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So much great stuff to update you on today, as we delve headlong into a brand new Culture Laser and embark on a shiny globetrotting Bookmarked with the Scottish Book Trust.

In the Laserland we explore the world of molecular mixology on this week’s episode with Paul Tvaroh of Lounge Bohemia, a place in Shoreditch where possession of a suit is grounds for summary ejection, and a place where some really excellent art and cocktails can be sampled with equal gusto. We talk Paul’s theatrical and playful creations, including a very unique shoe-based drink and a cocktail served in a hollowed out Bible “that smells like an old church and tastes like a priest – or vice versa”. We also feature the track MaraGnawa by Gol from their new album Strange Times – support them on Pledge Music, and listen to it right right here!

In the Bookmarked corner, I had the pleasure of talking to Gavin Francis , author of Empire Antarctica, about ice, silence and Emperor Penguins; we headed off to Mesopotamia for the Erbil Literature Festival in Kurdistan to hear from young Iraqi writer Sabrin Qadi and her our friend Krystelle Bamford; closer to home, I had a great chat with Glasgow crime author Caro Ramsay about her new book The Blood of Crows, which The Guardian called a “bleak, black and brilliant” read. So much great stuff to check out! And all at the click of a little triangle.

Really exciting news! The good people at Reel Festivals have announced their full programme of events for Reel Iraq 2013, which runs from 21-25 March all across the UK, including dates for the calendars of the citizens of London, Dumfries, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling. There’s a huge amount going on, with short film showings, music, poetry and writing workshops, really worth making a note of and coming along to support some of the best artists Iraq has to share with us.

We’re hitting the road in a massive poetic convoy with our Found in Translation team, featuring Ghareeb Iskander, Sabreen Kadhim, Zahir Mousa, and Awezan Nouri, our friends John Glenday, Jen Hadfield, William Letford, and Krystelle Bamford, plus so many massively talented UK-based poets joining us along the way, including George Szirtes, Tom Pow, Vicki Feaver, Miriam Gamble and Joe Dunthorne, to name a scant few. It’s going to be one week-long celebration of poems and the humans who write them, we’ll be exhausted and euphoric and we invite you to do likewise.

PLUS if you can make it up to Raploch Community Campus on Monday 25th, we’re throwing an intensely unique Golden Hour to bring this year’s Reel Iraq to a close, featuring all the aforementioned Iraqi and Scottish poets, short films, and music from Billy Liar, Hailey Beavis and others. You will pause, ponder, clap and sing along.

Can’t wait to get all this underway, can’t wait to see you there, and to put you in the mood, here’s Reel Festival’s very own theatrical trailer.

Lately I had the extreme pleasure of chatting about theatre and monsters with Nicholas Rawling of Paper Cinema, a company I cannot gush about sufficiently enthusiastically, or describe in sufficiently elaborate terms. Their latest production is The Odyssey, which is on at Battersea Arts Centre until 6 March 2013, and if for whatever reason you’re not totally excited about an ‘exploded comic book’ take on Odysseus’ voyage already, we get a chance to hear some of the amazing music from the show performed by Christopher Reed, Hazel Mills, Imogen Charleston and Quinta. We also feature ‘The Secret Life of a Second Hand Copy of ee cumming’s 100 Selected Poems’ from artist, playwright, producer and top-notch reader Deborah Pearson. It will make the hairs on your neck do a fun dance.

We have a great podcast for you, alls you gotta do is click the right-pointing triangle below.

In this week’s Multicoloured Coloured Culture Laser I sat down with Leonora Olmi and Lydia Beilby of Screen Bandita, a collective where previously abandoned film can be given new lease of life through its contextual re-imagination and exposure to a new audience. They curated a bunch of the Cameo’s double features, made a series of awesome Super 8 movies, and now encompasses old and charmingly obsolete formats of all stripes. They rule and have a great grasp of unusual cinematic sensibilities and a very particular kind of nostalgia for film that will bust your mind. Plus our friend, the magnificent William Letford, reads us a wintery poem giving us something to think about in the snow with the slow traffic and life-saving mugs of tea. I have been places with William whose work is often observant, funny and wise. And finally, we feature two tracks from the new album The Mule and The Elephant from The Payroll Union, these guys are deep and play super loud when they get together, which is something I love as much as their keen take on Americana. Get their album at the bandcamp like nowish. It’s all here, hit the play button and let us light up your ears.

