I'm delighted to have a poem at the 24project, a wonderful 'pop-up' literary magazine. It's being edited today (starting from midnight last night until midnight tonight) and will be online for one week only after that. There's a wonderful selection of poetry, fiction and photos on there already and you can see my poem here.
As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks that take you to other websites where you can find out more
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
DJ Physics
When you go to a Science Festival, maybe your first thought isn't that you'll end up dancing! However that has been one of my strong reactions to this years events at Edinburgh International Science Festival! I've already reviewed Emotion in Motion and last night I went along to DJ Physics.
I used to go clubbing regularly and was always fascinated by what the DJs were doing with the music but never enough to actually think about it too much, all my attention being given to dancing. So I was fascinated to finally get a chance to see what does go on in the DJ booth, both in terms of the practicalities and the science.
Martin Archer is a DJ and academic physicist who promised to make us all into expert DJs by the end of his presentation. I doubt I could now take over in my favourite club, but it certainly was a very entertaining event. There was lots of music to demonstrate how to skillfully move from one track into the next (and demonstrations on how not to do it). There was also a demonstration of how sound moving through a gas filled tube can cause flames to dance to the music, which was probably the highlight of an excellent event.
Martin Archer claims that DJs are puppet masters, manipulating the crowd to enjoy themselves, keep the dance-floor filled and the atmosphere upbeat. He shared his secrets of how all this works, though I'm guessing there would be more to it than that, to really become a successful club DJ.
Disclaimer: Clicket gave me the ticket for this event.
As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.
I used to go clubbing regularly and was always fascinated by what the DJs were doing with the music but never enough to actually think about it too much, all my attention being given to dancing. So I was fascinated to finally get a chance to see what does go on in the DJ booth, both in terms of the practicalities and the science.
Martin Archer is a DJ and academic physicist who promised to make us all into expert DJs by the end of his presentation. I doubt I could now take over in my favourite club, but it certainly was a very entertaining event. There was lots of music to demonstrate how to skillfully move from one track into the next (and demonstrations on how not to do it). There was also a demonstration of how sound moving through a gas filled tube can cause flames to dance to the music, which was probably the highlight of an excellent event.
Martin Archer claims that DJs are puppet masters, manipulating the crowd to enjoy themselves, keep the dance-floor filled and the atmosphere upbeat. He shared his secrets of how all this works, though I'm guessing there would be more to it than that, to really become a successful club DJ.
Disclaimer: Clicket gave me the ticket for this event.
As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.
Monday, April 02, 2012
Emotion in Motion
I'm just back from a lively session on dance and psychology at the Edinburgh International Science Festival. If you read my Crafty Green Poet blog regularly you'll know that I'll be blogging the festival for Clicket on their blog. I'm also blogging about selected events on my own blogs. You can for instance read about Saturday's Edinburgh Enlightenment Exchange here and here and also about the Science on a Plate exhibition organised by the Edible Gardening Project at the Royal Botanic Gardens, here.
Today's session featured dance psychologist Dr Peter Lovatt and choreographer Ruth Mills with the members of the Dance House Community Company from Glasgow. Using a mixture of video, live dance and audience participation they explored the ability of dance to communicate emotions. A very lively event that had all the audience dancing!
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Worldwide Reading Day for Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaiobo
This evening I attended a reading as part of the Worldwide Reading Day for Liu Xiaiobo, the imprisoned Chinese dissident writer who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.
Scottish writers read from Liu Xiaiobo's moving poems to his wife Liu Xia, who has herself not been heard of since her husband was awarded the Nobel Prize. They were joined by students from Napier University who read from poems they had written to Liu Xiaiobo and from his work and from the Chinese press.
It was a really moving event, good to see writers gathering together to highlight the fact that the freedom of expression that we take for granted is not something that is enjoyed everywhere in the world.
The event was organised by Scottish PEN Writers in Prison who actively campaign on behalf of imprisoned writers. It took place at Wordpower Books, Edinburgh's excellent radical independent bookshop, which has a brilliant selection of interesting books that are difficult to find anywhere else and hold some great events too!
Scottish writers read from Liu Xiaiobo's moving poems to his wife Liu Xia, who has herself not been heard of since her husband was awarded the Nobel Prize. They were joined by students from Napier University who read from poems they had written to Liu Xiaiobo and from his work and from the Chinese press.
It was a really moving event, good to see writers gathering together to highlight the fact that the freedom of expression that we take for granted is not something that is enjoyed everywhere in the world.
The event was organised by Scottish PEN Writers in Prison who actively campaign on behalf of imprisoned writers. It took place at Wordpower Books, Edinburgh's excellent radical independent bookshop, which has a brilliant selection of interesting books that are difficult to find anywhere else and hold some great events too!
