“In my opinion, what goes on in poems should always be too complex and too interesting for complete resolution. When I was in law school, my trial practice professor stressed that you should never ask a witness a question to which you don’t know the answer. Just the reverse is true in poetry. If you have an answer up your sleeve, the poem is likely to seem over-determined, too tidy.”

– An Interview with Susan Settlemyre Williams – by Kimberly L. Becker – Eclectica Magazine v13n1

“COMMANDMENTS
- Work on one thing at a time until finished.
- Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring.”
- Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
- Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
- When you can’t create you can work.
- Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
- Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
- Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
- Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
- Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
- Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.”

– Lists of Note: Henry Miller’s 11 Commandments (Via RGreco)

Now, how to use this in literature? Booklaunch: audience members with the appropriate smartphones/apps get access to a dedicated recording of the author reading from the text, or perhaps a recording of the author/poet in interview/conversation? OR: in a bookshop, standing in front of a featured book could give you access to exclusive audio (video) content related to the title. And not just a half-hearted book trailer, either. Mmm. Note to self: find out what kind of budget would be required to experiment with this technology. Promise not to weep at the figure.  

Sonic Notify, via Protein

Saturday night, 22:32, and I’ve had a long day in Leeds talking tech with poets and writers from both Leeds and London, organised by Dorothea Smartt via Peepal Tree Press. We touched on social media, smartphones, e-publishing, creative use of web platforms, personas, audiences, time management and more. Pay me to talk tech? Joy. And I came away with that warm glow associated with sharing knowledge and helping others move forward.

One of the ideas I was keen to challenge my participants with was the notion of innovative use of available tools/platforms— how we might “hack” our way through web services to make use of them in ways that challenge or add to or creative processes. Consider Pinterest as a way of compiling visual stimuli for poems, for example, with a board for each theme. Or a Tumblr poetry anthology, compiling audio, video and text. We’re only limited by our imagination, and really, the onus is on us to push the boundaries…

“I’ve a friend who says, “Treat anything mechanical
as if it’s just about to break.”
I’ve a feeling           broken-hearted
he’s talking about himself
in relation to his ex-wife,
but I don’t tell him that. She called me break the news
just before she left him. “Breaking up” was her phrase,
as if we were all broken promise still in grade school.
“I’m leaving,” she said, “For good.” I pictured him exactly
where I knew he was at the time—in mid-schuss
breakneck on a mogul-filled downhill in Vail.
He wouldn’t be back for two days, and had no idea
it would be to a broken home. And then,
no note, on the kitchen table or anywhere.
No red box on the wall: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY
BREAK GLASS.”

–

Note to self: define instruction set and consider this poem as the basis for a writing challenge. Yes.

“The Breaks” by Kirk Robinson – RATTLE: Poetry for the 21st Century » RATTLE: Poetry for the 21st Century

“I have built PCs and Linux boxes from parts. I built and ran a distributed Linux cluster. I had a few flavors of Linux on a laptop at a time when it was non-trivial to do that. I can handle running Linux just fine. But now I choose not to. I have a Mac. Why? I just don’t have time for that stuff anymore. I am at a place in my life where I will gladly pay more money for a product of higher quality that saves me time because I am (1) really freaking busy and (2) not broke anymore. I need a low maintenance, high performance computing tool. Mac OS X and most of its major applications are well integrated, very high quality tools. Macs are also beautiful and shiny, and I like that as much as the next person, but it’s secondary.”

–

(1) Why do some people prefer Macs over PCs running Linux? – Quora

It may be hard to believe for the people who know me, but I used to be a PC guy. I actually used to dislike Macs. Granted, this was back in the day, when I had the time and inclination for building my own computers, tweaking operating systems, and messing around in the registry when a virus broke through my defences. Much like the poster above, I got to a point when I simply didn’t have the energy to maintain that any more. 

