Railroad Flat Radio
A roving, ongoing & growing catalogue of works
for the radio from the Tenement wheelhouse,
in collaboration with Prototype Publishing.
10. A Suite for Seven Rooms / 700 Horses
Tenement & Prototype Publishing
Resonance Extra, London
14:30 / 03.03.24
Hannah Regel;
Nicolette Polek;
Iain Sinclair;
David Grubbs;
Lucy Sante;
Imogen Cassels;
Jess Cotton;
Joan Brossa;
Stanley Schtinter;
Edwina Attlee;
& Wayne Koestenbaum
A suite of works by eleven readers to mark the publication of Seven Rooms, an anthology of scattered works from across the Hotel series, 2016 to 2023. 700 Horses carries a select thread of live recordings from the London launch of Seven Rooms at Presse Books / FormaHQ (Regel, Sante, Cassels, Cotton, Attlee and Koestenbaum) alongside choice cuts from the Hotel Archive (Fanon, Polek, Sinclair, Grubbs, Brossa, and Schtinter).
See here.
Hannah Regel is a writer based in London. She has been published in The Poetry Review, Fantastic Man, Granta, Hotel and Canal, amongst others. She has published two collections of poetry, When I Was Alive and Oliver Reed (both Montez Press, 2017 and 2020 respectively). Her debut novel, The Last Sane Woman, will be published by Verso Fiction in 2024.
Nicolette Polek is the author of Imaginary Museums (Soft Skull, 2020) and the forthcoming novel, Bitter Water Opera (Graywolf Press, 2024). She is a recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers' Award, and a recent graduate of Yale Divinity School.
Iain Sinclair is a British writer, documentarist, filmmaker, poet, flaneur, metropolitan prophet and urban shaman, keeper of lost cultures and futurologist.
David Grubbs is Distinguished Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the author of Good night the pleasure was ours, The Voice in the Headphones, Now that the audience is assembled, and Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording (all published by Duke University Press, 2022, 2020, 2018, and 2014 respectively) as well as the collaborative artists’ books Simultaneous Soloists with Anthony McCall (Pioneer Works Press, 2019) and, with Reto Geiser and John Sparagana, Projectile (Drag City, 2021). Grubbs has released fourteen solo albums and appeared on more than 200 releases. He was a member of the groups Gastr del Sol, Bastro, and Squirrel Bait, and has performed with Tony Conrad, Susan Howe, Pauline Oliveros, Luc Ferrari, Will Oldham, Loren Connors, the Red Krayola, and many others.
Lucy Sante’s books include Low Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), Kill All Your Darlings (Verse Chorus Press, 2007), The Other Paris (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2015), Maybe the People Would Be the Times (Verse Chorus Press, 2020), and—in 2024—the memoir I Heard Her Call My Name (Heinemann).
Imogen Cassels is the author of various pamphlets, including Chesapeake (Distance No Object, 2021), VOSS (Broken Sleep, 2020), Arcades (Sad Press, 2018), and Mother, beautiful things (Face Press, 2017). Her writing has appeared in the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, The White Review, The Cambridge Review, Still Point, minor literatures, and elsewhere.
Jess Cotton is a writer based in London. Her book on John Ashbery was recently published by Reaktion Books.
Joan Brossa (1919–1998) was born in Barcelona into a family of artisans. He began writing when he was mobilised in the Spanish Civil War and, following an introduction to surrealism by way of the friendship and influence of Joan Miró and Joan Prats, would fuse political engagement and aesthetic experiment through sonnets, odes, theatre, sculpture and screenplay within a neo-surrealist framework. Brossa founded the magazine Dau al Set in 1948 and, during the fifties and sixties, his poetry was increasingly informed by collectivist concerns. His collection El saltamartí (1963) presented a synthesis of themes both political and social, and the subsequent publication of Poesia Rasa (1970), Poemes de seny i cabell (1977), Rua de llibres (1980)—and the six volumes of Poesia escénica (published between 1973 and 1983)—saw Brossa stake his place as a central figure in contemporary Catalan literature.
Stanley Schtinter has been described by writer Iain Sinclair as ‘the last accredited activist, the last avant-garde.’ He recently presented the premiere of his “endless” video-work, The Lock-In, at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, and exhibited the work as a solo presentation at the Barbican Centre in London during July 2022 (reviewed for The Guardian by Jonathan Jones as ‘an epic film [...] spellbinding, Warholian’). From May 2021 until May 2022 he presented Important Books (or, Manifestos read by Children) at Whitechapel Gallery in London. In 2021, he published the edited collection, The Liberated Film Club (Tenement Press). Schtinter is the artistic director of purge.xxx; an “anti-” record label (“anti-” everything) wherein he curates and publishes a catalogue of sound-works, soundtracks, and collaborations.
Edwina Attlee is the author of two pamphlets, Roasting Baby (if a leaf falls press, 2016) and the cream (Clinic, 2016). She teaches history to students of architecture in London.
Wayne Koestenbaum has published over twenty books of poetry, criticism, and fiction, including Ultramarine (Nightboat Books, 2022), The Cheerful Scapegoat (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents, 2021), Figure It Out (Counterpoint, 2020), Camp Marmalade (Nightboat Books, 2018), My 1980s & Other Essays (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), The Anatomy of Harpo Marx(University of California Press, 2012), Humiliation (Picador, 2011), Hotel Theory (Soft Skull, 2007), Circus (Soft Skill, 2004), Andy Warhol (Penguin, 2001), Jackie Under My Skin (Plume, 1995), and The Queen’s Throat (Da Capo Press, 1993), nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. He has given musical performances of his improvisatory Sprechstimme soliloquies at the Hammer Museum, The Kitchen, REDCAT, Centre Pompidou, Walker Art Center, The Artist’s Institute, the Renaissance Society, and The Poetry Project. His feature-length film, The Collective, premiered at UnionDocs (New York) in 2021. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and a Whiting Award. Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired his literary archive. He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center.
10. Derek Jarman / Through The Billboard
Promised Land Without Ever Stopping
Prototype Publishing & House Sparrow Press
First Ears—
19.02.24 12:00 Resonance Extra
19.02.24 20:00 Resonance 104.4FM
Repeats—
20.02.24 10:00 Resonance 104.4FM
21.02.24 10:00 Resonance Extra
23.02.24 18:00 Resonance Extra
25.02.24 22:00 Resonance Extra
An unabridged, archival reading of Derek Jarman’s sole work of fiction, Through the Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping (House Sparrow Press / Prototype Publishing, 2023)—as read by Jarman himself—to mark the 30th anniversary of his passing.
Jarman’s Through The Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping broadcasts on Resonance Extra, 19.02.24, with a new introduction from Gareth Evans.
See here.
In this blown-away piece of Jarman magic, a fantasy / fable about how to see differently and a cornucopic visual version of the psyche, Derek Jarman casually reconstructs notions of empire, the road trip, and the mid-twentieth century journey of the soul. Trippy, light, fantastic.
Ali Smith
Derek Jarman (1942-1994) is one of the most influential figures in 20th century British culture. Best known as an iconoclastic filmmaker and polemical gay activist who channeled unparalleled energy into painting, writing, gardening and all manner of cultural activity, he was one of the primary catalysts for a generation of artists and filmmakers whose work is only now being fully recognised for its dark, subversive imagination and fluidity across media. Amongst his films, Jarman is particularly recognised for Jubilee (1977), arguably the first punk movie, Caravaggio (1986), and Blue (1993), a moving memoir about his degeneration from AIDS.
9. Stanley Schtinter’s Last Movies
Tenement Press
Montez Press Radio, New York
1 January 27th 2024 / 18:00 (EST)
Jean Luc Godard (d. 2022)
John Dillinger (d. 1934)
Heaven’s Gate (d. 1997)
(Ongoing.)
All films are haunted, both by the immortal light of the sooner-or-later dead that they curate, and by the filaments of meaning they extrude into unscripted human lives. Last Movies is an unexpectedly revealing catalogue of final interchanges between imminent ghosts and counterpart electric spectres on the screen’s far side. Profound and riveting, Schtinter’s graveyard perspective offers up a rich and startlingly novel view of cinema, angled through cemetery gates before the closing credits. A remarkable accomplishment.
Alan Moore
An unabridged serialisation of Schtinter’s ‘book of endings,’ Last Movies (Tenement Press, 2023), as read by the author broadcasts with Montez Press Radio throughout the Spring, 2024.
A publication, durational artwork, and moving-image experience—the ‘endgame of endgames’ (Iain Sinclair, Sight and Sound)—Schtinter’s Last Movies is an alternative account of the first century of cinema according to the films watched by a constellation of its most notable stars shortly before (or at the time of) their deaths.
See here.
Listen (to an excerpt) on Soundcloud
Stanley Schtinter has been described by writer Iain Sinclair as ‘the last accredited activist, the last avant-garde.’ He recently presented the premiere of his “endless” video-work, The Lock-In, at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, and exhibited the work as a solo presentation at the Barbican Centre in London during July 2022 (reviewed for The Guardian by Jonathan Jones as ‘an epic film [...] spellbinding, Warholian’). From May 2021 until May 2022 he presented Important Books (or, Manifestos read by Children) at Whitechapel Gallery in London. In 2021, he published the edited collection, The Liberated Film Club (Tenement Press). Schtinter is the artistic director of purge.xxx; an “anti-” record label (“anti-” everything) wherein he curates and publishes a catalogue of sound-works, soundtracks, and collaborations.
8. A Pink Plastic Glove Arrives
Tenement Press
Montez Press Radio, New York
18:00 (EST) / 27.09.23
A bilingual assembly of poems from Peter Bush’s translation of Dolors Miquel’s El guant de plàstic rosa / The Pink Plastic Glove, featuring contribution from Miquel, Bush, and Nadia de Vries.
See here.
Dolors Miquel (Lleida, 18 July 1960) is a leading Catalan poet. From an early age, her distinct and critical voice—as evidenced in her writing for the page and the stage—upset many in her provincial birthplace. Expelled from a school run by nuns, Miquel studied in Barcelona, where she founded the literary magazine La Higiènica and, in the mid-90s, began to publish poems in a variety of styles. In collaboration with other Catalan poets, Miquel would organise week-long tours of small towns (ever keen to perform her works) and her writings—sharp, clear-eyed and ever-political—distill her roving criticality in a poetry that desecrates everything: ‘the Church, politics, and, naturally, the male figure’ (María Eloy García). In Gitana Roc (Llibres Del Segle, 2000), Miquel would express the core of her work as follows: ‘I talk about the damage caused by social structures, such as the family or the police. Love is the most frightening contract of fear, also the most powerful safeguard of society, and sex is the carrot.’ This aura of critique defines Miquel’s extensive bibliography (with over twenty collections under her name to date), and she has received numerous awards, such as the Rosa Leveroni (1989), Ciutat de Barcelona (2005), Gabriel Ferrater (2006), and Ausiàs March de Gandia (2016). She has published numerous collections, among them La dona que mirava la tele / The woman who watched TV (Edicions 62, 2010) and La flor invisible / The invisible flower (Bromera, 2011). Her latest book, Sutura / Suture (Pagès, 2021) is her final work as a poet; Miquel lives and works in Torredembarra, and continues to publish theatrical texts and other writings.