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Three Ways of the Saw by Matt Mullins
I was delighted to be sent an advance readers copy of this book of short stories. Some are very short indeed too! Most of the stories revolve around young men, whose attitudes and characters wouldn't necessarily normally appeal to me. But it's a sign of the quality of both the writing and storytelling that I was drawn right into every story. The voices in the stories are very convincing, I was particularly impressed with the way a male writer could inhabit the world of a girl on the cusp of womanhood - Rachel, who spends most of No Retreat waiting for her first period to start while on a Catholc girls' retreat that she doesn't want to be on.
The back cover of the book claims that these vignettes are 'refreshingly void of clear meaning' but at the same time the reader can't help but grasp some sense of what life and relationships are really about in almost every one of these stories. I Am and Always Will Be for example is a small but perfectly formed tale of how a young man reconsiders his judgement of the 'morbidly obese middle-aged lady' who lives near him.
The writing is consistently tight and infused with humour. To take an example from The Dog in Me, in which the narrator adopts a dog from the rescue to help him win over his attractive neighbour:
The plan was simple enough. Next time I saw my neighbor out watering her flowers in her short shorts and bikin top, I'd put Otto into action. Parade him casulally by. Let him work the cute. Nudge him to flutter those big brown eyes and give that floppy tongued smile. To make sure he truly understood what was at stake, I even showed him my view of things inching my bedroom curtain aside to reveal her sunbathing in her back yard. Otto licked his nose, gave a toothy yawn and went right on panting in appreciation. He was on board. All we needed now was an opportunity.
The best story in the collection though is the title one, Three Ways of the Saw, which offers the viewpoints of three people around the felling of a damaged tree. It's such a lovely story, I'll be giving it its own blogpost over on Crafty Green Poet in a few weeks time.
Three Ways of the Saw by Matt Mullins is published today by Atticus Books (whose website seems to be down at the moment!)
Reviewed for Brighton Blogger's Reading Challenge 2012.
To read my latest guest post on Brighton Blogger's Book after Book blog, click here.
The back cover of the book claims that these vignettes are 'refreshingly void of clear meaning' but at the same time the reader can't help but grasp some sense of what life and relationships are really about in almost every one of these stories. I Am and Always Will Be for example is a small but perfectly formed tale of how a young man reconsiders his judgement of the 'morbidly obese middle-aged lady' who lives near him.
The writing is consistently tight and infused with humour. To take an example from The Dog in Me, in which the narrator adopts a dog from the rescue to help him win over his attractive neighbour:
The plan was simple enough. Next time I saw my neighbor out watering her flowers in her short shorts and bikin top, I'd put Otto into action. Parade him casulally by. Let him work the cute. Nudge him to flutter those big brown eyes and give that floppy tongued smile. To make sure he truly understood what was at stake, I even showed him my view of things inching my bedroom curtain aside to reveal her sunbathing in her back yard. Otto licked his nose, gave a toothy yawn and went right on panting in appreciation. He was on board. All we needed now was an opportunity.
The best story in the collection though is the title one, Three Ways of the Saw, which offers the viewpoints of three people around the felling of a damaged tree. It's such a lovely story, I'll be giving it its own blogpost over on Crafty Green Poet in a few weeks time.
Three Ways of the Saw by Matt Mullins is published today by Atticus Books (whose website seems to be down at the moment!)
Reviewed for Brighton Blogger's Reading Challenge 2012.
To read my latest guest post on Brighton Blogger's Book after Book blog, click here.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Le Ton beau de Marot by Douglas R Hofstadter
This is a huge and brilliant book about poetry, translation, understanding and artificial intelligence that I can't begin to do justice to in my typical short review!
The main chapters of the book look at ideas around translation, particularly the essential untranslateability of certain words and phrases and with a large section on humour. Hofstadter also examines the history and development of artificial intelligence and mechanical translation programmes.
These main chapters are interwoven with multiple translations, by multiple writers of Ma Mignonne a poem by the old French poet Clement Marot. It could feel that this element of the book is overdone, but I found the comparisons between translations to be fascinating (it was also particularly instructive to see translations here made by mechanical translation programmes!). Many of the translations are really 'versions of' Ma Mignonne, or even 'poems inspired by' Ma Mignonne, which leads into discussions about how faithful a translation needs to be.
The penultimate chapter annoyed me. Hofstadter rants against modern poetry, and although I agreed with much of what he says he seems to entirely forget that rhyme wasn't often found in English language poetry before it was introduced from Italy!
The whole book is thought provoking, entertaining and insightful, recommended reading for anyone interested in poetry or translation. (And despite the title, it is in English (except for a few poems and phrases!).
Le Ton beau de Marot by Douglas Hofstadter published by Bloomsbury
I reviewed this for Brighton Blogger's 2012 Reading Challenge.
The main chapters of the book look at ideas around translation, particularly the essential untranslateability of certain words and phrases and with a large section on humour. Hofstadter also examines the history and development of artificial intelligence and mechanical translation programmes.
These main chapters are interwoven with multiple translations, by multiple writers of Ma Mignonne a poem by the old French poet Clement Marot. It could feel that this element of the book is overdone, but I found the comparisons between translations to be fascinating (it was also particularly instructive to see translations here made by mechanical translation programmes!). Many of the translations are really 'versions of' Ma Mignonne, or even 'poems inspired by' Ma Mignonne, which leads into discussions about how faithful a translation needs to be.
