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
April 14 [Monday]
Sienna Heights University, MichiganApril 25 [Friday 7:00pm]
The Norton World Poetry Anthology USA launch
Language for a New Century
Rubin Museum of Art, 150 West 17th Street, New York 10011. New York City. Tel: 212.620.5000
[with Tina Chang, Ishle Yi Park, Tsipi Keller, Nathalie Handal, Luis Francia, Kyi May Kaung, Michelle Valladeres, Ravi Shankar, Wang Ping, Woon-Ping Chin & Kirpal Singh]
April 26 [Saturday 5:00pm]
Ledig House Fellows Reading
Hudson Wine Merchants, Warren Street, Hudson, New York
[with James Canon, Sigrid Nunez, Mercedes Cebrian, Samuel Shimon, Claudia Schreiber, Kristin Omarsdottir, Denise Leith / moderated by D W Gibson]
April 28 [Monday 4:30pm]
Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, Virginia
[moderated by Fred D’Aguiar]
May 2 [Friday 10.00am]
10:00am-1:00pm
Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CT
Helix International Poetry Festival
3:00pm-5:00pm
Yale Working Group in Poetics, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University, New Haven, CT
May 3 [Saturday 2:00pm]
2:00-4:00 Hartford Public Library, Hartford, CT
May 12 — 16 [Monday — Friday]
Stanford University, Stanford, California
May 17 [Saturday]
Washington DC reading
[t.b.c. / details to follow]
May 18 [Sunday 5:00pm]
Kundiman Poetry Series, Verlaine’s Restaurant Lounge, 110 Rivington Street, (Ludlow & Essex Streets) New York City. Tel: 212.614.2494
[with Regie Cabico & Sandra Lim]
June 2nd - Kim Morrissey
Camden Green Fair
Regent’s Park
free
(and at the Time Bank stall)
with the Purple Poets