Peter Bush is a translator. His first literary translation was Juan Goytisolo’s Forbidden Territory (North Point Press, 1989) and Bush has to date translated eleven other titles in Goytisolo’s bibliography, including The Marx Family Saga and Exiled from Almost Everywhere. He has translated many Catalan writers including Josep Pla, Mercè Rodoreda, Joan Sales, Najat El Hachmi and Teresa Solana. His most recent effort is A Film (3000 meters) by Víctor Català, the classic 1919 feminist novel set in Barcelona’s criminal underworld. Bush lives and works in Bristol.
Nadia de Vries is a Dutch writer and culture theorist. She is the author of the critical thesis Kleinzeer (2019) and of the novel De Bakvis (2022), both published by Pluim. In 2020, she obtained a PhD at the Amsterdam University for her thesis about the image online of the dead human body. Her poetry collections Dark Hour and I Failed to Swoon were published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe (2018 and 2022 respectively) and Know Thy Audience was published by Moist in 2023.
7. Helen Palmer, Pleasure Beach (Cochlearical)
Prototype Publishing
Resonance Extra, London
A book as mind-bending as Blackpool itself.
Jeremy Deller
Palmer’s Pleasure Beach is a queer love story from the North West’s saucy seaside paradise, Blackpool, on one day: 16 June 1999. Written in multiple voices and styles, Pleasure Beach follows the interconnecting journeys and thoughts of three young women over the course of 24 hours and over 18 chapters which are structured and themed in the same way as James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Hedonist and wannabe playwright Olga Adessi, 19, is struggling along the prom to get to her morning shift at the chippy with a monstrous hangover, trying to remember exactly what happened with Rachel Watkins, 19, a strange and fragile girl she had an encounter with the night before. Former gymnast and teenage mum Treesa Reynolds, 19, is off to the Sandcastle Waterpark with her mum Lou and daughter Lulu, looking forward to a sausage and egg McMuffin on the way. Pleasure Beach breathes and exhales the unique sea air, fish and chips, donuts and candyfloss scents of Blackpool, bringing to life everything the town is famous for, portraying the gritty magic and sheer unadulterated fun of the city and its people across a spectrum of sensory experiences and emotions.
Pleasure Beach (Cochlearical) is an unabridged, four-part iteration of the Palmer’s novel, run as a special broadcast series to conincide with the book’s Prototype publication. (Cochlearical) was recorded on location in Resonance’s Bermondsey ‘Chapel’ studio, London—Spring 2023—and aired in four instalments on Resonance Extra (culminating on ‘Bloomsday’).
1 June 13th 2023 / 21:00 (BST)
Chapters I through III
2 June 14th 2023 / 21:00 (BST)
Chapter IV through VIII
3 June 15th 2023 / 21:00 (BST)
Chapter IX through XI
4 June 16th 2023, ‘Bloomsday’ / 21:00 (BST)
Chapter XII through to the End.
See here.
Download via Spiracle.
Helen Palmer is a writer from Blackpool. She is the author of Deleuze and Futurism: A Manifesto for Nonsense (London: Bloomsbury, 2014) and Queer Defamiliarisation: Writing, Mattering, Making Strange (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). She is a 2023 Interdisciplinary Resident at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Virginia, USA. She currently lives in Vienna. Pleasure Beach (Prototype, 2023) is her debut novel.
6. Kyra Simone’s Temporary Palaces
Tenement Press
Resonance Extra, London
An unabridged iteration of the Simone’s debut collection, Palace of Rubble, recorded on location in Resonance’s Bermondsey ‘Chapel’ studio, London, and aired in three instalments on Resonance Extra; ‘Tarzan the Apeman,’ ‘The Wild One,’ and ‘The Stranger.’ Temporary Palaces sinks Simone’s readings in a seabed of tidal drones, found sounds, and accompanying sonics (with musics lent by Benedict Drew and Jem Finer, ℅ Thanet Tape Centre, amongst others).
1 April 22nd 2023 / 13:00 (BST)
Tarzan the Apeman
In which the author reads ...
‘Palace of Rubble’
‘When Language is Gone from Bodies’
‘The Boys of Summer’
‘The View from the Tower’
‘World Business’
‘County Fair’
‘Still Life with Parrot’
‘Museum’
‘Today, Clouds’
‘Foreign Affairs’
‘The Empty Lot’
‘Dear Pauline’
‘Cadets No More’
‘The Wedding Exit’
‘The Nomad’
‘Blue Moon’
‘The Diver’s Song’
‘Pawns Talk of Scars’
‘Den of Millionaires’
2 May 27th 2023 / 13:00 (BST)
The Wild One
In which the author reads ...
‘The Great Escape’
‘The Revolving Door’
‘The Tunnel’
‘May’s End’
‘A Certain Music’
‘The Era is Over’
‘Obituary for Mrs. H’
‘Empty Chairs’
‘Somewhere Else’
‘The Prairie is on Fire’
‘The Lonely Pioneer’
‘The Last Days of Winter’
‘Rooms That Aren’t There’
‘The American Falls from Below’
‘You Promised me a Kingdom’
3 July 1st 2023 / 13:00 (BST)
The Stranger
In which the author reads ...
‘Au Black’
‘Away on Business’
‘The Clouds that Pass’
‘The Avalanche’
‘Swept Up in the Wave’
‘The Bag Lady & La Fleurs du Mal’
‘The Winged’
‘The Oneironaut & La Novillera’
‘The Thing in the Road’
‘The Land is Dark’
‘The Last Man to Qualify’
‘Thank You, Bye’
‘A Walk By the River’
‘The People in the Hotel’
‘The Palace at Midnight’
See here.
Kyra Simone is a Tunisian-American writer from Los Angeles, now based in Brooklyn. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in a variety of literary journals, including Conjunctions, The Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, Entropy, The Anthology of Best American Experimental Writing, and elsewhere. Simone is a member of the publishing collective Ugly Duckling Presse, and part of a two-woman team running the editorial office of Zone Books.
MMXXIII
5. SJ Fowler’s MUEUM
Tenement Press
Resonance Extra, London
An unabridged iteration of the poet’s debut novella, recorded on location in Resonance’s Bermondsey ‘Chapel’ studio, London, and aired in four instalments on Resonance Extra.
1 October 1st 2022
Chapters I through IV
2 November 5th 2022
Chapters V through VII
3 December 3rd 2022
Chapters VIII through XI
4 January 7th 2023
Chapters XII through to the (bitter) End.
Fowler’s MUEUM was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses, 2022/2023.
See here.
SJ Fowler is a writer and poet living in London. His collections include Fights (Veer Books, 2011), The Rottweiler’s Guide to the Dog Owner (Eyewear Books, 2014), {Enthusiasm} (Test Centre, 2015), The Guide to Being Bear Aware (Shearsman Books, 2017), I will show you the life of the mind (on prescription drugs) (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2020) and The Great Apes (Broken Sleep Books, 2022). His work has become known for its exploration of the potential of poetry, alongside collaboration, curation, asemic writing, sound poetry, concrete poetry, and performance. He has been commissioned by institutions such as the Tate Modern, The Photographer’s Gallery, Wellcome Collection and Southbank Centre, and he has presented his work at over fifty international festivals, including Hay Xalapa, Mexico; Dhaka Lit Fest; Hay Arequipa, Peru; and the Niniti Festival, Iraq. Fowler was nominated for the White Review Short Story Prize, 2014, and his short stories have appeared in anthologies, such as Isabel Waidner’s edited collection, Liberating the Canon (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2018).
Incidentally, from December 2007 to November 2014, Fowler was an employee of the British Museum.
4. Price Poetry or The Left Ventricle in Times of Trouble
Tenement Press
Resonance 104.4FM, London
12.04.22 / 20:00 (GMT)
Ona Balló Pedragosa;
Joan Brossa;
Jon Auman;
Lucy Mercer;
Joan Oliver / Pere Quart;
Stephen Watts;
Diamanda La Berge Dramm;
Dominic J. Jaeckle;
Salvador Espriu;
Agustí Bartra;
Aidan Moffat;
Francesc Vallverdú;
Harmony Holiday;
Gabriel Ferrater;
Stanley Schtinter;
& Cameron Griffiths
In partnership with Films 59 and the Institut Ramon Llull—commissioned for the “spotlight” on Catalan literatures at the 2022 London Bookfair—Price Poetry is a work-for-the-radio to commemorate (and refract) the first Popular Festival of Catalan Poetry at the Gran Price Theatre, Barcelona, 1970.
Ona Balló Pedragosa is a programmer and researcher in narrative interbreeding between music and image. Graduating from Popmeu Fabra University (Barcelona) and Sorbonne (Paris), her dissertation—carried out in collaboration with Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art (INHA)—deals with the musical thinking of composer Carles Santos on Pere Portabella’s film work. She also works professionally as a sound recordist for film, and writes about art and cinema for different media.
Joan Brossa (1919–1998) was born in Barcelona into a family of artisans. He began writing when he was mobilised in the Spanish Civil War and, following an introduction to surrealism by way of the friendship and influence of Joan Miró and Joan Prats, would fuse political engagement and aesthetic experiment through sonnets, odes, theatre, sculpture and screenplay within a neo-surrealist framework. Brossa founded the magazine Dau al Set in 1948 and, during the fifties and sixties, his poetry was increasingly informed by collectivist concerns. His collection El saltamartí (1963) presented a synthesis of themes both political and social, and the subsequent publication of Poesia Rasa (1970), Poemes de seny i cabell (1977), Rua de llibres (1980)—and the six volumes of Poesia escénica (published between 1973 and 1983)—saw Brossa stake his place as a central figure in contemporary Catalan literature. A first ever English language translation of Brossa’s El saltamartí was published by Tenement Press in 2021 (translated from the Catalan by Cameron Griffiths).
Jon Auman is a writer renting in Brooklyn.
Lucy Mercer’s first collection is Emblem (Prototype, 2022). Mercer was awarded the inaugural White Review Poet's Prize, and teaches creative writing at Goldsmiths.
Joan Oliver / Pere Quart (1899-1986) was also known by the name of Pere Quart, a pseudonym for his poetic works. He was a poet, playwright, narrator, translator and journalist, Oliver is regarded as one of the five major twentieth-century Catalan poets, and the most original of all. His first collection of poems, Les decapitacions / The Decapitations (1934) is a harbinger of the nature of his subsequent poetry—agile, anecdotal and drawn to realism—reflecting the traumatic experiences of the Spanish civil war and exile, revealing a desolate and sceptical vision of the world. Born into a bourgeois family of industrialists, and a co-founder with Francesc Trabal and Armand Obiols of the Grup de Sabadell (the Sabadell Group), his style as a writer was marked by his irony against conventionalism. As a translator, he received, in the 1950s, the Prize of the President of the Republic of France for his translation of Molière’s The Misanthrope. In 1970, he was received the Award of Honour in Catalan letters, while in the 1980s he received the City of Barcelona prize, the Josep Maria de Sagarra prize for translation, and the Generalitat (Autonomous Government) of Catalonia prize for poetry. True to his non-conformist and critical stands, he rejected the Sant Jordi Cross of the Generalitat.
