You are invited to a writers’ reading party, an informal get together of new and old friends, of people who love literature, life and conviviality to celebrate the launch of the Poetry Workshop’s 25^th anniversary anthology Divers. There will a wonderful line-up of poets — established and new — reading short extracts from their work. It promises to be a warm and engaging evening, full of words, laughter and reflection, so do come along with your partners/pals and join this special community of people — and celebrate friendship and writing. Everyone welcome. Tickets: £8/£5.

D I V E R S

Poetry Workshop
Anniversary Anthology

˜

C. L. DALLAT

JANE DRAYCOTT

HUGH EPSTEIN

CHRIS HEDLEY-DENT

ELIZABETH JAMES

DUNCAN MCGIBBON

LEONA MEDLIN

KIM MORRISSEY

RICHARD PRICE

LESLEY SAUNDERS

SUDEEP SEN

DAVID WINZAR

RICHARD WRIGHT


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D I V E R S

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C.L. DALLAT  was introduced to the Poetry Workshop by Elizabeth James in 1987. He writes for the Times Literary Supplement and the Guardian as well as contributing to BBC radio’s Kaleidoscope, Nightwaves and has been, since its inception in 1998, a regular contributor on Radio 4’s Saturday Review. Books include Morning Star (Lagan, 1998) and The Year of Not Dancing (Blackstaff, forthcoming). He is married to the writer Anne-Marie Fyfe, and they have two children.

JANE DRAYCOTT  was introduced to the Poetry Workshop by Elizabeth James in 1999. Collections include Prince Rupert’s Drop (OUP 1999) and The Night Tree (Carcanet/OxfordPoets 2004). Previous collaborations include Christina the Astonishing (with Lesley Saunders and artist Peter Hay, Two Rivers Press, 1998), Tideway (with Peter Hay, Two Rivers Press, 2002), The Street (with digital artist Janet Curley-Cannon, 2007) and several audio works for BBC R3 with Elizabeth James.

HUGH EPSTEIN  was introduced to the Poetry Workshop by Duncan McGibbon in 1984. For twenty years he has been the secretary of the Joseph Conrad Society (U.K.) and has published a number of works in this field. He has just embarked upon a PhD on Conrad and Hardy. He is an occasional reader at the Troubadour in London.

CHRIS HEDLEY-DENT  was introduced to the Poetry Workshop by Hugh Epstein in 1985. Born 1952. He is a Painter, Poet and Art Teacher, now based in Devon. Landscape is an important but not an exclusive inspiration for his painting and writing.

ELIZABETH JAMES  [www.cottage.clara.net] was introduced to the Poetry Workshop by David Winzar in 1984. Publications include Base to Carry (Barque, 2004), Recognition (Writers Forum, 1999), World of Interiors (Vennel, 1998) and 1 : 50 000 (Vennel, 1992. A recent sequence was commissioned as sleeve notes for a music CD (Adam Bohman & Roger Smith, Reality Fandango, Emanem, 2007). Her long poem collaborations include Neither the One Nor the Other (Form Books, 1999) with Frances Presley and 'Two Renga', in RENGA+ (Reality Street Editions, 2002) with Peter Manson.

DUNCAN MCGIBBON  founded the Poetry Workshop in 1983. His poem Stations of the Cross was set to music by the Australian composer, Joseph Estorninho and first performed in 2000. In 2006 he read at the Melbourne Festival, Victoria. He currently lives and writes in Geneva and Berne, commuting between his British and Swiss workshops.

LEONA MEDLIN  helped Duncan McGibbon to found the Poetry Workshop.  She and Richard Price published and edited Vennel Press.  Her own Vennel Press collection is The Tilted Mirror (1994).  Some translations (with Daniel Weissbort) of poems by Yunna Morits were published in Modern Poetry in Translation and other places.

KIM MORRISSEY  was introduced to the Poetry Workshop by Leona Medlin in 1993. Her books include Batoche (Coteau, 1989), Poems For Men Who Dream of Lolita (Coteau, 1991), Dora: A Case of Hysteria (Nick Hern Books, 1994) and Clever As Paint: the Rossettis in Love, (Playwrights Canada Press, 1999).  Her latest play, Mrs. Ruskin, is forthcoming from Aark Arts.  She is writer-in-residence for the Purple Poets at the West Euston Time Bank and Third Age Project in London.