Interesting thread… 

Two examples of Tumblr being used as more than just a blog (or even reblog) platform. The traditional structure of a blog is a series of posts offered in descending chronological order, pitching forward to some indeterminate future. While Tumblr (and other such platforms) were launched as micro-blogs— the same traditional basis for posting content chronologically minus the overhead of other popular blog platforms, with an equal weighting on ease of posting text, image, audio, video or other repurposed content from other sites— they offer such low barriers to entry that it’s easy to spawn sites themed for specific ideas or projects. With a canny choice of template (the grid style layout explodes the chronological stream) the Tumblr site can become a sourcebook, scrapbook, mood board and so much more…  

La existance de la luz / The existance of the light

“Sol Rezza (born April 7th 1982, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a sound artist, sound designer and sound jockey focused on the transformation of soundscapes into strange sound narratives. Her works are developed from field recordings of her own, sound objects from nature recorded by the artist, vocal experimentation and computer generated virtual instruments used as sound modulators. Her pieces are noted for their unconventional way of working, achieving unique sound textures for each of her compositions through the layer modification of previously recorded sounds. The narrative and the constant play with the symbols of language is a fundamental point throughout her work.” 
—excerpted from her biography. The existence of the light has been described as a “Tumblr album” for the way it brings together image, video, text and original musical compositions for an immersive experience. 

The Hero In You

Nick Makoha is a poet and spoken word artist. My Father & Other Superheroes, his 2012 one man show, is described as “one man’s honest revelation of how pop culture raised him in the absence of his father… a moving and powerful story about the journey from childhood to fatherhood.” The supporting Tumblr site serves almost as a sourcebook for the show. It’ll be interesting to see how ‘The Hero In You’ progresses, whether any archive footage from the show/tour itself will be inserted between the source posts, not simply as a promotional tool, but to serve as the central thread that pulls the various clippings, quotes and images together…

“Spoken word poetry is unaccountably still looked down on by some within the poetry world. This is unfortunate, because anyone who has experienced a range of spoken word poetry events knows that it is just as capable of subtlety and intelligence as its page-bound relative. It seems to be a fact overlooked that in many cultural groups, poetry has been conveyed orally for the majority of its history. You don’t hear of anyone denigrating song-like ballads such as The Twa Corbies, or the entire bardic tradition, for being unsubtle.”

–

The Spoken Word & Me: Faye Lipson via Spoken Word London

One of this year’s Barbican Poets, Faye Lipson, in an article on spoken word poetry, published through a site that’s maintained by two other Barbican Poets. I get to “teach” these guys; to say I’m blessed is no exaggeration.

“Something similar has happened to the Internet. Transcending its original playful identity, it’s no longer a place for strolling — it’s a place for getting things done. Hardly anyone “surfs” the Web anymore. The popularity of the “app paradigm,” whereby dedicated mobile and tablet applications help us accomplish what we want without ever opening the browser or visiting the rest of the Internet, has made cyberflânerie less likely. That so much of today’s online activity revolves around shopping — for virtual presents, for virtual pets, for virtual presents for virtual pets — hasn’t helped either. Strolling through Groupon isn’t as much fun as strolling through an arcade, online or off.”

–

The Death of the Cyberflâneur – Evgeny Morozov, via NYTimes.com

Humbly disagree. Must we posit the social web as inherently evil? Surely the social mechanisms of the web serve as a tool for dissemination of findings (albeit hoisted up on a system that trades in the monetisation of habits, trends and other personal data)?

While the web has practical use, there’s still plenty of other activity going on, and hey— not everyone’s going to be a flaneur, even under the best of conditions. The app market may be a fenced preserve, but with the growing range of apps available, particularly those that serve as portals for web content, surely that app market becomes another arcade for us to wander and explore? Agreed, Groupon doesn’t exactly fire the imagination, but since when was Groupon wholly representative of today’s Internet?

If the web today consisted of nothing other than Groupon, Google and Facebook, I might agree with Morozov more, and I’m certainly interested in reading his book “The Net Delusion” to see if his extended arguments might sway me. But in this regard, I’d argue less for the death of the cyberflaneur, more for the evolution.

