Thinkin’ on the Beats.

Just watching this video of excerpts from a discussion held at the Philadelphia Kelly Writer’s House. That place is such an engine of interesting thinking around poetry at the moment. The more and more I see/hear from there, the more I want to take wing and get over there for some conversing.

Anyway, the class this video’s from is about the Beat Generation, and takes my head back to the ‘Gimme The Beat Girls‘ show I worked on and performed with Leiza McLeod in Bristol a few years back. One of our source texts, Women of the Beat Generation ed. Brenda Knight, gets a massive and deserved plug. Would love to take the work I was doing over there to see what the response might be and what discussion would be prompted, especially because now I feel like I have a bigger picture than I did at the time, after seeing Amiri Baraka read in Glasgow before he died, for example, and after having explored Ginsberg’s poetics more in my own work.

So, enjoy this great video. Thanks uPenn!

Auld Enemies: Colin Herd and Iain Morrison –– Friday 11th July 2014, 7pm @ Summerhall, Edinburgh

Just a heads up that in the midst of life we are in the midst of a smashing Scottish poetry tour: Auld Enemies. It’s organised by the magisterial S.J. Fowler from his London eyrie and is now unleashing fun, debate, collaborative writing and merry mayhem around our rebellious lands. A core coterie of poets are whirling round Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Shetland, and Orkney before storming London at the end. They are: Ross Sutherland, Billy Letford, Colin Herd, Nick-e Melville, Ryan van Winkle and S.J. himself. The core is being added to at each destination by poetry players from the local locale. Tonight they took Dundee, tomorrow Glasgow, and I’m joining in with mission Edinburgh on Friday.

Colin Herd and I have worked on a new piece, building on some of the spirit of our Hidden Door collaboration, but cycling around a bit more for content. I’ll say not a jot more but leave you with the teaser trailer and the details (free! unticketed!) on this link here. Hope to see some of you at Summerhall on Friday evening.