The penultimate chapter annoyed me. Hofstadter rants against modern poetry, and although I agreed with much of what he says he seems to entirely forget that rhyme wasn't often found in English language poetry before it was introduced from Italy!
The whole book is thought provoking, entertaining and insightful, recommended reading for anyone interested in poetry or translation. (And despite the title, it is in English (except for a few poems and phrases!).
Le Ton beau de Marot by Douglas Hofstadter published by Bloomsbury
I reviewed this for Brighton Blogger's 2012 Reading Challenge.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrick Christian Delius
I was delighted to win a copy of this book in Brighton Blogger's Italy in Reading Challenge last year. I'm now reviewing for her 2012 Reading Challenge. Most of my reviews for that challenge will be over on Crafty Green Poet with the theme of nature and environment. This book doesn't fit that theme so I'm reviewing it here.
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman is a beautiful meditation on loneliness, innocence and loss in Rome during the Second World War. The narrative follows the thoughts of a young, pregnant German woman as she walks from her home to a church where she is going to a musical recital. Her husband is with the German army in Tunis and she thinks about him and their marriage as well as about her position in Rome as a foreigner during wartime.
I felt that the book was a perfect compliment to Elsa Morante's History. That book is much longer (around 700 pages to Portrait's 125) and has many more characters! However both focus on a woman who is quite innocent of world affairs and sees the war very much in terms of how it affects her life.
Portrait is in the form of one long sentence. This sometimes puzzled me as I could see many points in the narrative where full stops would have been useful. It also really made me wonder what the original German text looked like, given that in many contexts in German the verbs go at the end of a sentence.....
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius translated by Jamie Bulloch, published by Peirene Press
As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks that take you to other websites where you can find out more.
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman is a beautiful meditation on loneliness, innocence and loss in Rome during the Second World War. The narrative follows the thoughts of a young, pregnant German woman as she walks from her home to a church where she is going to a musical recital. Her husband is with the German army in Tunis and she thinks about him and their marriage as well as about her position in Rome as a foreigner during wartime.
I felt that the book was a perfect compliment to Elsa Morante's History. That book is much longer (around 700 pages to Portrait's 125) and has many more characters! However both focus on a woman who is quite innocent of world affairs and sees the war very much in terms of how it affects her life.
Portrait is in the form of one long sentence. This sometimes puzzled me as I could see many points in the narrative where full stops would have been useful. It also really made me wonder what the original German text looked like, given that in many contexts in German the verbs go at the end of a sentence.....
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius translated by Jamie Bulloch, published by Peirene Press
As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks that take you to other websites where you can find out more.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Femmes of Power by Del Lagrace Volcano and Ulrika Dahl
I was delighted to win a copy of this book in Brighton Blogger's LGBT Reading Challenge last year. I'm now reviewing it for her 2012 Reading Challenge. Most of my reviews for this challenge will be over on Crafty Green Poet on the themes of nature and environment. This book doesn't fit in with those themes, so I'm reviewing it here!
Femmes of Power is a fabulous book, showcasing queer-identified femmes (lesbians, bisexual women, transexuals and bearded ladies) around the world. There are interviews, articles written in the style of letters and features, sharing individual's life stories and their thoughts on queer politics and identity.
Femme is about reclaiming femininity and subverting the expected norms of what that means. This book shows there are many ways of doing that!
My only complaint about the book is that it didn't feature any goths! Goth girls (and many goth boys) are total femmes, with all the attitude and confidence (though often not the awareness of gender politics) of queer-identified femmes. Many goths in fact are queer identified (someone once told me that all goths are bisexual though that may not be strictly true!).
But anyway, this book really inspired me to put on my best goth dress and high heeled boots and go clubbing. Though I may just go and sit up a tree instead.
Femmes of Power by Del Lagrace Volcano and Ulrike Dahl, published by Serpent's Tail
As ever, coloured text here contains hyperlinks that take you to other websites where you can find out more.
Femmes of Power is a fabulous book, showcasing queer-identified femmes (lesbians, bisexual women, transexuals and bearded ladies) around the world. There are interviews, articles written in the style of letters and features, sharing individual's life stories and their thoughts on queer politics and identity.
Femme is about reclaiming femininity and subverting the expected norms of what that means. This book shows there are many ways of doing that!
My only complaint about the book is that it didn't feature any goths! Goth girls (and many goth boys) are total femmes, with all the attitude and confidence (though often not the awareness of gender politics) of queer-identified femmes. Many goths in fact are queer identified (someone once told me that all goths are bisexual though that may not be strictly true!).
But anyway, this book really inspired me to put on my best goth dress and high heeled boots and go clubbing. Though I may just go and sit up a tree instead.
Femmes of Power by Del Lagrace Volcano and Ulrike Dahl, published by Serpent's Tail
As ever, coloured text here contains hyperlinks that take you to other websites where you can find out more.
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