Hendrikson in Seabreeze a journal of Contemporary Liberian Writing http://www.liberiaseabreeze.com/ The issue is a very interesting one apart from my contribution. Duncan McGibbon
8:00pm on Sunday 29 June, 2008 Pentameters Theatre, 28 Heath Street, Hampstead, London NW3 6TE A writers’ reading party organized by the Poetry Workshop and Aark Arts publishers in celebration of 25 years of the Poetry Workshop, this event will also introduce Divers, an anthology of poems by the Poetry Workshop participants. Tickets £8 / £5. For further information see: Divers Book Launch, June 29th 2008, Pentameters Theatre, Hampstead http://members.aol.com/kimmorrissey01/timebank/westeuston/divers.html … or look on the Pentameters Theatre poetry event listing web page.
Raphael Urweider’s third collection, “Alle Deine Namen”, names eight seasons, when we have four, twenty six girls, when girls don’t come in alphabetical order and ten drinks from his cabinet filled with the small lyric. He moves from being consumed by time in early and late seasons to partnering plants and girls in an ordered dance and he ends consuming gin, vodka, whisky and more. His collection is prefaced by a quotation from the Book of Ecclesiastes,”Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them: I kept my heart from no pleasure and found pleasure in all my toil and this was my reward for all my toil.” The Barthean “jouissance” implied by this has a writerly audacity which is often born out in the subtle, shifting language in which the named entities are expressed. In ‘nachherbst’, Raphael rings changes on the named, unimagined tree that echoes unseen in the wind. A name without an object still somehow existing “the given with nothing ungiven.” gegeben…dagegen.
The poems are about the pleasures of existence and inexistence in landscape, love and labels. A Round Dance with the ABC of love has Antonia counselled not to wake the dogs, nor mar their dreams, nor arouse the cicadas and thus she mutes into the page. It has Caecilia mimicking the impermanence of flowers and so on. The diction of the poems is narrow but exact with a sophisticated play on words which is both rhythmic and visual. The third part of the collection is called selbstversuch, self-attempt, though “for personal experiment” would be more exact. The word rings of versuchung, temptation. Raphael’s verbal dexterity is brilliant in these word-paintings of the feel, the allusions and the effects of the alcoholic tastings he explores. His “whisky” puts this Scot to shame. The book is published by the Cologne firm, Dumont (www.dumont-buchverlag.de). ISBN 978-3-8321-8055-3.
Raphael read recently at the Solothurn Festival and here in Bern in the Raum (info@kulturraum.ch) to packed audiences. In Bern his reading was shared with music from Isaac Biaas who dazzled with his guitar style Afro Swing, especially, Ca Fait Mal.
Raphael translated Lavinia Greenlaw’s Minsk (2006). His two earlier collections are “Lichter in Menlopark” and Das Gegenteil von Fleisch. He won the prestigious Clemens-Brentano-pries and he is co-director of the Schlachthaus Theater in Bern.
The Scots poet, Donny O’Rourke has taken an Exchange Residency in the Art and Design Centre in Bern, Switzerland. He will be there until September. After reading at the Ullapool Festival, he will be reading his verse, fostering projects and enjoying the ambience of the Pleiade of current Scottish Poets in Switzerland. (Peter Mc Carey, Donal Mc Loughlan, Duncan Mc Gibbon, Donny O’Rourke). Donny O’Rourke was born in Port Glasgow, studied at Glasgow University, worked in Television and as creative Writing Fellow at Glasgow and Strathclyde. His writings include Second Cities, Modern Music, The Waistband and other poems (Polygon, 1997) and On a Roll: a Jena notebook (Mariscat, 2001), and with Richard Price he published a pamphlet of versions of modern French lyrics, Eftirs/Afters (Au Quai, 1996). He has spent some time in Nuremberg, having received the Hermann Kesten Stipendium, and a dual language collection of poems resulting from his time there was published in 2005, Aus dem Wartesaal der Poesie/From Poetry’s Waiting Room (Spätlese Verlag, Nürnberg). he was editor of The Dream State: The New Scottish Poets (1994), and is co-editor of New Writing Scotland.
See the PROGR artist in residence blog to follow Donny’s progress in Bern.
June 29th - Richard Price, Shore Poets Edinburgh
(www.marcabru.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/)
August 18th – Richard Price, Edinburgh International Book Festival
(http://www.edbookfest.co.uk/)
September 5th – Richard Price, Phoenix Festival Glasgow
(profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=223529711)
May 21st – Richard Price, University of Kent at Canterbury