Reading
I’ll be reading at the Circus Hostel Cellar Bar and Library, Weinbergsweg 1A, Berlin, at 7pm, Thursday 4 May.
Please RSVP by sending a message here on FB or to hello@thereaderberlin.com.
Workshop
I’m running weekend-long workshop at KLAK Verlag, all day Saturday 6 and Sunday 7. There are a maximum of 16 spots, and you can book your place by emailing hello@thereaderberlin.com.
I will be producing Intezaar / The Wait in Lahore, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad from April 6-11, in association with Justice Project Pakistan, Ajoka Theatre Pakistan, Complicite Creative Learning and Highlight Arts.
It is an interactive theatre piece bringing you stories straight from Pakistan’s prisons in an honest, heartfelt account of real inmates on death row.
6 April — 17.00
FCC – Forman Christian College, Lahore
FREE
This event is not ticketed, but please RSVP by contacting us via the details on the poster. Your name can be registered with the college which is necessary for your entrance on campus.
10 April — 17.00
National College of Arts (NCA), Rawalpindi
11 April — 18.30
Government College,Faisalabad
Details for 10 & 11 April coming soon.
On Thursday 27 July I’ll be at the Jupiter Artland hosting an evening of performance poetry. We’ll be exploring the grounds and taking in the art and words. Hope to see you there.
Join Saltire Prize-winning poet and curator Ryan Van Winkle for an engaging evening of poetry on a walkabout reading. Inspired by Jupiter Artland’s unique grounds and contemporary art, the Scottish Poetry Library and Jupiter Artland are showcasing the work of this original Scotland-based writer in a special, site-specific event.
Kindly supported by the Scottish Poetry Library.
Tickets are £12 (£10.80 for members). Thursday 27 July, 7-8.30pm.
Here is a video interview from Turkey, where I’ve been at the International Nilüfer Poetry Festival.
I’ve been profiled in the first edition of 50GS Magazine, a new digital literary journal of poetry, prose, innovative and cross-genre texts. My interviewers are Celia Wilding and Grace Hiu-Yan Wong, and you can read the whole edition on the 50GS website.
On Thursday 16 March I’ll join seven poets – Nicky Arscott, Nia Davies, Madara Gruntmane, Semyon Khanin, Artis Ostups, Eurig Salisbury and Arvis Viguls – for Poetry Connections, a multilingual evening of poetry at Rich Mix London.
Leading lights from Latvia’s vibrant poetry scene join contemporaries from Scotland and Wales for a unique reading in four languages. These award-winning poets will share newly translated poems, collaborations and experiments in a special event which reflects their friendship and celebrates the role art plays in building bridges between cultures.
With Nicky Arscott – Nia Davies – Madara Gruntmane – Semyon Khanin – Artis Ostups – Eurig Salisbury – Arvis Viguls – Ryan Van Winkle.
At this year’s StAnza International Poetry Festival I’ll be working alongside Anglophone poets Vicki Feaver and Tessa Berring and Francophone poets Michel Cassir and Aurélia Lassaque throughout the festival to create an entirely new poetic work. The finished product will be performed at 1pm on Saturday 4 March, Council Chambers in the Town Hall. Tickets are £4/£3. Hope to see you there.
Listen to new poetry in different languages as part of this year’s focus on French-language.
Throughout the week of StAnza 2017 Vicki Feaver and Tessa Berring will be working together with two francophone poets, Michel Cassir and Aurélia Lassaque, completing a collaborative residency in St Andrews, to create new work and translate each others’ poetry. Join us for a multilingual performance hosted by Ryan Van Winkle as they present the results of the residency: poetry doesn’t come fresher than this!
A joint event between StAnza, the Scottish Poetry Library and Literature Across Frontiers as part of the Literary Europe Live project supported by Creative Europe.
