Sophie Mayer

Contact information at the bottom of the piece...

*

95 Cent Skool: Summer Seminar in Social Poetics

2010 gets underway with two events: Days of Roses Tues Jan 26 at 3 Blind Mice, where I'll be reading with Jon Stone and Rowyda Amin), and a Q&A with Kim Longinotto on Sun 31 Jan, after a screening of Gaea Girls at the Renoir, also released this month on DVD by Second Run. I have an essay in the accompanying booklet -- and also an essay for the BFI's DVD of Sally Potter's legendary The Gold Diggers. Catch up with my Q&A with Sally and Tilda Swinton on BFI Live.

Hand + Star (confession: I'm a contributing editor, with articles on Alice Notley and poetry in translation up now) is an "offbeat e-magazine is published by independent poetry producer Penned in the Margins and tak[ing] its name from the Fleet Street workshop of Tudor printer Richard Tottell, whose 1557 Songes and Sonettess popularised the work of Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey." With a regular BookLust blog, there's no danger that Hand + Star will forget the codex form, but as a digital-native magazine it's realising the radical potential of new communication technology in the same ways that Tottell was doing 450 years ago. You can read the magazine online, subscribe to its RSS feed, and/or join the magazine's Facebook page. Knowing Penned in the Margins, I predict innovative live events and even publications in the offing!

After three years of writing and two years of planning, the great day is finally here! It's pick of the week in The Guide and Andrea Hubert flags up two big events: Sally in conversation with Tilda Swinton on Wednesday 2nd Dec (which I'm, gulp! chairing, and which you can watch live online at www.sallypotter.com at 8.30 GMT); my "Beginner's Guide" to Sally's early films, including cult favourite Thriller on 8.30 pm on Friday 4th Dec: join me for a drink in the atrium beforehand from 7.30. The book will be on sale, too -- and thanks to Chroma and Dr. Kate Ince for this kind, thoughtful and in-depth review.

I'm not great at blowing my own trumpet, but I'm chuffed to say that the irreverently excellent Luke Kennard and distinguished scholar Pam Cook have done a fantastic job on my behalf in reviews, respectively, of the "classy, assured … brilliantly disconcerting" Her Various Scalpels in Poetry London (Autumn 2009) and "rich and edifying" The Cinema of Sally Potter in Sight and Sound (December 2009). Neither review is available online -- but both magazines are well worth checking out (not just for the reviews).

Two opportunities to get some hot poetry in your wet and windy Wednesday: from the comfort of your armchair/desk/iPod, listen to me read on the Arts Show, hosted by Nikk Quentin Woolf, on the fantastic community radio station XStream East. The show is actively seeking guests, so if you're a London-based artist and you can get to Cable Street, drop them a line.

If you can brave the wuthering, come along for a fine cuppa (Absolute Cinnamon? Chilli Chilli Bang Bang? what's it to be?) and some great readers at Yumchaa Soho tonight from 7, where Ride the Word XVIII hosts Horizon Review Issue 3. I'll be reading along with HR editors Jane Holland and George Ttoouli. 

ouroboros review, edited by the lovely Jo Hemmant, launch their fourth issue today! You can read it online here or purchase a print-on-demand paper copy in their bookstore. I have four poems in the magazine, including one on the back cover, which is inspired by Sally Potter's The Man Who Cried.

'Tis the season, apparently: in the next fortnight, I'm reading at two launches for excellent magazines: Artesian: The WATER Issue, Weds Nov 11, Horse Hospital, 7pm, and Horizon Review 3 (as part of Ride the Word XVIII), Weds Nov 18, Yumchaa Soho, 7pm. If you're in London, come along! Wherever you are in the world, you can listen online to Nikk Quentin Woolf's Arts Show on Xstream East (Tuesday Nov 10, 3-4 pm), and both live and in the PennSound archive to Leonard Schartz's Cross-Cultural Poetics show on KAOS-FM, date tba. Woohoo!

Also: Michelle McGrane, a wonderful poet, included two poems from Her Various Scalpels on her lovely peony moon blog!

The BFI's first ever retrospective of a British woman director's work starts on 2nd December and runs throughout the month. Take a loved one (or first date?) to see the studio run of a beautiful new print of Orlando or let a post-Xmas screening of YES fill your heart with peace and goodwill to all. As co-curator, I'm inordinately proud of this fantastic season -- and also very proud to be introducing it in a "beginner's guide" on Friday Dec 4th, in collaboration with Club des Femmes, for Thriller and Potter's early shorts, some of which have not been seen since the 1970s! There's also events with Tilda Swinton and Julie Christie, so book early and I'll see you on the South Bank to reprise the dance from The London Story!

Join the TSG Facebook group for updates about filmmakers and book events, and discussions about feminist artmaking!

2009 has been pretty special and it's not over yet: hot off the fine presses of Wayne State University Press comes my third book of the year, There She Goes: Feminist Filmmaking and Beyond. In the spirit of feminist art, this book is a collective effort: specifically, an editorial collaboration with with my friend and colleague Corinn Columpar from the University of Toronto Cinema Studies department, and with contributions from an amazing range of writers, including filmmaker Michelle Citron on digital filmmaking and Kay Armatage on programming women's cinema, and interviews with filmmakers Kim Longinotto and Samira Makhmalbaf -- seen in our cover image, directing At Five in the Afternoon in Afghanistan.