the way she bends

the way she bends:
like a sailor,
as luck would have
it. & i am
lucky.

on television
the starship troops
are marching up
to beat us to
a pulp, for being
found wanting
too much: a place
to live, to not be
sick in, a fair
go at it all
or at it all
again.

when i say us
i mean them -- i
am not there i
am with you, &
thinking we cling
to love in lieu
of anything just.

love,
one step down from
god.

dragged out beatings,
wreck of love's
temporary
dwelling, calling:
what threat is posed
by those who stand
for everyone
by kneeling in
copper nests
to feel the cold
smack of cash they
don't have? we have
cash, a little,
& are not
buying it.

being ‘personal’,
i’d say for sure
your love for me
is equal to
half of my love
for you [currency]

makes sense – i mean:
you wouldn't buy
yourself a present.
you wouldn't write
yourself a poem.
you can’t arrest
yourself in the
dead night or keep
yourself a secret.

& besides: if
i loved you like
i love my country –
if I loved you like
i love me you'd
be sorry. if i
loved you like i
love me you'd be
dead –
& what good would
you be to me
then.

Sonnet 101

why is everybody always writing
about fucking like me the more writing
to be done the less time to do the
necessary fucking for poetry

which is just as well when “at a bar” or
side by side alone & almost having
sex but in the end we change our minds ‘cos
work is early/harsh work makes you nervous

lines up the days & besides you don’t love
each other so much today as yesterday
& that dwindle’s dampened the itch to do
anything but write some stupid sonnet

frigid at the kitchen table no damp
itch to speak of no great love to leap off

from SOUVENIR

i’m sick of love & sad for what I’ve lost:
that bullshit fix of nervy hands has gone &
rude spring’s a bully, sun & wavy cold air
& you are well, i having never been well i,
i want to meet you anew and be loved &
not thought of as silly – to you now i’m
a clown or a dog waiting to be put down
& so my breasts are hairy teats for cubs i love
& are not born, & not for you, my new nude
is atrocious & i wonder who you
think of in the shower, what wets your meat
if not my putrid body you once & gently
fucked & which i, promising it to you, have lost
the receipt for. go away for a long time


& meet me at the airport, run me a bath
as before with water from the kettle so
kind & we’ll shiver in two inches forever,
thigh on thigh never shrinking from the
moment but cycling it around the time
we do have, having been given each other, &
never unadorned or waiting to get broke.
i’d wait to die forever to have unlost
that time & die to lose it all again,
having taken too much, having got
love unspent not wanted & staid unhappy
inside the kettle waiting to be filled kindly,
touched on the cunt or met at the airport with the
ghosts of animal kingdoms still inside me.

parlour

I saw pictures of them dressing, all breathing,
all bare in the fires, the banks, the parlours,
the coding heat, the topic shakes, slacks,
looming ill over necks & ties, in my coat
made of feelings, in the semi-dark
of your smile I run away from naming.

The parlour has collapsed, is filling with snow,
mother is by the bureau, my schoolgirl god
in a coat made for crying, lips like thick
flames & she places her strange head upon
my chest & begs to bend to each amber flag,
hands about her ears in a clement gesture.

We fasten ourselves up like girls in parlours,
Shun sofa secrets, deaf words, these histories:
Domestic relics, my baby gods, now dead—
the sensation of it is gelatinous,
piles of cold carpet everywhere underfoot,
like snow – the room is filling with snow—

mother is by the door, & it is hard
to see her through the smoke, a sweet-smelling
smog pooled around us & we are melting,
we’re like honey – this is for you – I’m young &
I know nothing – I occupy all of your time.
I like having art poured into me wide-eyed.

Mother’s by the mantle, it’s too dark to see,
I’m freshened by hot bile, this nuance
of your love’s long guts glued onto me.
I like having money poured into me
with eyes closed or rolled inwards
in prayer, & that way I’m your trinketry.

Soft fists tumble onto me like snowflakes:
this is the louse of love, this is its bite.
I am now covered in a brotherly blue,
the ultramarine of fresh men – sticky, thick.
Snow piles in each tidy corner. Elsewhere
there are fires. Mother has left the room.

