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My creative practice as a writer attempts to steer a course between an awareness of the material nature of language whilst acknowledging its capacity to communicate directly or indirectly. I tend to work in an improvisational fashion, often writing short poems which respond to experience and memory in spontaneous ways. These poems build up into sequences which become records of processes of thinking and development over time. I am fascinated by how thought and language move, and the capacity of the poem to track and trace this subtle energy.
I did my PhD in Poetics at Edge Hill 1997-2002. I now run the MA Creative Writing: Innovation and Experiment at the University of Salford and co-run The Other Room reading series in Manchester. I edit The Radiator, a little magazine of poetics, and co-edit The Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry with Robert Sheppard.
I live in Liverpool.
This photograph, taken by Peter Griffiths, shows me reading in Manchester in 2007. You can hear a recording of this performance below. |
Recordings
This recording was made on 14 November 2007, at The Thirsty Scholar pub, Manchester. I began this poem sequence in response to the invitation to contribute to James Davies' Matchbox magazine project, a unique series of 12 issues of individual poets' work published inside real matchboxes. I developed a form comprising four four-line stanzas which were readable in a vertical direction as well as horizontally (see below for some examples). For the Matchbox presentation I used seven of these poems but cut them up into single stanzas which could be read individually, as part of a 28 stanza sequence, or in new patterns. In this performance I read the stanzas of the first seven Matchbox poems horizontally in their original forms and then some newer poems from the sequence, reading the final one in both directions. The completed sequence of 80 poems will be published by Shearsman in Spring 2010.
The photograph above was taken at the moment when a train, which you can hear on the recording, rumbled over the top of the venue at an apt point in the reading!
This recording was made on 25 November 2006, at a house in Stamford Hill, north London. The reading includes performances of the first three texts in the collection Hold published by Shearsman in 2006.
Bibliography
BOOKS
- Internal Rhyme (forthcoming Shearsman: Exeter, 2010) c.80pp
- Momentum (Shearsman: Exeter, 2008) 108pp
- Hold: Poems 1994-2004 (Shearsman: Exeter, 2006) 113pp
- Of Utility (Spanner: Hereford, 2005)
- Turns (with Robert Sheppard) (Ship of Fools/Radiator: Liverpool, 2003)
- Two Sequences (RWC: Sutton, 1998)
- Sleight of Foot (Reality Street Editions: London, 1996) (Selection)
- Fragments (The Lilliput Press: Norwich, 1994)
- State(s)walk(s) (Writers Forum: London, 1994)
- Poems Nov 89 - Jun 91 (Writers Forum: London, 1991)
ANTHOLOGIES
- Liverpool Poets (Erbacce: Liverpool, 2008)
- Slova Bez Hranic, ed. by Bob Hysek et al (Detour: Olomouc, 2007). The anthology of the 2007 'Words Without Borders' festival in Olomouc, Czech Republic.
- The Allotment: New Lyric Poets, ed. by Andy Brown (Stride: Exeter, 2006), pp. 208-15
- Broken Compass Press Anthology, ed. by Chris Brownsword (Broken Compass Press: Sheffield, 2006), pp. 26-27
MAGAZINES
Selected online magazine appearances:
CRITICISM
- 'Accreted Statement' in Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh (Salt, 2009), pp. 123-31
- I edited The Salt Companion to Geraldine Monk (2007).
- My interview with Tony Lopez is published at The Argotist Online website.
- 'If poetry is private language aspiring to be public, how should one write?' (on Barrett Watten and Ira Lightman) in Poetry and Public Language, ed. by Tony Lopez & Anthony Caleshu (Shearsman: Exeter, 2007) pp. 263-269 (ISBN 978-1905700646)
- 'Audience and Representation: Method and Technique' in The Paper 9 (September 2007), pp. 39-53
- 'A Tribute to Bob Cobbing 1920-2002' in Neon Highway 3 (2003)
- Interviews with Allen Fisher, John Wilkinson, Adrian Clarke, Ira Lightman, Maggie O'Sullivan, and Ulli Freer published in issues 3-9 of Poetry Salzburg Review (2002-2006)
ON-LINE REVIEWS
- 'Lisa Samuels: The Invention of Culture and Carrie Etter: Yet' Stride Magazine (2009)
- 'Robert Sheppard: Tin Pan Arcadia and Hymns to the God in which My Typewriter Believes' (2006) Stride Magazine
Sample text
from Internal Rhyme
internal rhyme a species of adder magic
I can feel your badge by my side
eternal flask leave out those signs
of relief at the end of withdrawal symptoms
pleasure you can't measure the hybrids
stand at the gateway the larger logic that makes
possible dynamic critical constructions
you will terribly well un-read
in visibility give me the whole without
totality the weight of me dropping down moving
my feet in a new way full flow force field
ignites a prospect of balance relation to
ground to other this searing contact
fiery remote surgery perfect platinum breaks
an encased circuit of touch without
never refusing suppressing difference
death my enemy let's stay closer than
ever the face crags the pay off of ages
the young argue for themselves consigned
to finitude open essentially mortal
well for pure water mathematics of waves
form an invitation to disappear in different
radical plurality disjunctive others
take my hand lovely wolf-skull
Reviews
Ira Lightman 'On Weightedness in Poetry: An Approach to Scott Thurston' at The Argotist Online
Joseph Brooker 'The Needle and the Language Done' at Pores
Melissa Flores-Bórquez's review of Hold at Intercapillary Space
Luke Kennard's review of Hold at Stride Magazine
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