Happy 50th, Ambit
Martin Bax‘s Ambit magazine celebrates its 50th birthday (and 200th issue).
Maintenant #13 – Sam Riviere
I like spontaneity but I like measured-ness… Sometimes I think it’s to do with tone, not wanting to be too high-minded and straight-faced, too sane, and equally not wanting to be facile or anecdotal or bland. So you try and be neither by having ingredients of both. A colloquial aside, a change in register, can deflate something that’s becoming too sentimental or self-important, and a lyrical detail can elevate something that’s starting to sound stale or familiar. If you’re using a certain way of speaking, these things suggest themselves through rhythm and just getting a feel for a voice. I guess I have an idea of the direction but not precisely where it’s going or how I’ll get there. But it’s all very subtle and hard to calibrate and easy to get wrong— sort of a process of judging the next step ahead of you by what’s come before; a bit like walking on a frozen pond, if it creaks you go the other way.
In the thirteenth of his Maintenant series SJ Fowler interviews the English poet Sam Riviere.
Four Poems
The last thing she did was talk to me, the dead leaves are elated!
Giddy, fourteen circled me with blackbirds.
Summer almost gone.
These fields the last fields.
If I reach the road before the next car passes…
I solved my love on the half-mile home, wore it as a stain is worn, a new cut on my thumb.
On Gallows Hill the sunset tapped my empty head.
The red clouds collapsed, like clouds above the bomb.
The bus could crash and we could live forever in its wreckage!
The trees agreed…
By Sam Riviere.
The Missing Links
There is No Authority But Yourself, a Dutch documentary about Crass. * The internet as social movement. * An in-depth interview with Adam Ant. (More here.) * William Burroughs shooting William Shakespeare. * Will Self learns French. * Porn parody of 1960s Batman. * An interview with Gavin James Bower. * The Kills’ Jamie Hince […]
3:AM Reloaded
What you (may have) missed on 3:AM recently: Flash fiction: ‘Haunted Prosthetic Limb Rescued From the Dumpster Near the Produce Stand’ by Gregory Frye Poetry: In the twelfth of his Maintenant series, SJ Fowler interviews the Estonian poet Jürgen Rooste; ‘Two Poems’ by Jürgen Rooste Comic Strip: ‘A Day in the Life of Spencer McCormick […]