RICHARD PRICE  [www.hydrohotel.net] was introduced to the Poetry Workshop by Leona Medlin in 1989. He has edited several little magazines over the years; the current one is Painted, spoken.  Publications include A Boy in Summer (11|9, 2002). His second poetry collection with Carcanet, Greenfields, (2007) has been shortlisted for the Sundial Scottish Arts Awards.

LESLEY SAUNDERS  was introduced to the Poetry Workshop by Jane Draycott in 2007.  She was shortlisted for the Forward Prize Best Single Poem in 1999.  She has had a pamphlet, The Dark Larder (Corridor Press, 1997) and — with Jane Draycott — a book, Christina the Astonishing, (Two Rivers Press, 1998).

SUDEEP SEN  [www.sudeepsen.net] was introduced to the Poetry Workshop by Kim Morrissey in 1995. His publications include Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins, 1997), Prayer Flag (Wings, 2004), Distracted Geographies (Peepal, 2004) and Rain (Mapin, 2005). He edits the international book[maga]zine Atlas - and his new work appears in New Writing 15 (Granta, 2007) and the Norton world poetry anthology, Language for a New Century (W. W. Norton, 2008).

DAVID WINZAR  was one of the first poets to join the Poetry Workshop in 1983.  He was born in Epsom in 1953.  He won the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1976.  His work appeared in Professing Poetry (Macmillan, 1978), edited by John Wain.  David died of cancer in 1988.  His book Common Mallow (Epsom: Manor Green Press, 1990) was published by his father Ray.

RICHARD WRIGHT  was introduced to the Poetry Workshop by Leona Medlin in 2004.  He was involved with Cockpit Poets (with joint publications with Harriet Rose, Judith Kazantzis, Miriam Scott and Valerie Sinason). He is a member of Lapidus. His long poem, Briar Rose, is on the web: http://www.geocities.com/prufrock_hancock/

˜

the POETRY WORKSHOP members
PAST AND UPCOMING READINGS:

April 14 [Monday]  – SUDEEP SEN
Sienna Heights University, Michigan


April 15th, 2008 [Tuesday, 6:30 p.m. until late] – KIM MORRISSEY
333 Club  (event sponsors: Network Canada and London Book Fair)
333 Fulham Road, London SW10 9Ql
(above the Goats in Boots Pub)
[reading with: Annie Freud, Ashis Gupta, John Stiles,
Rebecca Bloom, Joey Comeau]
http://www.networkcanada.org/


April 25th, 2008 [Friday, 8 p.m.] – SUDEEP SEN
Norton 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
[reading 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 26th, 2008 [Saturday, 5 p.m.] – SUDEEP SEN
Ledig House Fellows Reading

Hudson Wine Merchants,
Warren Street, Hudson, New York


April 28th, 2008 [Monday] – SUDEEP SEN
Virginia Tech University,
Blacksburg, Virginia
[moderated by Fred D'Aguiar]


May 2nd, 2008 [Friday, 10:00am-1:00pm ] – SUDEEP SEN
Central Connecticut State University,
New Britain, CT



May 2nd, 2008 [Friday, 3:00pm-5:00pm ] – SUDEEP SEN
Yale Working Group in Poetics,
Whitney Humanities Center,
Yale University, New Haven, CT



May 3d, 2008 [Saturday, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m. ] – SUDEEP SEN
Hartford Public Library,
Hartford, CT



May 11/12 & May 15/16, 2008  – SUDEEP SEN
university readings
Washington DC,
University of South Carolina,
Columbia University readings



May 13/14, 2008 [Tuesday/Wednesday]  –   SUDEEP SEN
Stanford University,
Stanford, California


May 17th, 2008 [Saturday, 9 p.m.] – RICHARD PRICE
Ullapool Village Hall
Lyric poet Richard Price was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize for Poetry in 2005. His most recent collection Greenfields was published in 2007. Free glass of wine, oatcakes and smoked salmon. Chaired by Donny O’Rourke Richard Price is able to be with us thanks to the generosity of Tom Wright's Trust; money left in the poet, playwright and television dramatist's will to further the cause of Scottish writing. Wine donated by Wine Importers Edinburgh Ltd, smoked salmon donated by Ullapool Smokehouse Ltd, oatcakes donated by Ullapool Bakery. Tickets: £6.  
www.ullapoolbookfestival.co.uk/


