Thanks to the Czech Centre London and the friends of Kensal Green cemetery, I led a tour around that location with readings next to the famed dead. You can read about it here - www.theenemiesproject.com/cemeteryromance
I read next to the grave of Erich Fried. A very special thing for me, as I had been so warmly helped by Sheila Ramage of the Notting Hill bookshop when I first began writing and she had told me stories of Erich and all the Austrians who came to London in the postwar period.
a long time coming, it's pretty comprehensive... www.theenemiesproject.com
So pleased to be associated with the amazing landscape architects J&L Gibbons and to be a part of their beautifully produced Below Ground publication was a lovely thing, with my poems on Soil.
Now to find out that work has been selected for the On Landscape exhibition at the Materia gallery, is a grand and unexpected development. http://www.materiagallery.com/
"Matèria is proud to announce the results of the On Landscape #2 book call. On behalf of the judging panel we would like to thank all the participants; the response and quality of submitted work has been exceptional. After careful deliberation the judges selected 44 books that will be exhibited at Matèria alongside work by Dafna Talmor, Emma Wieslander, Minna Kantonen and Marco Strappato."
I'm really very privileged to have had poetry in the first three issues of Gorse, one of the most beautifully and professional, and groundbreaking, literary journals of the 21st century in Europe, edited so scrupulously by Susan Tomaselli. http://gorse.ie/
This time it is a collaboration in the magazine, with Ailbhe Darcy. We began writing for the Yes But Are We Enemies tour last September 2014, and our Subcritical Tests have become something special to me, in that they are the most concentrated example of a collaboration in poetry living and breathing through a profound friendship. Meeting Ailbhe and having the great fortune to now call her a friend was the boon of that project and through our writing together I feel we will long be close. So grand the result of all this is in a place that is its equal.
I’m happy to present the new Enemies project website in time to announce our full Spring program. The website explains our previous programs and future plans in some depth, and stands as a resource of documentation for all the work the 400 poets and artists have put into the project so far. Please have a look and share the word.
You can also follow the project on Twitter @enemiesproject
As well as the previously mentioned Wrogowie: a Polish Enemies project & a Cemetery Romance, both free to attend and taking place on March Saturday 28th, here are our events up to the summer.
Enemigos: a Mexican Enemies project www.theenemiesproject.com/enemigos
April Tues 14th : 7.30pm : Rich Mix Arts Centre: Main Space : Free Entry
in partnership with the British Council, the London Book Fair & Conaculta
New collaborations from Rocio Ceron & Holly Pester, Nell Leyshon & Carmen Buellosa, Adriana Diaz Enciso & Fabian Peake, and Amanda de la Garza & I. Also the launch of the long awaited Enemigos anthology.
Co-curated by Rocio Ceron.
Feinde: an Austrian Enemies project www.theenemiesproject.com/feinde
in partnership with the Austrian Cultural Forum
May Friday 8th : 7.30pm : Rich Mix Arts Centre: Main Space : Free Entry
New collaborations from Jörg Piringer & I, Max Höfler & Robert Herbert McClean, James Wilkes & Esther Strauss. Also featuring Ann Cotton, Tim Atkins & Jeff Hilson Philip Terry & James Davies, Purdey Lord Kreiden & more.
May Tuesday 12th : 7.30pm: Austrian Cultural Forum
Solo readings from Ann Cotton, Rebecca Perry, Jen Calleja & more.
The Feinde exhibition – May 1st to 14th at the Hardy Tree Gallery
An exhibition of contemporary European concrete & visual poetry, celebrating the contribution of Austria to this tradition, among others. New works from Anatol Knotek, Victoria Bean & others. There will be a special view and reading held on May Sunday 10th at the Hardy Tree Gallery, free entry, from 7.30pm.
European Literature Night: Edinburgh www.theenemiesproject.com/eln
in partnership with UNESCO, Edinburgh City of Literature, Caesura & others.
May Thursday 14th: multiple venues, 6pm then 8.30pm : Free Entry for all
4 simultaneous events with solo performances from poets travelling across Europe culminate in a massive 24 poet collaborative camarade event in the city of Edinburgh. Featuring Mariusz Pisarski, Valgerður Þórodds, Eduard Escoffet, Martin Bakero, J.Johanneson Gaitan & many others.
Co-curated by Ryan Van Winkle, Graeme Smith, Iain Morrison & Colin Herd.
Gelynion: a Welsh Enemies project www.theenemiesproject.com/gelynion
in partnership with Arts Council Wales, Poetry Wales and the Hay-on-Wye festival
Enemies Cymru: Six poets – Nia Davies, Joe Dunthorne, Zoë Skoulding, Eurig Salisbury, Rhys Trimble & I - touring new collaborations across Wales drawing in poets for Camarade events in each location. Beginning in Newport on May 19th, Gelynion visits Cardiff, Swansea, Aberystwyth, Bangor before a culminating premiere performance at the Hay-on-Wye festival on May 29th. Then the project will close for 2015 with a reading at the Rich Mix in London on June 5th.