The police are on their way. It is too bright
to see. A series of arms appear
to wrap around each other in blind
solidarity. This is for anyone.
A Molotov cocktail sings. This is not love.
This is for no thing—

Animal Hospital

Animal Hospital

Some times like sin sugar that broke that crashes
Bruise of rib like rip off cloth and let salt
Winds scathe in eye in face I am sandy,
Long for ocean grind – but shy, but shy – “I
Don’t owe you any money don’t have to
show you all my things” – just live, okay? ‘Cause
all our money is etch-a-sketch, and I
Think too often about the forward times
When our things are out and old on the street,
When we are out of time, stink, are the laughed
At lucky ones or, worse, screaming in two
Different hospitals, species strangers,
Unknown/unknowing.

This is the ailing
Of peace, the rearrangement of passion.
We do not kiss but strum ourselves apart.
The sun has its sins, the heart its heavy.
This poem should be longer, and more careful.
Give me time.

meditations on an empty room

from a

new poem

Toward her, a cantata of grace (part one: suture)
For G.

If I were you and you were me I would
Turn and turn again, move my arms from left
To right, I would large I would small I would
Seek out all the danger. If I were me
And you were a tall blue thing a light coming
Out from the sides of all the sad then yes
I would stroke your ruffled feathers sleepy
And unknowing, blind in the bed which knows
Us, fucking or not – being us – your or
Me – is like getting away with it, laughing
then being slapped away like being told
we are too good – if I were you I would
disappear, would fright myself away – if
I were me I would beat myself across
Myself would find myself out and just say,
When you were a child you could not stay inside
And now you still must be caught and brought in
Clopping, cold and snotty from the wanting.
Play your games on a Wednesday scuff your dust
Do anything you would do if you were
you and I were me I would eat the whites
of your eggs your eyes and whisk the yolks out
to form themselves anew. Terror masses
around us – the whine of legitimate
lovemaking. I have accomplished only
you, am small and unable to shock. We
are here, chewing the courser fat to forget
the living freaks falling down like zips like
propositions – FRANCE I LOVE YOU in food,
sour and sighed, and if I were you I would
move to a society dead of western
grace – and yes we shall move with our
motivations for moving writ large across
the screen as in a silent movie. I
Scratch myself deep inside the thicket of
your charm and anything alright still
Remains tough scuffing your oxfords
Beyond frigidity the meaning of which
Is caught in my wing and we acre carrying
The sky as emptiness, sustained beneath,
Sour and communicative…nobody’s
Intimate taste is perverse, and a lusty
Burning has set in between my scars, a
Crippling freedom braided into us, skirting
Savagely the legitimating reports
Of our deaths. If I were me I would
Be a bloated male goddess, as emotional
As I am British. If I were you I would go soft
Under the night’s shadow, I would kill the
Prose, I would kill the film, I would sick up
All the silence. If you were me I would
Smell you automatically for
What you are, manhandled automatically
in the summer of individual problems, unable
To talk anything out in a meaningful
Or sustained way we die faster than all
The other discourses. I have been growing
This hair since I was eleven and I
Quite like it, as animals like their
Cellars. If I were you I would make
Myself my pastime, young and difficult
As I am. Constellations of honour
Arrange themselves above us as we eat
At the heels of poetry & I splay
myself dizzy with the effort of
Living like a sexy patriot spasming
down my spine. This light has never been in
my control, my living pose unearthed
and taking form in slow in fast inside
the pulse of your neck in repose,
rigid with freedom. If I were you
I’m not sure I’d stay, but that does not
Make your lascivious goodbye any more
Charming.

The Other Room, Manchester, December 2009

I read atThe Other Room in Manchester last month, with Nick Thurston. Here be documentx. Great and provocative event, worth the train zoom up.


Sophie Robinson

Other | MySpace Video


Sophie Robinson interview

Other | MySpace Video

Things To Love, 1

1. Amy King is the bomb, and her new collection Slaves Do These Things looks great, though I have yet to get my sticky fingers on it. I have been mostly addicted to 'The Always Song', featured on Rethink this week.