May 18th, 2008 [Sunday, 5 p.m.]– SUDEEP SEN
Kundiman Poetry Series,
Verlaine's Restaurant Lounge,
110 Rivington Street,
(Ludlow & Essex Streets)
New York City. Tel: 212.614.2494

[reading with Regie Cabico & Sandra Lim]


May 20th, 2008 [Tuesday, 7-10 pm] – SUDEEP SEN
Oxfam Series of Readings
Never Say Never Again: Oxfam Poets 2008
Gala Fund-Raising Reading
Featuring:
Helen Dunmore, Nathan Hamilton, Cralan Kelder,
Gwyneth Lewis, Kathryn Maris, Sudeep Sen, Lemn Sissay,
Christopher Reid and others]
Oxfam Books & Music, 91 Marylebone High Street, W1
Admission free, voluntary £8 donation appreciated - proceeds to Oxfam
RSVP for seats requested, but not essential.
Contact person: Martin Penny, email: oxfammarylebone@hotmail.com
http://www.oxfammarylebone.co.uk/


May 21st, 2008  [Wednesday] – RICHARD PRICE
University of Kent at Canterbury


June 1st, 2008 [Sunday, 2-4 p.m.] – KIM MORRISSEY  WITH SUDEEP SEN  
Camden Green Fair
Regent's Park
free
Readings and Translation Workshop
with the West Euston Time Bank Purple Poets
closest tube: Great Portland Street


June 2nd 2008 [Monday, 7 p.m.] – SUDEEP SEN
Norton Anthology Book Launch
'Language For a New Century'
The Nehru Centre of The Indian High Commission,
8 South Audley Street, Mayfair,
London W1K 1HF.
Telephone: 020.7491.3567
[reading with Sarah Maguire, Michelle Valladares, Yong Shu Hoong,
Quader Mahmud, Woon-Ping Chin & others]
closest tube: Green Park.

June 28, 2008 [Saturday, 8.30 pm] – C.L. DALLAT
at Pizza on the Park,
11 Knightsbridge, London SW1X 7LY
cover charge £20.
Anne-Marie Fyfe and C.L. Dallat reading poems as part of a jazz and poetry evening
with Pete Churchill, Jeremy Brown, Stephen Keogh and the Sandro Gibellini Trio.

June 29th,2008 [Sunday]  8 p.m. – the Poetry Workshop 25th Anniversary and Book Launch of  D I V E R S Pentameters Theatre [above the Horseshoe pub] 28 Heath Street, Hampstead NW3 6TE tel: 020 7435 3648 confirmed readers: C.L. Dallat, Jane Draycott, Chris Hedley-Dent, Elizabeth James, Duncan McGibbon, Leona Medlin, Kim Morrissey, Lesley Saunders, Sudeep Sen, Richard Wright. closest tube: Hampstead (Northern Line)

June 29th, 2008 [Sunday, 7.45pm] – RICHARD PRICE
[reading with Simon Pomery and Angela McSeveney]
Shore Poets , Edinburgh
Mai Thai cafe bar
The Tun, 111 Holyrood Road
Edinburgh EH8 8AE
(down the lane from the Scottish Poetry Library)
Admission £3 / concessions £2
(www.marcabru.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/)


June 30, 2008 [Monday 5:30pm] – SUDEEP SEN
Oxford University
Kellogg College, Mawby Pavilion, Rewley House
1 Wellington Square, Oxford, OX1 2JA
[moderated by Jane Draycott & Clare Morgan
There will be a buffet supper and drinks reception
at 8 pm following the reading  (Acland Room)


