and that new day's coming soon...

Dulwich Park, Jan 2 2008

NUMOON

Pic by Nailman

Just played at an amazing festival in Rotterdam. The Numoon Festival, with Ursula Rucker, Joseph Bowie (defunkt), Bembe Segue, Mark de Clive Lowe, Kain the Poet. Collective improvisation with the Numoon Orchestra conducted by Hanyo van Oosterom.
I was there from Friday to Sunday in cold Rotterdam. Went walking round the block and came upon Kain in a record shop buying a TS Eliot album. Kain has long been an inspiration to me, ever since a friend gave me The Blue Gureilla LP, which every spoken word artist must hear.
The whole vibe of the fest was beautiful. The people were open and warm, the music; and it was all about the musiC - was spellbinding with Halle, Colonel Red, Spoonface, Pan Africans, even the Silent Disco where folks dance round with headphones. For me though the performance that moved, shocked and had me deepened was Kain. Deep is not the word for what he did.
I guess you can tell a festival is special when there is no merchandise stall and DJ Gea is spinning Louis Armstrong.
The concerts were filmed and will be shown in the Netherlands on New Years Eve I believe, it will also be available to view online at www.numoonlab.tv
For more info on the Numoon Lab see : www.myspace.com/numoonlab

there are some pics from the festival at http://flickr.com/search/?q=numoon

and thanks to Hanyo, Bembe, Mark, Gea, Spoonface and his band, Joe Bowie for making it so special. I gotta be there next time!

Footnote: There is nothing that can prepare you for a performance by Kain the poet. It is a life changing, soul intensifying experience. Watch out for the blue Guerilla.

Reading at Borders

The Grimore of Grimalkin

My co-host at La Langoustine est morte has just had this, her debut collection published by Salt. Read her.

Besides an inveterate love of language which makes you write “her malachite décolletage,” whatever else you need to be a good poet is here. It could be sounds. Come right in; don't step gently then.

BERNADETTE MAYER

Sascha Akhtar repels ghosts with this text and liberates the word from the burden of meaning. These poems are spells and sonorous soundings that have the power to frighten, seduce or enchant. Akhtar aspires to magic. This is a timeless and vital collection from a poet willing to transcend the liminal.

ANTHONY JOSEPH

For more reviews and info see http://www.myspace.com/saschaakhtar

Acoustic Avant Gardism CD

Ronnie McGrath - Acoustic Avant Gardism - streams of consciousness poems for neo-surrealists (Ankhademia Press 2007, 15 track CD)

Footprints
more abstract than flower stems
set their homes in dusty bookshelves (Perpendicularities..)

All you hipsters, so-called blak dada intellegenics, performance poet dons having portraits taken leaning against brutal doorways, all you post modern poem writers suffering sick in attics waiting for something new, here it is. This is mouth music for your mind, shifting paradigms with the blistering texture of words and abstract Jazz feeling. It MUST be heard.
For copies contact Ronnie at info@ankhademia.com - do it now!

I just got back from doing a reading with Ronnie McGrath in Acton. It was the reading, of all the readings I've done this year, that I was most excited about. Because of course I love Ronnie's work - we share an estatic aesthetic sensibility - a vision of the liminal, also because it was billed as 'The Black Avant Garde' - as such as this, a historic event, a forum for experimentation. And the response from the audience was a beauty-full thing/one woman said how she felt her whole body open up, had a physical reaction to the poetry, exposed her vulnerability.We are attempting here to re-locate, re-design and re-focus the meandering nature of our legacy as it wanders narrow to the edge of definition and installation in time by kente cloths and black fists. More soon!

poem in process no.112

Five Rivers, Trinidad Aug 07

Untitled

Jack Spaniard nest
wrap up under galvanise
cross cut teak/appropriate
- a horner man beeps – fish man – scale hand - fish van
an plastic flowers an the pink thick drapes
the dog
panting on the roof
daylong
day come
an all these hills
all these hills an holy mountainsides
green an purple
ablaze
wit the gospel radio that on all day
an alright –
all these things like umbilical vine.


my sister
my sister with the sling of love
my sister
my sister
with the muddy gust of tears
our mother
who art in heaven…
with the acolytes and the wooden crosses
crossin hell yard in the stingin
stingin rain

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Metonymy

The origin of the work is not the first influence, it is the first posture: one copies a role, then, by metonymy, an art: I begin producing by reproducing the person I want to be.
- R. Barthes