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Composer Thomas Butler discusses his composition, Elbow Room, performed this week by the Red Note Ensemble, which tells the story of how contemporary Glasgow was built. It includes fragments of films made in the 1949 and 1971 that looked forward to the future of Glasgow and Thomas’s piece reflects on the optimism that was present in the schemes and perhaps some of the mistakes that were made. He wanted to capture some of the excitement that the planners had to make a better life for everybody – that it could be an urban Utopia, even though they failed. Featuring music recorded at the performance at Summerhall with the Red Note Ensemble. Presented by Ryan Van Winkle and produced by Colin Fraser of Culture Laser Productions.

Very pleased to have been invited to take parts in Northampton Arts‘ series of Jonbar Archeology events & installations. With the Canadian poet Katherine Leyton and sound Artists Jonathan Prior we’ve created a poetic walking tour of Northampton exploring alternative histories and legacies. We’ll share that online soon or you can come try it out on 20 June before the Jonbar Cabaret & the mega Untune solstice event created by the artist Jantine Wijnja.
Jonbar Cabaret
20 June 2014, 8pm
Venue: NN Café, Number Nine Guildhall Road, Northampton NN1 1DP
A night of poetry, performance, music, readings and stories by Jo Blake Cave, Ben Moor, Ryan van Winkle and others, followed by through-the-night interventions and performances in the lead up to Untune at St Crispin’s. Tickets £5 available from NN Café.

Untune at St Crispin’s
21 June 2014, 3:30am
Meet at NN, Number Nine Guildhall Road, Northampton NN1 1DP
This year at summer solstice, you are invited to join us in commemorating the story of Doris Towers. We will use her story as an anchor for something more: a celebration of all that does not fit easily into our lives. A hike led by artist Jantine Wijnja will leave NN in time for us to watch the sun rise. Wear footwear ready for hiking and bring a bottle of water. Round trip will take approximately 3 hours.

Very pleased to be heading to Berlin with some very talented Scottish poets for VERSschmuggel, as part of the Literatur Werkstatt, Berlin. With Anna Crowe Scotland/UK – Odile Kennel Germany; Peter Mackay Scotland/UK – Dagmara Kraus Poland/Germany; Ryan Van Winkle USA –Björn Kuhligk Germany. Moderation: Aurélie Maurin editor, translator, Berlin.

The poesiefestival berlin invited some of Scotland’s most outstanding poets to meet up with German-speaking colleagues for the VERSschmuggel translation workshop.

The poets work in pairs on the translation, supported by intermediaries and interlinear translations. Through this process, an intensive smuggling of cultural connotations, poetic traditions, and compositional processes develops. The results of the workshops will be presented on two evenings. They also appear as a bilingual anthology with a CD in Scotland (with Freight Books) and in Germany (with the publishing house Das Wunderhorn). Part two of VERSschmuggel takes place on Wed 11.6.

Kindly supported by: British Council, Creative Scotland.

Please join us for the Edinburgh launch of A Bird is Not a Stone, a groundbreaking anthology of Palestinian poetry translated into the languages of Scotland. 

The collection features by 25 contemporary Palestinian poets and as many Scots writers, including the makar Liz Lochhead, Costa Award winner Kathleen Jamie and Guardian Fiction Prize winner Alasdair Gray.

The evening will include readings of poems from the collection in both the original and translations by Liz Lochhead, Abla Oudeh, Liz Niven, Harry Giles, Rachel McCrum and Ryan Van Winkle.

More information on the book can be found here.

What: Edinburgh Launch of A Bird is not a Stone

Where: Looking Glass Books, 3 Porters Walk, Edinburgh

When: Tuesday 3 June, 6pm

How Much: FREE

Culture Laser Live

“That’s Right – We’re Doing it Live”

culturelaser.com

The Multi-Coloured Culture Laser enters Berlin for a night of performance, discussion, drinking, and hot hilarious uke action. A podcast experience for your eyes & your hearts – done fucking live.