“Resolve to do lots of writing along the way. Much of it will be routine note-taking, but you should also write reflectively, to understand: make outlines; explain why you disagree with a source; draw diagrams to connect disparate facts; summarize sources, positions, and schools; record even random thoughts. Many researchers find it useful to keep a journal for hunches, new ideas, random thoughts, problems, and so on. You might not include much of this writing-to-discover-and-understand in your final draft. But when you write as you go, every day you encourage your own best critical thinking, understand your sources better, and, when the time comes, draft more productively.”

– The Craft of Research, 3rd Edition via Andrea Mignolo

Can’t. Get. This. Song. Out. Of. My. Head. Lianne La Havas— Forget. One eye on the past and one eye on the future with the video; brings to mind old Soul II Soul, Terrance Trent Darby and other UK soul promos in styling, colour palette and temperament. Go hard, Lianne. Looking forward to more many more good things from you. 

On these kinds of days, it’s difficult to write. So much doing, not enough reflecting. Is there any rail equivalent for air miles? This week alone I’ve spent something like 30 hours in transit on cross country trains between London, Norwich, Dorset, Manchester and Leeds. And workshops: off the train, into a cab, to a venue, to work. This is not a complaint. It’s good to be (the right kind) of busy, and the opportunity I have to engage and share skills with a representative selection of teaching poets (beyond academia) is an enlivening one, one I’m sure I’m not making as much of as I could or perhaps should. I should be gathering thoughts and perspectives on the work we do, who we are, why we do it. What else? If there was one question I could ask them, what would it be? (Note to self: crowd source suggestions).

This travel is just one part of the work I’m doing, specifically for the national youth poetry slam event (Shake the Dust) I’m artistic director for. Consider a mini “state of the nation” round-up: I’m putting together a list of 300 recommended texts for a new poetry collection for Lewisham Libraries and planning an associated workshop project in three London schools to encourage young writers to respond to work within that new collection; I’m teaching and planning further developments for the Barbican Poets (showcase at the Barbican, March 21st); I’m planning a series of poetry events at the newly opened Deptford Lounge, including the dream of a residency there engaging with the local community and architecture; I’m reading through a shortlist for a new literary award, and doing my best to work through my manuscripts-to-edit pile; I’m supporting the development of national poetry competition related to… well, I probably shouldn’t say right now, just in case; I’m working on a body of new poetry for a computer gaming event in Margate; I’m staying true to my drive to offer more tech workshops for writers and creatives with an all-day session in Leeds on the 11th of February; I’m running a six week online poetry workshop for the Poetry School (joy!); and I’m sure there are other things I’m forgetting.

I’m also: trying to avoid falling back into bad habits around email (flag for later attention, where later never comes); lamenting the lack of use my Bronica medium format camera has seen over the past few weeks, but learning to love Instagram (@jacobsamlarose); tweeting and posting to Tumblr (http://jslr.tumblr.com / http://beforeitdisappears.tumblr.com) regularly; resigned to the fact that I can no longer get away with the three or four hours of sleep I used to survive on (I’m currently good on an average of six or seven); and keenly aware that my main site (http://jacobsamlarose.com) needs a reboot, moreso since I didn’t properly finish it the last time round… 

And with that, the train’s pulling in at Leeds. Time to go workshop. On these kinds of days, it’s difficult to write, but you do what you can. Hasta la vista…

“Don’t ask me who’s influenced me. A lion is made up of the lamb he’s digested, and I’ve been reading all my life.”

– Charles De Gaulle

En route to catch up with my Corfe Hills residency, Poole. Tough week for travel: Norwich, Poole, Leeds and Manchester all within a five day stretch. All for the love of people and poetry… (Taken with instagram)

“Exercise tenacity. It’s not what you take from something, it’s what you bring to it.”

–

—Franklyn Rodgers.

