(Natalie) d'Arbeloff's uneven practice - working within, through, and against strata, suggests activity of an itinerant 'rhizomath'.
The Making of Slow Fiction (Home'Baked Books by Michael John Weller, 2010)

Notes on a local literary festival, part eight

(parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, nine)

On June 23 2011, in London, three face-to-face consecutive 'bubbles' of linguistically innovative poetics and poetry "clashed". Keyed here as events A, B, and C.

A) Contemporary Romanian poets
B) Special poetry event at Parasol Unit in association with exhibition of paintings by Jakub Julian Ziółkowski
C) Crossing the Line special at The Horse Hospital

Mike W, in attempt to experience poetics of 'bubble chasing' - left 'bubble' B, reaching 'bubble' C during break, to find fellow attendee Chris G also reaching C during break - after attending 'bubble' A.

As printed publications and E-readings, or blog entry poetries, find own multiple niche-pockets of followers, viewers, readers, and collectors - so gig or poetry sociates, hearers and attendees, seem likely be drawn to face-to-face bubble-space of choice in simultaneous retinue "bubbling bubbling bubbling, bubbling, bubbling" in words of late Gil-Scott Heron, recently sampled by Kanye West on 'Lost in the World' track from My Dark Twisted Fantasy album.

Second Beckenham Bubble with invited guests planned for Monday July 4th with other expected UK poetry bubbles also coinciding in London, Bury, Cambridge, Brighton, Luton, Manchester, Withington, etc. But apart from Lisa Appiganesi @London Literature Festival are there other 'bubbles' in London? Is there no free poetry in New York City on Independence Day?



Bubble-space may be moved from small screened lending area to Library reference section as July 4 evening time-space bubble poetic concentrates at London's capital litfest, smaller suburban Bromley litfest plus smaller Beckenham Bubble within that.



So next London 'bubble-chasing' evening of poetics looks as if it may be Wednesday July 6th here and here.

Kid Doctor Clinics (KDC) encouraged book clubs for readers - not writers groups for authors. For people to have unrealistic aspirations and expectations meant a lot of hard work for the Earth Corporation's social engineers and volunteer armies. KDC encouraged amateur dramatic societies for real-life social networks.
War in Heaven (Home'Baked Books by Michael John Weller, 2010)

Notes on a local literary festival, part seven

(parts one, two, three, four, five, six, eight, nine)

Although not formally invited to read or perform at Beckenham Bubble one - the writer, as part-organiser/curator of evening responded to request "do something" by improvising themes Fics from the Sticks bookwork.

1990's Beckenham writers group The Scribblers killed off through fictionalization as 'Addingcombe Nibs'. Not sure what audience, some former Scribblers, made of this.

Curious reading Yeats' 1893 'The Rose of Peace' opening 'Now Here's A Tale...' (Slow Fiction) to congregated Shortlands Poetry Circle (est 1911). Sometimes voice go beyond estuarine twang. Could be library bubble-space effect.

@bromleylitfest Bromley Lit Fest
had a fab evening with the Beckenham Bubble at Becfest!

tweet 'n' all

Notes on a local literary festival, part six

(parts one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, nine)

Most events in Becfest brochure have pretty image of authors accompanying text. Not this one.






At Bromley Fest Tomfoolery launch two weeks ago organisers concerned not one single booking for Beckenham Bubble one.

Notes on a local literary festival, part five

(parts one, two, three, four, six, seven, eight, nine)

'Richmal Crompton, Enid Blyton, and Edith Nesbit are three giants of children's literature,' said Michelle Jolly.
'And like you, they all live and work near South London, Kent and Surrey perimeters of the M25,' said Lucy.
'No, they don't live there now, silly - they are all dead!' Michelle laughed to her comedienne friend, Lucy Greenwood.
Graphic Novel, (Home'Baked Books by Michael John Weller, 2010)

The Scribblers had become a marketable writers' group set up in the local 1997 UK reality of The Studio building - an experimental arts, media and comedy workshop centre in Beckenham; still under Bromley local authority control in honeymoon months of Blair's government.

In bigger national picture of arts council lottery funding for literature - Apples and Snakes' The Popular Front Of Contemporary Poetry (which included Bob Cobbing) and Iain Sinclair-edited Conductors of Chaos (which didn't) - were the two must-read anthologies for aspiring creative writers of that era.