Stephen Watts was born in London in 1952 (of partly Swiss-Italian heritage), where he still lives and works in Whitechapel. He has published seven books of poetry—The Lava’s Curl (Grimaldi Press, 1990); Gramsci & Caruso (Periplum, 2004, with Czech translation by Petr Mikeš, reissued by Mille Gru, 2014, with Italian translation by Cristina Viti); The Blue Bag (Aark Arts, 2004); Mountain Language / Lingua di montagna (2008) and Journey Across Breath / Tragitto nel respiro (2011, both published by Hearing Eye, with Italian translations by Cristina Viti); Ancient Sunlight (Enitharmon, 2014, reprinted ‘20), and Republic of Dogs / Republic of Birds (Test Centre, 2016; with a new edition by Prototype, 2020). Watts has also edited several anthologies, including Houses & Fish, a book of drawings with writing by 4 & 5 year olds (Parrot Press, 1991); Voices of Conscience (an international anthology of censored poets, Iron Press, 1995); Mother Tongues (a special issue of Modern Poetry in Translation, 2001), and Music While Drowning (an anthology of German Expressionist poems that accompanied an exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, Tate Publishing, 2003). His numerous translations and co-translations include books of modern Kurdish, Georgian and British Bangladeshi Poetry as well as volumes by A.N. Stencl, Meta Kušar, Amarjit Chandan, Adnan al-Sayegh, Golan Haji and Ziba Karbassi (from Yiddish, Slovenian, Punjabi, Arabic, Persian). He has also curated bilingual readings at several exhibitions (including Emil Nolde, Joan Miró, Arshile Gorky, Renato Guttuso and Francisco Toledo). Watts has worked in schools and hospitals as a writer on issues of well-being and creativity. The Republics, a film directed by Huw Wahl and based on Watts’ book Republic of Dogs / Republic of Birds premiered in 2020. Since 1980, Watts has compiled an ongoing Bibliography of Modern Poetry in English Translation, with an artist’s edition (℅ Hannes Schüpbach) deposited at the National Poetry Library, London.
Diamanda La Berge Dramm grew up in Amsterdam, the Netherlands playing the violin since the age of four. Growing up among the leading figures of the Dutch classical, avant-garde and improvisation scene, her own concerts reflect all of these elements. In 2018 she was the first ever string soloist to win the Dutch Classical Talent Tour & Award. Diamanda studied at New England Conservatory and at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. Recent performances include solo concerts with the Metropole Orchestra, and an Indonesia tour giving workshops and concerts. In 2020, Dramm was in residence at Musikfest Bremen as winner of the Deutschlandfunk Förderungspeis. Dramm is a founding member of Splendor, a collective of 50 artists in Amsterdam who co-run a working space and concert hall.
Dominic J. Jaeckle is a writer, publisher, editor and broadcaster. Jaeckle curated and collated the irregular magazine Hotel and its adjacent projects, and runs the publishing project, Tenement Press. Jaeckle’s first collection, 36 Exposures (A Bastardised Roll of Film), was published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe in 2021; Magnolia or Redbud: Flowers for Laura Lee is forthcoming through Jaeckle’s own imprint for experiments and collaborations, John Cassavetes.
Salvador Espriu (1913-1985) is one of Catalonia's most significant post-war writers and an outstanding poet. Although he first became known as a narrator, his relatively later incursion into poetry was no obstacle to his achieving swift recognition as a poet, not only within the sphere of Catalan letters but also internationally. He also played an important part in the revitalisation of Catalan theatre. He published novels, El Doctor Rip (1931) and Laia (1932); collections of stories, Aspectes (1934), Ariadna al laberint grotesc / Ariadna in the Grotesque Labyrinth (1935), Miratge a Citerea / Mirage in Citerea (1935), Litizia i altres proses / Litizia and Other Prose (1937); and works which led to his being considered the most original Catalan narrator of the post-Noucentisme (the turn-of-the-century cultural and political movement in Catalonia). Amongst his published collections of poetry are Cementiri de Sinera / Sinera Cemetery (1946); Les hores / The Hours (1952); El caminant i el mur / The Wanderer and the Wall (1954); Final del laberint / The End of the Labyrinth (1955); Les cançons d'Ariadna / The Songs of Ariadna (1949); La pell de brau / The Hide of the Bull (1960); Llibre de Sinera / The Book of Sinera (1963; and Setmana Santa / Holy Week (1971). He revised the entirety of his work with the aim of creating a unified corpus. Translated into many languages, Espriu’s name frequently appears amongst those proposed as Nobel laureates. He received the Award of Honour in Catalan Letters in 1972, the City of Barcelona Gold Medal and that of the Generalitat (Autonomous Government of Catalonia) in 1980. He was given honorary doctorates by the universities of Barcelona and Toulouse (Llenguadoc). In 1982, he was awarded but declined to accept the Spanish distinction, the Cross of Alphonse the Wise, because of his civic stand with respect to Catalonia.
Agustí Bartra (1908-1982) was a poet, novelist, translator and playwright, one of several writers who had to go into exile because of the Spanish Civil War. In 1940, with the writer Anna Murià, he settled in Mexico where he worked as a translator. During this period he received grants that enabled him to make several trips to the United States, which he combined with intense literary activity, producing for example Antologia de la lírica nord-americana / Anthology of American Poetry (1951). He returned to Catalonia in 1970 and went to live in Terrassa. Outstanding among his works are the novel Crist de 200.000 braços / Christ of 200,000 Arms (1968) in which he describes the collective experience of the concentration camps, and his book of poems entitled Ecce homo (1968), which reflects his personal cosmology through the four elements: earth, fire, air and water. Bartra's poetry has traditionally been compared with that of Walt Whitman, but he also followed in the footsteps of German Romantic poets such as Novalis, Hölderlin and Rilke. The Generalitat (Government) of Catalonia rendered homage to Bartra and his work by awarding him the Creu de Sant Jordi (Saint George Cross).
Aidan Moffat from Falkirk, Scotland, has been writing and recording music since 1996, with ten years at the front of Arab Strap, a few instrumental records as L. Pierre, some solo albums, and many collaborations. His 2011 album with Bill Wells, Everything’s Getting Older, won the inaugural Scottish Album Of The Year Award; his children’s book, The Lavender Blue Dress, was published in 2014 and he made a film about folk music with award-winning director Paul Fegan, Where You’re Meant To Be. Moffat always wanted to live in Glasgow, has done since 1999, and continues to write, record and play both alone, in collaboration, and with Arab Strap.
Francesc Vallverdú (1935-2014) was a poet, sociolinguist, literary critique and translator. He worked as an editor and editorial consultant. He is considered one of the central poets of the Catalan social realism movement in poetry, with titles such as Com llances / With Spears (1961), awarded the Joan Salvat-Papasseit, Cada paraula un vidre / Each Word a Glass (1968), awarded the Carles Riba, Somni, insomni / Insomnia (1971), Retorn a Bílbilis / Return to Bílbilis (1974), awarded the Ausiàs March from Gandia, Leviatan / Leviathan (1984), Encalçar el vent / Chow Down on the Wind (1995), amongst others. He also introduced sociolinguistics into the Catalan speaking territories, with works such as L'escriptor català i el problema de la llengu / The Catalan Writer & the Language Problem (1968), Dues llengües: dues funcions? / Two Languages: Two Functions? (1970), El fet lingüístic com a fet social / The Linguistic Fact as a Social Fact (1973), awarded the Octubre-Joan Fuster, and L’ús del català: un futur controvertit / Catalan Uses: A Controversial Future (1990), among others. In 2009 he published his complete poetic works, Temps sense treva / Time Without a Break (2009). He worked as linguistic consultant at the Corporació Catalana de Ràdio i Televisió [Catalan national radio & TV] (1985-2006) and at the Gran Larousse català (1987-1993). He was manager of the Enciclopèdia de la llengua catalana (1999-2002)—one of the founders of the Grup Català de Sociolingüística [Catalan group for sociolinguistics]—and chief editor of its yearbook, Treballs de Sociolingüística catalana (1977-2002).
Harmony Holiday—born in Waterloo, Iowa—is a poet and choreographer. The daughter of Northern Soul singer-songwriter Jimmy Holiday, her father died when she was five, and she and her mother moved to Los Angeles. Holiday earned a BA in rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley and an MFA at Columbia University. She is the author of Negro League Baseball (2011), winner of the Fence Books Motherwell Prize; a “dos-a-dos” book featuring poetry, letters, and essays, Go Find Your Father / A Famous Blues (Ricochet Editions, 2013); Hollywood Forever (Fence Books, 2017), which she is turning into an afroballet; and Maafa (Fence Books, 2022). Holiday is currently working on a biography of Abbey Lincoln.
Gabriel Ferrater (1922-1972) was a writer and linguist. He produced some of the most significant poetic works in Catalan of the post-war period, with only three collections: Da nuces pueris / Nuts for the Children (1960), Menja’t una cama / Eat a Leg (1962), and Teoria dels cossos / Theory of Bodies (1966); these editions were then published as one volume, Les dones i els dies / Women and Days in 1968. Open eroticism and the passage of time are among Ferrater’s constant themes. His poems ‘In memoriam’ and ‘Poema inacabat’ / ‘Unfinished Poem,’ are amongst the most valuable testimonies concerning the Civil War and its consequences. A lecturer in linguistics and literary criticism at the University of Barcelona, he began to write a series of articles on linguistic doctrine in the review Serra d’Or (1969-72) under the title ‘De Causis linguae,’ outstanding amongst which is the draft of a metric theory based on the phonological component of the generative-transformational grammar proposed by Chomsky and Halle. He translated Kafka’s The Trial into Catalan and Bloomfield's Language and Chomsky's Cartesian Linguistics.
Stanley Schtinter has been described as an ‘artist' by the Daily Mail and as an ‘exorcist' by the Daily Star.
Cameron Griffiths studied History and English Literature at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. His poetry has appeared in journals in New Zealand, Australia and the United States. He lives with his family in Spain. Griffiths first translated collection—Joan Brossa’s El saltamartí / The Tumbler—was published by Tenement Press, 2021.
3. Dominic J. Jaeckle & Polly Barton
(with Mason Lindahl & Matthew Shaw),
A Table of Contents / 36 Exposures
Tenement Press & John Cassavetes
Resonance Extra, London
05.10.21 / 14:00 (GMT)
I salt my breakfast eggs.
All day long I feel created.
Anne Dillard, Holy the Firm (1977)
A work by Dominic J. Jaeckle, Polly Barton, Mason Lindahl & Matthew Shaw. Grounded in a book that collects a roll-of-film’s worth of co-dependent photographs and prose-poems by artist Hoagy Houghton and writer Dominic Jaeckle, 36 Exposures (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2021; John Cassavetes, 2024), A Table of Contents is a quilt of first- and second-hand reticulated reflections and ratiocinations; a ‘disembodied voice-over’ for a set of absent images, memories and other assorted totem poles. Featuring musics from Matthew Shaw and Mason Lindahl, with readings from Polly Barton.