Had the opportunity to work with Frank on a PAL project: If Not You Who Else. It was a blessing, really, to share the space with so many accomplished and open-hearted people, and it’s the kind of space I wish I could inhabit much more of the time. Spring cleaning, I came across this in a pile of notes, and wanted to give the thought a life beyond my archived paper…

What is your relationship with silence…? 

What does poetry mean to you? Poetry Loves Company event, 01/12 (by Danielle Shaw)

I’d started into building a habit/tradition of social events for poets and writers, particularly around Christmas, for a few years up until 2010. Christmas is an interesting time for “freelance creatives”. Depending on the strength of our networks and collaborations, maybe we’re invited to a larger company’s Christmas party, but there’s little that we do for ourselves as a community. With that in mind, I started organising simple Christmas dinners at a friendly Indian restaurant off Oxford Street. We had a good run, then came 2010 (tough year for me for personal reasons) and I had to let a few things go. Rather than restarting the same tradition in 2011, I decided to do something a little different. Christmas is always a busy time, even if we’re not celebrating as a community, so why not celebrate the beginning of new year, rather than the end of an old? 2012 marked the first in what I hope will be a long run of such celebrations, attended by a number of poets and emerging writers I’ve worked with, from flipped eye, Barbican Poets, the London Teenage Poetry SLAM, Malika’s Kitchen, the Roundhouse, the Vineyard and beyond. 

With so many poets in the room, it felt criminal to waste the opportunity to make something. Cue filmmaker Danielle Shaw, a Canon EOS 500D, and a few willing guinea pigs with opinions on poetry. 

Thanks to Woolfson & Tay (the bookshop, café and gallery space that hosted the event) and everyone who attended, with special thanks to Indigo Williams, Dorothy Fryd, Miriam Nash, Inua Ellams, Nii Ayikwei Parkes and Katie Hale. 

Next Poetry Loves Company event? Currently looking at June. Watch this space.

Work Hard Stay Humble— sir, yes sir. 

“A few months ago, the term cassette tape was taken out of the Oxford English Dictionary.(!!!) It may seem ironic, then, that the cassette has experienced a quiet comeback over the last few years, as independent labels issuing tape-only releases have begun popping up around the world. I can’t even tell you how many fond memories I have of the days when cassette tapes ruled my music life. Do you remember the days being angry at a radio announcers when they’d start talking before the song was over and screwed up your recording of a song? I do!” — Swiss Miss

My mind dropped out of the paragraph somewhere around the cassette being removed from the OED. WTH?

Xperia Smart Tags (by sonyericsson, via Protein)

“SmartTags are small programmable tokens that give your Android phone a series of commands to keep you from performing repetitive tasks. For example, swiping your phone on a nightstand could switch your phone to silent, turn off mobile connections and set your alarm for the following morning.” 

Isn’t this just a deep critique of the complexity of smartphones?

These tags might be interesting if they could launch programmes or routines, or trigger an “if this, then this” style set of cascading actions, but everything I’m seeing in the promo would be trumped by easily accessible phone “profiles”. 

Having said that, the tech geek in me is still itching to see these come to market… 

‘Birthday’, Sam Winston 

Free exhibition at the Southbank Centre 
Friday 27 January 2012 – Sunday 29 January 2012

“If you don’t know what your passion is, then you’re in luck…because blogging will help you find one. There is a passion deep inside you, and when you sit down day after day and put words onscreen, you’ll start to understand what it is you like to write about, and want to keep learning about, and talk to readers and other bloggers about. The discovery process of blogging helps connect you to yourself.”

–

blogging is good for you: why, for the love of the gods, you should start your author blog today | Justine Musk

I also like this, because I feel like one of the things we just never learn is the process of introspection. I’m not entirely sure, but it seems to me that living is as much about determining the way we feel about the things happening around us as it is experiencing those things. That’s why, after things go wrong, we need to process things to get back to normal, but also why to really thrive, we need to take that time to think. And so, I like this: to uncover our passion means as much thinking about and understanding why we like the things we do, as doing them.

