prole

i’m happy to say that i’m in prole magazine this month. it’s always nice to be published but, for me, it’s the people who make the difference and the communication i’ve had with brett and phil, for it is they who are prole, have been a joy.

i’ve been banging on about this a lot recently but once more in case you blinked and missed it – the ‘art’ is all fair and good but it’s the people element that can add so much more. working with people who actually get out and make things can be a very synergistic process. i like prole for those very reasons and will be buying copies based on that alone. i urge you to do the same!

new video

still no distances link on the sidebar you ask? that is true but sometime soon i’ll figure out paypal. in the meantime i came across a couple of videos floating about in the ether. the first is from the street weaving thing i was involved in last year seeing which brought back all sorts of happy memories of rocio, stefanie and all the rest. my best to you all where-ever you are! all the other people in that are just people who were passing by and fancied playing with some wool. a fine way to spend an afternoon!

the second is part of a reading i did with soutar writers couple of weeks ago there’s some sweariness at the beginning in case you’re at work or have children running about (it’s very brief). it does have a first read of one of the lazarus poems tho. it was a nice wee night and very well attended which can only be good for perth.

Why a Street Weave with Rocio Jungenfeld and Morgan Downie from Stefanie Tan on Vimeo.

reading at resonate

so off we went to the resonate arts house in alloa for their international festival and to see how people would respond to distances. i was a tad miffed at the prints as the foam board we’d had for the mounts absorbed the spray mount and bubbled the finish. naturally only me and t noticed this but that’s not the point!

the couple of times i’ve been down to resonate have been great – alloa’s best times, it could be argued, are well past but to have such a space in this wee town id just great and the fact that it manages without any need of grant etc from a central funder is even more amazing. angela and the rest of them do a great job – it’s worth going out of your way to get down and see them just to coast on some of that enthusiasm. other scottish towns should take note.

a great turn out and an abundance of art on the walls. if there wasn’t something there for you could engage with i’d be very surprised. i did a brief bit of speaking and a couple of poems from the prints – they seemed to go down well – watch out for the pictures in the alloa advertiser! i had a gran chat with some of the people and, as with the reading at the festival, a surprise appearance from the past from rachel, who i haven’t seen in what must be the last fifteen years. even back then she was nagging me to get some work out so it was great to finally say here it is!

the only person who wasn’t there was roxana whose presence was limited to my mp3 stuck to the wall. i’m very taken with her versions of the poem so here they all are here

the water brother

the tea drinker’s poem

perfect day

demeter

distances

after what seemed like an eternity in the making i’m delighted to announce that distances, the photobook i’ve done with roxana, finally arrived in four surprisingly heavy cardboard boxes as of this morning. it’s so new i don’t even have a thumbnail of the cover!

if i say so myself, it’s a beautiful looking thing. the poetry is more towards stoneandsea than a lazarus but, despite the poems being older now, i can see both works in them.  expect little in the way of punctuation and long, skinny poems. how to describe the photography? i’d start by looking up something like sumptuous on the thesaurus. i’d hope roxana’s work needs no introduction but if you’re not familiar with it follow the link and have a treat.

i can’t comment on the translation aspect as, no matter that i promised roxana my romanian would be up to it by the time this came out, i haven’t really progressed beyond buying the cds and a firm commitment to the dodgy world of google translate. roxana, i do apologise! but, equally, roxana speaks more than enough languages for the both of us! the brief for the translation was not to do a translation but to produce a version of the original that would make sense romanian. in the end i found this one of the most entertaining aspects of the whole project. aside from layout, syntax and the like there were fundamental questions that you just don’t have to ask (or can avoid) in english. what, for instance, is the gender of the narrator? which leads to a laying out of a different set of poetic cards on the table.

anyway, there’ll be a link on the sidebar in due course once i figure out how to do a paypal thingy. in the meantime i’ll be taking distances out for its first airing at the resonate arts house in alloa on friday night. which, being tomorrow means i should be off working on that. there will be other events in due course so i’ll post them on here.

in the meantime here’s a video of me and roxana mucking about with sound poetry what seems an age ago (we must do more of that!). i still have that childish sense of wonder and potential with technology and the internet and think that distances is very much a product of that. if all it does is encourage others to do something similar (or better, very different!) i’ll be very happy.