Kathrine Sowerby & Ryan Van Winkle
Berlin, you say, I remember
Rome, I say, you remember
the crossroads and the smell
of song, the ancient footprints
of cooking meat. The last cigarette
and the rubble at the bottom
of vodka drunk from a great height
at the Spanish Stair. Everyone there
turning round and round and round…
I promise, they will greet us like we are
the sofa, the mask, the television – singing
is coca-cola. And your masterpiece is blue
electric blue, the colour of my dreams.
Is it waiting, like the ghost of lions
in the coliseum? Milan is goodbye
to the moon. The moon, you say,
with no money left in train stations.
What next? I remember trying
to run to the top of the escalator
to get us that far. It swung low
looked up at wheels and bells
last night. And it was like a city –
I wanted to follow you south. I wanted
what we once had the map to, to boil
pasta in the street every morning.
I wanted the keys. I swung high
licked honey from plastic, shouted
Relax! And missed. My eye was off.
I wanted to spill oil and watch it
seep into the feather white cloth.
Tranquillity comes at a price. I steal wine
and I wanted to collect faces and pin them
to your hand in the fountain
pulling up wet copper and shove
them into your damp pocket in Paris
where you looked like the sun
looked like an angel that shone on stone
and bones below. Stay still while I draw
the corners of the room, the thing
that made us itch until our skin bled
and stained the sheets. Where is the key?
The money? The colour that doesn’t last
and I am hungry.
Kathrine says: “Writing collaboratively gives you a kind of freedom, a sense of ‘it’s not all down to me’ and ‘let’s go here now’ and ‘I can write whatever I want and it will sound different up against, threaded through, or wrapped around someone else’s words’. Which is a pleasure.”
Bio: Kathrine Sowerby’s chapbooks include Tired Blue Mountain (Red Ceilings Press) and Margaret and Sunflower (dancing girl press). Out very soon is her first collection That Bird Loved (Hesterglock Press) and her book of stories The Spit, the Sound and the Nest (Vagabond Voices). kathrinesowerby.com
I’ll be reading at the Whitespace Gallery’s second performance evening at 7.30pm, Thursday 26 January. Hope to see you there.
This is the second Performance evening at The Whitespace Gallery.There will be about 5/6 performers.
Doors open 7.15pm.
Show starts 7.30pm
A midway break for 10mins.
Entrance fee will be £5 on the door.
Alicia Sometimes & Ryan Van Winkle
My self – limps into the afternoon sometimes
we are perched on the fringes
of the universe, in cramped caverns
of marginalia unable to rush ahead, or move
at opportunity. We lean in closer, mesmerized
by embers from the insatiable flame of doubt.
My soul – always a stranger
who comes to visit at inconvenient times
knocking at the door, saying surprise
surprise, do you have anything hot to eat?
Every time we want to collapse, we let our legs fold
holding heavy unyielding minds, hardbound confusions.
*
My self – an adult. Knows
how to read a book for information.
My soul – a child still looking
a new, secret, pleasure.
It is a short amount of time.
It is glacial.
It is a concrete, so solid now.
It is a shadow of my shadow.
Maybe we don’t need millions.
Maybe we need just a few
white paper flowers.
*
My self speaks –
Every time we feel tawny, like some purple word hoodlum,
some upshot with too many full stops. Those days we
believe we’ve defrauded all around us with our bankable bluster
and blunt phrases – our unfathomed blue lagoon of talk.
I believe our dusty roars can fill an egomaniacal sawpit.
I believe the stars are narcissist too. And that the trees
will know hubris. I spend hours tranquilized or annoyed,
can’t get past the beginning of a particular philosophy.
‘I think therefore I am’
and that’s about it.
My soul speaks –
Every time we put our breath into something
every time we blow a bubble or feel our hairs
billowing like a thousand balloons about to raise
up with all the lusty air. Those days when
we go up a few miles and can see
our place in the city, those days we get high
enough to see our place in it all.
*
Dear Self, gravity gives us mass
and keeps us grounded
it is weak. Lift your hand, you’ve won.
Dear Soul, speak up. It’s like you landed
on the moon and we’re down here waiting
for one good word, one small step.
***