(via ninakix)

“Shaping your own cultural identity – and having it recognised by others – is central to human dignity and growth. If people can’t represent themselves culturally how can they do so politically? If people are only imagined and portrayed by others, how can they be full, free and equal members of society? And yet, in every society, people’s access to culture is very uneven. Those who identify with dominant cultures have no difficulty creating and promoting their values. Others, passively or actively denied cultural resources, platforms and legitimacy, remain on the margins.”

– François Matarasso

“People need to hear the things you think about, dream about, and worry about. They have to hear it in your voice which isn’t the same as anyone else’s voice.” Because this is how we learn to become more human, by learning to share our voices, no matter how those voices are expressed.””

–

SpeEdChange: Changing Gears 2012: reconsidering what “literature” means

(via RGreco)

“But as he grew older, he learned that a word was a powerful thing. An insult didn’t have to be shouted to bleed; a vow didn’t have to be whispered to make you believe. Hold a thought in your head, and that was enough to change the actions of anyone and anything that crossed your path.”

– Jodi Picoult, The Tenth Circle (via teachingliteracy)

“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.”

–

Bene Gesserit – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ah, the Bene Gesserit litany against fear. I recently finished reading ‘The Winds of Dune’. I have fond memories of watching the movie adaptation of Frank Herbert’s original Dune novel (which is where I remember the litany from, even until now), though ‘The Winds…’ was penned by his son, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.  

Appetite for sci-fi sated. For now. 

“…if we didn’t have that means of communication, in fact, we’d still be living in caves, but still, a lot of people are just surprised to think that language could have any function other than being about something. But sometimes—well, like me; when I was a boy, I began to think that there was something missing there. You could read Scientific American and it would explain String Theory but it was talking about it. And what poetry is engaged in, the kind of language it’s engaged in, is not the language of aboutness, it’s engaged in the language of isness. You’re not trying to point to something out there, and talk about it, you’re trying to actually put it right on the reader’s fingertips. The prose in a biology textbook is trying to tell you about the frog; the poem is trying to turn you into a frog. It’s trying to do the very difficult thing of trying to give you a sense of frogness. When you’re using referential prose, the ontological—excuse me for using that word, but the ontological experience and meaning of the thing is always dead to you if you’re just talking about it. There’s a big difference between telling somebody how much their investment has made over the year and putting them in the seat of a new Ferrari and letting them touch the leather and smell the new car and put it in first and feel that rush of power as they go out of the parking lot. I’m sorry, I don’t usually talk about Ferraris because I couldn’t afford one myself. [Fox laughs] I was talking with a friend the other day who owns one. But referential prose, expository prose, which dominates our minds, not only dominates our minds but actually brainwashes us into believing that’s all language can ever do. It can only point to things; they’re dead to you but you know about them. So poetry actually has to compete with that and it’s very hard to do because people whose minds are trained to process expository prose then are stymied when they come to a poem. And it’s not that the poem doesn’t want you to learn something but it wants you to learn it by seeing it and smelling it and tasting it and knowing the weight of the thing or whatever the ontological physical reality of the thing happens to be. So that’s a huge difference. And I think the word ontology is important there because it’s a radically different mode of being. Poetry’s job is to produce in the reader an order of being utterly different from the order of being that he is possessed by with ordinary explanatory prose. It’s a huge difference and it’s an important difference too because if you try to write a poem and you write it entirely in explanatory referential language, you’re going to get an absolutely dead poem.”

– from A Conversation with B.H. Fairchild – RATTLE: Poetry for the 21st Century » RATTLE: Poetry for the 21st Century

“I have been a Buddhist long before I started writing poems and I think as far as perception is concerned, Buddhism has had a major impact. My meditation practice made observing objects “as they are” a lot easier and this has helped in the avoiding the younger writer’s tendency towards canned or cliched phrases like “rolling hills”, “deep blue eyes”, or “shattered heart”, for example. Practicing Zen made it natural for me to question whether those hills are really “rolling”, or that perhaps those blue eyes are not very deep at all, maybe they’re hollow or crystalline, perhaps they resemble a mine shaft studded with jewels, a sea of lilacs? What I am saying is that there’s a danger in falling into these easy and common descriptions and by stripping the object of its very name, we can begin to see it in a more clear and unique way. When we remove an object or idea from the relative nature of language, we can see how stunning it really is all by itself, naked and fully present; we can see, at last, that an elephant is big only when it’s next to something small.”