‘A Table of Contents’ is formed of materials owing to an ongoing project called Veronica Lake, Walden Pond, & River Phoenix.
Dominic J. Jaeckle is a writer, editor and publisher. Jaeckle curated and collated the irregular magazine project, Hotel and its adjacent activities (2016-2023), and leads a small press project called Tenement (2021 and on).
Polly Barton is a Japanese translator and writer, living in Bristol. Her book Fifty Sounds is published by Fitzcarraldo Editions. Translations include Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda (Tilted Axis Press, 2020) and There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura (Bloomsbury International, 2020).
Matthew Shaw is a composer, author and artist; Shaw is currently working with Shirley Collins & Brian Catling on Crowlink; a sound installation and recording project featuring Collins’ recitation of English folk songs collected over seventy years, poetry from Catling and Shaw, and fragments of letters, diaries and prose from Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and the Bloomsbury Group. Shaw’s Atmosphere of Mona, a book of poetry and photography, was published by Annwyn House in 2020.
Mason Lindahl is a guitarist and composer based in New York City. His finger-picking style is largely influenced by minimalism and classical music. He grew up listening to folk and country music in Northern California, where he was first taught to play the guitar by his father. Lindahl’s record Kissing Rosy in the Rain was released by Tompkins Square, 2021.
2. Dominic J. Jaeckle, Diamanda La Berge Dramm,
& Matthew Shaw, Shipping Forecast / 36 Exposures
Tenement Press & John Cassavetes
Resonance Extra, London
22.02.21 / 18:00 (GMT)
A utility amongst the swallows is their music;
they use it to avoid collision.
John Cage, 36 Mesostics (1978)
Anchored in a book that collects a roll-of-film’s worth of co-dependent photographs and prose-poems by Hoagy Houghton and Dominic J. Jaeckle, 36 Exposures (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2021; John Cassavetes, 2024), Shipping Forecast is a quilt of first- and second-hand reticulated reflections and ratiocinations—a ‘disembodied voice-over’ for a set of absent images, memories and other assorted totem poles. Matthew Shaw plays the ocean, Diamanda La Berge Dramm, the anchor.
Shipping Forecast is formed of materials owing to an ongoing project called Veronica Lake, Walden Pond, & River Phoenix.
Dominic J. Jaeckle is a writer, editor and publisher. Jaeckle curated and collated the irregular magazine project, Hotel and its adjacent activities (2016-2023), and leads a small press project called Tenement (2021 and on).
Diamanda La Berge Dramm grew up in Amsterdam, the Netherlands playing the violin since the age of four. Growing up among the leading figures of the Dutch classical, avant-garde and improvisation scene, her own concerts reflect all of these elements. In 2018 she was the first ever string soloist to win the Dutch Classical Talent Tour & Award. Dramm studied at New England Conservatory and at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. Recent performances include solo concerts with the Metropole Orchestra, and an Indonesia tour giving workshops and concerts. In 2020, Dramm was in residence at Musikfest Bremen as winner of the Deutschlandfunk Förderungspeis. Dramm is a founding member of Splendor, a collective of 50 artists in Amsterdam who co-run a working space and concert hall.
Matthew Shaw is a composer, author and artist; Shaw is currently working with Shirley Collins & Brian Catling on Crowlink; a sound installation and recording project featuring Collins’ recitation of English folk songs collected over seventy years, poetry from Catling and Shaw, and fragments of letters, diaries and prose from Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and the Bloomsbury Group. Shaw’s Atmosphere of Mona, a book of poetry and photography, was published by Annwyn House in 2020.
1. Dominic J. Jaeckle & Nadia de Vries,
Verse & Chorus / A Patchwork Quilt
Tenement Press & John Cassavetes
Montez Press Radio, New York
29.01.21 / 12:00 (EST)
Rewire Festival, The Hague
06.05.21
Cíntia Gil;
Diamanda La Berge Dramm;
Mark Lanegan;
Stanley Schtinter;
Becket Flannery;
Vilde Valerie Bjerke Torset;
Matthew Shaw;
& Duke Garwood.
An exquisite corpse of an “I” played out in a multiplicity of voices, Verse & Chorus is an experimental act of collaborative reworking that quilts and collages cuts from two manuscripts into an imagined third object and—in order of appearance—features readings from Nadia de Vries, Cíntia Gil, Diamanda La Berge Dramm, Mark Lanegan, Stanley Schtinter, Becket Flannery, and Vilde Valerie Bjerke Torset, with an accompaniment of borrowed songs and original music from Matthew Shaw, Mark Lanegan, and Duke Garwood.
Verse & Chorus is formed of materials owing to an ongoing project called Veronica Lake, Walden Pond, & River Phoenix.
The poems included in Verse & Chorus are excerpted from two publications; Jaeckle’s 36 Exposures and de Vries’ I Failed to Swoon (both published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2021).
Verse & Chorus premiered with Montez Press Radio, 29.01.21, and was broadcast as an element of the online programme for the 2021 edition of Rewire Festival (The Hague, Netherlands), 06.05.21.
Dominic J. Jaeckle is a writer, editor and publisher. Jaeckle curated and collated the irregular magazine project, Hotel and its adjacent activities (2016-2023), and leads a small press project called Tenement (2021 and on).
Nadia de Vries is a Dutch writer and culture theorist. She is the author of the critical thesis Kleinzeer (2019) and of the novel De Bakvis (2022), both published by Pluim. In 2020, she obtained a PhD at the Amsterdam University for her thesis about the image online of the dead human body. Her poetry collections Dark Hour and I Failed to Swoon were published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe (2018 and 2022 respectively) and Know Thy Audience was published by Moist in 2023.
Cíntia Gil studied at the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema (Lisbon Theatre and Film School) and holds a degree in Philosophy from the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto (Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Porto), where she has also taught seminars on aesthetics. From 2012 to 2019, Gil served as co-director and then director of Doclisboa, Portugal’s most important and steadily expanding documentary film festival, where she launched the Ibero-American lab Arché. From 2019 to 2021 she has directed Sheffield DocFest.
Diamanda La Berge Dramm grew up in Amsterdam, the Netherlands playing the violin since the age of four. Growing up among the leading figures of the Dutch classical, avant-garde and improvisation scene, her own concerts reflect all of these elements. In 2018 she was the first ever string soloist to win the Dutch Classical Talent Tour & Award. Diamanda studied at New England Conservatory and at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. Recent performances include solo concerts with the Metropole Orchestra, and an Indonesia tour giving workshops and concerts. In 2020, Dramm was in residence at Musikfest Bremen as winner of the Deutschlandfunk Förderungspeis. Dramm is a founding member of Splendor, a collective of 50 artists in Amsterdam who co-run a working space and concert hall.
Mark Lanegan (1964-2022) is a musican and author of I Am The Wolf: Lyrics and Writings (Hachette Books, 2017), Sing Backwards and Weep: A Memoir (White Rabbit, 2020), Leaving California (Heartworm Press, 2021), and Devil in a Coma (White Rabbit, 2021).
Stanley Schtinter has been described as an ‘artist' by the Daily Mail and as an ‘exorcist' by the Daily Star.
Becket Flannery / Becket MWN is an Amsterdam-based writer and artist, originally from the United States. He received his BA in Political Science from Swarthmore College in 2007, and his MFA from the University of Southern California in 2014, and was a resident artist at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam from 2015 to 2017. He publishes his writing under the name Becket Flannery, and his upcoming book The Chance Event, wherein… on The Chance Event, a performative theory conference organized by Chris Kraus and Semiotext(e) in a casino in the Nevada desert, is forthcoming. Forthcoming texts include an essay on William Pope.L for Metropolis M and an essay co-authored with Ruth Clemens on the neo-fascist online imaginary included in Deleuze & Fascism, edited by Rosi Braidotti and Rick Dolphijn, from Edinburgh University Press. He currently teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, where he is the mentor of the graduation year in the Fine Arts Department. His work often takes the form of text-based audio, and comments on and is structured by its architectural context. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include The Tail (Brussels, BE), Kevin Space (Vienna, AT), Kunstverein Graz (Graz, AT). Recent group exhibitions include Kunsthalle Fribourg (Fribourg, CH), Bel Ami (Los Angeles, US), Motto Books (Berlin, DE), SculptureCenter (New York, US), TG Gallery (Nottingham, UK), and Vleeshal (Middelburg, NL).
Vilde Valerie Bjerke Torset is a norwegian artist and poet based in London. Her publications include the poetry books Apollinaire and Other Horses (If a Leaf Falls Press, 2022), WHAT IT MEANS WHEN YOU DREAMS : A to Z (AFV press, 2021), and the artist book PAREIDOLIA—Dotremont’s Daughter (Timglaset Ltd, 2020). She has been commissioned by The British Museum and The Royal Norwegian Embassy, and been a guest lecturer at Kristiania University College, and The Poetry School, among others. Her performances, including both solo works and collaborations, have taken place at a range of national (UK) and international venues, including The British Museum, The National Centre for Writing, The Poetry Society, Jorvik Viking Centre, and London Rich Mix. Her books are in the collections of the Norwegian National Library, Bergen Public Library and University of Victoria Libraries. She is a member of Norske Billedkunstnere, Norsk Tegnerforbund, and founder and curator of SCRYPTH.
Matthew Shaw is a composer, author and artist; Shaw is currently working with Shirley Collins & Brian Catling on Crowlink; a sound installation and recording project featuring Collins’ recitation of English folk songs collected over seventy years, poetry from Catling and Shaw, and fragments of letters, diaries and prose from Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and the Bloomsbury Group. Shaw’s Atmosphere of Mona, a book of poetry and photography, was published by Annwyn House in 2020.
Duke Garwood is a London-based multi-instrumentalist and recording artist whose expertise on a wide range of instruments has graced numerous albums by an eclectic range of musicians. He is best known for his collaborations with songwriter Mark Lanegan and his solo work.
A roving, ongoing & growing catalogue of works
for the radio from the Tenement wheelhouse,
in collaboration with Prototype Publishing.
10. A Suite for Seven Rooms / 700 Horses
Tenement & Prototype Publishing
Resonance Extra, London
14:30 / 03.03.24
Hannah Regel;
Nicolette Polek;
Iain Sinclair;
David Grubbs;
Lucy Sante;
Imogen Cassels;
Jess Cotton;
Joan Brossa;
Stanley Schtinter;
Edwina Attlee;
& Wayne Koestenbaum
A suite of works by eleven readers to mark the publication of Seven Rooms, an anthology of scattered works from across the Hotel series, 2016 to 2023. 700 Horses carries a select thread of live recordings from the London launch of Seven Rooms at Presse Books / FormaHQ (Regel, Sante, Cassels, Cotton, Attlee and Koestenbaum) alongside choice cuts from the Hotel Archive (Fanon, Polek, Sinclair, Grubbs, Brossa, and Schtinter).
& in which ...