Co-curated by Nia Davies.
Mahu: an exhibition www.theenemiesproject.com/mahu
June 6th to 27th at the Hardy Tree Gallery, Kings Cross, London.
An exhibition exploring asemic live writing where an entire novel will be inscribed onto the walls of the gallery only to be erased when the exhibition finishes. Ten events over three weeks features events celebrating presses (Test Centre, Influx, Blart, If p then q), poets (Tom Raworth, Tomaz Salamun) and collaborative practise.
a Berlin Camarade www.theenemiesproject.com/berlin
June Tuesday 23rd: at Lettretage in Kreuzberg 7.30pm : Free Entry
in partnership with Lettretage & Kookbooks.
Drawing on vast and brilliant vanguard poetry community of Berlin, this Camarade event, taking place during the Berlin poetry festival, will feature new collaborative work in multiple languages from some of the most exciting poets in Europe.
Featuring Max Czollek, Ernesto Estrella, Tom Breseman, Alexander Filyuta, Daniella Seer, Cia Rinne, Uljana Wolf, Monika Rinck, Alexander Gumz, Christoph Szalay, Eugene Ostashevsky, Georg Leß & more.
More information forthcoming about each project as it arrives and our equally exciting summer and winter program for the year. www.theenemiesproject.com
http://www.acflondon.org/literature-and-books/kakania-iv/ Book your place
March 26th Thursday 7pm!
Kakania has been one of the most satisfying curatorial experiences of my career, perhaps the most satisfying. It's not just that the concept was so lovingly taken up by all the artists I approached, and that there was such a groundswell of positive responses from the extensive audiences and readers and creative folk involved, but because it began ambitious, almost intimidatingly so, and yet is coming to a close feeling intimate, careful and thoroughly realised. It's hard to marry one's ambition to reality in these kind of art projects, but four events in, two books, 40 artists each with a new commission and it feels I've barely broke a sweat. Without being cloy, the genuinely amazing support of the Austrian Cultural Forum is a huge part of this.
The final event is not a culmination, it is, as each event has been, it's own entity, curated with it's own rhythm and feel, relative to the venue and artists. Yet, there is a natural build towards it. It is built on language works, poets, both new to Kakania and those who have acted as a sort of creative spine to the project, will be reading - Stephen Emmerson so beautifully engaging with Rilke (his son is called Rainer), Colin Herd so brilliantly evoking Kokoschka, George Szirtes born to write about Schnitzler. These poets are complimented with some radically different mediums, Josh Alexander with his abstract film on Paul Wittgenstein, Fabian Faltin with a conceptual performance on Otto Wagner and Ben Morris, a sound art beast, on Ernst Krenek.
The point is to create a specific energy and experience throughout the evening that rests on complimentary and responsive artforms, artworks and artists. And more than that to show how powerful the connection is in 21st century London to the iconoclasts of early 20th century Vienna. Each work will speak to the next, as together they are far more about the artists through the ghost voices of their Habsburg predecessors, than the details of the individual artworks themselves. It'll be unique, come along
This is the presentation I gave in Berlin in January 2015 at the Lettretage conference, which I hope covers the Enemies project and its activities in 10 minutes or so.
I had a truly beautiful experience in Liverpool, giving a seminar at Edge Hill University, where I was hosted and treated to extraordinary hospitality by James Byrne, enjoying the open, interesting campus before meeting 50 or 60 deeply discerning undergraduates and staff, before a Camarade took place in Liverpool centre on the same night.
The event was wonderful, so much so because James had taken the curatorial weight and allowed me to be free to launch my collaborative book with Tom Jenks, 1000 Proverbs, and to discover so many who were new to me. Great to meet Michael Egan, Patricia Farrell, Luke Thurogood and co. It was an extraordinary evening of poetry, full of energy and warmth.