– Ocean Vuong | Ocean Vuong: The TNB Self-Interview | The Nervous Breakdown

“Essentially I believe that everybody’s life involves this sort of dualism. Rationality and poetry are just as much part of our daily lives as liquid crystal watches and sunsets.”

– Andrea Galvani

dunnefrankowski:

Since the start of the year, I’ve been really taken by the idea of having something green on my worktable. It goes without saying that I spend a lot of time there, but when you’re focused on the screen (as my work calls me to be) it’s easy to lose touch with the space itself, to allow it to fall from view. Nothing wrong with that, as such— it’s a function of focus. But it’d be good to see some mark of time passing other than the accumulation of dust I counter with the occasional wipe down of surfaces. Something like the lighting system above: serves concrete purpose (lighting), but also marks the passing of time. To be able to say In the time I’ve been here, something has grown, something has come into being— could serve as a powerful reminder of actuality, the passage of time, and presence. A complement or even antithesis to the memento mori skull on the desk of old; rather than a reminder of inevitable death, a reminder that you have lived.

I’m also currently looking into window farms and table gardens. I’d love to track a lighting/hydroponic system like this down…

From 12 January to 1 March the UltraLounge on the Lower Ground floor of Selfridges London will be transformed into a library and become the epicentre of the Words Words Words theme. The library will provide a unique interactive space to become fully immersed in the topic, from specially curated ranges of inspirational books to fascinating classes and lectures from The Idler Academy and It’s Nice That.

[Schedule includes a couple of Faber poetry readings and lots of storytelling from Rachel Rose Reid.]

Via Words Words Words takes over Selfridges | Selfridges.com)

“I believe that the most complex and profound truths are usually arrived at when we allow our imaginations to interact with factual truths. I also believe that facts can lie. So—many of my poems are fictional at least in part. Poetry is not autobiography, not journalism, not textbook history. I understand poetry as an imaginative art, and at this point in my life, I value the power of the imagination as much—or more—than I value any set of facts.”

– How a Poem Happens: Corrinne Clegg Hales

Jacaszek – Dare Gale (by Ghostly International)

“I keep a hotel room. I have everything taken off the walls, and I bring in yellow pads, a Roget’s Thesaurus, a dictionary, a bible, a deck of cards, crossword puzzles and a bottle of sherry (red wine). When I approach the door, it is with utter apprehension and anticipation. It is frightening. It is what I am. I sit at a little table and play solitaire. My grandmother used to say when I was young, ‘You know that’s not even on my littlest mind.’ And so I determined that the human being has a big mind and a little mind. The cards occupy my little mind so I can get to the big mind and hear the language.”

–

Writers’ Routines: Maya Angelou

Two things here.

a) For a while, I developed a (bad?) habit of munching while working. Almost incessantly. Mostly healthy stuff (though I’m pretty sure I could have a reasonably decent conversation with Bill Herbert about decadent delicacies and bad eating habits we might have in common…), but munchies all the same. I wonder if this wasy my way of engaging my “little mind” so the big mind could carry on with more important things?

b) Writers’ Routines is excellent. I’d considered doing something like it myself a while back, and still might, though of course I’d have to invest some effort in differentiation— if something’s already being done, what could I add to the enterprise? Whether or not I find a satisfactory answer to the question, Writers’ Routines is worth a read. Go see.

“Oh, yes,
let’s bless the imagination. It gives
us the myths we live by.”

–

‘On the Meeting of Garcia Lorca and Hart Crane’— Philip Levine.