Hannah Regel reads Mahmoud Darwish’s ‘Eleven Stars Over Andalusia,’ Nicolette Polek reads a short story called ‘The Rope Barrier,’ Iain Sinclair reads ‘Animal Drums,’ a cut-up impromptu to SJ Fowler’s motion-picture-poem of the same name (at the Whitechapel Gallery, 2019), David Grubbs reads a cut from his feature-length poem, ‘Good night the pleasure was ours,’ Lucy Sante reads a poem called ‘Call My Baby,’ Imogen Cassels reads a poem called ‘Two Types of the Same Return’ and ‘Moss’ (as in Kate), Jess Cotton reads a poem called ‘States of Bewilderment’ and a poem called ‘Aloof,’ Stanley Schtinter reads Joan Brossa’s ‘Astral Summary’ (Parts I and II of III), Edwina Attlee reads a poem called ‘Refrigeration’ and a poem called ‘Australia Day,’ and Wayne Koestenbaum reads a poem called ‘Stigma Pudding.’
Hannah Regel reads Mahmoud Darwish’s ‘Eleven Stars Over Andalusia,’ Nicolette Polek reads a short story called ‘The Rope Barrier,’ Iain Sinclair reads ‘Animal Drums,’ a cut-up impromptu to SJ Fowler’s motion-picture-poem of the same name (at the Whitechapel Gallery, 2019), David Grubbs reads a cut from his feature-length poem, ‘Good night the pleasure was ours,’ Lucy Sante reads a poem called ‘Call My Baby,’ Imogen Cassels reads a poem called ‘Two Types of the Same Return’ and ‘Moss’ (as in Kate), Jess Cotton reads a poem called ‘States of Bewilderment’ and a poem called ‘Aloof,’ Stanley Schtinter reads Joan Brossa’s ‘Astral Summary’ (Parts I and II of III), Edwina Attlee reads a poem called ‘Refrigeration’ and a poem called ‘Australia Day,’ and Wayne Koestenbaum reads a poem called ‘Stigma Pudding.’
See here.
Hannah Regel is a writer based in London. She has been published in The Poetry Review, Fantastic Man, Granta, Hotel and Canal, amongst others. She has published two collections of poetry, When I Was Alive and Oliver Reed (both Montez Press, 2017 and 2020 respectively). Her debut novel, The Last Sane Woman, will be published by Verso Fiction in 2024.
Nicolette Polek is the author of Imaginary Museums (Soft Skull, 2020) and the forthcoming novel, Bitter Water Opera (Graywolf Press, 2024). She is a recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers' Award, and a recent graduate of Yale Divinity School.
Iain Sinclair is a British writer, documentarist, filmmaker, poet, flaneur, metropolitan prophet and urban shaman, keeper of lost cultures and futurologist.
David Grubbs is Distinguished Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the author of Good night the pleasure was ours, The Voice in the Headphones, Now that the audience is assembled, and Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording (all published by Duke University Press, 2022, 2020, 2018, and 2014 respectively) as well as the collaborative artists’ books Simultaneous Soloists with Anthony McCall (Pioneer Works Press, 2019) and, with Reto Geiser and John Sparagana, Projectile (Drag City, 2021). Grubbs has released fourteen solo albums and appeared on more than 200 releases. He was a member of the groups Gastr del Sol, Bastro, and Squirrel Bait, and has performed with Tony Conrad, Susan Howe, Pauline Oliveros, Luc Ferrari, Will Oldham, Loren Connors, the Red Krayola, and many others.
Lucy Sante’s books include Low Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), Kill All Your Darlings (Verse Chorus Press, 2007), The Other Paris (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2015), Maybe the People Would Be the Times (Verse Chorus Press, 2020), and—in 2024—the memoir I Heard Her Call My Name (Heinemann).
Imogen Cassels is the author of various pamphlets, including Chesapeake (Distance No Object, 2021), VOSS (Broken Sleep, 2020), Arcades (Sad Press, 2018), and Mother, beautiful things (Face Press, 2017). Her writing has appeared in the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, The White Review, The Cambridge Review, Still Point, minor literatures, and elsewhere.
Jess Cotton is a writer based in London. Her book on John Ashbery was recently published by Reaktion Books.
Joan Brossa (1919–1998) was born in Barcelona into a family of artisans. He began writing when he was mobilised in the Spanish Civil War and, following an introduction to surrealism by way of the friendship and influence of Joan Miró and Joan Prats, would fuse political engagement and aesthetic experiment through sonnets, odes, theatre, sculpture and screenplay within a neo-surrealist framework. Brossa founded the magazine Dau al Set in 1948 and, during the fifties and sixties, his poetry was increasingly informed by collectivist concerns. His collection El saltamartí (1963) presented a synthesis of themes both political and social, and the subsequent publication of Poesia Rasa (1970), Poemes de seny i cabell (1977), Rua de llibres (1980)—and the six volumes of Poesia escénica (published between 1973 and 1983)—saw Brossa stake his place as a central figure in contemporary Catalan literature.
Stanley Schtinter has been described by writer Iain Sinclair as ‘the last accredited activist, the last avant-garde.’ He recently presented the premiere of his “endless” video-work, The Lock-In, at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, and exhibited the work as a solo presentation at the Barbican Centre in London during July 2022 (reviewed for The Guardian by Jonathan Jones as ‘an epic film [...] spellbinding, Warholian’). From May 2021 until May 2022 he presented Important Books (or, Manifestos read by Children) at Whitechapel Gallery in London. In 2021, he published the edited collection, The Liberated Film Club (Tenement Press). Schtinter is the artistic director of purge.xxx; an “anti-” record label (“anti-” everything) wherein he curates and publishes a catalogue of sound-works, soundtracks, and collaborations.
Edwina Attlee is the author of two pamphlets, Roasting Baby (if a leaf falls press, 2016) and the cream (Clinic, 2016). She teaches history to students of architecture in London.
Wayne Koestenbaum has published over twenty books of poetry, criticism, and fiction, including Ultramarine (Nightboat Books, 2022), The Cheerful Scapegoat (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents, 2021), Figure It Out (Counterpoint, 2020), Camp Marmalade (Nightboat Books, 2018), My 1980s & Other Essays (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), The Anatomy of Harpo Marx(University of California Press, 2012), Humiliation (Picador, 2011), Hotel Theory (Soft Skull, 2007), Circus (Soft Skill, 2004), Andy Warhol (Penguin, 2001), Jackie Under My Skin (Plume, 1995), and The Queen’s Throat (Da Capo Press, 1993), nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. He has given musical performances of his improvisatory Sprechstimme soliloquies at the Hammer Museum, The Kitchen, REDCAT, Centre Pompidou, Walker Art Center, The Artist’s Institute, the Renaissance Society, and The Poetry Project. His feature-length film, The Collective, premiered at UnionDocs (New York) in 2021. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and a Whiting Award. Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired his literary archive. He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center.
10. Derek Jarman / Through The Billboard
Promised Land Without Ever Stopping
Prototype Publishing & House Sparrow Press
First Ears—
19.02.24 12:00 Resonance Extra
19.02.24 20:00 Resonance 104.4FM
Repeats—
20.02.24 10:00 Resonance 104.4FM
21.02.24 10:00 Resonance Extra
23.02.24 18:00 Resonance Extra
25.02.24 22:00 Resonance Extra
An unabridged, archival reading of Derek Jarman’s sole work of fiction, Through the Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping (House Sparrow Press / Prototype Publishing, 2023)—as read by Jarman himself—to mark the 30th anniversary of his passing.
Jarman’s Through The Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping broadcasts on Resonance Extra, 19.02.24, with a new introduction from Gareth Evans.
See here.
In this blown-away piece of Jarman magic, a fantasy / fable about how to see differently and a cornucopic visual version of the psyche, Derek Jarman casually reconstructs notions of empire, the road trip, and the mid-twentieth century journey of the soul. Trippy, light, fantastic.
Ali Smith
Derek Jarman (1942-1994) is one of the most influential figures in 20th century British culture. Best known as an iconoclastic filmmaker and polemical gay activist who channeled unparalleled energy into painting, writing, gardening and all manner of cultural activity, he was one of the primary catalysts for a generation of artists and filmmakers whose work is only now being fully recognised for its dark, subversive imagination and fluidity across media. Amongst his films, Jarman is particularly recognised for Jubilee (1977), arguably the first punk movie, Caravaggio (1986), and Blue (1993), a moving memoir about his degeneration from AIDS.
9. Stanley Schtinter’s Last Movies
Tenement Press
Montez Press Radio, New York
1 January 27th 2024 / 18:00 (EST)
Jean Luc Godard (d. 2022)
John Dillinger (d. 1934)
Heaven’s Gate (d. 1997)
(Ongoing.)
All films are haunted, both by the immortal light of the sooner-or-later dead that they curate, and by the filaments of meaning they extrude into unscripted human lives. Last Movies is an unexpectedly revealing catalogue of final interchanges between imminent ghosts and counterpart electric spectres on the screen’s far side. Profound and riveting, Schtinter’s graveyard perspective offers up a rich and startlingly novel view of cinema, angled through cemetery gates before the closing credits. A remarkable accomplishment.
Alan Moore
An unabridged serialisation of Schtinter’s ‘book of endings,’ Last Movies (Tenement Press, 2023), as read by the author broadcasts with Montez Press Radio throughout the Spring, 2024.
A publication, durational artwork, and moving-image experience—the ‘endgame of endgames’ (Iain Sinclair, Sight and Sound)—Schtinter’s Last Movies is an alternative account of the first century of cinema according to the films watched by a constellation of its most notable stars shortly before (or at the time of) their deaths.
See here.
Listen (to an excerpt) on Soundcloud
Stanley Schtinter has been described by writer Iain Sinclair as ‘the last accredited activist, the last avant-garde.’ He recently presented the premiere of his “endless” video-work, The Lock-In, at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, and exhibited the work as a solo presentation at the Barbican Centre in London during July 2022 (reviewed for The Guardian by Jonathan Jones as ‘an epic film [...] spellbinding, Warholian’). From May 2021 until May 2022 he presented Important Books (or, Manifestos read by Children) at Whitechapel Gallery in London. In 2021, he published the edited collection, The Liberated Film Club (Tenement Press). Schtinter is the artistic director of purge.xxx; an “anti-” record label (“anti-” everything) wherein he curates and publishes a catalogue of sound-works, soundtracks, and collaborations.
MMXXIV
8. A Pink Plastic Glove Arrives
Tenement Press
Montez Press Radio, New York
18:00 (EST) / 27.09.23
A bilingual assembly of poems from Peter Bush’s translation of Dolors Miquel’s El guant de plàstic rosa / The Pink Plastic Glove, featuring contribution from Miquel, Bush, and Nadia de Vries.
See here.