July 6, 2008 [Sunday, 4:00pm] – SUDEEP SEN
The London Magazine Literary Festival as part of the O2 Wireless Music Festival [June 3-6, 2008]
Speaker's Corner, Hyde Park, London
[with Maurice Riordan, Roddy Lumsden, Neil Curry, Katy Evans-Bush, Tom Chivers, Claire Crowther, Ruth O'Callaghan, Catherine Smith, Bernadette Cremin, Aiofe Mannix, Isobel Dixon, Morgan Nichols, Richard Tyrone Jones, Louise Halvardsson, Jacob Sam La-Rose, A.F. Harrold, Maggie Butt, Agnes Meadows, Stanley Mitchell, Tim Wells, Naomi Woodis, Rosy Carrick, James Wilkes, Todd Swift, Gareth Buckall, Paul Lyalls, Louise Hercules & others]


July 9, 2008 [Wednesday 8:00pm] – JANE DRAYCOTT, KIM MORRISSEY, SUDEEP SEN
Atlas book[maga]zine online edition launch
[part of the Arts Council funded digitisation project / a London Literature Festival associate event]
Poetry Library, Royal Festival Hall [Level 5], South Bank Centre, London
[with Jane Draycott, Fred D'Aguair, Imtiaz Dharker, Patience Agbabi, Kim Morrissey, Todd Swift]
http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/events/readings/?id=2763
on-line reading at http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/issue.asp?id=642



July 10, 2008 [Thursday 8:00pm] – LESLEY SAUNDERS (WINNER, OPEN CATEGORY)
Buxton Poetry Competition 2008
Devonshire Dome,
University of Derby, Buxton
winning poem (s):  http://www.derby.ac.uk/buxtonpoetrycompetition/2008/poems

2008 Buxton Festival Judges: Fleur Adcock and Michael Schmidt In the Open Category (for poets aged 19 and over) the results were: Winner: Lesley Saunders, from Slough. With her entry entitled Rill Runner-Up: Ama Bolton, from Somerset. M is for Water Runner-Up: John Gallas, from Leicestershire. Molecule Bikes to the Springs Highly Commended: Ann Alexander. The Polio Pond Highly Commended: Anthony Watts. The River... Highly Commended: Sian Tower. Sough. In the Children’s Poetry category (for poets aged up to 11) the results were: Winner: Kristy-Ann Wilson, 11, from Cardiff. I Will Take Over the Earth Runner-Up: Martyn Bonham, 11, of Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire. The Flood (From the Water’s Perspective) Runner-Up: Eloise James, 10, from Reading. The Mermaid Highly Commended: Chess Law, 10, from Ballymena, Northern Ireland. The Sea Highly Commended: Oliver Turner, 8, from Shropshire. Osprey and Gull. In the Young People's Poetry category (for 12 to 18-year-olds) the results are: Winner: Harry Hudson, 12, of Headington, Oxford. The Necromancer Runner-up: Zaib Nasir, 13, of Addlestone, Surrey. Whispering Sea Runner-up: Emily Middleton, 18, of Buxton. Water 2058 Highly Commended: Caitlin Robbins, 13, of Twickenham. Rain in Richmond Highly Commended: Sian Hughes, aged 17. Strong as Heartsong (Water not War) The three winners' poems were published in the 2008 Buxton Festival programme. The finalists’ poems in each category were exhibited around the Dome at the Buxton Campus during the Buxton Festival from July 9-27

................................................................................................................................................... 5th Annual Mslexia Poetry Competition 2008 Judged by Carol Ann Duffy 1st Prize SIBYL RUTH (£1000) 2nd prize VALERIE LAWS (£500) 3rd prize PATRICIA ACE (£250) Runners up: Hilary Menos, Elizabeth Berry, Alexandra Citron, Nazneen Zafar, Lesley Saunders, Heidi Williamson, Julie Lydall, Josie Turner, Kathy Towers, Siobhán Campbell, Nell Farrell, Sarah Westcott, Jo Verity, Fiona Ritchie Walker, Carole Bromley,   Rosie Garland, Sarah Roby, Berta Freistadt, Frances Thompson and Kate Hunter http://www.mslexia.co.uk/whatson/msbusiness/pcomp_active.html