2. Pamela Klaffke's photography, esp the bestia parvulus and ladies of the balaclava series. Analogue joy.


3. Gaggle. 22-piece all woman alt choir. I can only listen to them for about 4 minutes without wanting rip my own hair out, but in limited doses I think they're fucking brilliant. Maybe it's my predictable, optimistic new years nicotine starvation but I LIKE CIGARETTES is my favourite (performed at Barden's Boudoir, where we went last night and had a grand ol' time...more on that....)



4. Tavi, my 13-yr-old fashion guru. Georgie thinks it's creepy. Soz.

5. Last week G and I managed to just catch Sophie Calle's Take Care of Yourself (Prenez soin de vous) at the Whitechapel Gallery, before the exhibition ended. I <3 Sophie Calle more than most things, but haven't seen much of her work exhibited before. The concept behind the exhibition was, typically for Calle, a matter of the heart - a lover broke up with her by email, signing off with the phrase 'take care of yourself'. Calle then gave the letter to a load of women, chosen on the basis of their skill/profession, and asked them to 'translate' the piece. The exhibition documents these translations from psychologists, police, actors, musicians, dancers, philosophers, writers, and a parrot - amongst many others - in a multimedia frenzy. The exhibition is well curated but was obv crowded on the last weekend of its run, and besides there's just too much text to read in one go. It reminded me of Roni Horn's Another Water in that respect, and the volume of responses, text, sounds, images and respondents - all repeating, in various way - the same page of text - all serve to highlight the gravity of damage done. I love the way that Calle externalises the personal in this way, making art of our need to repeat a story in order to grieve. And it's totes more productive than boring your friends with your post-breakup, wine-fuelled melancholy night after night. I bet that email guy is really kicking himself, but it was a bit of a foolish move, let's face it. Guardian Interview / extracts from book.



6. A bit late, but the Delirious Advent Kalender, co-ordiated by wonderous Dusie Press (aka Susana Gardner) has been such a yummy daily treat for me the last month. 25+ (extra treats for xmas day) audio poems - all up now, obv - gorge yourself. Like finding your advent calender, slipped down the back of the radiator on Dec 2nd, in early Jan. Except nothing's been compromised by improper storage. End of dubious metaphor. Faves include Gardner herself, Emily Critchley, Marianne Morris & Cathy Wagner.

7. Last night - Mofofest = whisky/bands/djs at Barden's Boudoir in Stokey. We saw a lot, but my faves were ultra styled electro Bunny Come - who must be complimented for their awesome dance moves and totally great stage presence despite having an audience of, like, 12 - and Chapter 24, who might well fill the small hole in my heart made by The Long Blondes breaking up. Happy dancing in sparkly pants with edge of unhinged lunacy. Just my cuppa.

glove bark

A regime devoted to time
embodied in the colour of a wall or running
repeatedly into yourself
spattering thighs; knee-deep in lard
breath-by-breath attack
starving for a digital release I
am accurate – moot musculature –
diligently flowing
outward away from posterity whipped
into relief the texture of
beaten leather;
suction cups, monster artists stuck to myriad
bathroom floors as a naïve
defence against anxiety –
Billie Holliday vox
tremors soaked in deep red quiet amid
the itchy knife
of emotional compromise –
inventories of abstracted
feeling burned into grids as markers of
claustrophobic unlovability, which
worn as a crown demands
the question
why am I here –
what did my tidy heart want
to witness?

hunch & shuffle

The modesty of caramel – burned, earthy
& smashed against my wanton mouth in stickled
smudges – make a meal of my gushing brains, take
my faith as fallen & my delicate curls
unshaven. Pimp your pickles with my bluish
pelvis. I crook myself upon you, dribbling
with an anorexic urgency, and I don’t see
your workload lightening beneath the crusted
halo of your charm, cowboy, so knuckle down.

flesh leggings

A persuasive blackness of spirit touches
you, & I do not have the answer you
Feel you deserve. Your olive-oil stomach
Is calling out for the thrill of lips, &
Your hurt curls are enshrined in cotton.
Small and puffy by the door, a backless
Vibration falls amongst us, a low-flowered
Anger. You hold out your palms of feel the
Chesty pulses, and soon it creeps in you,
Harping over and over the hands and
Cities. The loving diagnosis of
Your hip shot from grace – a stapler greeted
By skin, broke, fell to earth like a gazelle.