Dolors Miquel (Lleida, 18 July 1960) is a leading Catalan poet. From an early age, her distinct and critical voice—as evidenced in her writing for the page and the stage—upset many in her provincial birthplace. Expelled from a school run by nuns, Miquel studied in Barcelona, where she founded the literary magazine La Higiènica and, in the mid-90s, began to publish poems in a variety of styles. In collaboration with other Catalan poets, Miquel would organise week-long tours of small towns (ever keen to perform her works) and her writings—sharp, clear-eyed and ever-political—distill her roving criticality in a poetry that desecrates everything: ‘the Church, politics, and, naturally, the male figure’ (María Eloy García). In Gitana Roc (Llibres Del Segle, 2000), Miquel would express the core of her work as follows: ‘I talk about the damage caused by social structures, such as the family or the police. Love is the most frightening contract of fear, also the most powerful safeguard of society, and sex is the carrot.’ This aura of critique defines Miquel’s extensive bibliography (with over twenty collections under her name to date), and she has received numerous awards, such as the Rosa Leveroni (1989), Ciutat de Barcelona (2005), Gabriel Ferrater (2006), and Ausiàs March de Gandia (2016). She has published numerous collections, among them La dona que mirava la tele / The woman who watched TV (Edicions 62, 2010) and La flor invisible / The invisible flower (Bromera, 2011). Her latest book, Sutura / Suture (Pagès, 2021) is her final work as a poet; Miquel lives and works in Torredembarra, and continues to publish theatrical texts and other writings.
Peter Bush is a translator. His first literary translation was Juan Goytisolo’s Forbidden Territory (North Point Press, 1989) and Bush has to date translated eleven other titles in Goytisolo’s bibliography, including The Marx Family Saga and Exiled from Almost Everywhere. He has translated many Catalan writers including Josep Pla, Mercè Rodoreda, Joan Sales, Najat El Hachmi and Teresa Solana. His most recent effort is A Film (3000 meters) by Víctor Català, the classic 1919 feminist novel set in Barcelona’s criminal underworld. Bush lives and works in Bristol.
Nadia de Vries is a Dutch writer and culture theorist. She is the author of the critical thesis Kleinzeer (2019) and of the novel De Bakvis (2022), both published by Pluim. In 2020, she obtained a PhD at the Amsterdam University for her thesis about the image online of the dead human body. Her poetry collections Dark Hour and I Failed to Swoon were published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe (2018 and 2022 respectively) and Know Thy Audience was published by Moist in 2023.
7. Helen Palmer, Pleasure Beach (Cochlearical)
Prototype Publishing
Resonance Extra, London
A book as mind-bending as Blackpool itself.
Jeremy Deller
Palmer’s Pleasure Beach is a queer love story from the North West’s saucy seaside paradise, Blackpool, on one day: 16 June 1999. Written in multiple voices and styles, Pleasure Beach follows the interconnecting journeys and thoughts of three young women over the course of 24 hours and over 18 chapters which are structured and themed in the same way as James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Hedonist and wannabe playwright Olga Adessi, 19, is struggling along the prom to get to her morning shift at the chippy with a monstrous hangover, trying to remember exactly what happened with Rachel Watkins, 19, a strange and fragile girl she had an encounter with the night before. Former gymnast and teenage mum Treesa Reynolds, 19, is off to the Sandcastle Waterpark with her mum Lou and daughter Lulu, looking forward to a sausage and egg McMuffin on the way. Pleasure Beach breathes and exhales the unique sea air, fish and chips, donuts and candyfloss scents of Blackpool, bringing to life everything the town is famous for, portraying the gritty magic and sheer unadulterated fun of the city and its people across a spectrum of sensory experiences and emotions.
Pleasure Beach (Cochlearical) is an unabridged, four-part iteration of the Palmer’s novel, run as a special broadcast series to conincide with the book’s Prototype publication. (Cochlearical) was recorded on location in Resonance’s Bermondsey ‘Chapel’ studio, London—Spring 2023—and aired in four instalments on Resonance Extra (culminating on ‘Bloomsday’).
1 June 13th 2023 / 21:00 (BST)
Chapters I through III
2 June 14th 2023 / 21:00 (BST)
Chapter IV through VIII
3 June 15th 2023 / 21:00 (BST)
Chapter IX through XI
4 June 16th 2023, ‘Bloomsday’ / 21:00 (BST)
Chapter XII through to the End.
See here.
Download via Spiracle.
Helen Palmer is a writer from Blackpool. She is the author of Deleuze and Futurism: A Manifesto for Nonsense (London: Bloomsbury, 2014) and Queer Defamiliarisation: Writing, Mattering, Making Strange (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). She is a 2023 Interdisciplinary Resident at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Virginia, USA. She currently lives in Vienna. Pleasure Beach (Prototype, 2023) is her debut novel.
6. Kyra Simone’s Temporary Palaces
Tenement Press
Resonance Extra, London
An unabridged iteration of the Simone’s debut collection, Palace of Rubble, recorded on location in Resonance’s Bermondsey ‘Chapel’ studio, London, and aired in three instalments on Resonance Extra; ‘Tarzan the Apeman,’ ‘The Wild One,’ and ‘The Stranger.’ Temporary Palaces sinks Simone’s readings in a seabed of tidal drones, found sounds, and accompanying sonics (with musics lent by Benedict Drew and Jem Finer, ℅ Thanet Tape Centre, amongst others).
1 April 22nd 2023 / 13:00 (BST)
Tarzan the Apeman
In which the author reads ...
‘Palace of Rubble’
‘When Language is Gone from Bodies’
‘The Boys of Summer’
‘The View from the Tower’
‘World Business’
‘County Fair’
‘Still Life with Parrot’
‘Museum’
‘Today, Clouds’
‘Foreign Affairs’
‘The Empty Lot’
‘Dear Pauline’
‘Cadets No More’
‘The Wedding Exit’
‘The Nomad’
‘Blue Moon’
‘The Diver’s Song’
‘Pawns Talk of Scars’
‘Den of Millionaires’
2 May 27th 2023 / 13:00 (BST)
The Wild One
In which the author reads ...
‘The Great Escape’
‘The Revolving Door’
‘The Tunnel’
‘May’s End’
‘A Certain Music’
‘The Era is Over’
‘Obituary for Mrs. H’
‘Empty Chairs’
‘Somewhere Else’
‘The Prairie is on Fire’
‘The Lonely Pioneer’
‘The Last Days of Winter’
‘Rooms That Aren’t There’
‘The American Falls from Below’
‘You Promised me a Kingdom’
3 July 1st 2023 / 13:00 (BST)
The Stranger
In which the author reads ...
‘Au Black’
‘Away on Business’
‘The Clouds that Pass’
‘The Avalanche’
‘Swept Up in the Wave’
‘The Bag Lady & La Fleurs du Mal’
‘The Winged’
‘The Oneironaut & La Novillera’
‘The Thing in the Road’
‘The Land is Dark’
‘The Last Man to Qualify’
‘Thank You, Bye’
‘A Walk By the River’
‘The People in the Hotel’
‘The Palace at Midnight’
See here.
Kyra Simone is a Tunisian-American writer from Los Angeles, now based in Brooklyn. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in a variety of literary journals, including Conjunctions, The Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, Entropy, The Anthology of Best American Experimental Writing, and elsewhere. Simone is a member of the publishing collective Ugly Duckling Presse, and part of a two-woman team running the editorial office of Zone Books.
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5. SJ Fowler’s MUEUM
Tenement Press
Resonance Extra, London
An unabridged iteration of the poet’s debut novella, recorded on location in Resonance’s Bermondsey ‘Chapel’ studio, London, and aired in four instalments on Resonance Extra.
1 October 1st 2022
Chapters I through IV
2 November 5th 2022
Chapters V through VII
3 December 3rd 2022
Chapters VIII through XI
4 January 7th 2023
Chapters XII through to the (bitter) End.
Fowler’s MUEUM was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses, 2022/2023.
See here.
SJ Fowler is a writer and poet living in London. His collections include Fights (Veer Books, 2011), The Rottweiler’s Guide to the Dog Owner (Eyewear Books, 2014), {Enthusiasm} (Test Centre, 2015), The Guide to Being Bear Aware (Shearsman Books, 2017), I will show you the life of the mind (on prescription drugs) (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2020) and The Great Apes (Broken Sleep Books, 2022). His work has become known for its exploration of the potential of poetry, alongside collaboration, curation, asemic writing, sound poetry, concrete poetry, and performance. He has been commissioned by institutions such as the Tate Modern, The Photographer’s Gallery, Wellcome Collection and Southbank Centre, and he has presented his work at over fifty international festivals, including Hay Xalapa, Mexico; Dhaka Lit Fest; Hay Arequipa, Peru; and the Niniti Festival, Iraq. Fowler was nominated for the White Review Short Story Prize, 2014, and his short stories have appeared in anthologies, such as Isabel Waidner’s edited collection, Liberating the Canon (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2018).
Incidentally, from December 2007 to November 2014, Fowler was an employee of the British Museum.
4. Price Poetry or The Left Ventricle in Times of Trouble
Tenement Press
Resonance 104.4FM, London
12.04.22 / 20:00 (GMT)
Ona Balló Pedragosa;
Joan Brossa;
Jon Auman;
Lucy Mercer;
Joan Oliver / Pere Quart;
Stephen Watts;
Diamanda La Berge Dramm;
Dominic J. Jaeckle;
Salvador Espriu;
Agustí Bartra;
Aidan Moffat;
Francesc Vallverdú;
Harmony Holiday;
Gabriel Ferrater;
Stanley Schtinter;
& Cameron Griffiths
In partnership with Films 59 and the Institut Ramon Llull—commissioned for the “spotlight” on Catalan literatures at the 2022 London Bookfair—Price Poetry is a work-for-the-radio to commemorate (and refract) the first Popular Festival of Catalan Poetry at the Gran Price Theatre, Barcelona, 1970.
Ona Balló Pedragosa is a programmer and researcher in narrative interbreeding between music and image. Graduating from Popmeu Fabra University (Barcelona) and Sorbonne (Paris), her dissertation—carried out in collaboration with Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art (INHA)—deals with the musical thinking of composer Carles Santos on Pere Portabella’s film work. She also works professionally as a sound recordist for film, and writes about art and cinema for different media.
Joan Brossa (1919–1998) was born in Barcelona into a family of artisans. He began writing when he was mobilised in the Spanish Civil War and, following an introduction to surrealism by way of the friendship and influence of Joan Miró and Joan Prats, would fuse political engagement and aesthetic experiment through sonnets, odes, theatre, sculpture and screenplay within a neo-surrealist framework. Brossa founded the magazine Dau al Set in 1948 and, during the fifties and sixties, his poetry was increasingly informed by collectivist concerns. His collection El saltamartí (1963) presented a synthesis of themes both political and social, and the subsequent publication of Poesia Rasa (1970), Poemes de seny i cabell (1977), Rua de llibres (1980)—and the six volumes of Poesia escénica (published between 1973 and 1983)—saw Brossa stake his place as a central figure in contemporary Catalan literature. A first ever English language translation of Brossa’s El saltamartí was published by Tenement Press in 2021 (translated from the Catalan by Cameron Griffiths).
Jon Auman is a writer renting in Brooklyn.
Lucy Mercer’s first collection is Emblem (Prototype, 2022). Mercer was awarded the inaugural White Review Poet's Prize, and teaches creative writing at Goldsmiths.