July 28th [Monday] to August 1st [Friday],  2008 – C.L. DALLAT
at John Hewitt International Summer School, Armagh: headline poetry event with Seamus Heaney and former US poet laureate - and Troubadour regular - Billy Collins: original Mon 28th reading was an immediate sell-out so second reading now bookable on Tue 29th but with places reserved for anyone signing up for all or part of Smmer School week of readings, creative writing, panel discussions etc including C.L. Dallat, Maurice Riordan, Jane Duran, Joan Newmann and Ruth Carr - who've all read at the Troubadour - plus Lisa Appignanesi, Imtiaz Dharker, Andrew O'Hagan, Glenn Patterson, Hugo Hamilton, Clair Wills, six Salmon Press poets and many more: see www.johnhewittsociety.org;

August 4th,  2008 [Monday] to August 8th [Friday] – C.L. DALLAT
Yeats Summer School, Sligo, C.L. Dallat is one of many participants, in this prestigious annual Celebration of Yeats. A chance to find out more about Yeats in a week of lectures, seminars, readings, drama etc: see www.yeats-sligo.com/html/summer/lecturers.html


August 5th, 2008 [Tuesday]– C.L.  DALLAT
C.L. Dallat lecturing (Tue 5th Aug) on the Bedford Park influence on Yeats' poetry:
for anyone inspired by Edna O'Brien's magical talk June 11th, 2008 in London.  
'Lute-Thronged, Rook-Delighting Suburb:
Bedford Park and Playing at Ireland'
(Yeats Family Lecture)
plus a week of seminars on the early poems...
(http://www.yeats-sligo.com/html/summer/lecturers.html)



August 18th, 2008 – RICHARD PRICE
Edinburgh International Book Festival
(http://www.edbookfest.co.uk/)


August 30th,  2008. [Saturday, 6:20 - 6:50 p.m] – KIM MORRISSEY
Reading at the Arts and Culture Festival, orgnised by Lennox Raphael
2020 Visions Festival ( www.2020visions.dk)
Kulturhus, Islands Brygge
Copenhagen
Dennmark


September 5th, 2008 – RICHARD PRICE
Phoenix Festival Glasgow
"Scotland's Alternative Poetry Festival; www.phoenixfestival.co.uk"
http://www.myspace.com/phoenixpoetryfestival
The Phoenix Poetry Festival will take place in Glasgow on the first weekend of September 2008 in various venues across the city. Tickets for the festival will be available from our website in January 2008. A single ticket costing £10 will give visitors access to all the events over the weekend from the Friday to the Sunday. Poets appearing include Georgina Banfield, Miles Bell, Elena Byrne, Des Dillon,  Robert Knox, Andy Manders,  Robert Marsland, Chloe Morrish,  Richard Price, Saffron Poet, Les Quind, Gerry Stewart,  Petra Whiteley and Catherine Woodward.
(profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=223529711)

September 16 - 23, 2008– SUDEEP SEN
Sha'ar International Poetry Festival
Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Nazareth
Israel

October 4 or October 5, 2008 – LESLEY SAUNDERS
Poems, paintings, photographs inspired by Rousham Gardens, Oxfordshire
The reading will take the form of a tour, with picnic, of the gardens.
[reading with Geoff Carr and Malcolm Rigg]

October 15, 2008 –  DUNCAN MCGIBBON
Bath  [Poetry Society reading]

October 15 - 18, 2008 – SUDEEP SEN
Cuisle Limerick International Poetry Festival
Limerick, Ireland

October 23- 25, 2008 – SUDEEP SEN
Maastricht International Poetry Nights
Maastricht, The Netherlands
October 23-25, 2008

DECEMBER 14 - 18 – JANE DRAYCOTT, KIM MORRISSEY, SUDEEP SEN
Delhi International Literary Festival Festival [DILF]
www.atlasaarkarts.net/dilf
New Delhi,  India

The DILF events will take place as part of the wider month-long multi-arts multi-venue Delhi International Arts Festival [DIAF] events in India's capital city of New Delhi and at the Neemrana Fort Palace in Rajasthan. During these days writers are invited to read from their work, meet Indian writers, editors, critics, publishers, and other international guest writers. In addition they will be able to visit sites in the historic Mughal city of Delhi (and Rajasthan).