These volumes were bookended to beginning of Smash Hits reader JK Rowling's Harry Potter books, Time-Warner America Online, Kyoto Climate Change Summit, weird religiosity surrounding the death of the Princess of Wales, and building of a celebratory Millennium Dome in England.

As reward for their success The Scribblers were given performance training by Apples and Snakes with an eye on their touring circuit. When doing character don't be afraid of putting on a different voice. Complete contradiction to what writer was to understand couple years later at Bob Cobbing's Writers Forum workshops.

Use voice to sound text.

A Bromley grouping - not wishing to participate as trained Scribblers in London's The Word Festival 1999, played a local borough library for free instead.

Writing as word. Writing as world. Writing as read. Writing as unlimited.

Notes on a local literary festival, part four

(parts one, two, three, five, six, seven, eight, nine)

But who is this Mike Weller? Where is he exactly? And what is the nature of the realit(ies) he lives in? Why does he feel as if he is a character in somebody else's fiction?

Space Opera developed from this ...

A creative writers' group The Scribblers at Studio Beckenham was attracting interest and funding - and from the beginning of 1997 I was able to test reactions through public reading of Space Opera as work in progress and display its graphics content. The Studio Scribblers experience was rewarding through adopting a performance persona of live storyteller to receptive audience. Arts Council of England Lottery-funding of The Scribblers anthology On the Shelf and Off the Wall vol II meant I was able to extract a section of Space Opera for inclusion.
The Making of Slow Fiction (Home'Baked Books by Michael John Weller, 2010)

Receiving an invitation to participate in a local literary festival - the writer spent days humming and ha'ing whether to agree to take part, or not. Identical response before cautiously looking in on creative writers' group, short bus ride away, fifteen years before - the Beckenham Scribblers.

In 1996 something was in the air in southeast London. The writer was often able to identify 'things in the air' on his doorstep. A peculiar charge of localized preternatural energy perhaps; a combination of several extraordinary coincidences, maybe. Vitalized synchronicity associated within scribbling process of sudden collective realization, definitely. Like Beckenham Arts Lab formation quarter century before.

1969 different time-space; 1997 different time-space again; 2011 different time-space yet again.

Then afterwards, the shaping movement of scribblers into tangible entity, losing bits deemed unnecessary to working model. A group of writers serious about their business emerges. Poetry is composed and read without comment or criticism. Brand names appear in fragments of text. A suggestion even of Scribbler commodification. Essential if product be sold arts market society.

'Beckenham' as place dropped from name. Too local. 'The Scribblers' formed: band of UK writers and poets gigging at Studio Beckenham, introduced like support band before going into individualized solo reader's performance - warm-up acts on southeast London Studio literary nights featuring Adrian Mitchell, John Cooper Clarke, Labi Siffre, Alex King, and the "irrepressible" Mike Weller.









'Island of Dreams' from Space Opera, MJ Weller 1997

Notes on a local literary festival, part three

(part one, two, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine)

While Acorn's Bromley litfest's brochure is a professionally designed and printed production, Becfest's brochure is a 'home'baked' publication. Desk-top and library table one-staple collation job.

Although Bromley's festival has no big literary names to draw crowds from outside town, it is big on celebrating popular generic forms (crime, thriller, romance, history, travel) and broad attractions necessary for appeal to people of all ages (authors' book talks, literary pub quizzes, improvised comedy, under-18's open mic, Shakespeare in the Park). There is very little Leila and Ali Dewji's Acorn Independent Press don't know about the history of old-fashioned books (they've done their homework), modern electronic publishing, possibilities of self-publishing - especially for the aspiring novelist with an eye on getting that first airport paperback downloaded to thousands of tablet screens.

When Acorn proudly announced 2011 was Bromley's first literary festival it was kinda true. Bromley had participated in London's Festival of Literature The Word, Spread the Word, The Blurb in years gone by - and Bromley 'The Library' have held local summer festival of books and reading as an annual event since. Becfest was planned to have been a 2011 continuation of this modest celebration. Then Acorn's plans for the first Bromley Literature Festival came out of soapy water like a big inspirational bubble.

What is curious about Bromley is that its northern pockets - West Beckenham, Penge, Anerley - have produced writers as much as readers and book consumers. Writers have lived in the area as residents. Children's writers particularly attracted to Beckenham's leafy suburbs and calming River Beck. Enid Blyton began the whole global kidlit squad from a detached house in the borough.

In Bromley's southern semi-rural expanses Richmal Crompton dreamed up the munificent Just William and Edith Nesbitt named south-east London locations in her novels.