Upcoming Readings

DESPERATE FOR LOVE]
22nd September 2009
Komedia Studio Bar, Gardner Street, Brighton
8-11pm / £3.50

Keston Sutherland is a Brighton based poet. He teaches at the university and through his editing of the poetics journal Quid, co-editing (with Andrea Brady) of Barque Press, and most notably through his own poetry, has already made a huge and pemanent contribution to poetry culture in Britain. His most recent collections are: Hot White Andy, Neocosis and Neutrality. He's read all over the world and his poems have been translated into several languages. Keston's a brilliantly engaging reader. His poems are spiked and sticky, spattered with jump edits and blurt jargon, precise in their articulations of the millivolt twitching of difficulty, and funnier than you think or deserve.

Sophie Robinson is a London poet who's work has appeared in various online magazines including Pilot, How2 and Dusie as well as Jeff Hilson's Reality Street Book Of Sonnets and Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century (Bloodaxe) Her most recent collection, 'a' (Les Figues Press) is a magnetically fascinating tender and beautiful book about loss. Everyone we've shown it to has been transfixed by it. I hope she brings some so you can all buy one.

Neil Palmer is Brighton's foremost and only Hauntiquarian. A mage of divergence, his stuff is: punk rock, words, tailoring, speculative enquiry. All conducted at the sub-rumour valency. Provisional cassettes, secret discographies, unmaintained websites, and a recent chapbook Hillwaking all testify to his fierce, baffling, kind, impatient intelligence.

PLUS: Desperate For Love regulars reading, Alan introducing people and rambling slightly, Steph from Born Bad playing beautiful and apposite records, and a free chapbook for the first 50 of you through the door. Fraser behind the bar, Lisa on the door, it's a family affair. If you come, you're family. You are so coming.


14 HOUR : VOICE RECOGNITION SPECIAL
24th September 2009
Whitechapel Gallery, Whitechapel High Street, London E1
7.30pm / FREE ENTRY


To mark the release of Bloodaxe's anthology Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century, 14 Hour presents 5 of its poets.

AMY BLAKEMORE + HEATHER PHILLIPSON + ADAM O'RIORDAN + SOPHIE ROBINSON + AHREN WARNER

"Who are the best young poets today? Which new poets are most likely to become the defining voices of their generation? Two young editors, JAMES BYRNE and CLARE POLLARD, set out to answer these questions in Voice Recognition, a vibrant anthology introducing 21 of the most exciting young poets of the 21st century.

"Voice Recognition showcases the work of a talented new wave of poets from Britain and Ireland who are just now starting to make their mark. None has yet published a first book of poems. All are likely to produce distinctively different debut collections in the next few years.

"Influenced by poetries from across the world, and unafraid to take risks, all these poets are committed to extending and remaking the traditions of poetry in a fast-changing new millennium. Their poems show a lively range of styles and subjects - sometimes sexy, sometimes dark, but consistently brimming with vitality. The future of poetry begins here.

"Voice Recognition includes: Jay Bernard, Emily Berry, Amy Blakemore, Siddhartha Bose, Ailbhe Darcy, Joe Dunthorne, Miriam Gamble, Sarah Jackson, Annie Katchinska, Mark Leech, Toby Martinez de las Rivas, Jonathan Morley, Adam O'Riordan, Colm O'Shea, Sandeep Parmar, Heather Phillipson, Kate Potts, Sophie Robinson, Jack Underwood Ahren Warner, and James Womack." - official blurb.

● AMY BLAKEMORE was a Foyle Young Poet of the Year in both 2007 and 2008, and has since been highlighted by the Times as one of the top ten rising stars of British poetry. Her work has been featured in various places, including Iota, Brittle Star, Rising and Pomegranate.

● HEATHER PHILLIPSON has received commissions and awards for her writing, including the Michael Donaghy Poetry Prize in 2007, an Eric Gregory Award in 2008, and a Faber New Poets Award in 2009. Her pamphlet will be published by Faber and Faber in October 2009. She is also an artist and exhibits nationally and internationally, with recent shows in London, Paris and New York. She has a PhD in Fine Art practice and received the Sir Leslie Joseph Young Artist Award 2009.

