The Burning Bush 2, Issue 2

The Burning Bush 2 is an online 'revival' of the original Burning Bush magazine, which was published in print from Galway between 1999 and 2004. I remember coming across a couple of issues just before it ceased publication and being impressed by what I saw as an outward-looking, experimentalist ethos and underlying radical dimension - a refreshing approach in a conservative Irish poetry scene.

TBB2, edited from Dublin by Alan Jude Moore, aims like its predecessor to publish work from a mix of new and established writers while operating under new publishing and social conditions. It therefore represents both a revival of and a break from the original magazine.

Issue 2, published last week and available both as a download and on the magazine's website, includes two new poems of mine. There's also excellent work from, among others, Kimberly Campanello and co-founder and editor of the original magazine, Michael S Begnal.

Poetry Olympian

The Poetry Parnassus festival is a global gathering of poets due to take place at London's Southbank Centre from 26 June to 1 July 2012 as part of this year's Cultural Olympiad and the London 2012 celebrations. Selected out of reportedly more than 6,000 nominations/recommendations, 204 poets will participate in the festival - each representing an Olympic nation.

The list of confirmed poets was published last week, and I can announce that I accepted an invitation to take part as the representative of Cyprus.

The invitation came a few months ago, rather unexpectedly. It's a unique opportunity to meet and get to know the work of a great array of poets. And I view the invitation, considering the calibre and record of some of the other poets involved, as a significant and fortifying mark of recognition.

I look forward to it!

The full programme of readings and events is yet to be finalised; in fact, representatives for some countries are still to be confirmed - nominations can be made here.

publication of Muses Walk

gone walkabout

I'm very happy to announce that Muses Walk, my new chapbook / artist's book, is now available in an individually-numbered edition of 100 copies. The first three of these have been donated to 'An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street', for which project the book was originally conceived (I have been writing a series of posts on my involvement with this project, the idea behind the book, its relevance to the project and also to the rest of my work, and its development). The remainder will be available to buy at readings and events, and can also be purchased directly from me on request. The price is 5 Euro.

Writing, producing visual material, designing, laying out the text and images, printing, binding, cutting and generally publishing Muses Walk is proving a hugely valuable experience, if only as a sobering lesson in small-scale book-making and publishing. The finished book measures 148 x 105 mm (A6) and is in the quarto format - which means that it has been produced by twice folding over the full blanksheets, in this case of standard A4 size, of material on both sides. It's printed on 160gsm coloured (ivory) card paper, and runs to 32 pages - translating to 4 double-sided twice-folded sheets, each quarter of which contains one page of the book. Working out how the pages relate to each other when printed back-to-back and then folded, which piece of text and/or visual material should go on each quarter/page, and how exactly this material should fit within each quarter, was the easy part.

One reason for making the production of this book relatively complex is that I wanted its publication to be virtually unrepeatable. Its specific printing requirements (so that text and images line up correctly) and the material I used to make it, as well as the folding, binding and cutting of each individual copy by hand, make this the case. Plus I have no plans to reprint it in this form. In this sense, the making of Muses Walk was akin to a performance. I enjoyed the difficulty of putting it together - the consequence of which is that I feel huge satisfaction for having brought it to completion as I envisaged it, without having to compromise in its making.

Special mention must go to the people at the extremely busy Reads print centre on Dublin's Nassau Street, and in particular Nohema, for their patience with my nit-picking, endless re-drafting of the pdf file before re-printing and re-folding sample sheets, and my very specific printing requirements...

Solar Winds and Ions, by Adam Rudden

A paragraph towards the end of Adam Rudden's introduction to the online publication/hosting of his collection Solar Winds and Ions (Lapwing, 2011) by Poetry Ireland, describes the launch of a limited print edition of the same collection a few months before. "There was a different type of energy surrounding the launch at the Irish Writers’ Centre, in September 2011," Rudden writes. "Launching a limited edition publication has a more distinct ‘vibe’ to it than a standard publication launch. As a poet, I got a real sense of immediacy in the room: I was aware that the people seated in front of me, might be the only ones to receive a hard copy."

Note the contrast between the immediate and very real "vibe" of presenting a limited-edition publication as described by Rudden, and the surprising mundanity of it subsequently being made freely available online. Does unlimited access to the collection affect how the work in it is actually read? And is such a move in some way dismissive of those readers who attended the print launch and who "might be the only ones to receive a hard copy"?

Briefly (though everyone is able to apply their own reading to it) Solar Winds and Ions is a short collection that regards artwork as part of the poems rather than illustrations of them, and makes some interesting use of typography. The text is typical of Rudden's work in that it forms spare investigations into what may be called 'the great questions'. There's also interest in forms of communication and its breakdown. It has a clinical quality which is at times vital and refreshing, at others jarring - the poems sometimes appearing overwrought, but often, as in some of the more minimalist pieces, urgent and luminous.

Crucially, it's a collection designed for publication in print, not least because it makes no use of any of the specific publishing capabilities of the web.

The mode of making the collection public becomes of concern due to the emphasis placed on it by the poet himself. Yes, publishing online is easy and cheap. And current. Rudden also clearly wants to make a statement about accessibility. But he also understands that this is a minority-interest project, which makes its launching as a limited-edition publication somehow appropriate: it created a unique and unrepeatable event. Whether an online version becomes available to more potential readers seems irrelevant, because the mode of its conveyance also has to be appropriate. In the vastness of the internet a path to the work is essential.

Though an online presence clearly helps achieve a widening of the interest in a poet's work, could total, free and unsupported access to the poems themselves actually have the effect of diminishing their value? Where should a line be drawn? There's probably merit in a publishing model where the full material becomes freely accessible, whether online or in print, with its author being financially or otherwise compensated through live appearances and events. But the question of how it might work for minority-interest forms - and in particular poetry that doesn't specifically rely on its performance - remains.