The writer's "Openned Letter to Allen Fisher on the question of poetry, place & poetics" (veer off, Veer Books, 2008) continues discourse on naming.

Notes on a local literary festival, part two

(& parts one, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine)

Brochure cover left is 2011 Bromley litest's and cover right is 2011 BecFest's.

















During next week or so, EGNEP's blog will go inside the BecFest brochure. This doesn't mean Bromley Literary Festival (BLF) and its brochure isn't worthy of interior investigation, far from it. In fact in this post, a brief deconstruction of Bromley's brochure is attempted by Bromley's writer-in-residence, MJ.

Distinguished arty, theatrical and bookish sponsors - local, national and dotcommy have their logos reproduced and Ladyzone, Orpington's "Ladies Only Gym with a difference" advertise.

Bromley litfest is sooooo girly! Girlier than an emilyfest!! Girlier than Redell Olsen's Sharp Exhalations, Andrea Brady Poetry Lady and & Holly Pester Does It Better rolled into one!!!

Professional industry Bromley litfest organisers Acorn Independent Press, a local brother and sister team, Ali & Leila Dewji, are sooooo young! And they have sooooo many top literary contacts! Global literary agents any aspiring novelist would die for, nay, kill for. How? Why?

Leila and Ali are younger than many creative writing graduates performing at emilyfest bubbles anywhere, everywhere, anytime. Bromley's Tomfoolery pub at Bromley litfest's launch night had as many under thirties as Shoreditch's Foundry in the late 2000's.

What are they all doing in Bromley?

Notes on a local literary festival, part one
(& parts two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine)

New media politics of networked space and new communities of interest, from global and local perspectives, seem likely to lead to more scenes within scenes, bubbles within bubbles - organized in the UK around county and district, town and city suburbs, and within region and locality.
- Mike Weller, 'Home'Baked: literary artzines in the age of the internet' (Openned Zine #1, 2010)

And just over one year later, the writer of this published monograph is invited to curate two evenings for Beckenham Literary Festival - the 2011 BecFest to be held within a bubble-space, in the open public lending section of Beckenham library.

BecFest has been organized both simultaneously, and within, a big borough-wide Bromley Literary Festival (Beckenham is one suburb of London's largest borough and dormitory town).

Both festivals are taking place as major shake-ups of Bromley's Library services occur, as they are in other parts of the UK. This means threatened closures, borough mergers, and library staff redundancies.

Bromley Literary Festival seems, to the writer, to be taking place in one locality and reality. BecFest in another locality and reality. Neither locality or reality has any notion of what the present writer's practise is. But a formal invitation to take part in some way arrived by old-fashioned letter post. The writer thinks the library service may think the writer a local historian because they did buy copies of his Harriet Staunton: A Victorian Murder Ballad (visual associations, 1999) for the reference section of its borough branches.

The invitation was not a specific invitation to read or perform. So the writer will not read or perform.

So does the writer agree to take part or not?

Yes, for the purposes of testing bubble-within-bubble-within-bubble theory in practice. This will be carried out by creating a third reality. Beckenham Bubble number one and two. Linguistically innovative place-bubbles.

Beckenham librarian organizing BecFest, Vanessa Williamson, is encouraging about place-bubbles. There is perhaps a sense of last opportunity for poetry and poetics to be discussed and performed in a public space without pressure of providing profitable returns.

'Until Breton and Trotsky's Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art is distributed free to everyone and the workers' democratic government is formed,' whispers ever-optimistic Mick.

On evenings Wednesday, June 29 and Monday, July 4th - there is likely to be numerous poetry events elsewhere - in cafés, pub-function rooms, university faculties, poetry-hegemonized venues - perhaps other libraries and litfests. In these realities nothing clashes when bubbles burst

€#*@$!

Sophisticated Boom Boom



The writer hadn't attended voiceworks (showcase of new music for voice) before. For several years this initiative, coordinated by Birkbeck Contemporary Poetics Research Centre with Guildhall School of Music & Drama, has been performed in association with Wigmore Hall - London's major international venue for song.

"The girls were wearing formals, the boys were wearing ties" in the words of Shadow Morton's song written for The Shangri-Las.

2011's performance in May featured seven songs including texts by poets SJ Fowler and James Wilkes. The writer had only just posted "Nature Boy" to this blog when Mr Wilkes explained all about an Urban Physic Garden plant project he was curating poetry contributions towards.