Featuring:

Sholem Krishtalka: Berlin diarist, Lurker, Tarot card maker—offering personal, political & compelling insights through art.

http://www.sholem.ca/index.php?/work/a-berlin-diary/

Imogen Heath: Sex, dark, light, beauty, humans, rabbits & music on film. Co-founder of nowMomentnow.com

http://vimeo.com/imogenheath

Sticky Biscuits: Marc & Naomi play cute, nerdy & naughty tunes on ukulele!

http://www.stickybiscuits.com/

+ tunes from the Culture Laser Collective Band: The Hilarious Psycho-Acoustic Enterprise (Drock & Alex’s Hilarious Productions)

pow pow zap!

When: Sunday! 8 June, 8PM!

Where:

altes finanzamt

Schönstedtstraße 7 – EG Neukölln 12043 Berlin

http://altesfinanzamt.blogspot.co.uk/

FREE!

Delighted to report that This Room is Waiting, a collection of the poems written during the Reel Iraq Festival by UK poets Jen Hadfield, Billy Letford, Krystelle Bamford and John Glenday, by Iraqi poets Zahir Mousa, Sabreen Kadhim, Ghareeb Iskander and Awezan Nouri, and edited by myself and Lauren Pyott, has been published by Freight Books. Working with literal translations of the Arabic and Kurdish poems, the English language poets have created new ‘versions’, startling works that channel the anger, fear, hurt, hope, joy and fragile optimism of the originals, reconnecting readers with the realities of real life in post-invasion Iraq, far beyond the banalities of cyclical western media stories.

‘What if it was our culture, our country that was invaded?’ is the question asked. This Room is Waiting fashions an extraordinary portrait of a country rebuilding after war.

Structo Magazine has also given us our first review: ‘The poets’ culture and experience shines through the poems, but there’s also a sense of connection based on the shared experience of writing and translating together.’

We talk with Molly Bernstein whose film, The Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay, was featured at this year’s Glasgow Film Festival. She discusses the 12 years it took to make the film and how it focuses on Ricky Jay’s interest in his own mentors. As Jay says himself, “The real key to learning is almost like the sensei-master relationship. The way you want to learn is by someone you respect showing you something.” We also feature a few excerpts from the film and a piece from co-director Alan Edelstein. Check out the film. Presented by Ryan Van Winkle and produced by Colin Fraser of Culture Laser Productions.

We spent a day at the fabulous Hidden Door Festival at the start of April and spoke with Dave Martin, one of the founders and organisers of the event as well as a number of the artists who took part. These include Harriette Yarrington talking about her turtle skull sculptures, Paddy Hare on improvisation, Alicja Pawluczuk on managing a cinema space and participatory video, Jenny Smith on her short film involving shadows in a monastery, Graeme Smith discussing his multimedia presentation involving 180 eggs labelled good and bad and Ed Stack on his ambitious Decagram event. Featuring music from BEDS and a track from Numbers Are Futile. Support Hidden Door by heading to their fundraising event on 17 May at the Liquid Rooms in Edinburgh. Presented by Ryan Van Winkle and produced by Colin Fraser of Culture Laser Productions.

Artist Sarah Roberts uses living organisms to create her art works. She talks about how she gets ‘other organisms to join in with me… Most things that move can paint. Don’t believe what your art teacher told you.’ We also feature Ewen Maclean of jazz outfit Algorhythmical. He talks about their debut Impending Joy. Presented by Ryan Van Winkle and produced by Colin Fraser of Culture Laser Productions.

We talked with Caroline Bird after her recent reading at The Sutton Gallery in Edinburgh. She discusses her latest collection The Hat-Stand Union and reads a couple of her poems. She also talks about the importance of reading for a poet and how an Arvon course she attended when she was 13 persuaded her to transform her readings habits. It obviously worked as she published her first collection at just 15 years of age. Produced by Colin Fraser of Culture Laser Productions.