OFF_press

Following in the footsteps of some of Europe’s greatest poetic innovators in the 20th century, the work of Anatol Knotek is the latest chapter in the visual / concrete / conceptual poetry legacy that has emerged from Austria, and most specifically, the city of Vienna. It is often suggested that concrete and visual poetry reached it’s apex in the 1950’s to 1970’s and since then has declined somehow. It is probably true that the vitality and power of the original movement, (led, outside of Austria, by the likes of Bob Cobbing, the de Campos brothers, Henri Chopin, Edwin Morgan, Andras Petocz, Shimpei Kusano…) could not be sustained and attention from a wider readership waned. However, it is clear when poets as young as Knotek produce work of this superlative quality the medium is not lacking, it is in resurgence and rather some of the very best poetry in Europe is part of this tradition. At it’s forefront sits Knotek and we are pleased to present a poetic artist whose work will no doubt become a focal part of the European poetic landscape for years to come.

click on image above to visit the Maintenant website…

Date: Monday 31 January
Time: 19:00
Venue: Hall One
Price: £9.50

The annual Sebald lecture on Literary Translation, given by Ali Smith, is preceded by the presentation of the 2010 Translation Awards. Six prestigious, long-established translation awards are given for fiction, poetry and non-fiction, translated from the original Arabic, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Hebrew. There will be readings from the prize-winning books and the awards will be presented by Sir Peter Stothard, editor of the TLS. In collaboration with the British Centre for Literary Translation and the Society of Authors.

click on image below to book tickets…

“You don’t need me to give you the facts. Everyone here is aware of the situation. The government, in the Dickensian person of Mr Eric Pickles, has cut the money it gives to local government, and passed on the responsibility for making the savings to local authorities. Some of them have responded enthusiastically, some less so; some have decided to protect their library service, others have hacked into theirs like the fanatical Bishop Theophilus in the year 391 laying waste to the Library of Alexandria and its hundreds of thousands of books of learning and scholarship.

Here in Oxfordshire we are threatened with the closure of 20 out of our 43 public libraries. Mr Keith Mitchell, the leader of the county council, said in the Oxford Times last week that the cuts are inevitable, and invites us to suggest what we would do instead. What would we cut? Would we sacrifice care for the elderly? Or would youth services feel the axe?

I don’t think we should accept his invitation. It’s not our job to cut services. It’s his job to protect them…”

read on by clicking the image below…

click on the image below for the latest writing from Biweekly Magazine…

“My friend Bolesław Taborski, who has died aged 83, was a Polish emigre broadcaster, translator, critic, author and poet. I was with Bolesław when he composed his first poem, as a teenager in August 1944, a few days after the outbreak of the Warsaw uprising, in which he took part as a member of the Home Army resistance against Nazi Germany.

He recited the poem to the members of our unit to great applause. Two months later, as the uprising collapsed, only half of them were alive. The memory of his friends, fellow insurgents and the Warsaw civilians who died in that event haunted him for the rest of his life…”

Zbigniew Pelczynski, guardian.co.uk, Sunday 23 January 2011

read more by clicking on the image above

OFF_PRESS publishes contemporary Polish writing in translation. Zeszyty Poetyckie is one of Poland’s premier promoters of modern verse. Both are non-profit making enterprises run by writers for writers, so I called Dawid Jung and Marcin Orlinski, editors of ZP a few months ago, asked if they wanted to put a competition, book and film together. In the spirit of bardic madness, they said why not link it up with Feast of Fools, an alt-art festival we’re organising. So we did it all, in May of 2010…

Now, several months later, those words are here made matter.

Is poetry still needed in the 21^st century?

Is the world ever going to tire of such tired questions?

In an age of earth-shattering acceleration, we all need quick fixes. The kind that fit on a laptop or phone screen, reminding us of what language can do when stripped to its purest state. This anthology contains the work of several generations of Polish poets, all of them widely published in Poland’s most respected literary and popular titles, a clear sign poetry continues to count both in quantity and quality.

Dariusz Adamowski
Zofia Bałdyga
Ewa Brzoza-Birk
Krzysztof Ciemnołoński
Izabela Fietkiewicz-Paszek
Rafał Gawin
Ewa Glińska
Kajetan Herdyński
Genowefa Jakubowska-Fijałkowska
Mariusz Cezary Kosmala
Karolina Kułakowska
Elżbieta Lipińska
Piotr Macierzyński
Piotr Mierzwa
Krystyna Myszkiewicz
Ninette Nerval
Mariusz Partyka
Iza Smolarek
Krzysztof Szeremeta
Mirka Szychowiak
Aleksandra Zbierska
Dominik Żyburtowicz

click on the image above to go to our on-line store…

EACH COPY OF THE BOOK COMES WITH A FREE DVD – “THROUGH THE GREY ZONE”, A DOCUMENTARY FILM SHOT BY THE OFF_PRESS CREW LAST YEAR… click link above to see the trailer

Hello,

We would like to invite you to take part in our arts and crafts children and families events around London. During events we will give away for free bilingual, Polish-English Locomotive book. Join us and feel free to spread the world about our project around.