SJ Fowler: poet, friend, bear-lover

As mentioned last month, ‘Commiserate’ is an experiment in poetic collaboration born out of SJ Fowler’s inspiring Enemies project. As I’ll be down in London’s Rich Mix on the 9th as part of his ‘Comrades IV‘ line up I thought I’d share one of the five collaborations between SJ & I. Dig into Fowler’s ‘Enemies’ site and I’ll be sure to let you know when his big book of collaborations comes out in September. If the names associated with the project are any indication, it will be a dynamic, challenging publication featuring cutting edge work from throughout Europe.

February, 2013: SJ Fowler

Fowler says: ‘The Burbs is a collaborative writing through of the city space that is not the centre, and so these poems, dotted across the globe, are neither periphery or core. The goal was to leave behind who wrote what, and become poetically annulled, as is appropriate in a celebration of the places people only go to live’.

The Poem Says:

Bled Suburbs

if there is a date to make
what if I arrive injured?
swinging a cane with pleasure, singing
this is all coming together
sighing
a student of Hebrew
a Scot
delayed at the threshold by the English
rewriting / a marsh
that kills an army
blue cross
dark red beef cross family feelings
let’s abandon the discussion in
favour of poetry that is comedy
that is not song
that is what time slows down to
stick a pin in meat
friends

I have a yellow heart
an apple
a burned-out physic Dodge
I can psychic drive
38 dollars and
desert desert desert
a wilderness of mirrors
in my left pocket, no
right pocket, rain
where my right pocket should be
You are right
to ask questions. You are left
turn at the light. I have one
thing I never talk about
another I can’t stop breathing.
What is a name
if you don’t know the eye,
the color red?

so I’m trained now
steven did you know, that even if you
have bad knees and can crouch down,
you can actually lean your torso
forwards from your hips? it’s called
bending over ooo tiny rabbit, i see your moon
but your health is crucial
to the inflatable you can’t resist
puffing air into your chest and pushing
into rain and I only remember
my mother’s maiden name
when they ask, steven did you hear
the shaking keeps you steady
you should know

RVW says: I was genuinely flattered when SJ asked if we could make a sequence of poems together. I had no idea what to expect or if I would totally embarrass myself / ourselves in this process. Not only was Fowler generous in his encouragement but he also seemed fearless in a way that was very freeing. I could toss out insane non-sequitors, drop an F-bomb, shift the poem radically and know that he’d run with it. Further, I think we had a genuine conversation though the work – we both stole from our discussions or emails and it was heartening to see Fowler use my own words against me. I can’t say enough kind things about this avant-garde provacatour. I remain inspired by his work and his commitment to the form.

The Streets of Erbil

In the past few weeks I’ve had the huge privilege of going out to Iraq with the excellent people at the Erbil Literature Festival and Reel Festivals. While in Erbil and Shaqlawa in the Kurdish region of Iraq we played and worked with 8 Scottish and Iraqi poets – whose work you’ll see here in the UK in March – but in the meantime here are a few blog posts to whet your appetite and to give you an idea of what Reel Festivals is all about. Click on the headline for the full feature! 

Smile, You’re in Erbil!

In less than a day our troupe of Scottish and Iraqi poets will converge here in Erbil before bussing over to Shaqlawa in the foothills of the Safeen mountains. There, not unlike everywhere in Western Europe, there will be snow.

On the journey here, the snow was our enemy but soon, I hope, it will be our friend. Weather conditions meant Dan Gorman and I were waylaid in Vienna. While kicking around the airport Dan met a couple of stranded Iraqis on their way home to Oslo. When they heard where we were headed one exclaimed, “Shaqlawa makes me insane!” This has become our motto.

In Which We Glimpse World Peace

I first met Lukman Derky in Damascus in November, 2010. At the time he was running a spoken word event so rare, courageous, and new that it was covered in The New York Times before Syria began meriting headlines for the worst reasons. A cultural cowboy, Derky’s Bayt al-Qasid (House of Poetry) was doing something many of us take for granted – bringing people together to perform and play. In that dimly lit basement bar where secret police likely hid in plain sight – people spoke freely.