I listened to a lot of Philip Levine and Robert Hass while pulling Breaking Silence together. At one point, I had a playlist of various readings on rotation. Now that Breaking Silence is out, I’m easing back into a writing schedule, and Levine still holds pride of place at the top of my reading stack. Currently (re)reading The Simple Truth, in which the poem the above quote is take from is contained.

“As for technique, I was “playing it by ear.” I wanted to make the facts lyrical.”

– How a Poem Happens: John Drury

theweekmagazine:

The Exclamation Comma. “Just because you’re excited about something doesn’t mean you have to end the sentence.”

That’s true.

14 Punctuation Marks You Never Knew Existed

Add to 2012 task list: track down a murmuration of starlings. Need to see with my own eyes. 

(via Max Wallis @ http://wedlockwinter.com/)

When I die, bury me so I can return as a tree. It’s a more appealing idea than any other I’ve heard thus far… (via MARTÍN AZÚA)

Night Truths
Stephen Dunn 

I’ve known an edginess, come evening,
when I haven’t chosen to be alone, but am,
the necessity of music, the implacable silence
of the telephone, when my faith is faith
in the provisional, wild, no consolation
in it, and deeply, late at night, in the
peaty, musk-scented, moon-driven dark
I’ve felt so singular,
so importantly sorry for myself,
or so exquisitely stilled, attuned,
that I knew there were night truths
unavailable to lovers or the loved,
thought I might be close to them,
and have put off sleep because sleep
is social, intrusive, all the uninvited
waiting to make their appearances, put it off
until it came for me, ignorantly, persuasive. 

(via distantstations:)

“Read, read, read. Read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.”

– William Faulkner (via creationoftheday)

Want! WAAAANT!! Don’t know how I’ll use it yet, but WAAAANT!! 

Birthday’s in June, guys. Just saying. 

(I’m curious to see how this will work. Does it mean another inbox to keep abreast of, or will it serve as a useful means of communications between Tumblr-ites…?)

staff:

We’ll be rolling out Fan Mail — a new interblog messaging service — over the next few days for everyone.

You can send unlimited Fan Mail to the blogs you follow and customize each message.

You’ll see the new option appear in your Inbox, avatar menus, or in the top corner of the blogs you follow.

Have fun!

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.”

– Buckminster Fuller, via Sarah B. Nelson

“Every time I’ve made writing mistakes it’s been because of one significant reason. The reason being is that I wrote a poem or short story or a play that was about my need for self- glorification and ego. I was writing and gazing at myself in the mirror and smiling. I also know that my writing has been most successful when I’ve offered my writing in service to others without ego. So when I think of how my writing better serves the reader, I have not failed. I’m always thinking at the back of my mind better words, better books, better people, better interpersonal relationships, better communities, and better world. As lofty as it sounds it helps me stay on my best writing track.”

– Roger Robinson » 1 Minute Lecture: Is Your Writing In Service?

Happy 2012, dear readers! How did you observe the turn of the year? The christmas/festive thing was a bit up and down for me, but New Year’s Eve turned out to be one of the better celebrations I can remember for various reasons, including the following: 

- Rachel Rose Reid’s Poetry Library Takeover, which featured an impeccably curated lineup. Anthony Anaxagorou, Nia Barge, Dizraeli, Katrice Horsley, Adam Kammerling, Femi Martin, Stephanie Dogfoot and yours truly joined forces for a veritable feast of poetry, flash fiction and storytelling. Outstanding way to kick off proceedings in the company of fellow wordsmiths. Hats off to Rachel— she knows how to put on a party. Personal bonus: who was called upon, iPhone in hand, to do a stint as honorary DJ type person to warm up the “everybody take your seats” part of the evening? Yeah, that’s right… 

- Sara and Umar. You know who you are if you’re reading this, and you rule. See you at a gig sometime soon. Might not have my own line of stationary or t-shirts by then, but we’ll figure something out… 

- Although I’d been booked to perform at a NYE gig in the Poetry Library on the Southbank, I had no idea of what was happening in the rest of the building. D’oh! I walked straight out of the Poetry Library into a set from We Were Evergreen (recommended, if you’re not already familiar) and somehow managed to miss Fiona Bevan. 