Julian Tuwim Locomotive poem was for the first time illustrated with pinhole photography. This outstanding example of children’s literature has been published in London. Join us at one of our events and get a free copy of the book!

For over 1000 years Poland had been a very multicultural society. Before World War II, the Jewish community accounted for 10% of the overall population of Poland and 30% in most major cities. Julian Tuwim was born in Łódź, city in central Poland into a Jewish family. He is one of the most famous authors of children’s poetry in Poland and his poetry is widely recognized as being amongst Poland’s national cultural treasures. The Locomotive poem was written in 1938, just before World War II began. It is still very famous for its rhythmical and onomatopoeic language. Almost every Pole will know this charming and entertaining story about a train setting out on its journey. The poem was translated into English by Marcel Weyland.

The Locomotive book was prepared in an untypical manner. In order to prepare the book for children from every background, Click Academy artist Marta Kotlarska and curator Olga Glazik collaborated with a group of Polish young people. The group dedicated their free time and has worked really hard since mid October 2010 all in order to produce a beautifully illustrated, bilingual, professionally-printed picture book for children using an unusual technique called pinhole photography. They planned public events scenarios and designed various tools such as a super-sized version of the book, games and music activities with musical instruments and a specially-prepared nursery rhyme song in order to make events as engaging as possible for kids.  The book has had 1,500 copies printed and is being distributed for free during public events taking place in London Libraries and other centres for children and learning.

All the events promoting the book are designed for children age 3-7. Participants have an opportunity to make their own trains, learn and sing a Locomotive song especially created for the events, read the story using a gigantic book and make the various sounds also using the instrument created by them in order to imitate the sounds of a train. Every child receives a free copy of the book after each event.

The books already have started to be distributed in London. The first hosting venues were Church Street library in the London borough of Westminster and at Topolski Century on  the South Bank where Click Academy promoted it on 31 December and 16 January. The aim is to reach as wide a public as possible and also to introduce the book to schools with a high frequency of Polish children in order to help them to learn the English language.

The “Locomotive” project is financially supported by The Embassy of the Republic of Poland, Polish Cultural Institute and Mediabox. The project has also received references from The Board of Deputies of British Jews as well as Michael Schudrich, Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Community in Poland.

Click Academy (Akademia Pstryk) was founded by photographer and artist Marta Kotlarska. It is an art group using pinhole photography as a means of social change through empowering communities. Since 2004 we have been working with young people from ethnic minority groups, to address the issues they face.  (www.clickacademy.co.uk)

Under our supervision, children living in the poorest borough of Warsaw (Poland) were preparing illustrations of a famous Warsaw legend, the exhibition of which was shown in major Warsaw public spaces including Tube stations, the Central Train station and billboard stands around the city. We also prepared a series of public events and pinhole-made animations about Warsaw with them, which were used in an e-guide about the capital of Poland. Young people were encouraged to participate in project planning and in all stages of delivering the project. As a result they felt responsible for the project and learnt that if they work hard they are able to achieve something spectacular. They gave a lot of interviews in press, radio and TV both locally and nationally.

Since 2006 we have been working with traditional Roma settlements in Southern Poland (Małopolska region). Our Nowy Sacz settlement project exhibition was part of EYID UK (European Year of Intercultural Dialog) and was awarded as the best art activity of Gypsy, Roma and Travellers History Month in 2008.

In 2008 (Click Academy) Akademia Pstryk along with the Children’s Society, delivered the Roma Picture Book project. We worked with Roma children aged 7 to 14 years, hailing from Poland and Slovakia although momentarily living in the borough of Newham in London. We produced a children’s picture book, ‘Romano Bumburumbum’, which expresses Roma culture. It was distributed for free via a series of public exhibitions and street art workshops where the public was invited to engage with the Roma culture and traditions. The project was a great success and received rave professional reviews. It is presented by Everybody Writes as one of the most inspiring projects in the country. The books are now on the shelves in Newham libraries and available for loans.

Events calendar

——-

Marta Kotlarska

Www.ClickAcademy.co.uk

mkotlarska@clickacademy.co.uk

tel +44 778 981 33 78

LSE Literary Festival discussion, supported by the Polish Cultural Institute

Date: Saturday 19 February 2011
Time: 10.30am-12pm
Venue:  Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building
Speakers: Ursula Chowaniec, Izabela Filipiak, Grazyna Plebanek

Three female Polish authors discuss migration in women’s writing in Poland.