---

the POETRY WORKSHOP members
SOME REVIEWS OF THEIR WORK
IN OTHER PUBLICATIONS

JANE DRAYCOTT Prince Rupert's Drop (Oxford University Press, 1999)
from The Manhattan Review  written by Penelope Shuttle

... Hers is a scrupulous intelligence. She pares away all the flimflam of the innecessary, so that each poem finds its exact weight; equilibrium is struck between the lyrical and the practical. Her work wizzes me up and fascinates me! Her searching curiosity and wonderful assurance make her an impeccable and central poetic intelligence
SOURCE: CARCANET BOOKS



DUNCAN MCGIBBON AND LEONA MEDLIN:
Introduction , written by Peter Porter, to the Anthology KITES FREE:

The first thing I noticed when reading the poems which follow was the remarkable shape or form which Duncan McGibbon had invented for his poem, At Aira Force, Ullswater. It is a rhapsody in equal but variable distributed clutches of lines, with a high rhetorical tone and one ostinato effect, the recurrence towards the end of each section (I deliberately haven't written stanza) of a short statement of definition beginning "It is" .... Now there is no special reason why the arbitrariness of this form should make a good poem (though I think it has) but I know that I am always pleased by signs of externally applied forms in poetry, and even more so when they are not merely traditional ones but things the poet has invented for himself. If you make yourself follow some rule or other you won't put down the words too glibly. No poem is a flat race: each one is an obstacle course of some sort.

The rest of these kites keep up pretty convincingly, though I should have liked more attention to shape and structure. I admit that this is a prejudice rather than an aesthetic judgement. Leona Esther Medlin's Gratitude to Poets struck me as a very appealing example of the closed shop. The persistence of watercourses, of Autumn, of the Zoo and of quatrains pleased me. Poets are in a strange position, since they have the duo role of standing for the claims of the imagination and yet must never abandon their championship of the ordinary, the tap roots to all mystical states.
PETER PORTER, INTRODUCTION,
KITES FREE: HIGHGATE POETS (LONDON: HIGHGATE SOCIETY, 1979)




KIM MORRISSEY in ATLAS 02 (Aark Arts, 2007)
from The Guardian Diary 11.08.2007 written by NW [Nicholas Wroe]
Pomp and sex therapy |Review |guardian.co.uk Books
(Atlas 02 launch at the Nehru Centre, Mayfair)

An alarming rumour began to circulate that, at the launch of vol 1, 32 poets read from their work. But this time a shorter cast list was given just two minutes each. Khalvati still found time to praise a journal that gives space to longer poems, while Daljit Nagra provided a neat Anglo-Indian link. George Szirtes and Daniel Weissbort - neither of whom are in the new book - were good value, but perhaps the most heartfelt applause was for the British-based Canadian writer Kim Morrissey. She had drawn attention to 101-year-old Rose Hacker in the audience, a pioneering sex therapist in the 1930s (and still a feisty columnist for the Camden New Journal) who inspired Morrissey earlier this year to write the poem "Imagine Rose Dancing".
FULL REVIEW:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2146078,00.html




RICHARD PRICE
the Guardian - Arts

Richard Price's poems "are clear, witty, intelligent, versatile and often highly moving; superb examples of a hard-earned surface simplicity conveying oceanic depths of feeling and thought."
- The Guardian




SUDEEP SEN in the Norton world poetry anthology,  Language for a New Century
edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal and Ravi Shankar (W.W. Norton; 2008, 734 pages)
from the San Franscisco Chronicle  20.04.2008 written by Megan Harlan
Language for a New Century:
Contemporary Poetry From the Middle East, Asia and Beyond

The editors explain that quality ultimately guided their decisions on which poems to include - and the extraordinary quality of these hundreds of poems bear this out,  lined by fresh and surprising imagery.  Ideas of home, for example, span haunting evocations of exile (in Sudeep Sen's "A Blank Letter," "An envelope arrives unannounced from overseas/ containing stark white sheets,/ perfect in their presentation of absence.") to Asadullah Habib's war-torn homeland, Afghanistan: "The story of my country/ is a fractured mirror,/ a continuous fire,/ a burning garden."
FULL REVIEW:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/18/RVNOVUMIT.DTL

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the POETRY WORKSHOP members
WEBSITES

       –  hypertext Poetry Workshop project –
[http://www.carpenter.btinternet.co.uk/hpwp/]
transcripts of the Poetry Workshop meetings