Joan Oliver / Pere Quart (1899-1986) was also known by the name of Pere Quart, a pseudonym for his poetic works. He was a poet, playwright, narrator, translator and journalist, Oliver is regarded as one of the five major twentieth-century Catalan poets, and the most original of all. His first collection of poems, Les decapitacions / The Decapitations (1934) is a harbinger of the nature of his subsequent poetry—agile, anecdotal and drawn to realism—reflecting the traumatic experiences of the Spanish civil war and exile, revealing a desolate and sceptical vision of the world. Born into a bourgeois family of industrialists, and a co-founder with Francesc Trabal and Armand Obiols of the Grup de Sabadell (the Sabadell Group), his style as a writer was marked by his irony against conventionalism. As a translator, he received, in the 1950s, the Prize of the President of the Republic of France for his translation of Molière’s The Misanthrope. In 1970, he was received the Award of Honour in Catalan letters, while in the 1980s he received the City of Barcelona prize, the Josep Maria de Sagarra prize for translation, and the Generalitat (Autonomous Government) of Catalonia prize for poetry. True to his non-conformist and critical stands, he rejected the Sant Jordi Cross of the Generalitat.
Stephen Watts was born in London in 1952 (of partly Swiss-Italian heritage), where he still lives and works in Whitechapel. He has published seven books of poetry—The Lava’s Curl (Grimaldi Press, 1990); Gramsci & Caruso (Periplum, 2004, with Czech translation by Petr Mikeš, reissued by Mille Gru, 2014, with Italian translation by Cristina Viti); The Blue Bag (Aark Arts, 2004); Mountain Language / Lingua di montagna (2008) and Journey Across Breath / Tragitto nel respiro (2011, both published by Hearing Eye, with Italian translations by Cristina Viti); Ancient Sunlight (Enitharmon, 2014, reprinted ‘20), and Republic of Dogs / Republic of Birds (Test Centre, 2016; with a new edition by Prototype, 2020). Watts has also edited several anthologies, including Houses & Fish, a book of drawings with writing by 4 & 5 year olds (Parrot Press, 1991); Voices of Conscience (an international anthology of censored poets, Iron Press, 1995); Mother Tongues (a special issue of Modern Poetry in Translation, 2001), and Music While Drowning (an anthology of German Expressionist poems that accompanied an exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, Tate Publishing, 2003). His numerous translations and co-translations include books of modern Kurdish, Georgian and British Bangladeshi Poetry as well as volumes by A.N. Stencl, Meta Kušar, Amarjit Chandan, Adnan al-Sayegh, Golan Haji and Ziba Karbassi (from Yiddish, Slovenian, Punjabi, Arabic, Persian). He has also curated bilingual readings at several exhibitions (including Emil Nolde, Joan Miró, Arshile Gorky, Renato Guttuso and Francisco Toledo). Watts has worked in schools and hospitals as a writer on issues of well-being and creativity. The Republics, a film directed by Huw Wahl and based on Watts’ book Republic of Dogs / Republic of Birds premiered in 2020. Since 1980, Watts has compiled an ongoing Bibliography of Modern Poetry in English Translation, with an artist’s edition (℅ Hannes Schüpbach) deposited at the National Poetry Library, London.
Diamanda La Berge Dramm grew up in Amsterdam, the Netherlands playing the violin since the age of four. Growing up among the leading figures of the Dutch classical, avant-garde and improvisation scene, her own concerts reflect all of these elements. In 2018 she was the first ever string soloist to win the Dutch Classical Talent Tour & Award. Diamanda studied at New England Conservatory and at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. Recent performances include solo concerts with the Metropole Orchestra, and an Indonesia tour giving workshops and concerts. In 2020, Dramm was in residence at Musikfest Bremen as winner of the Deutschlandfunk Förderungspeis. Dramm is a founding member of Splendor, a collective of 50 artists in Amsterdam who co-run a working space and concert hall.
Dominic J. Jaeckle is a writer, publisher, editor and broadcaster. Jaeckle curated and collated the irregular magazine Hotel and its adjacent projects, and runs the publishing project, Tenement Press. Jaeckle’s first collection, 36 Exposures (A Bastardised Roll of Film), was published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe in 2021; Magnolia or Redbud: Flowers for Laura Lee is forthcoming through Jaeckle’s own imprint for experiments and collaborations, John Cassavetes.
Salvador Espriu (1913-1985) is one of Catalonia's most significant post-war writers and an outstanding poet. Although he first became known as a narrator, his relatively later incursion into poetry was no obstacle to his achieving swift recognition as a poet, not only within the sphere of Catalan letters but also internationally. He also played an important part in the revitalisation of Catalan theatre. He published novels, El Doctor Rip (1931) and Laia (1932); collections of stories, Aspectes (1934), Ariadna al laberint grotesc / Ariadna in the Grotesque Labyrinth (1935), Miratge a Citerea / Mirage in Citerea (1935), Litizia i altres proses / Litizia and Other Prose (1937); and works which led to his being considered the most original Catalan narrator of the post-Noucentisme (the turn-of-the-century cultural and political movement in Catalonia). Amongst his published collections of poetry are Cementiri de Sinera / Sinera Cemetery (1946); Les hores / The Hours (1952); El caminant i el mur / The Wanderer and the Wall (1954); Final del laberint / The End of the Labyrinth (1955); Les cançons d'Ariadna / The Songs of Ariadna (1949); La pell de brau / The Hide of the Bull (1960); Llibre de Sinera / The Book of Sinera (1963; and Setmana Santa / Holy Week (1971). He revised the entirety of his work with the aim of creating a unified corpus. Translated into many languages, Espriu’s name frequently appears amongst those proposed as Nobel laureates. He received the Award of Honour in Catalan Letters in 1972, the City of Barcelona Gold Medal and that of the Generalitat (Autonomous Government of Catalonia) in 1980. He was given honorary doctorates by the universities of Barcelona and Toulouse (Llenguadoc). In 1982, he was awarded but declined to accept the Spanish distinction, the Cross of Alphonse the Wise, because of his civic stand with respect to Catalonia.
Agustí Bartra (1908-1982) was a poet, novelist, translator and playwright, one of several writers who had to go into exile because of the Spanish Civil War. In 1940, with the writer Anna Murià, he settled in Mexico where he worked as a translator. During this period he received grants that enabled him to make several trips to the United States, which he combined with intense literary activity, producing for example Antologia de la lírica nord-americana / Anthology of American Poetry (1951). He returned to Catalonia in 1970 and went to live in Terrassa. Outstanding among his works are the novel Crist de 200.000 braços / Christ of 200,000 Arms (1968) in which he describes the collective experience of the concentration camps, and his book of poems entitled Ecce homo (1968), which reflects his personal cosmology through the four elements: earth, fire, air and water. Bartra's poetry has traditionally been compared with that of Walt Whitman, but he also followed in the footsteps of German Romantic poets such as Novalis, Hölderlin and Rilke. The Generalitat (Government) of Catalonia rendered homage to Bartra and his work by awarding him the Creu de Sant Jordi (Saint George Cross).
Aidan Moffat from Falkirk, Scotland, has been writing and recording music since 1996, with ten years at the front of Arab Strap, a few instrumental records as L. Pierre, some solo albums, and many collaborations. His 2011 album with Bill Wells, Everything’s Getting Older, won the inaugural Scottish Album Of The Year Award; his children’s book, The Lavender Blue Dress, was published in 2014 and he made a film about folk music with award-winning director Paul Fegan, Where You’re Meant To Be. Moffat always wanted to live in Glasgow, has done since 1999, and continues to write, record and play both alone, in collaboration, and with Arab Strap.
Francesc Vallverdú (1935-2014) was a poet, sociolinguist, literary critique and translator. He worked as an editor and editorial consultant. He is considered one of the central poets of the Catalan social realism movement in poetry, with titles such as Com llances / With Spears (1961), awarded the Joan Salvat-Papasseit, Cada paraula un vidre / Each Word a Glass (1968), awarded the Carles Riba, Somni, insomni / Insomnia (1971), Retorn a Bílbilis / Return to Bílbilis (1974), awarded the Ausiàs March from Gandia, Leviatan / Leviathan (1984), Encalçar el vent / Chow Down on the Wind (1995), amongst others. He also introduced sociolinguistics into the Catalan speaking territories, with works such as L'escriptor català i el problema de la llengu / The Catalan Writer & the Language Problem (1968), Dues llengües: dues funcions? / Two Languages: Two Functions? (1970), El fet lingüístic com a fet social / The Linguistic Fact as a Social Fact (1973), awarded the Octubre-Joan Fuster, and L’ús del català: un futur controvertit / Catalan Uses: A Controversial Future (1990), among others. In 2009 he published his complete poetic works, Temps sense treva / Time Without a Break (2009). He worked as linguistic consultant at the Corporació Catalana de Ràdio i Televisió [Catalan national radio & TV] (1985-2006) and at the Gran Larousse català (1987-1993). He was manager of the Enciclopèdia de la llengua catalana (1999-2002)—one of the founders of the Grup Català de Sociolingüística [Catalan group for sociolinguistics]—and chief editor of its yearbook, Treballs de Sociolingüística catalana (1977-2002).
Harmony Holiday—born in Waterloo, Iowa—is a poet and choreographer. The daughter of Northern Soul singer-songwriter Jimmy Holiday, her father died when she was five, and she and her mother moved to Los Angeles. Holiday earned a BA in rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley and an MFA at Columbia University. She is the author of Negro League Baseball (2011), winner of the Fence Books Motherwell Prize; a “dos-a-dos” book featuring poetry, letters, and essays, Go Find Your Father / A Famous Blues (Ricochet Editions, 2013); Hollywood Forever (Fence Books, 2017), which she is turning into an afroballet; and Maafa (Fence Books, 2022). Holiday is currently working on a biography of Abbey Lincoln.
Gabriel Ferrater (1922-1972) was a writer and linguist. He produced some of the most significant poetic works in Catalan of the post-war period, with only three collections: Da nuces pueris / Nuts for the Children (1960), Menja’t una cama / Eat a Leg (1962), and Teoria dels cossos / Theory of Bodies (1966); these editions were then published as one volume, Les dones i els dies / Women and Days in 1968. Open eroticism and the passage of time are among Ferrater’s constant themes. His poems ‘In memoriam’ and ‘Poema inacabat’ / ‘Unfinished Poem,’ are amongst the most valuable testimonies concerning the Civil War and its consequences. A lecturer in linguistics and literary criticism at the University of Barcelona, he began to write a series of articles on linguistic doctrine in the review Serra d’Or (1969-72) under the title ‘De Causis linguae,’ outstanding amongst which is the draft of a metric theory based on the phonological component of the generative-transformational grammar proposed by Chomsky and Halle. He translated Kafka’s The Trial into Catalan and Bloomfield's Language and Chomsky's Cartesian Linguistics.
Stanley Schtinter has been described as an ‘artist' by the Daily Mail and as an ‘exorcist' by the Daily Star.
Cameron Griffiths studied History and English Literature at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. His poetry has appeared in journals in New Zealand, Australia and the United States. He lives with his family in Spain. Griffiths first translated collection—Joan Brossa’s El saltamartí / The Tumbler—was published by Tenement Press, 2021.
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3. Dominic J. Jaeckle & Polly Barton
(with Mason Lindahl & Matthew Shaw),
A Table of Contents / 36 Exposures
Tenement Press & John Cassavetes
Resonance Extra, London
05.10.21 / 14:00 (GMT)
I salt my breakfast eggs.
