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Mariangela
Ian SeedThree texts
Rupert M LoydellVessel
Melita SchaumSome Guts
Simon Collings (with collages by John Goodby)Three Short Fictions
Meg PokrassThe Campus Novel
Peter RobinsonCharlie Boy and Captain Fitz: A One-Act Play
Alan WallSnapshot, Sachsenhausen and three more poems
Peter BlairSeven short poems
Lucian Staiano-DanielsFour prose poems
Olivia TuckThe Back of Beyond and two more prose poems
Tony KittTwo poems
Moriana Delgadofrom Reverse | Inverse
Lucy HamiltonSix haibun
Sheila E. MurphyKingfishers and cobblestones and five more new poems
Kitty HawkinsZion Offramp 76–78
Mark ScrogginsCome dancing with me and two more new poems
Marc VincenzPlease Swipe Right
Chloe Phillips‘Three Postcards’ and a prose poem
Linda BlackStill Life
Melita SchaumIn memory of
John Taylor with drawings by Sam ForderImmortal Wreckage
Will StoneNew in Translation
Snowdrifts
Marina Tsvetaeva, trans. by Belinda CookePoems from Prière (1924)
Pierre Jean Jouve, trans. by Will StoneSix Prose Poems
Pietro di Marchi, trans. by Peter Robinson -
A new Review of John Matthias’s Some Words on Those Wars by Garin Cycholl.
Anthony Howell’s review, A Clutch of Ingenious Authors: Michelene Wandor Four Times EightyOne: Bespoke Stories | Annabel Dover Florilegia | Sharon Kivland Abécédaire
Essays by Alan Wall
· ‘King of Infinite Space’: The Virtue of Uncertainty
· AI: Signs of the Times
· The Lad from Stratford
· Stanley Kubrick: Sex in the CinemaWill Stone’s Missing in Mechelen and At Risk of Interment
G. Kim Blank’s Civilizing, Selling, and T. S. Eliot Curled Up behind the Encyclopædia Britannica
Tronn Overend’s Samuel Alexander on Beauty
AND Conor Robin Madigan’s Master Singer, Simon Collings’s Robert Desnos, Screenwriter, and Igor Webb’s Never Again
New Fortnightly Serials
from The Ruinad
Anthony Howellfrom White Ivory
Alan Walland much more below this column.
Departments
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Audio archive: Two poems, with an audio track, from Heart Monologues by Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani | Daragh Breen’s Aural Triptych | Hayden Carruth reads Contra Mortem and Journey to a Known Place | Anthony Howell reads three new poems | James Laughlin reads Easter in Pittsburgh and five more | Peter Robinson reads Manifestos for a lost cause, Dreamt Affections, Blind Summits and Oblique Lights
Previous Serials
2011: Golden-beak in eight parts. By George Basset (H. R. Haxton).
2012: The Invention of the Modern World in 18 parts. By Alan Macfarlane.
2013: Helen in three long parts. By Oswald Valentine Sickert.
2016: The Survival Manual by Alan Macfarlane. In eight parts.
2018: After the Snowbird, Comes the Whale, by Tom Lowenstein.
LONDON
Readings in The Room: 33 Holcombe Road, Tottenham Hale, London N17 9AS – £5 entry plus donation for refreshments. All enquiries: 0208 801 8577
Poetry London: Current listings here.
Shearsman readings: 7:30pm at Swedenborg Hall, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1. Further details here.NEW YORK
10 reliable poetry venues in NYC.
· The funeral of Isaac Albéniz
· Coleridge, poetry and the ‘rage for disorder’
· Otto Rank
· Patrons and toadying · Rejection before slips
· Cut with a dull blade
· Into the woods, everybody.
· Thought Leaders and Ted Talks
· How Mary Oliver ‘found love in a breathing machine.’
AND read here:
· James Thomson [B.V.]
A dilemma for educators:
Philosophy and the public impact.
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Michelene Wandor on Derek Walcott and the T.S. Eliot Prize.
.Nick Lowe: the true-blue Basher shows up for a friend.
Anthony Howell: The new libertine in exile.
Kate Hoyland: Inventing Asia, with Joseph Conrad and a Bible for tourists.
Who is Bruce Springsteen? by Peter Knobler.
Martin Sorrell on John Ashbery’s illumination of Arthur Rimbaud.
The beauty of Quantitative Easing.
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Marianne Faithfull’s ‘Innocence and Experience’.
A Fortnightly Review of
Innocence and Experience.
