In May Spoken Word Antics celebrates the avant-garde and its continuing impact on contemporary poetry and performance. Live performances will be interspersed with archive recordings of avant-garde practitioners such as Maiakovskii, Schwitters, Dada, and Ginsberg.
There will be special appearances from Scott Thurston, Bruce Barnes, and Roland Miller. The work of these three can be thought of as baring on language in different ways; Scott's work exposes the reader to unexpected juxtapositions of words and unorthodox syntactic patterns; Bruce explores the sounds of language and the suggestion of meaning; and Roland's work toys with the presence and absence of language.
Also expect to hear from Matt Black, Andy Hurst, Chris Brownsword, and Jonathan Baxter, as well as Tom Stafford, who will be reading a new piece from his series of 'historical vignettes about moments of revolution'. Avant-garde Antics is connected with the launch of a new pamphlet anthology by Chris Brownsword, which will be launched later in May.
Scott Thurston began writing in the context of Gilbert Adair’s Subvoicive Poetry reading series and Bob Cobbing’s New River Project workshops in London in the late eighties. A full-length collection, HOLD (2006) has just been published by Shearsman books. His other publications include Turns (with Robert Sheppard (Ship of Fools/Radiator: Liverpool, 2003), Two Sequences (RWC: Sutton, 1998), Sleight of Foot (Reality Street Editions: London, 1996) (Selection), Fragments (The Lilliput Press: Norwich, 1994), State(s)walk(s) (Writers Forum: London, 1994) and Poems Nov 89 - Jun 91 (Writers Forum: London, 1991). He lectures in English and Creative Writing at The University of Salford, lives in Liverpool and is editor of The Radiator, a journal of contemporary poetics.
Bruce Barnes is a Bradford based poet-performer equally adept at reading from the page as at performing poetry. His performances are a celebration of word sounds and the poems tackle the 'big themes' from odd angles. His work appears in magazines, anthologies, and too many poetry competition shortlists; his latest collection, Somewhere Else, was published by the Utistugu Press in 2003
Roland Miller is a performance artist...and something of a legend!