Steve Van Hagen & Michael Egan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAZrHb573Mg
Andrew Oldham & Lindsey Holland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pscQB_8JNY
Elio Lomas & Luke Thurogood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9WEvvu0dE8
Scott Thurston & Steve Boyland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5V6ImYwqqU
Robert Sheppard & the European Union of Imaginary Authors Liverpool Camarade - Robert Sheppard & the European Union of Imaginary Authors
James Byrne & Sandeep Parmar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD6MnII1fAc
Joanne Ashcroft & Patricia Farrell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yIQx3zSHpE
Tom Jenks & I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3eF4bV8Mrw
The third installment of Kakania was held in the legendary avant-garde hub the Horse Hospital right in the heart of Bloomsbury London. It featured some of the most interesting live artists from across the continent, including Joerg Zemmler, Caroline Bergvall, Martin Bakero and Damir Sodan. You can watch the videos from the performances here www.theenemiesproject.com/kakaniaevents
The Kakania project closes its program for now with a grand event at the Austrian Cultural Forum, just off Hyde Park, in London. Four new commissions, and four new iterations of previous commissions blend poetry, avant-garde music, performance art and video art, all from contemporary artists and poets each responding in their own unique way to a figure of Habsburg Vienna around one century ago.
George Szirtes reads poems on Arthur Schnitzler
Ben Morris offers experimental music on Ernst Krenek
Joshua Alexander screens his video art on Paul Wittgenstein
Emily Berry reads poems on Sigmund Freud
Colin Herd reads poems on Oskar Kokoschka
Fabian Faltlin performs in response to Otto Wagner
Stephen Emmerson shares things in response to Rainer Maria Rilke
eff Hilson reads poems on Ludwig Wittgenstein
The event is completely free, but please do use this link to book your place
http://acflondon.org/literature-and-books/kakania-iv/
Both Kakania publications, the Kakania anthology with over 40 contributors, and Oberwildling: On the Life of Oskar Kokoschka by Colin Herd & I, will be available to buy at the event.
Once this phase of Kakania is complete, the remaining copies of the books will be available online and the anthology will have a special reading launch in June at the Hardy Tree gallery in Kings Cross, London.
Also in situe at Kakania IV will be books from the imitable Pushkin Press, who have generously supported the Kakania project and who publish some of the finest authors of the era we are emploring. http://pushkinpress.com/kakania/
Thanks too to Theodora Danek, Elisabeth Kögler and the team at the Austrian Cultural Forum and all those who’ve helped make the project so special. www.kakania.co.uk
Wrogowie: a Polish Enemies project www.theenemiesproject.com/wrogowie
March Sat 28th :7.30pm : Rich Mix Arts Centre: Venue 2 : Free Entry
in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute http://www.polishculture.org.uk/
Celebrating the great modern tradition of Polish & British experimental poetry alongside innovative collaborative practise, this will be an exchange between the increasingly familial nations of Poland and England featuring 16 of the most dynamic poets from those nations. This event will see brand new collaborations between the pairs of poets, asked to work together for the first time, specifically for this event at the Rich Mix Arts Centre.
Elzbieta Wójcik-Leese & Scott Thurston
Wojciech Bonowicz & James Davies
Malgorzata Lebda & Tom Jenks
Milosz Biedrzycki & I
Marek Kazmierski & Stephen Watts
Kamila Pawluś & Lila Matsumoto
Tomasz Mielcarek & Marcus Slease
Tasimbaradzwa Kanyangarara & Nik Way
Wrogowie year two is co-curated by Elzbieta Wójcik-Leese
A Cemetery Romance http://www.theenemiesproject.com/cemeteryromance
March Sat 28th : 2pm : at the Gates of Kensal Rise Cemetery : Free Entry
in partnership with the Czech Centre London http://london.czechcentres.cz/
To celebrate the visit of avant-garde Czech artist, and professional gravedigger, Miloslav Vojtíšek (otherwise known as S.d.Ch.) this special one off literary tour of the magnificent Kensal Green Cemetery, facilitated by a guide, will feature Miloslav explaining the art of exhumation while being joined by a host of British poets, who will also present their work on death and dying, including Emily Berry, Tom Jenks, Alex MacDonald, Scott Thurston & many more. We will visit the graves of JG Ballard, Harold Pinter and others, before exploring the Dissenters Chapel Catacombs.
The event is completely free to attend but please RSVP at info@czechcentre.org.uk
http://london.czechcentres.cz/programme/travel-events/miloslav-vojtisek-cemetery-poetry-reading/
The group will meeting at 2pm in front of the Kensal Green Cemetery main gate, near the intersection of Harrow Road and Kilburn Lane http://www.kensalgreencemetery.com/ With thanks to the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery
http://london.czechcentres.cz/programme/travel-events/miloslav-vojtisek-cemetery-poetry-reading/
The group will meeting at 2pm in front of the Kensal Green Cemetery main gate, near the intersection of Harrow Road and Kilburn Lane http://www.kensalgreencemetery.com/ With thanks to the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery
www.stevenjfowler.com/salzburgglobal
One of the most extraordinary weeks of my life.
