Stuck in Hastings

December 1, 2010
I'd been hoping to travel to Manchester this morning to read in The Other Room series this evening (Wed 1 Dec). Unfortunately, rail services between Hastings and London have been severely disrupted, so I can't even complete the first leg of the journey and have had to cry off. Very disappointing.

Posted by Ken Edwards.

 

Manchester and Hastings

November 24, 2010
Busy week next. Up to Manchester a week from today to read at The Other Room. Here's the announcement:

The next Other Room is a week away, on 1st December 2010. We are back at our usual venue of The Old Abbey Inn, 61 Pencroft Way, Manchester, M15 6AY (on Manchester Science Park). Start time is 7 PM and admission is, as always, free. The performers are Neil Addison, Ken Edwards and Louise Woodcock.
Please note that this is a change to the earlier billing for this event.
There will be a well stock...
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Posted by Ken Edwards. Posted In : writing 

 

Small Publishers Fair

November 15, 2010

 
It was great to meet people at the Small Publishers Fair in the Conway Hall, London, over the past weekend. Some of the usual poetry addicts were otherwise engaged at an Olson conference, but there was a good attendance nevertheless, undaunted by the competing attractions in the capital of the Lord Mayor's Show and the rugby international at Twickenham. 



This is me taking part in a mini-Bill Griffiths showcase for the Collected Earlier Poems. My co-publisher on this book, Alan Halsey of West ...
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Posted by Ken Edwards. Posted In : Reality Street 

 

Hastings disassembled

November 4, 2010
Researching post-industrial imagery for some writing I'm doing, I have been fascinated over the past week by Andrew Moore's photographs of Detroit Disassembled (published with an essay by the poet Philip Levine). There are awesome images of abandoned car factories, theatres, ballrooms and the ruin that was once Michigan Central Station.

You can also view some of these and other images accompanying an excellent recent piece in David Byrne's blog. 

This sort of thing has sometimes been disparaged...
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Posted by Ken Edwards. Posted In : Hastings 

 

Past-loving gaze

October 20, 2010
The Review of Contemporary Fiction has run a review of my Nostalgia for Unknown Cities, by A D Jameson. (You can, of course, should you wish, buy this book on this very site, I mean here.)

The magazine itself arrived this morning, and it looks like another interesting issue, "Slovak Fiction", to follow spring 2010's "Writing from Postcommunist Romania". We in the Anglophone West are so abysmally ignorant of literary developments elsewhere, so I am grateful to RCF for its continuing endeavours....

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Posted by Ken Edwards. Posted In : writing 

 

National Poetry Day

October 7, 2010
What did happen to it?
That October Thursday
or whenever?
A voice like a self-
satisfied weasel 
or a caried and measled
inkslinger
coolly delivered its four words deep
into my orifice:
English poetry is dead. 
 
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Posted by Ken Edwards. Posted In : writing 

 

US trip part 2: Reading at the Poetry Center, San Francisco

October 3, 2010
I'm late with this update on my reading in San Francisco over a week ago (Sat 25 Sept). After a wonderful sojourn of two weeks in the US, we had a pretty tedious trip back, courtesy of a British Airways flight delayed by nine hours. It wasn't quite as bad as the eight-hour delay returning from Cuba two years ago - San Francisco International offers slightly more amenities than Havana airport - but it's not how I want to spend my waking hours.

Anyway, two days back in the UK I still feel semi-d...
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Posted by Ken Edwards.

 

US trip, part 1: The Church of St John Coltrane

September 29, 2010
On Sunday we went to church.

Haven't done that for a good many years, but this was different. I had always been curious about the St John Coltrane Church in San Francisco - wondered if it still existed, but there it was mentioned in the guidebook: services between 12 noon and 3pm every Sunday.

The church was founded by Franzo Wayne King, now Archbishop of the St John Will-I-Am African Orthodox Church, after he had had a religious experience listening to Coltrane's music.

Finding it was another m...
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Posted by Ken Edwards. Posted In : music 

 

60

September 13, 2010
Many thanks to everyone who came to my belated birthday celebrations in Hastings on Saturday 11 September - including a few who travelled from quite far afield. The Moors were the resident band, and I think gave a great show. By the end of the action-packed weekend, I was somewhat ... well, let's say that, briefly, I did feel my age, but the feeling soon passed and I'm back to my adolescent self.

I am off to the USA soon: Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco. Mainly a holiday, but I look forward...
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Posted by Ken Edwards. Posted In : writing 

 

Sometimes I think we all need a little forest glossary

September 4, 2010
Nothing has cheered me up quite so much this week as receiving Jeff Hilson's In the Assarts from Veer Books. It's a square book, Denise Riley-style (I love this) containing 68 numbered sonnets, one to a page. No, to be exact, 68 numbered 14-line poems alluding to the sonnet tradition, except that some maybe have 13 lines and a couple are double sonnets. If I sometimes have a gripe with the otherwise inestimable Veer, it is that the type in some of their books is a little too small and ugly, b...
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Posted by Ken Edwards. Posted In : writing 

 
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About ...


Ken Edwards This blog is written by Ken Edwards, co-founder and editor/publisher of Reality Street, and it's mainly about the press. Ken's personal blog can now be found at http://www.kenedwardsonline.co.uk