Delighted with possibility of designing new "nature poem" present writer plumbed for caraway plant - perhaps because this was first spice consumed by writer as small boy tasting his grandmother's caraway-seeded cake.

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us sequence

Nature Boy


Stem Harvest (writers forum, September 2002) was among last batch of chapbooks published by Bob Cobbing just before he died. Stem Harvest was subtitled "Nature Poems". I'm not sure Bob liked the book that much.

In fact I don't think Stem Harvest has been archived among Writers Forum publications. Book contains sequence 'De Eye On The Science That', 'Nature Boy', 'Flowers', 'Three Cells' and 'Leek Legion'. Though seeming end-of-era London-based avant-printing, Stem Harvest wears forward-looking simian smile.

Within final year of Cobbing-led WF publications - song 'It's a Small World After All' was translated into DNA fragments and imported into the genome of a living bacterium.

Possibilities of science and technology in the wake of genome cloning has been explored by the Fishbone Initiative (collective nod perhaps to community collaborative/anonymous science workers) - Deciphering Human Chromosone 16: We Report Here (information as material, 2007).

First referenced on Peter Philpott's Great Works, an introduction to performative possibilities of tuned-in poets Richard Makin and Sarah Jacobs was one highlight London's 'Sundays at the Oto' couple years ago.

Christian Bök's The Xenotext Experiment (with genetic vocabulary 'thread' and 'strand' already blogosphere-speak) has animated dead-clay into new encoded life. Real, virtual and poetic.

Curious thing is, programming seems counter-intuitive to designing poetry.

Amount of exacting characters, symbols and spaces required to make codes work seems disproportionate as literary practise.

But if long rule-based pattern encryption is required to make poem feed off its own organism - poetics of scripton & cybertexton may finally have come of age.




jolt




Songs Our Teachers Learn Us sequence

brief history of paper doll cut-ups, cut-outs & cut-offs in changing times

"...but even the president of the United States and his wife sometimes must have to stand in their underwear without any visible sign of genitalia..."






















Songs Our Teachers Learn Us sequence

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us on twitter

christianbok Christian Bok

Finished reading: "Star Maker" by Olaf Stapledon—(a real drug-trip…).
17 May

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us without sound

"here individual performed"

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us on the Internet

Thank you, Sarah.

Four reasons to watch out for this Weller guise

...blogging, twittering, eBooking digital character EGNEP (egnep); the lively character named Mike Weller; or Mick Weller the Earth Corporation's own facebooked yellow Weller; the home'baking self-publisher, Michael John Weller; and the authorial Bromley writer-in-residence character named MJ - have been existing in lower four realities of the wellerverse. A vacuum where shit fills space left by divine inspiration.

If notion of 'wellerverse' sounds mad (one or two of Paul Weller's fans may live in a muso's 'Wellerverse' but that is a somewhat different fairy tale) to blog visitors here, most likely means unfamiliarity with Michael J. Weller's Space Opera and Slow Fiction bookworks.

To explain. Firstly, Michael Weller is an elderly, dull, boring London suburbanite with estaurine sarf landhan glottal stop sans caressive mic-skills or any velvety whisper-lilt for that matter. Heard south London voice shouting up parochial southeast London spiritualist church on local commercial radio station once, sandwiched between DJ promoting carpet bargains & traffic news. Ugly utterances not poetry at all. A less contextualized poetical discourse would be hard to imagine. Yet wasn't hard to imagine remembered voice could have been that of ventriloquized Weller.

Secondly, Michael is invited to help organize two evenings for 'Beck Fest', a Beckenham Library festival tacked onto first ever 2011 Bromley Literary Festival in June and July. This, the writer hastens to add, is not an invitation for any of the Weller guys to read or perform.

Thirdly, to ensure local artist and writer couldn't become more localized if he tried - Mike Weller has been featured as Penge 'artist and poet' resident for Bromley Cuts Concern's (Bromley Against the Cuts) media campaign in local newspaper.

And fourthly, to cap it all, an 87-year old woman named Freda (is that spelled correctly?) sitting outside local café called Mike over to the table she was sharing with younger friends.

"I saw your picture in the paper. Are you really a poet? Is that true? Yes? Oh, how wonderful! Do you know Walter de la Mare lived in Penge? Wonderful man. Nobody has heard of him these days. He's forgotten. Such a shame."

"Don't worry," Michael said. "He'll be back."

What?

Why on earth did Michael say that?

