The Erasmus Room

CAROL WATTS
+
ROD MENGHAM
will be reading in the Erasmus Room at Queens' College, Cambridge, on Friday 21st November 7.30-9pm.
All welcome.

Sundays at the Oto

Sunday
November 16
3.00–5.00 pm

Tom Lowenstein + Roshi Nasehi (music) + Hannah Silva

Sundays at the Oto: Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, E8 3DL
£4

TALKSTALKSTALKS

Wednesday November 12
7.30–9.00 pm

TALKSTALKSTALKS: The Council Room, Birkbeck Main Building, Torrington Square, WC1.

Free admission.

Steve Willey: "Documents of Collaboration: The poem in Song and Opera"

This talk will also be the launch of a new work:
"Portmanteaux///Document" by Edward Nesbit & Steve Willey
presented by Professor Robert Hampson

The Blue Bus

The Blue Bus will present a reading by Peter Philpott and Peter Riley

at The Lamb, 94 Lamb’s Conduit Street, London WC1, in the upstairs room,

on Wednesday 19th November, 7.30.

Admissions: £5 / £3 (concessions).

Please note Peter Philpott will now be reading instead of Johan de Wit.

Peter Riley’s many publications include Passing Measures (selected poems) 2000, and Alstonefield (long poem) 2003, both from Carcanet, and The Day's Final Balance (miscellany of uncollected prose and poetry) and The Llyn Writings, both 2007 from Shearsman. Next year Shearsman will bring out a set of 130 prose poems called Greek Passages.


Johan de Wit’s publications include Up to You Munro (Veer Books, 2008) and Hippototescopo (West House Books, 2000); he has also published poetry in such magazines as Poetry Salzburg Review, Harry’s Hand, Memes, Object Permanence, Symtex & Grimmer and Tak Tak Tak. He edited the magazine Linear A.


Future Blue Bus events will include Geraldine Monk and Jeff Hilson (20th January 09), Sharon Morris, James Harvey, Ken White/David Miller [music duo] and James Hately (3rd February), Allen Fisher and tba (17th February) and Will Rowe and Carol Watts (17th March).

Crossing the Line

Thursday 6th November 2008, 7.30 pm. Charles Alexander; Daniel Kane. The Leather Exchange, 15 Leathermarket Street, London Bridge, SE1 3HN. £5 / £3 conc.

Charles Alexander is an American poet, publisher and bookmaker. Resident in Tucson, Arizona, he is the editor of Chax Press (http://www.chax.org/), one of the USA's most significant small presses (he's published, amongst many many others, Ed Dorn, Jackson Mac Low, Lyn Hejinian, bpNichol, Steve McCaffery, Beverly Dahlen). Charles' most recent book of poems is Certain
Slants (Junction Press: New York, 2007).

Daniel Kane is an American poet and critic, author of All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s, and editor of Don't Ever Get Famous: Essays on New York Writing after the New York School. His reading will be a launch of his first book of poems, Ostentation of Peacocks, fresh out from Egg Box Press in Norwich (http://www.eggboxpublishing.com/books.html). Daniel is Senior Lecturer in American Studies at Sussex University.

Stephen Rodefer is unable to read as previously advertised but will be joining us in the New Year.

La Langoustine Est Morte

THE TRANSGALACTIC INTERWOMAN POETIC EXPRESSWAY brought to you by
La Langoustine Est Morte
ONE TIME ONLY!!!!

Nov 8th 7:30
Poetry Cafe
22 Betterton Street
Covent Garden tube

£5 / 4 concessions

HOSTS: Anthony Joseph and Sascha Aurora Akhtar
Representation from all distant and not-so-distant planets

Jamika Ajalon (U.S.A by way of London by way of France)
Olumide Poopola (Nigeria/Germany)
Valeria Melchioretto (Switzerland)
Shanta Acharya (India)
Frances Kruk (Canada)
Ziba Kirbassi (Persia)
Sophie Robinson (the most exotic of them all Old Blighty!)

Frances Kruk lives in London in the presence of cats, moss, glue, scissors, oil pastels, and dark chocolate, all of which make for an unspeakable atrocity. She does not write real poetry.

The Nigerian German writer and performer Olumide Popoola has performed her poetry internationally, collaborating with many different artists and musicians. Currently studying for a MA in (creative) writing she is exploring all sorts of genres and styles, deepening her practice of writing for performance in particular.She won the May Ayim Award for Poetry in Germany 2004 and has seen her work published in anthologies, journals and newspapers as well as featured on radio and documentaries.

Valeria Melchioretto is a London based artist and award-winning writer. Her poems have appeared in many prestigious magazines and anthologies. The End of Limbo, is her first full collection for which she received a bursary from the Arts Council and it was published by Salt in 2007. In 2008 became a Hawthonden Fellow.

Ziba Kirbassi is a rara avis. Seen only sometimes for short periods of time if you are lucky. Her work is visceral, hallucinatory at times and from the passions and conflicts of being born into a country where violence has caused her untellable strife. Her work will be read in Persian and translated by Stepehen Watts.

Shanta Acharya was born and educated in Orissa, India. In 1979 she won a scholarship to Oxford, and completed her doctoral thesis in 1983. Between 1983-85 she was a Visiting Scholar, as well as a Teaching-cum-Research Assistant at Harvard University. In 1985, she moved to London where she has lived and worked since. She is currently Executive Director, Initiative on Foundation and Endowment Asset Management at London Business School. Her doctoral study, The Influence of Indian Thought on Ralph Waldo Emerson, was published by The Edwin Mellen Press, USA, in 2001. Her four books of poetry are Shringara (Shoestring Press, UK; 2006), Looking In, Looking Out (Headland Publications, UK; 2005), Numbering Our Days' Illusions (Rockingham Press, UK; 1995) and Not This, Not That (Rupa & Co, India; 1994). For more information, visit her website: www.shantaacharya.com

Sophie Robinson was born in 1985, and lives and works in London.
She has an MA in Poetic Practice from Royal Holloway, and is currently working on a practice-based PhD at Royal Holloway. Her first chapbook, Killin'Kittenish!, was published by yt communications in 2006. Since 2005 she has performed at numerous events in the UK and the US. Her critical and creative work has been featured in Dusie, How2 and Pilot, and her book a is forthcoming from Les Figues press in Los Angeles in November 2008.

Jamika Ajalon, charismatic American poetess, film director and long time Zenzile collaborator based in London, released her debut solo album the 5th march 2007. «Helium Balloon Illusions» showcases a range of influences, mixing hip hop and electro, dub and spoken word all built on a foundation of amazing grooves and incisive lyrics.Anyone who has followed her work with Zenzile since the late nineties, will already be familiar with her phenomenal energy and sensual delivery, which has seen her dubbed "the female Tricky" and the "underground Grace Jones" by some reviewers. Born in St Louis Missouri, Jamika has lived in London for ten years, after studying in Chicago and spending time in New York.She claims: «I have always considered myself a poet at root and by route, using different media to express the poetic: including spoken word, music, visual arts and the fusion and blending of these different media. I like to blur boundaries of genre and form and draw from all my influences in creating something that is truly an expression of my unique vision." ». She now lives in France.