● ADAM O'RIORDAN was born in Manchester and educated at the universities of Oxford and London. From 2008 to 2009 he was Poet-in-Residence at The Wordsworth Trust, the Centre for British Romanticism. His first collection will be published by Chatto and Windus in 2010.

● SOPHIE ROBINSON was born in 1985, and lives and works in London. She has an MA in Poetic Practice from Royal Holloway, and is currently working on a practice-based PhD at Royal Holloway. Her first chapbook, Killin'Kittenish!, was published by yt communications in 2006. Since 2005 she has performed at numerous events in the UK and the US. Her critical and creative work has been featured in Dusie, How2 and Pilot.

● AHREN WARNER has published his poems in magazines including Poetry Review, Magma and The Wolf. He has work forthcoming in several anthologies, including Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century (Bloodaxe) and Identity Parade: An Anthology of New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe). He also has a pamphlet forthcoming from Donut Press. He maintains a keen interest in post-Heideggarian ontology and aesthetics, and kittens.


OPENNED: LAJEE FUNDRAISER
6th October 2009
The Foundry, Great Eastern Street, London EC2A
7.30pm / FREE ENTRY

The next Openned night, the Land for Lajee Fundraiser, takes place on Tuesday 6th October.

Confirmed readers so far are: Sean Bonney, Sophie Robinson, Harry Gilonis, Josh Stanley, Tim Atkins, Nat Raha, Posie Rider, Peter Philpott, Alan Hay, Michael Zand, Amy De’Ath, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Frances Kruk, Raz, Andrea Brady, Justin Katko.

Publishers donating to the book table include: Barque Press, Reality Street, Bad Press, West End Lane Books, Critical Documents, Grasp Press, Hot Gun!, Veer.

Come along and buy amazing books to support the Lajee Project. Visit Openned for more details about the night and the project.

Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century

Who are the best young poets today? Which new poets are most likely to become the defining voices of their generation? Two young editors, James Byrne and Clare Pollard, set out to answer these questions in Voice Recognition, a vibrant anthology introducing 21 of the most exciting young poets of the 21st century.

Voice Recognition showcases the work of a talented new wave of poets from Britain and Ireland who are just now starting to make their mark. None has yet published a first book of poems. All are likely to produce distinctively different debut collections in the next few years.

Influenced by poetries from across the world, and unafraid to take risks, all these poets are committed to extending and remaking the traditions of poetry in a fast-changing new millennium. Their poems show a lively range of styles and subjects – sometimes sexy, sometimes dark, but consistently brimming with vitality. The future of poetry begins here.

Jay Bernard • Emily Berry • Amy Blakemore • Siddhartha Bose • Ailbhe Darcy • Joe Dunthorne • Miriam Gamble • Sarah Jackson • Annie Katchinska • Mark Leech • Toby Martinez de las Rivas • Jonathan Morley • Adam O’Riordan • Colm O’Shea • Sandeep Parmar • Heather Phillipson • Kate Potts • Sophie Robinson • Jack Underwood • Ahren Warner • James Womack

Voice Recognition @ Bloodaxe
Buy the book on Amazon.co.uk

hunky dory

Struck acute, I dine alone
& sad; like a burned
out carcass of a car in
a ghetto in Paris I

am too tired to riot.
You cling translucent
To my rustic children, a
Petrol-slick & I long to

Say hello. Tears in my soup,
eyes in my mouth. How
can we have an exchange when
you’re being so quiet. Hello.

preshus

Above all things I must remember to ART to wrap
My children up in blankets like pigs to the slaughter &
To keep my them my sausages in the fridge that’s where I
Like them best.

What is love but last year’s hate. What is hate but last
Year’s death or travelcard or cardigan or anything
Else you have to lose to drop off
The edge. Follow the river
Around drink whiskey
For the corpses.

At the sink I have been silly with myself in the past I
Will admit I have been careless -

Blackouts.

