Sophie Mayer

A brief snapshot of recent writing -- all over the field, as ever. Starting with pop culture, I've reviewed two films due out this Friday (26th April) for Sight & Sound (in the May & June issues respectively): documentary Being Elmo and superhero caper Avengers Assemble,  which Muppet and Whedon (and me) fans will be unsurprised to hear are both an aesthetic and political cut above the mainstream. Getting more avant-garde, I celebrated New Queer Cinema turning 20 with a lecture (well, more a rambleture with jokes) on its history at the splendid Fringe! festival, at a screening programmed by Club des Femmes. And further still into alternative culture, a review-essay on John Kinsella's T.S. Eliot prize-nominated-and-withdrawn-from-for-sound-ethical-reasons-or-it-would-have-won-for-sure new collection Armour, in the magnificent Wolf magazine, which celebrates a decade in print this year. So cake all round!

A slightly belated, bemused and in-progress post on what the Occupy movement and Buffy the Vampire Slayer might learn with and from each other.

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Sometimes it's hard to be a Slayer, what with the grinding anti-demonic activity, sense of isolation, and stains that never wash out. But if the BuffyVerse shows us one thing, it's why it's worth being a Slayer, or the friend/ally of a Slayer (henceforth: Scooby). Gaining knowledge (through research) of systemic injustice, and putting one's body on the line to stop it, may suck sometimes beyond the telling of it -- but returning to ignorance and passivity is null, even if a facade of ignorance and passivity earns you a culturally privileged position.

because events are springing up everywhere & it's time to come out and have fun. I've got three readings & a screening talk coming up:

Fri 30th March: Creative Writing programme, University of Greenwich

Weds 4th April, 6.30 pm: The Wolf magazine launch, Poetry Cafe, 22 Betterton Street, Covent Garden, London. Readers will include Ruth Padel, Helen Moore, Alfred Corn, Sophie Mayer and Michael McKimm. This is a FREE event, but there is limited seating. Please arrive early.

Sat 14th April, 4 pm: New Queer Cinema 101 + screening of High Art, Fringe! LGBTQ film festival, Aubin Cinema, Shoreditch, London.

Sat 12th May: Surrey Poetry Festival, Guildhall, Guildford. (Events TBA here)

Maybe it's the influence of all those Xmas chocolate selection tins, but so far 2012 is all about variety (and trying not to eat chocolate). March's Sight & Sound, on newsstands next week, see me reviewing The Muppets and interviewing lesbian experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer (and this short intro for The F Word where you can win a season pass!), while in the wildlands of the internet, I've been shimmying to Wild Flag, talking with feminist porn filmmaker Mia Engberg and blogging about censorship in America (as an introduction to my upcoming evening class on Free Speech and Literature with English PEN and Bishopsgate: places still available!).

After five years of pitching I finally (FINALLY) made it into The (hallowed) Guardian, with a Reader Response column about Andrea Arnold's breathtaking adaptation of Wuthering Heights and why British cinema needs to tackle racism and empire. Woo-hoo! Meanwhile, Kiss Off (my chapbook of poems about kissing) got a small write-up on the PBS Poetry Portal, and I wrote my first ever gig review, of my favourite ever musician (no pressure there, then), Tori Amos, for The F Word. Time to deck the halls and consume much hearty grog, methinks!

A bit behind the curve, but here are my reviews from the London Film Festival, of three diverse and ambitious films by women directors: Pariah, Futures Market and Chicken with Plums. I didn't get to review Milagros Mumenthaler's Back to Stay, but it was my pick of the fest! My feelings about Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty (S&S Nov 2011) were rather less positive... and I was in two minds about John David Rhodes' study of Meshes of the Afternoon, in the Book of the Month review in Sight & Sound Dec 2011.

There's no such thing as too often to celebrate the amazing women writers and artists who inspire me, and I've had some lovely opportunities to do so recently...

Starting with Luce Irigaray, Sally Potter, Lucía Puenzo and Joan Roughgarden, whose ideas and images all make an appearance in Kiss Off, a beautiful new chapbook from the Michael Marks award-winning Oystercatcher Press, is now available for a tasty £4. I'll be reading from it at the Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio in Cambridge on Friday October 14th to welcome John Kinsella as the 2011-12 Judith E. Wilson Fellow.

Before that, I'll be at the BFI this Saturday, 8th October, to talk about Maya Deren as part of Maya Deren: New Reflections. I'll be talking about femmes (fatale and otherwise), feminism, hair, oceans, mirrors, magic and more. In fact, I'll be at the BFI most days in October, blogging about the London Film Festival for Sight & Sound: I'll post links as I have them. I talk more about Deren in this post celebrating women and technology for Ada Lovelace Day. 

I'm very pleased to be leading the first ever Bishopsgate Institute lunchtime book club, which will be running on alternate Mondays from September 12th, 12-1pm. If you work/stufy/live in the City or East End, this is a perfect way to meet people, get engaged and -- most importantly -- read some excellent books.

As part of the 'Whose Mind is it Anyway?' season at the Institute, the book club is explored the Edge of Mind. We'll read work by poets and novelists who have experienced institutionalisation for mental illness and written about it frankly, observantly and with humour, rage and love. 

Here's the reading list:

Introductory week: excerpts from "Jubilate Agno" by Christopher Smart; "Journey Out of Essex" and letters from the asylum by John Clare (to be supplied as photocopies)

Week Two: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

Week Three: Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Week Four: Janet Frame, An Angel at My Table

Week Five: Comparisons between An Angel at My Table and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Week Six: Allen Ginsberg, Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems

Autumn: season of mists and mellow literary salons, close bosom friend of the maturing poem. Dress in your finest burning leaf drag and come and join me at the following events (here's a Google map with all locations):

September 1st: Political A-Gender, Royal Vauxhall Tavern, 372 Kennington Lane, 7pm-2am. Nearest station: Vauxhall. Fundraiser, featuring Roz Kaveney.

September 8th: POLYply, Centre for Creative Collaboration, Acton St. Nearest station: King's X.

October 8th: Maya Deren: New Reflections, BFI, 10.30 am. Nearest Station: Waterloo.

October 14th: Judith E. Wilson Fellowship Reading for John Kinsella, Cambridge. More details soon.

October 21st: Launch for Collective Brightness, London Buddhist Centre, 51 Roman Road, 7.30-10.30 pm. Nearest station: Bethnal Green.

I'm very excited to be hosting a Salt Publishing table at the upcoming Edinburgh Zine & Small Press Fair on Sunday 7th August: I haven't 'done' a small press fair since I left Toronto in 2006, and this event is being organised by one of my favourite Torontonians, Sandra Alland. They're called fairs because they're home to fairly-priced books across a fairly incredible diversity! As if that weren't enough, the fair will be followed by Faceplant at the Forest Café at 6pm, where I'll be reading alongside performers including Alison Smith, whose video-poems I've loved from afar (thanks to Sandra) via YouTube.