I've got my rhythm now, and finding my purpose amidst the immense possibility of the Hub. Somehow I assumed I would be able to land here and spark collaborations immediately, but what I've realised, being here a few days a week for over a month now, is that's not even desireable, even if it was possible. At root this is because it's still hard for me to comprehend the freedom we have to explore new work on our terms, the real space we have to create interdisciplinary works. Anyway, my work with the Hub is evolving into these areas:
- Some experimental classes that take my martial arts teaching and develop them as wholly process orientated practises, to emphasise the students knowledge of their own bodies possibilities, integrities and corporeal limits / potentials. That is to say these classes will be about motion, mental focus, muscle memory and not about harming other bodies, through the developed exercises and techniques that originate toward the product of hurting bodies.
- Video art performance pieces of me training, hitting the punchbag so far, and which emphasise the rest periods between this exertion in order to create vistas of human perception when altered by this exertion. A long time preoccupation of mine, this is taking form for me in the realm of video, which is exciting, and at the moment I'm tinkering with making these pieces glitchy and kitsch.
- A new series of collaborative sound poetry performances, called Soundings:
"Soundings in the Reading Room is a series of collaborative avant-garde sonic art & sound poetry performances which will present site-specific writing, composition and performance that explores how noise and silence mediate the relationship between the city and the text, artwork or musical score. Receptive to the unique surroundings of the Wellcome Collection Reading Room, Soundings will be an exploration of the potential poetics of sound amidst city noise and the profound effect it has on our experience of restfulness."
This last one is really an extraordinary platform for me to work with artists I admire in a beautiful new space.
I also helped build a hammock and have made lots of new friends.
This was a really lovely evening, expertly curated by the generous and eloquent Gareth Evans, putting myself and Chris McCabe into a program of some amazing contemporary American experimental cinema, reading American poets. The Whitechapel is always a good place to read, but to have cinema sit up close with poetry, and to be reading work like O'Hara and Starr Hamilton made it feel completely new to me. A very generous feeling between the filmmakers and film curator Jamie Wyld and us too, this is the kind of thing I'm always happy to be doing.
Another extraordinary lineup of contemporary artists presenting new works responding to figures of Habsburg Vienna one century ago marks our third Kakania event, this time taking place at the iconic Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury, London. A host of artists I am very proud to present, coming from Vienna, Paris, Zagreb & elsewhere just for Kakania. Doors 7pm, for a 7.30 start.
Caroline Bergvall on Gustav Klimt
Martin Bakero on Arnold Schoenberg
Colin Herd on Oskar Kokoschka
Marcus Slease on Max Kurzweil
Damir Sodan on Gustav Mahler
Joerg Zemmler on Karl Kraus
Stephen Emmerson on Rainer Maria Rilke
Tickets, at £8, on the door, with info available here: http://www.thehorsehospital.com/now/kakania-iii/
More news soon on the launches of the Kakania anthology and Oberwilding: on the life of Oskar Kokoschka, both original publications made for the project, now in print and presented for the first time at the Freud Museum. As well as our last event on March 26th at the Austrian Cultural Forum, who must be thanked for their generous support of this project. www.kakania.co.uk / www.acflondon.org
I would also like to draw your attention to the awful news that the Horse Hospital, an endlessly innovative and generous home for avant garde artwork in London, for 20 years now, is in the process of being sold off. There is a campaign against this http://www.thehorsehospital.com/horse-hospital-to-be-sold/ Please support the HH in anyway you can.
The Liverpool Camarade event on Feb 18th 2015 will also serve as the launch for my new collaborative publication, 1000 Proverbs, written with the brilliant Tom Jenks and published by Knives Forks & Spoons press. I've been excited about this for a very long time. Tom and I have read from the work on multiple occasions and every time people seem to enjoy it. It is because he is talented and funny.
Soon the book will be available here: http://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/
& you can see some of the many times Tom & I have shared our proverbial wisdom over the last few years here:
The cover is by the artist Theo Kaccoufa.
I’m happy to announce that on February 18th the Enemies project will travel to Liverpool for a special Camarade event featuring 16 poets. Some of the northwest’s most exciting vanguardists will present brand new collaborations in pairs, written for the night. The event is being co-curated by the Wolf magazine.
Details below, entrance is free but please book using this link:
http://www.eventbrite.com/e/liverpool-camarade-tickets-15406896442
7.30pm, Wednesday 18th February
Upstairs at the Fly in the Loaf. 13 Hardman Street, Liverpool, Merseyside L1 9AS
Tom Jenks & SJ Fowler
Robert Sheppard & The European Union of Imaginary Authors
Scott Thurston & Steve Boyland
James Byrne & Sandeep Parmar
Patricia Farrell & Joanne Ashcroft
Steve Van Hagen & Michael Egan
Lindsey Holland & Andrew Oldham
Elio Lomas & Luke Thurogood
Please come along to support another Enemies project foray outside of London.