Because it connected with something lost, faded, obscure, oddly local but English in modern POETRY kit way, as one poetic slipstream among many - networked globally via internet.

Joyfully and mischievously playing on once-bright realities. And without appealing to nostalgia, anti-modernity, or post-modernism.

(capital)ism on the island of Ireland

Linguistically innovative DOH! publicising exhibition in Belfast

Downright Bockedy minimovie from Dublin

& growing samanthas do it better

Realising I'd left out my old Apples & Snakes performance trainer Samantha Coerbell (always spelled instructor's surname wrong - probably because the writer was never taught how to use a mic by 'England's Leading Organisation for Performance Poetry') from earlier editions &hpdib Michael J added her name to'samantaha' page and entire page design unit of chapbook collapsed. So not only need mick-sans-mic contend with 'Hardware Error 502' the old fellow has to re-design new edition.

Nah, not really - extra page or two that's all, keeping pics of polyester sheets & OD'd gurlesque bunny which deserves its own post doncha think...where is that drunk 'n' stoned bunny?
Here's the beauty, as big as I can make baby for blogspot

S Club 7 Uncut UK

/new fairy tales/psychopoetic landscapes/old superlatives/

I have... catalogued in alphabetical order, an A-Z dictionary of the most common superlatives, phrases of expression, and emotive words used in texts to transfer feelings associated with the selling of products and ideas. Often the same superlatives turn up from time to time to promote and sell the arts, including books and exhibitions.
from 'Three chapbooks' (Visual Associations, visual associations, 2001)

Claim a Free Wheeler was penultimate Writers Forum Weller publication by Bob Cobbing, June 2001. Title formed one part of 3-chapbook display triptych along with Hitcloh Ilk and Visual Associations (visual associations, 2001).

End of era when 'mainstream' still oppostional to 'avant-garde', 'underground', 'alternative', 'experimental' or 'innovative' poetries - unified organizationally through London's Writers Forum and UK university reading scenes.

Hub of differing models of performative writing all 'linguistically innovative' yet using different methods, techniques, like pop and rock 'genres', 'sub-genres' and 'styles' used by myspace x-factor generation singers and musicians.

All collapsed into multiple competing slipstreams now. Poetry wars of old (battles of cultural manouevre) replaced by conflicts of geographical time-place/juxtaposition. Poetry scenes within poetry scenes. Bubbles within bubbles. Web 2.0's prosumers & consumers jockeying for juxtaposition in blogs and self-publishing.

Argument introduced in 2010's Openned Zine #1 short monograph 'Home'Baked: literary artzines in the age of the internet'.

Pictured few years earlier as visual poetic in hardcore/copy Sean Bonney's & Frances Kruk's yt communication bulletin.















'myindividualisedspace.globalized@'
(war pigs:::, yt communication, 2006)


'Climb a Free Wheeler is intended as an exercise in poetics, not a dictionary of usage', Weller wrote in 'Three chapbooks' essay.

Word usage issue @recent Blue Bus #47 when Sean B questioned word 'beauty' during performance of lines from Tuli Kupferberg's Give me the music-makers - scored on sheet as '...When beauty barks I heel... (repeat x4).

"I'm not saying that, am I?"* posed Sean in middle of unrehearsed public reading. Although printed on yellow and pink cards text wasn't scored as 'When beauty barks I heil' (text-score version Kupferberg had not discouraged in his lifetime).

'Beauty' as beat generation hippy ideology something Sean rejected. Paul Sutton confronted me "You bullied Sean into reading that, didn't you?" laughing his bleedin' head off. Parts of this gig were filmed.* In twelve years of performance, believe only one or two short readings of present writer filmed, video'd, or saved. Documents tend to end up wiped or re-cycled with other performers.
















Category 'B' (detail performance score in revision, Climb A Free Wheeler, Writers Forum, 2001)

Speaking of light bulbs and dark times - what about 'B' category superlative, 'brilliant'? Many things described as 'brill' aren't brilliant. Some 'brilliant' slam poetry, for example, is not brilliant. I've heard JH Prynne's poetry described as 'brilliant'. Is that 'brilliant' as in brilliant or 'brilliant' as in brill!?

Did I read or dream I read Ryan Ormonde's and Becky Cremin's description materiality of language within psychic ritualistic states being oblique,forward slash like? Can't find pressfreepress source for this. Ne'er mind.

* Vimeo'd Bonney/Weller voicing 'Give me the music-makers' here

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