All day long I feel created.
Anne Dillard, Holy the Firm (1977)
A work by Dominic J. Jaeckle, Polly Barton, Mason Lindahl & Matthew Shaw. Grounded in a book that collects a roll-of-film’s worth of co-dependent photographs and prose-poems by artist Hoagy Houghton and writer Dominic Jaeckle, 36 Exposures (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2021; John Cassavetes, 2024), A Table of Contents is a quilt of first- and second-hand reticulated reflections and ratiocinations; a ‘disembodied voice-over’ for a set of absent images, memories and other assorted totem poles. Featuring musics from Matthew Shaw and Mason Lindahl, with readings from Polly Barton.
‘A Table of Contents’ is formed of materials owing to an ongoing project called Veronica Lake, Walden Pond, & River Phoenix.
Dominic J. Jaeckle is a writer, editor and publisher. Jaeckle curated and collated the irregular magazine project, Hotel and its adjacent activities (2016-2023), and leads a small press project called Tenement (2021 and on).
Polly Barton is a Japanese translator and writer, living in Bristol. Her book Fifty Sounds is published by Fitzcarraldo Editions. Translations include Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda (Tilted Axis Press, 2020) and There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura (Bloomsbury International, 2020).
Matthew Shaw is a composer, author and artist; Shaw is currently working with Shirley Collins & Brian Catling on Crowlink; a sound installation and recording project featuring Collins’ recitation of English folk songs collected over seventy years, poetry from Catling and Shaw, and fragments of letters, diaries and prose from Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and the Bloomsbury Group. Shaw’s Atmosphere of Mona, a book of poetry and photography, was published by Annwyn House in 2020.
Mason Lindahl is a guitarist and composer based in New York City. His finger-picking style is largely influenced by minimalism and classical music. He grew up listening to folk and country music in Northern California, where he was first taught to play the guitar by his father. Lindahl’s record Kissing Rosy in the Rain was released by Tompkins Square, 2021.
2. Dominic J. Jaeckle, Diamanda La Berge Dramm,
& Matthew Shaw, Shipping Forecast / 36 Exposures
Tenement Press & John Cassavetes
Resonance Extra, London
22.02.21 / 18:00 (GMT)
A utility amongst the swallows is their music;
they use it to avoid collision.
John Cage, 36 Mesostics (1978)
Anchored in a book that collects a roll-of-film’s worth of co-dependent photographs and prose-poems by Hoagy Houghton and Dominic J. Jaeckle, 36 Exposures (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2021; John Cassavetes, 2024), Shipping Forecast is a quilt of first- and second-hand reticulated reflections and ratiocinations—a ‘disembodied voice-over’ for a set of absent images, memories and other assorted totem poles. Matthew Shaw plays the ocean, Diamanda La Berge Dramm, the anchor.
Shipping Forecast is formed of materials owing to an ongoing project called Veronica Lake, Walden Pond, & River Phoenix.
Dominic J. Jaeckle is a writer, editor and publisher. Jaeckle curated and collated the irregular magazine project, Hotel and its adjacent activities (2016-2023), and leads a small press project called Tenement (2021 and on).
Diamanda La Berge Dramm grew up in Amsterdam, the Netherlands playing the violin since the age of four. Growing up among the leading figures of the Dutch classical, avant-garde and improvisation scene, her own concerts reflect all of these elements. In 2018 she was the first ever string soloist to win the Dutch Classical Talent Tour & Award. Dramm studied at New England Conservatory and at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. Recent performances include solo concerts with the Metropole Orchestra, and an Indonesia tour giving workshops and concerts. In 2020, Dramm was in residence at Musikfest Bremen as winner of the Deutschlandfunk Förderungspeis. Dramm is a founding member of Splendor, a collective of 50 artists in Amsterdam who co-run a working space and concert hall.
Matthew Shaw is a composer, author and artist; Shaw is currently working with Shirley Collins & Brian Catling on Crowlink; a sound installation and recording project featuring Collins’ recitation of English folk songs collected over seventy years, poetry from Catling and Shaw, and fragments of letters, diaries and prose from Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and the Bloomsbury Group. Shaw’s Atmosphere of Mona, a book of poetry and photography, was published by Annwyn House in 2020.
1. Dominic J. Jaeckle & Nadia de Vries,
Verse & Chorus / A Patchwork Quilt
Tenement Press & John Cassavetes
Montez Press Radio, New York
29.01.21 / 12:00 (EST)
Rewire Festival, The Hague
06.05.21
Cíntia Gil;
Diamanda La Berge Dramm;
Mark Lanegan;
Stanley Schtinter;
Becket Flannery;
Vilde Valerie Bjerke Torset;
Matthew Shaw;
& Duke Garwood.
An exquisite corpse of an “I” played out in a multiplicity of voices, Verse & Chorus is an experimental act of collaborative reworking that quilts and collages cuts from two manuscripts into an imagined third object and—in order of appearance—features readings from Nadia de Vries, Cíntia Gil, Diamanda La Berge Dramm, Mark Lanegan, Stanley Schtinter, Becket Flannery, and Vilde Valerie Bjerke Torset, with an accompaniment of borrowed songs and original music from Matthew Shaw, Mark Lanegan, and Duke Garwood.
Verse & Chorus is formed of materials owing to an ongoing project called Veronica Lake, Walden Pond, & River Phoenix.
The poems included in Verse & Chorus are excerpted from two publications; Jaeckle’s 36 Exposures and de Vries’ I Failed to Swoon (both published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2021).
Verse & Chorus premiered with Montez Press Radio, 29.01.21, and was broadcast as an element of the online programme for the 2021 edition of Rewire Festival (The Hague, Netherlands), 06.05.21.
Dominic J. Jaeckle is a writer, editor and publisher. Jaeckle curated and collated the irregular magazine project, Hotel and its adjacent activities (2016-2023), and leads a small press project called Tenement (2021 and on).
Nadia de Vries is a Dutch writer and culture theorist. She is the author of the critical thesis Kleinzeer (2019) and of the novel De Bakvis (2022), both published by Pluim. In 2020, she obtained a PhD at the Amsterdam University for her thesis about the image online of the dead human body. Her poetry collections Dark Hour and I Failed to Swoon were published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe (2018 and 2022 respectively) and Know Thy Audience was published by Moist in 2023.
Cíntia Gil studied at the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema (Lisbon Theatre and Film School) and holds a degree in Philosophy from the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto (Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Porto), where she has also taught seminars on aesthetics. From 2012 to 2019, Gil served as co-director and then director of Doclisboa, Portugal’s most important and steadily expanding documentary film festival, where she launched the Ibero-American lab Arché. From 2019 to 2021 she has directed Sheffield DocFest.
Diamanda La Berge Dramm grew up in Amsterdam, the Netherlands playing the violin since the age of four. Growing up among the leading figures of the Dutch classical, avant-garde and improvisation scene, her own concerts reflect all of these elements. In 2018 she was the first ever string soloist to win the Dutch Classical Talent Tour & Award. Diamanda studied at New England Conservatory and at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. Recent performances include solo concerts with the Metropole Orchestra, and an Indonesia tour giving workshops and concerts. In 2020, Dramm was in residence at Musikfest Bremen as winner of the Deutschlandfunk Förderungspeis. Dramm is a founding member of Splendor, a collective of 50 artists in Amsterdam who co-run a working space and concert hall.
Mark Lanegan (1964-2022) is a musican and author of I Am The Wolf: Lyrics and Writings (Hachette Books, 2017), Sing Backwards and Weep: A Memoir (White Rabbit, 2020), Leaving California (Heartworm Press, 2021), and Devil in a Coma (White Rabbit, 2021).
Stanley Schtinter has been described as an ‘artist' by the Daily Mail and as an ‘exorcist' by the Daily Star.
Becket Flannery / Becket MWN is an Amsterdam-based writer and artist, originally from the United States. He received his BA in Political Science from Swarthmore College in 2007, and his MFA from the University of Southern California in 2014, and was a resident artist at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam from 2015 to 2017. He publishes his writing under the name Becket Flannery, and his upcoming book The Chance Event, wherein… on The Chance Event, a performative theory conference organized by Chris Kraus and Semiotext(e) in a casino in the Nevada desert, is forthcoming. Forthcoming texts include an essay on William Pope.L for Metropolis M and an essay co-authored with Ruth Clemens on the neo-fascist online imaginary included in Deleuze & Fascism, edited by Rosi Braidotti and Rick Dolphijn, from Edinburgh University Press. He currently teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, where he is the mentor of the graduation year in the Fine Arts Department. His work often takes the form of text-based audio, and comments on and is structured by its architectural context. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include The Tail (Brussels, BE), Kevin Space (Vienna, AT), Kunstverein Graz (Graz, AT). Recent group exhibitions include Kunsthalle Fribourg (Fribourg, CH), Bel Ami (Los Angeles, US), Motto Books (Berlin, DE), SculptureCenter (New York, US), TG Gallery (Nottingham, UK), and Vleeshal (Middelburg, NL).
Vilde Valerie Bjerke Torset is a norwegian artist and poet based in London. Her publications include the poetry books Apollinaire and Other Horses (If a Leaf Falls Press, 2022), WHAT IT MEANS WHEN YOU DREAMS : A to Z (AFV press, 2021), and the artist book PAREIDOLIA—Dotremont’s Daughter (Timglaset Ltd, 2020). She has been commissioned by The British Museum and The Royal Norwegian Embassy, and been a guest lecturer at Kristiania University College, and The Poetry School, among others. Her performances, including both solo works and collaborations, have taken place at a range of national (UK) and international venues, including The British Museum, The National Centre for Writing, The Poetry Society, Jorvik Viking Centre, and London Rich Mix. Her books are in the collections of the Norwegian National Library, Bergen Public Library and University of Victoria Libraries. She is a member of Norske Billedkunstnere, Norsk Tegnerforbund, and founder and curator of SCRYPTH.
Matthew Shaw is a composer, author and artist; Shaw is currently working with Shirley Collins & Brian Catling on Crowlink; a sound installation and recording project featuring Collins’ recitation of English folk songs collected over seventy years, poetry from Catling and Shaw, and fragments of letters, diaries and prose from Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and the Bloomsbury Group. Shaw’s Atmosphere of Mona, a book of poetry and photography, was published by Annwyn House in 2020.
Duke Garwood is a London-based multi-instrumentalist and recording artist whose expertise on a wide range of instruments has graced numerous albums by an eclectic range of musicians. He is best known for his collaborations with songwriter Mark Lanegan and his solo work.
MMXXI
An irregular season of broadcasts
& occasional radio works produced by
Dominic J. Jaeckle & Milo Thesiger-Meacham (see here).
Prototype Publishing
(London, UK)
Resonance 104.4FM
(London, UK)
Resonance Extra
(London, UK)
Montez Press Radio
(New York City, NY, USA)
& occasional radio works produced by
Dominic J. Jaeckle & Milo Thesiger-Meacham (see here).
Prototype Publishing
(London, UK)
Resonance 104.4FM
(London, UK)
Resonance Extra
(London, UK)
Montez Press Radio
(New York City, NY, USA)