Curated by Marianne Faithfull and John Dunbar
Tate Gallery Liverpool.
21 April to 2 September 2012
By Denis Joe.
THE MANNER IN which Marianne Faithfull’s exhibition in the DLA Piper Series at the Tate Liverpool is laid out is rather like reading a picture book and not an entirely innocent one, either. The photographic works of Robert Mapplethorpe, for example, have always had voyeuristic quality about them. His portraits of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the cover of Patti Smith’s debut album are some of the most memorable images here.
But of the four Mapplethorpe images on display, it is the well-known portrait of Marianne Faithfull that is the most striking. In contrast to the celebrities of today who fall over themselves to present their fears and weaknesses, Mapplethorpe’s Faithfull, perched precariously on a banister, seems awkward, defiant and frightened. The beauty of the picture is that it shows us a young woman who is not the extra in a picture of Mick Jagger. Instead, she is the story in the photo. It’s an insightful portrait because she looks just as she must have often felt – a vulnerable woman trying to maintain a sense of balance.
THERE ARE OTHER works that question the reality of stardom. Pauline Boty’s The Only Blond In The World shows us Marilyn Monroe trapped inside what looks like some kind of traffic sign. Of course, it could be any blonde stopping traffic. But the piece is well suited to this exhibition, not simply because Boty was a pioneer of Pop art but also because she consistently attacked the idea of the objectification of women, particularly when they were part of the celebrity circus. Faithfull herself was very much seen in this light and I feel that, although the Mapplethorpe portrait contrasts with Botys’ portrayals, they also complement each other and remind us that humans, even stars, are much more than appearances. The inclusion of Edward Ruscha’s humorous Roughly 92% Angel but about 8% Devil also suggests that complexity is at the heart of humanity.
And it is this that captures the meaning of William Blake’s poetry, that gives this exhibition its name. Apparently, neither Faithfull nor Dunbar – to whom she was married before her affair with Jagger – view innocence as simply a trait of childhood. Instead, ‘innocence’ is seen as the simple absence of experience. This becomes clear as we make our way around an exhibition which has no sequential order – there are no labels that say, helpfully, ‘this is “innocence” and this is “experience”‘. Instead we are given obvious examples. Nan Goldin’s Greer and Robert on the bed, NYC, for instance, is quite a harrowing image: the woman, Greer, is at the centre of the portrayal, whilst Robert is looking away from the camera – and from Greer. His pose suggests a lack of understanding of the situation, whilst garish masks, hanging playfully from the bare-brick wall, look down teasingly, as if daring us to make sense of the experience of looking at these two lonely, very urban people.
Yet for me the highlight of the exhibition is the inclusion of the installation The Spring Recordings by David Tremlett. I first encountered this shelf of cassettes of nature recordings about 10 years ago at the Tate Liverpool and fell in love with them. The recordings were made in mainly rural areas and last roughly 15 minutes each. The notable exception is a recording made in London. Whilst the work succeeds as a ‘geographical mapping of the national landscape in sound’ it also captures a sense of contemplation of both the world within us and about us and takes us far from Greer and Robert and their world of masks and despair.
PERHAPS SIMILARLY THE placing of Richard Hamilton’s collage Swingeing London 67 – poster provides the viewer with a brief narrative of the ’60s including Marianne Faithfull’s part in it. The images might suggest a view of her coming to terms with this experience – and there is a feeling that she looks out of place in the newspaper photos – but this is not the defining image of Marianne Faithfull. It’s just one of many. The ’60s and the decades that followed were filled with such images.
Her work of self-definition is still in progress. Ultimately, the strength of the Innocence and Experience exhibition lies in the conceit that this is a biographical exhibition that tells us something about Marianne Faithfull through works of art that have meaning to her. I found that the selection and the arrangement of the exhibition allows us to see the interior world of Faithfull. Admitting that Blake and Richard Dadd – and all of the other artists who fascinated ’60s celebrities to the point that they became clichés – are artists who still have resonance and significance is a brave thing to do; the art world loves esoterica and often dismisses public tastes. So there is a certain humility about Innocence and Experience in that Faithfull allows herself to be seen as a person for whom the past is revisited not to elicit pity or empathy, but as a guide showing us some of the steps she has taken on her own road from innocence to experience.
♦
Denis Joe is a poet living in Liverpool. He is a regular reviewer for the Manchester Salon Discussion Group.
More: Anthony Howell’s memoir of his lifelong friend, Marianne Faithfull, in the Fortnightly
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Publication: Monday, 30 April 2012, at 13:25.
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