JANE DRAYCOTT [http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/janedraycott/]
ELIZABETH JAMES  [www.cottage.clara.net]
LEONA MEDLIN [www.leonacarpenter.co.uk/]
KIM MORRISSEY [www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/morrissey ]
RICHARD PRICE  [www.hydrohotel.net]
SUDEEP SEN  [www.sudeepsen.net]

˜




the POETRY WORKSHOP members
OTHER PROJECTS

ELIZABETH JAMES  [Victoria and Albert Exhibition]
'Certain Trees: the Constructed Book, Poem and Object 1964-2008'
[curated by Elizabeth James]

A selection of small-press publications (pamphlets, postcards, multiples) and objects, by poets and artists, primarily (not exclusively) British, with Ian Hamilton Finlay as the kind of godfather figure. Aside from his Morning Star, imprints include: Tarasque (Stuart Mills & Simon Cutts), Coracle (Cutts -- who is really the curator), Journeyman (Robert Lax), Moschatel (Thomas A and Laurie Clark), Colin Sackett, WAX 366 (David Bellingham) ... and others. Some more info is on the V&A website [http://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/index.html]

If you enjoyed Richard Price's great Migrant Press show at the British Library last year you'll like this too -- indeed there are quite strong links between the two (one of the references of the title -- Certain Trees -- is a poem by Roy Fisher; I think Gael Turnbull introduced Stuart Mills to Finlay; etc.). Anyway, modest as it is (and it is) the Independent said it was one of the 5 Best Exhibitions in London last week! There is also another, much larger, more spectacular, international and historically wide-ranging exhibition of artists' books on now at the V&A, called Blood on Paper (also well worth seeing; also free) and tomorrow evening (25.04.2008) the V&A is open for 'Blood on Paper Friday Late' -- talks, discusions, readings and activities relating to artists' books and to the collections of my department (Word & Image, including the National Art Library).

REVIEW:
Certain Trees - The Constructed Book 1964-2008 (to 17 August); Blood on Paper – The Art of the Book (tomorrow to 29 June); both at V&A, London SW7; every day, admission free
Artists brought to book: What happens when artists swap their canvases and paint for the printed page? Two new shows at the V&A speak volumes, finds Tom Lubbock
Monday, 14 April 2008
[excerpt]

You'd have to look quite hard in the world of art or books before you came across the 15-odd book-artists in Certain Trees: The Constructed Book 1964-2008. They constitute a fringe tradition, mostly British, of visual-verbal-paper creation. Self-published, often collaborative, their practice grew out of the concrete poetry movement of the early Sixties. The pivotal figure is the late, great Ian Hamilton Finlay, artist, poet, gardener, philosopher, and some of his paper works are among those on view.

"Art is a small adjustment": one of his epigrams could be a motto for the whole display. The books, booklets and other paper productions here are modest, precise, laconic, fragile. There's a strict economy of words, images, pages. Their mood is quietly playful or quietly moved. Their concerns are often rural and domestic. They never forget where books come from: there's natural gravitation toward the subject of wood and trees.

The artists dwell wittily on their materials – on letters, typefaces, inks, paper, printing, the way books work....  At the same time, these works are a model of carefulness. As they lay out printed marks on a page, you're conscious of the aligning, centring and spacing of words and letters. You see judgement at work, tact, the imperative to get it right, make it true. The achievement is not only exquisite, it's a kind of ethical behaviour.
FULL REVIEW:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art-and-architecture/reviews/artists-brought-to-book-808580.html

˜


the POETRY WORKSHOP members
SAISON POETRY LIBRARY, SOUTHBANK, LONDON
ON-LINE READINGS FROM LITERARY MAGAZINES

JANE DRAYCOTT, ELIZABETH JAMES, KIM MORRISSEY, RICHARD PRICE READ THEIR POEMS FROM:
Painted, spoken Number 16
http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/issue.asp?id=641

KIM MORRISSEY READS HER POEMS FROM:
ATLAS 02
http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/issue.asp?id=642

West Euston Time Bank Purple Poets
West Euston Time Bank, London
Writer-in-Residence
Kim Morrissey