- Location, location. Prime position for NYE Southbank fireworks, sans wet weather and crowds. Score. 

All in all, a memorable night. May the year continue in such a rewarding vein… 

[Oh, and before I’m chastised: photo credit - Danielle Shaw. Ta much.]

Most Listened To (Week Ending 2011-12-25):

1. Boards of Canada (46)
2. The Cinematic Orchestra (17)
3. Abimaro & The Free (11)
4. 4hero (8)
5. The Mattson 2 (7)

Powered by the popular Last.fm/Tumblr pipe by JoeLaz

“Some things
you know all your life. They are so simple and true
they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,
they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
the glass of water, the absence of light gathering
in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.”

– Philip Levine, “The Simple Truth”

Most Listened To (Week Ending 2011-12-18):

1. Dorian Concept (24)
2. Dimlite (19)
3. Bibio (13)
4. Machine Drum (12)
5. Abimaro & The Free (11)

Powered by the popular Last.fm/Tumblr pipe by JoeLaz

It’s been almost a year since I last ran Last.FM. Started up again a week ago, and hey presto! I’d forgotten this automated Last.FM scraper was listening. Nice little reminder that the web is watching…

Ralph Ellison on Symbolism via Paris Review – Document: The Symbolism Survey, Sarah Funke Butler

“

My advice is always to make a lot of art; to make a lot of art, then look at what you have made and then think about what you have done. If you think first, you will never do anything or you will do something boring. Art doesn’t exist until the artist has finished making it. The differences between one’s responses as a critic, teacher, dealer and curator are as follows: As a critic I presume the art is finished and on purpose. As a teacher, I presume the art needs work. So the same work that I might like as a critic, I might find wanting as a teacher, simply because my rule for looking at student art is: if you’re not sick don’t call that doctor. As a dealer you’re looking for quality, of course, but you’re also looking for evidence of the artist’s work habits and commitment to a long-term career. As a curator you’re looking for what fits.

Thirty-five thousand MFAs a semester, 90 percent of whom never make another work of art.

With the artists, I don’t teach, I coach. I can’t tell them how to make art. I tell them to make more art. I tell them to get up early and stay up late. I tell them not to quit. I tell them if somebody else is already making their work. My job is to be current with the discourse and not be an asshole. That’s all I wanted in a professor.

”

– DAVE HICKEY, Art critic, Educator, Curator. 
»jon-garcia: “I saw this on Tumblr some time ago but I can’t find it. So here it is again. Those last two sentences are just… prophetic.” (via tobia)

“To comprehend a man’s life, it is necessary to know not merely what he does but also what he purposely leaves undone. There is a limit to the work that can be got out of a human body or a human brain, and he is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted; and he is still wiser who, from among the things that he can do well, chooses and resolutely follows the best.”

– John Hall Gladstone

Hello Little Printer, available 2012 (by BERG)

Want!

ArtStack:

From the about page: “ArtStack lets you discover, collect and share art.”

“You can’t keep a great piece of art to yourself. By linking you with the people and things you’re interested in, ArtStack gives you a continually updated feed of relevant and inspiring artworks and commentary. When you see something you like – on the site or anywhere on the net – you can easily add it to your Stack, your personal collection of art.”

I recently received an invite to Artstack’s closed beta. There’s a surfeit of platforms for the micro-curation/like-blogging of visual content, but what I’ve seen of Artstack so far suggests that it’s a clean, easy to use tool. Shame I’ve already got a Tumblr for this kind of thing and a neglected Pinterest account. 

One day my orphaned internet properties will gang up and turn against me… 

<a href=”http://resonate.bandcamp.com/track/shiwasu-mix” _mce_href=”http://resonate.bandcamp.com/track/shiwasu-mix”>Shiwasu mix by Ichiro</a>

Saturday afternoon soundtrack provided by Shiwasu. All systems blazing in Jsamlarose towers…