Tease me feed me neatly to your dogs. Do not let them
Gobble. Do not scratch yourself in public YOU
Are as noisy & ineffectual as a travel hairdryer,
ma noisette je te promets, do not sadden swallow
til you vomit or bust wide open but never never not
To ART or drink whiskey or play amongst the
Thighs of your favourite your only horse, stabled,
Skin-drunk and this is the year that matters or
You will rot.

Pulchritudinous

the proud line of your tailoring moves
me. Tuck the sag of years into line; crop
each spasmic landmine to its limit you
were my favourite unplanned closure, you
were my best sign of misdirection beset
with grime you groove foggily to the lapsing
beat-heart of my weakest pet, my sickly
sparrow wormless and breaking in a bath
of porridge – goopy flapping of the end
of days –

¡compadre!
do not leave I have sweeter
meats to feed you yet –

Our lament: left alone, like so much lunch,
overcharred, undersundered – nude hams,
merely basking in the burn of your urbanity.

captured on film

video courtesy of Daniel Ereditario & meshworks

Alternative Cabaret @ The Other Place
SoundEye Festival, Cork
4th July 2008

THE TRANSGALACTIC INTERWOMAN POETIC EXPRESSWAY

THE TRANSGALACTIC INTERWOMAN POETIC EXPRESSWAY
brought to you by La Langoustine Est Morte
ONE TIME ONLY!!!!

Nov 8th 2008 7:30
Poetry Cafe
22 Betterton Street
Covent Garden tube

£5/ 4 concessions

HOSTS: Anthony Joseph and Sascha Aurora Akhtar

Representation from all distant and not-so-distant planets

Jamika Ajalon (U.S.A by way of London by way of France)
Olumide Poopola (Nigeria/Germany)
Valeria Melchioretto (Switzerland)
Shanta Acharya (India)
Frances Kruk (Canada)
Ziba Kirbassi (Persia)
Sophie Robinson (the most exotic of them all Old Blighty!)

Frances Kruk lives in London in the presence of cats, moss, glue, scissors, oil pastels, and dark chocolate, all of which make for an unspeakable atrocity. She does not write real poetry.

The Nigerian German writer and performer Olumide Popoola has performed her poetry internationally, collaborating with many different artists and musicians. Currently studying for a MA in (creative) writing she is exploring all sorts of genres and styles, deepening her practice of writing for performance in particular.She won the May Ayim Award for Poetry in Germany 2004 and has seen her work published in anthologies, journals and newspapers as well as featured on radio and documentaries.

Valeria Melchioretto is a London based artist and award-winning writer.
Her poems have appeared in many prestigious magazines and anthologies. The End of Limbo, is her first full collection for which she received a bursary from the Arts Council
and it was published by Salt in 2007. In 2008 became a Hawthonden Fellow.

Ziba Kirbassi is a rara avis. Seen only sometimes for short periods of time if you are lucky.
Her work is visceral, hallucinatory at times and from the passions and conflicts of being
born into a country where violence has caused her untellable strife. Her work will be read in Persian and translated by Stepehen Watts.

Shanta Acharya was born and educated in Orissa, India. In 1979 she won a scholarship
to Oxford, and completed her doctoral thesis in 1983. Between 1983-85 she was a Visiting Scholar, as well as a Teaching-cum-Research Assistant at Harvard University. In 1985,
she moved to London where she has lived and worked since. She is currently Executive Director, Initiative on Foundation and Endowment Asset Management at London Business School. Her doctoral study, The Influence of Indian Thought on Ralph Waldo Emerson, was published by The Edwin Mellen Press, USA, in 2001. Her four books of poetry are Shringara (Shoestring Press, UK; 2006), Looking In, Looking Out (Headland Publications, UK; 2005), Numbering Our Days' Illusions (Rockingham Press, UK; 1995) and Not This, Not That (Rupa & Co, India; 1994). For more information, visit her website: www.shantaacharya.com

Olumide Popoola

The Nigerian German writer and performer Olumide Popoola has performed her poetry internationally, collaborating with many different artists and musicians. Currently studying for a MA in (creative) writing she is exploring all sorts of genres and styles, deepening her practice of writing for performance in particular.
She won the May Ayim Award for Poetry in Germany 2004 and has seen her work published in anthologies, journals and newspapers as well as featured on radio and documentaries.

