Sophie Mayer

I've been saving up a stacked shelf of poetry to read over the summer -- and I'll be posting reviews -- or rather, non-review reading notes and musings -- on my blog, Delirium's Library. First up is an immediate response to Carrie Etter's The Tethers, launched last night in London. Coming up: a round-up of film poetry, some new Salt titles, Arc's Visible Translation series, the Bumper Book of Alice Notley, Cristina Peri Rossi in Spanish and English, and some random titles collected at independent bookstores around the world.

I've been invited to read at Declan Ryan's excellent Day of Roses reading series at Filthy McNasty's (a pub that really doesn't live up to its name -- it even has Pieminister Pies!) in Islington, on 24th June... There's a great line-up and a really good spirit: should be a fantastic night!

is almost here! You can read more about it here and pre-order it from Wallflower or Amazon. Launch details to follow, as well as events to tie in with the upcoming launch of RAGE!

The new issue of Vertigo magazine is out now -- and it may be the last! This all-too-rare space for the discussion of non-commercial, experimental, activist, intelligent, beautiful, impassioned cinema and visual media is under financial threat. Where else will you find inquisitive and accessible writing about Palestinian cinema, Hackney on film, cinema in hospitals, Ann Turner's lost classic Celia (and, blowing my own trumpet, Sally Potter's RAGE). Subscribe, buy the new issue, donate, tell everyone you know who cares about film, visual art and smart writing.

 ... and in the window at Prospero's Books, between Marilynne Robinson's Home and Midsummer Nights, edited by Jeanette Winterson, and nestling above Oliver Jeffers' Lost and Found: amazing company to keep!

I'm launching my first solo collection Her Various Scalpels (Shearsman, 2009) this coming Friday, 15 May, at the fabulous FleaPit on Columbia Road, London EC2 (walk or bus from Old Street or Liverpool Street stations). Come by from 7 pm to enjoy their excellent selection of beers, wines (and teas)... The event will kick off at 7.30 pm. As well as a reading, there will be a screening of short film "Je Suis Ici" by filmmakers Ben Crowe and Preti Taneja (whose first film was nominated for the short film Palme d'Or!) and a photo slideshow by Flickr star Lady Vervaine. Stay on to dance into the night to tunes from DJ j-level...

Keep an eye on my Events page for upcoming readings, talks and appearances.

Made you look.

Two posts about sexual ethics that I wrote for the webzine Shebytches: one about the haters going after Judy Blume (Judy Blume!!!) after she gave a shout-out to Planned Parenthood on Mother's Day; and the other - following an Equality Now action item - about sexual violence in videogames.

HVS gets its first review on Carrie Etter's blog. Yay! Look out for Carrie's forthcoming collection, Tethers, from Seren in June. Sample poems, reading dates (Prague! I'm very jealous) and details here.

As NaPoWriMo draws to a conclusion in a haze of indexing, swine flu hypochondria and the gorgeous sounds of the Late Junction St. George's Day broadcast, I wish I could spring forth a brilliant, fully-formed poem. Due to the aforementioned haze, however, what I have at this sharp end of the month is: a half-full notebook of poem sketches, fragments, notes and crime report numbers; an abiding pleasure in the practice of taking poetry seriously, everyday; a deep-seated love of Fluxus instructions as "inspiration" and exercise; a bookshelf full of poetry books purchased in celebration of National Poetry Month, and which I am planning to read once the indexing is done (and also the new NMC Songbook, a Late Junction fave); a few finished poems that may even have publishing destinations; and, best of all, a renewed sense of connection to other poets engaged in writing and reading their work.

In tribute to Late Junction, which has kept me sane over this indexy month, here's a creative instruction that I mis-heard Verity Sharp issue on the St. George's Day broadcast:

create pieces out of doors

...which I preface by saying that, like Virginia Woolf, I feel that "as a woman, I have no country." On the other hand, I am grateful for the opportunities presented by a British passport, privilege that rests on the displacement and degradation of the rights of others. So my gratitude is mixed with guilt, and a fierce rage against borders and delimiting institutions of all kinds. And a rage against certain constructions of Englishness, whether rural nostalgia or shiny-shiny capitalist greed -- or even the separatist reconstructions of locality undertaken by Geoffrey Hill in Anglia and Ted Hughes in Yorkshire (once the kingdom of Elmet) in an attempt to claim some exclusive English indigeneity that ignores this island's constantly changing cultures and peoples.