Poets in the Game Zone

A chance encounter of an evening stroll in Shaqlawa, Iraq found the Reel Iraq cohort make a surprisingly fluid transition from poet to sportsmaster.

Hello folks! I’m back in Scotland after a fantastic trip around Iraq with the wonderful people at Reel Festivals, and I’m kicking off the old reading schedule at one of Edinburgh’s acest pubs, the Waverley, for the newest edition of the Caesura reading series. It happens on the second Friday of every month and is totally free.

If you come along you’ll hear work from fine fellow, Sandy Hutchison, and our friends Sean Cartwright and Lila Matsumoto. Should be a cracking night! Hope to see you there.

SJ Fowler and his performing bears

On Saturday February 9 I’ll be joining our friends at the Rich Mix Arts Centre in London Town for the first event for avant garde poet SJ Fowler’s project Enemies. It’s a collaborative poetry project, a multidisciplinary programme of events, exhibitions and publications that takes a bonesaw to the skull of poetry and lets the butterflies out.

I’ll be joining some immensely talented writers, including Sidekick Books‘ Kirsty Irving with whom I collaborated, plus all of these literary chaps:

Chris McCabe & Tom Jenks
George Szirtes & Carol Watts
Peter Jaeger & Tim Atkins
James Wilkes & Christodoulos Makris
Stephen Emmerson & Lucy Harvest Clarke
Alex Niven & Joe Kennedy
Roddy Lumsden & Carrie Etter
Todd Swift & Paul Perry
Marek Kazmierski & Stephen Watts
Sophie Mayer & Astrid Alben
Holly Pester & Daniel Rourke
Tamarin Norwood & tba

I’m really looking forward to performing with these guys, it’s a super exciting opportunity to do something that’s a complete departure from the norm as far as poetry goes, it will make your weekend a thing of beauty. Hope to see you there!

What: Camarade IV presents Enemies

When: Saturday February 9, 7pm

Where: Rich Mix Arts Centre, Bethnal Green, London

How Much: FREE FREE FREE NO MONEY

Introducing – The Golden Hour

Back in October we hit the road in the Gorilla Perfumes tour bus and made beautiful music and words happen all over the UK’s favourite cities. We furthermore cannot be held accountable for the brief and slight olfactory improvements made in those cities. It was an incredible ride, and for those of you who missed us we present a brief video journey across the island. All the films were done by Luke Flemming on our Golden Hour ‘Infused & Bemused Tour’.

Golden Hour – Manchester – Billy Liar

Golden Hour – London – Robin Grey and Collisions Dance

Golden Hour – Edinburgh – Inspace

Golden Hour – Leeds – Robin Grey and Collisions Dance

Golden Hour – Oxford – Garance Lewis

Golden Hour – Sheffield – Hailey Beavis

Golden Hour – Brighton – Hannah Moulette / Ruth Skipper

Golden Hour – Stirling – Andy McKay

Golden Hour – Newcastle – Billy Liar and Ryan Van Winkle

Golden Hour – Stirling – Lake Montgomery

If you’re looking for a cracking way to mark the beginning of the new year, you sure could do worse than click the play button on our third Bookmarked podcast with the Scottish Book Trust. It’s a great show, featuring conversations about kids’ wild imaginations with author and illustrator John Fardell, discovering the world of football with Rodge Glass and rubbing shoulders with the League of Extraordinary Booklovers.

Somerset Maugham Award-winning author Rodge Glass talks about sports and his new book, Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs, in which I learn who Ryan Giggs is;

John Fardell takes a break from creating a mural at the Mitchell Library to share what it’s like to be an illustrator-in-residence, how kids constantly surprise him and who his favourite illustrators are;

2012 New Writers Award winners Andrew Sclater and Roy Gill discuss how the award changed their lives and their writing and what we can expect from them in the future;

Karen Cunningham, head of Glasgow libraries, speaks about the future of books during Book Week Scotland;

Three members of the League of Extraordinary Booklovers talk about how they were chosen, what their mission is and what books they were eager to recommend.

Wow! This was a fantastic podcast to make and record, these guys are really clued in on a massive range of ideas, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll have a much greater understanding of the metaphorical import of Ryan Giggs. Enjoy.