Clive Birnie's Blog, page 2

A Short Noir-poem/film

National Poetry Day Screening on Big Screen Bristol

This is the short slideshow-film that will be playing on the Big Screen in Bristol’s Millennium Square for National Poetry Day today October 6th. I am told it will remain in the schedule for the rest of October as well. But as I understand that not everyone lives in Bristol – it is also showing EVERYWHERE else courtesy of Vimeo.

To accompany the screening I spent yesterday afternoon installing a number of window sticker prints of some of the pieces from the film around Millennium Square. This was an experiment in how to take the digital out into the real world where people might stumble across them inspired by a conversation with Paula Varjack about taking art out of formal art environments. I said for a while that I am exploring the places where digital and analogue collide and have been inspired by the willingness of the @Bristol Big Screen Bristol team to humour my ideas at what in the end was crazy short notice.

I also installed a few in the windows of Boston Tea Party in Clifton, Bristol. The manager Thom and his colleague Laura likewise willing to support a bit of kooky art-poetry collision.

 

 

 

A HashtagPoetry# Sequence on YouTube

A hashtagpoetry# sequence in response to URSPRUNGSALPHABET (Alphabet of Origin) by Nora Gomringer assisted by online translation engines and Twitter searches. All the images were created using apps on an iPhone 5S to redact and paint over screen shots of the iOS Twitter app generated via Twitter searches using terms generated by online translations of lines from Nora’s poem or occasionally the original German. The sequence was created and posted on Instagram and Twitter over 26 days from 1-26 May 2016.

This is the original poem by Nora that inspired the work:

 

 

On Saboteurs, innovation and publishing

Later this month it will be four years since Burning Eye Books published its first title, Slinky Espadrilles by Ash Dickinson. Earlier this month it was announced that Burning Eye had been nominated by enough people to make the shortlist for Most Innovative Published in Sabotage Review’s Saboteur Awards. This was the fourth time Burning Eye has been shortlisted for this award. We didn’t win in 2013, 14 or 15. I don’t think we will win this time either. That’s cool we are kinda small and kinda fringe. As I am fond of saying, just getting nominated is not bad going for a press run part-time from a spare bedroom near Bristol. But as usual it has made me ponder the innovation question. What exactly is it that we  do that makes people think us worth nominating? On the face of it,  you see, we all publish physical books. Either fairly standard trade paperback format or fairly ordinary (in terms of the physical specification of manufacture) hardbacks. Some aspects of our business model and how we try to work in a collaborative manner with our writers might from some quarters be seen as innovative, but we are not alone in this and unless you have worked with us as a writer you would not necessarily know this, so the number of potential nominators is pretty small. There are some under the hood kinks in how we run things that might arguably be considered innovative, but these are known only to a handful of people. So what is it?

My perception is that Burning Eye gets nominated for publishing what we might call standupslamperformancespokenword poetry. In which case the nomination is perhaps best understood as a vote of appreciation for the curation of the catalogue of writers. But is it innovative? Maybe I am wrestling with that I-word too much. Looking for atom splitting invention when innovation in the 21st Century is more about small incremental change rather than revolution. Maybe it is my outsider/imposter syndrome kicking in. What Burning Eye? Really? Innovative? Are you sure? We just publish poetry we like and work with people we like working with, is that innovative? Maybe I just need to shut up and do some work. After all it is the 11th of May as I write and we have only put 10 books out so far this year (combined Burning Eye and BX3)  and we are not even half way yet!

 

 

I Blame the Internet

To everyone who liked, shared, RT’d or expressed appreciation of or encouragement for my HashtagPoetry# project…

#NaPoWrMo Day 7

Download HashtagPoetry# – the @StAnzaPoetry Edition (Free)

Download your FREE ebook or PDF: HashtagPoetry# – the StAnza Edition.

At the beginning of March 2016 I had the honour of being the Hashtag Poet in residence at the StAnza International Poetry Festival in St Andrews (Scotland).  The residency had three elements:

1. An installation / projection of a selection of the work I had produced over the previous year as I had developed my HashtagPoetry# project on Instagram and Twitter.

2.A DIY open workshop at the Byre Theatre in St Andrews encouraging festival attendees to make blackout / hashtag poems (see some of the results at the end of this post**).

3. Creating and posting (mostly) new work in response to the festival and its themes.

For the final element I lined up a series of pieces ready to post during my stay in Scotland and then added new work created over my three days at the festival. I will admit I did re-post a couple of older pieces just because circumstances reflected the content and they worked within the specific context of those moments but the majority of the work was created specifically for StAnza.

I have collected these 28 pieces in a FREE ebook & PDF, HashtagPoetry# – the StAnza Edition. You can sign up to download it here.

I continue to post new work as part of this ongoing project on Instagram and Twitter and am currently creating a new piece each day throughout April as part of NaPoWriMo.

 

** Here are a selection of blackout / Hashtag poems made by StAnza Festival attendees:

#NaPoWriMo day 6 – the Perfect Ghost

NaPoWriMo Day 5: Apparently Ancient…

Advance Review Copies Available

I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before to post this here.

If you are are book reviewer and you use Netgalley you can download an Advance Review Copy of my forthcoming book HashtagPoetry# – the Hidden Poetry of Twitter via this link.