Klatch 2

Klatch 2 is now available to view in Online > ePubs. The magazine was assembled on Friday 29th January 2010. Thanks to everyone who was involved.

Photos from Klatch 3 are also now available to view in the Nights > Photos section, and a copy of the magazine produced during this Klatch will be available in the coming weeks.

Michael Zand - Lion

"I always seem to begin with the photographs". The photos in questions were taken in Iran and date from the 1930s to the 1960s. They chronicle the rise and fall of an Iranian patriarch, the lion of the title, and they haunt the imagination of his son, the narrator. We take a poetic and spiritual journey with the photographs, each of which yields a sequence of texts in poetry and prose. Lion is a narrative of sorts, but it is necessarily disruptive and disjunctive: ideas and literary structures are questioned, even the fixed boundaries of language itself are challenged. Lion is a meditation on the role of kinship in the development of cultural identity and the importance of rites of passage as cultural artifacts in the modern world. Ultimately, Lion is about the impact of the loss of identity amongst the Iranian diaspora, and the creation of myths of origin. The photographs create an imagined hinterland on the edge of reality, which is every bit as vivid as any material place. It is from this created world that narrator draws his energy, the Iran of disaporic memory, the Iran of the photographs, the Iran of the Mind.

£8.95 / $15, Shearsman, 2010 (1st ed., Paperback, 80 pages)

ISBN 9781848611153

To pre-order lion at the special price of £6, please email lion.iranpoems@me.com with your name and postal address. Please not that this significantly reduced price is available for a short time only.

Available via the Bookshelf.

Klatch 2

The third Klatch meeting was held on Friday 29th January. At this meeting the second Klatch magazine was put together. Each poet brought 50 copies of their work to the Klatch and we made up 50 copies of a magazine, now called Klatch 2. We also broadcast readings and performances live from the Klatch via Openned TV. Each poet took two copies of the magazine to distribute by hand. There are now only 13 copies of the Klatch magazine left. To request a copy, contact us and leave your request along with your postal address. The magazine is completely free. Poets included in Klatch 2:

• Tim Atkins
• Becky Cremin
• Alex Davies
• Amy De'Ath
• Elizabeth Guthrie
• Edmund Hardy
• Johanna Linsley
• Fransesca Lisette
• Georgi M'Glug
• Nat Raha
• Sophie Robinson
• Karen Sandhu
• Linus Slug
• Tessa Whitehouse
• Steve Willey
• Michael Zand

Update on Monday 1 March, 2010 by Openned

Please note all available copies of Klatch are now gone.

lexico

lexico is a new project from Michael Zand:

Essentially, lexico is all about poetry in translation. We are not talking about ”straight” translations, i.e. when we take words in the original language and transposing them into the English. In most cases these sorts of translations are available elsewhere or, if not, I would recommend using “google translate”.

Instead, the aim is to produce what Walter Benjamin calls “aura of the original text”. New creative material will be introduced, often to make the writings more contemporary, more challenging or even more disruptive. I will as the translator try very hard to be as subjective as possible, introducing my own ideas and literary affectations at every available opportunity. The ultimate aim is, to quote Benjamin again, “to go beyond the life (leben) of the original and to give it a higher life (uberleben) which transcends the limitations of time, culture and place”.

There will a new poem posted ever week, along with a brief description of the poet concerned and the background to the piece in question.

via Marcus Slease

at the old place

Check out Michael Zand's poem at the old place.  

XmasING the Line

The audience is invited to come dressed to the nines for this poetry party (of sorts) - there will be publications to accompany the evening, and more details may appear here.

Michael Zand reading at Openned, 21st October 2008

[wpvideo CbsAGM2d] Michael Zand was the second poet to read at this night. The poet Jeff Hilson had tipped us off about his work and we were glad to be able to put him on. Michael also has a blog called proetics which is well worth checking out. Thanks Michael and Jeff.

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