Saturday 4 April 2009

two more gigs in London

On Tuesday the Shearsman reading featured Lisa Samuels, fresh off the plane from New Zealand, launching a book-length poem Tomorrowland, and Canadian Erín Moure (above) reading some of her own work alongside further translations of the astonishing Galician poet Chus Pato (m-Talá). En route to this and Thursday’s readings in the capital it was possible to play the game ‘spot the banker’ – it’s that one over there with the purple dreadlocks! – due to the profession advising staff to come to work in mufti to avoid confrontations with irate G20 protestors.

Thursday’s Crossing the Line reading was a launch for The Canting Academy, a book of responses, as the cover says, to a 16th century rogues’ lexicon. Of the twenty respondents the reading featured David Annwn, Vahni Capildeo, Giles Goodland, Ken Edwards, Alan Halsey, Geraldine Monk and Gavin Selerie. A ‘canting academy’, creating its own secret languages, might serve as a jocular self-image of poetry that isn’t part of the hegemonic Official Verse Culture. Here’s the actual Leather Exchange building (next to the pub of the same name), and here too is Ken Edwards reading his selection.


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