Sophie Robinson was born in 1985, and lives and works in London. She has an MA in Poetic Practice from Royal Holloway, and is currently working on a practice-based PhD at Royal Holloway. Her first chapbook, Killin'Kittenish!, was published by yt communications in 2006.
Since 2005 she has performed at numerous events in the UK and the US. Her critical and creative work has been featured in Dusie, How2 and Pilot, and her chapbook a is forthcoming from Les Figues press in Los Angeles in April 2009.

Jamika Ajalon, charismatic American poetess, film director and long time Zenzile collaborator based in London, released her debut solo album the 5th march 2007. «Helium Balloon Illusions» showcases a range of influences, mixing hip hop and electro, dub and spoken word all built on a foundation of amazing grooves and incisive lyrics.Anyone who has followed her work with Zenzile since the late nineties, will already be familiar with her phenomenal energy and sensual delivery, which has seen her dubbed "the female Tricky" and the "underground Grace Jones" by some reviewers. Born in St Louis Missouri, Jamika has lived in London for ten years, after studying in Chicago and spending time in New York.She claims: «I have always considered myself a poet at root and by route, using different media to express the poetic: including spoken word, music, visual arts and the fusion and blending of these different media. I like to blur boundaries of genre and form and draw from all my influences in creating something that is truly an expression of my unique vision." ». She now lives in France.

Things Lost & Found in Edinburgh 1

Along with Tom Pinhorn, I directed the lovely & late Aerin Davidson's Darning Jilly at the Edinburgh fringe this year. The whole experience was amazing and insane and sort of great but awful at the same time. I have never had less sleep, seen such a quantity of amazing and truly terrible things or experienced such a degree of general daily debauchery in my entire 23 years of life. A lot of what went on in Edinburgh will stay in Edinburgh, but these are some gems I brought home with me:


1. TR Warszawa's production of 4.48 Psychosis















Shown for 2 nights only as part of the Edinburgh International Festival, this Polish translation of Kane was totally absorbing and horrendously moving. As far as I could tell, the script had been shuffled around and edited to form more of a narrative arc, held together by Madalena Cielecka as the protagonist desceding into a personal hell. There was a large supporting cast, including a small child and a skeletal old woman, who shared out the rest of the script, or the bits that appear to be dialogue. The fact that this was such a high budget and technically slick production, as well as the quality of the acting and the innovative direction, made the piece all the more immersive. Basically the whole audience are dragged into hell with this woman, and the effects were so real that were this play staged in a more interactivity-friendly environment (as many lower-budget fringe productions were) then I feel like someone would have intervened. As it was, we all (over 200 of us on the night I went) just sat there, paralysed, as Cielecka, wrists slashed, threw herself against a wall over and over again, covering the stage in blood.

"It is myself I have never met, whose face is pasted on the underside of my mind

please open the curtains"

These last lines were followed by silence, then the last number of the play, which seemed to count down in a series from 100 to mark changes in scene, echoes repeatedly through the theatre, a kind of call to action. "2" over and over again, & the lights went down on the stage and up on the audience, as all you could hear are uncomfortable coughs and the occasional sob. After a few minutes of absorbing the shock, the paralysis was broken by a solitary clap. Somehow everything on the stage had vanished without us seeing. There was a halfhearted applause and we all filed out into the night, a bit broken.

I felt - unfashionably - involved, invested and fucking heartbroken by the whole thing. At the same time it struck me that something was maybe being said about the futility of art, like there was this beautiful thing happening which was actually just horrible torture and death, and the fact that we were all sitting there with no idea what to do or how to react, that all we could do was absorb and walk away, that you probably come to the play with all this knowledge of Kane's life and suicide shortly after she wrote the play, that you still go and see it & that seems voyeuristic, & then you struggle to divide the two because that's also unfashionable...it seemed to all say a lot about Kane's work, both playing with the idea of theatre & then being an intensely subjective and involving story, & also the relationship between work & writer. Complicated, beautifully wrought, irreconcilable.

Part 2 shortly.