Recordings
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. As Hold is arranged chronologically, these are the earliest texts in the book and were all written in 1994. 'Touch Watch' was a sequence of poems written daily for a number of weeks then edited down. They attempt to respond to intellectual and emotional impulses in a direct way -- but are always aware of how language constructs as much as reflects experience. 'Rejecting the Personal' was written headlong in one sitting as a response to hearing the work of Tom Raworth (tho' not for the first time) at the Equipage/Microbrigade reading held at Cambridge University in Spring 1994. I was responding to Raworth's poems Blue Screen and 'Wit Wither'. 'Speak for Itself' was realised again in one long sitting. Its co-ordinates were my early reading of Gertrude Stein along with various responses to violence in Northern Ireland and elsewhere at the time. Due to the inflation of the currency of the word 'terrorism' in recent years, this poem has renewed itself in its ability to link with the events of September 11, 2001. The fourth poem 'Singing Sensation' forms one third of a new projected sequence of ninety poems called Momentum. It was written between July 2004 and October 2005 and parts of it have appeared in various little magazines. In some way this poem exhibits a return to the impulse underlying a sequence like 'Touch Watch'. It is a kind of post- or new-lyric poem that attempts to respond to the contingencies of experience whilst simultaneously focusing on the constitutive nature of language.
Bibliography
- 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
- 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
- Onsets (The Gig Editions: Willowdale ON, 2004)
- Listening to the Birth of Crystals, ed. by Alan Corkish and Andrew Taylor (Paula Brown: 2003), pp. 164-65
- Verbi Visi Voco -- A Performance of Poetry, ed. by Bob Cobbing and Bill Griffiths (Writers Forum: London, 1993), pp. 244-245.
MAGAZINES
Online magazine appearances:
CRITICISM
- '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)
- I edited The Salt Companion to Geraldine Monk (2007).
- My interview with Tony Lopez is published at The Argotist Online website.
- 'Ulli Freer: Space is the Place / Ulli Freer and Scott Thurston: An Interview', in Poetry Salzburg Review 9 (Spring 2006), pp. 169-187.
- 'Allen Fisher -- Reading "Mummers' Strut"' in volume 4 of Eseje o wspólczesnej poezji brytyjskiej i irlandzkiej, (Essays on Modern British and Irish Poetry) ed. Ludmila Gruszewska and David Malcolm, (Gdansk: University of Gdansk Press, 2005), pp. 119-134 (ISBN: 83-7326-288-1).
- 'Ira Lightman: The Ethics of Generative Form / Ira Lightman and Scott Thurston: An Interview', in Poetry Salzburg Review 7 (Winter 2004), pp. 9-25.
- 'Maggie O'Sullivan: Substance and Transformation / Maggie O'Sullivan and Scott Thurston: An Interview', in Poetry Salzburg Review 6 (Summer 2004), pp. 6-20.
- 'Adrian Clarke: Cutting through Closure / Adrian Clarke and Scott Thurston: An Interview', in Poetry Salzburg Review 5 (Autumn 2003), pp. 9-30.
- 'John Wilkinson: Fascination and Effacement / John Wilkinson and Scott Thurston: An Interview', in Poetry Salzburg Review 4 (Spring, 2003), pp. 8-29.
- 'Allen Fisher: The Necessity of Change / Allen Fisher and Scott Thurston: An Interview / Poems by Scott Thurston', in Poetry Salzburg Review 3 (Autumn, 2002), pp. 10-39.
- See also my article 'A Tribute to Bob Cobbing 1920-2002' in Neon Highway 3 (2003)
ON-LINE REVIEWS
- 'Robert Sheppard: Tin Pan Arcadia and Hymns to the God in which My Typewriter Believes' (2006) Stride Magazine
- 'Dell Olsen: Secure Portable Space' (2005) Readings
- 'Miles Champion: Three Bell Zero' (2004) Readings
- 'Geraldine Monk: Noctivagations' (2002) Stride Magazine
Sample text
from 'Singing Sensation'
dashed singing sensation
dares to incorporate a
robbery as if monotony
an unfolded collar
of chambers beaten
out on an anvil who
shouldered the wrong
burden wants redressing
as a split bung type
to the paradise of
another open matter
offer pattern
regressing
yes it's chopped off
out of the ether
an oblong slide
into shaded polygon
a thick block
wedged into position
shifted over
determined minutiae
what magnifies
this ecstatic identification
as if a stone
hands over turns and
leaves
cows and horses
placed here equally
asunder a redounded
sense of the outmoded
categories the licenses
to print castellate
the chimneys on the
horizon the simple point
spits a loop of
charcoal settling neatly
the chance
attendant on thought again
Reviews
Ira Lightman, 'Weightedness in Poetry: An Approach to Scott Thurston', The Argotist
'Intelligent investigations of the work of language in the world' (from Carrie Etter's review of Hold in West Branch no. 61, Fall/Winter 2007)
"Scott Thurston's writing enlists its readers in a struggle through language. Words are isolated, broken up, placed in apposition and opposition. [...] Scenes are persistently set -- domestic interiors, urban observations -- yet never stay stolidly stable: from a warped yet recognizable scenario, Thurston flips us back onto the snowy slopes of a language with which we must renew our acquaintance. [...] Signs and selves are alike remade in Thurston's workshop." (from Joseph Brooker's blurb for Hold)
See Joseph Brooker 'The Needle and the Language Done' (Pores) on the poems which appeared in The Allotment.
"Thurston's poetry is, I think, concerned with a point of contact across terminals, between one and the Other. [...] [His] poems are short statements remaining in an emergent state, thus leaving it to the reader to always, newly for each poem, engage in a building-up (Aufbau) principle. So my encounter with the poem is a becoming-approximation." (from Melissa Flores-Bórquez's review of Hold at Intercapillary Space)
"There is an inviting richness of association in Thurston's title that is at once encouraging and puzzling -- and that stands for his poetry, too. [...] Furthermore, Thurston's first full-length collection is the result of ten years work and incorporates not only his hellishly difficult (but nonetheless rewarding) linguistically innovative stuff, but also his beautiful, lyrical meditations on selfhood which are powerful and well-crafted. [...] 'Rescale', a series of 30 prose poems is stunning, taking in the sound-associations of Sheila E. Murphy and the philosophical abstractions of Ashbery and Creeley and doing the whole thing pretty damn well. [...] As in the title, there is a generosity of association to Thurston's conjoined phrases and word-salad that outstrips many of his contemporaries." (from Luke Kennard's review of Hold at Stride Magazine)
"[Thurston's] work could be said to represent the harder edge of Brit lyrical avant garde poetry but for me his is also one of most aesthetically successful. Despite the fact that he honed his style and methodology in the milieu of Sub-Voicive and Bob Cobbing the work used to come across to me as closer in its poetic textures to American Language Poetry than to British avant models but reading this volume made me amend that view -- it is not relaxed enough: like Sheppard and Upton etc there is a drive and tension that is distinctly English -- objects are solid and sharp and unstable, they hurt -- he writes as though the threat is being returned." (From Tim Allen's review of Hold at Terrible Work)
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