Urszula Chowaniec is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Cultural Studies Andrzej Frycz-Modrzewski Cracow Academy in Poland. She is also a researcher within an international project at the University of Tampere, Finland: Body, Generation and Transformation: Polish and Russian Women’s Writing (www.womenswriting.fi, 2007-2010), as well as the editor of the online cultural journal Women’s Writing Online. She teaches literary theory, gender studies and theory of translation (also as the visiting lecturer and supervisor at the University of Westminster and the Metropolitan University, London). She gained her PhD in literary studies at the Jagiellonian University in 2004 and is the author of In Search of Woman: On the Early Novels of Irena Krzywicka (W poszukiwaniu kobiety. O wczesnych powieściach Ireny Krzywickiej, 2007), she has co-edited Mapping Experience in Polish and Russian Women’s Writing (Cambridge Scholar Publishing 2010) and Masquerade and Femininity. Essays on Polish and Russian Women Writers (Cambridge Scholar Publishing 2008). She has published articles and book chapters on women’s writing, literary theory and literary and cultural history (e.g. in Gender and Sexuality in Ethical Context: Ten essays on Polish prose, ed. Knut Andreas Grimstad and Ursula Philips, Slavica Bergensia, Volume 5, 2005).

Izabela Filipiak is an author of several books of fiction and nonfiction who debuted after the fall of the iron curtain in Poland. She wrote her first two books in New York and her doctorate in Berkeley. She is a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Gdańsk and the president of the Writers for Peace Foundation based in Poland.

Grazyna Plebanek – writer, author of best-selling novels Illegal Liaisons (WAB 2010) and Girls from Portofino (WAB 2005) as well as Box of Stilettos (2002, WAB 2006) and A Girl Called Przystupa. She has a regular column in the respected Polish weekly Polityka. Plebanek has worked as a journalist for Reuters News Agency and for Poland’ biggest daily Gazeta Wyborcza. She now publishes articles in the “Wysokie Obcasy” (High Heels) weekly supplement of Gazeta Wyborcza, in the Lampa literary monthly, in Newsweek, Elle, as well as Pogranicza and Bluszcz. She is the author of short stories published in the following anthologies: Dziewczynskie bajki na dobranoc (Girls’ good-night stories, AMEA 2008), Zaraz wracam (Back shortly, Centrum Kultury Zamek, 2008), Projekt mezczyzna (Project Man, wydawnictwo Delikatesy, 2009), Piatek, 2:45 (Friday, 2:45, Filar 2010).  Born in Warsaw, Plebanek has lived for five years in Stockholm and she now resides in Brussels. She is among a group of international artists whose portraits will be exhibited in Brussels Gare de l’Ouest for the next 10 years.

Polish Cultural Institute is a part of the Polish diplomatic mission in the UK, tasked with the aim of promoting and fostering an understanding of Polish culture throughout the country… for more info and tickets, click on image below

We spend hours on the web, but you wouldn’t know that from reading contemporary fiction. Novelists have gone to great lengths – setting stories in the past or in remote places – to avoid dealing with the internet.

Is this finally changing, asks Laura Miller…

click on image below to read the article in the The Guardian on-line

During the French Renaissance, Michel de Montaigne wrote about material objects but also explored deeper questions around experience and friendship, offering the world’s first guide on how to live life. Sarah Bakewell celebrates Montaigne’s life and essays with leading poet and biographer Andrew Motion, and discusses how his writing illuminates our approach to life today. She examines what it is we are seeking when we read Montaigne, and takes questions from the audience.

Sarah Bakewell is the author of How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer and will be appearing at the SOUTHBANK CENTRE – for more info, click image above

This is the first line. This line is meaningless – an interview with Tadeusz Dąbrowski by SJ Fowler.

“”Simply one of the most substantial and powerful poets emerging from Europe as a whole, Tadeusz Dąbrowski is a figure who is climbing toward worldwide prominence. An essayist, critic and editor (of the literary magazine Topos) he has authored five poetry collections and won the Hubert Burda Prize and, from Tadeusz Różewicz himself, the Prize of the Foundation for Polish Culture. His poetry has been translated into thirteen languages. Maintenant, as a series, hopes to be a platform in which readers will be able to come across poets who might grow into the stature of their most reputed and iconoclastic forebears. Perhaps with Tadeusz Dąbrowski we have arrived too late. Fundamentally a product of his generation, and quite definitively, the literary culture of Poland in general, Dabrowski’s is a voice both singular and alert, both wry and contemporary. He is a poet who should, and does, speak for himself.”

to read on click the image below…

Locomotive pinhole exhibition at the Menier Gallery in London, on 10-15th January 2011 is organized by artists Marta Kotlarska, Anna Udowicka and Curator Olga Glazik from Polish group Click Academy who have collaborated during Locomotive project with a group of Polish young people in order to prepare illustrations for Julian Tuwim’s Locomotive poem.

The Locomotive Project is the latest solution intending to build bridges between young people of different cultural backgrounds. The Locomotive Project exhibition is a retrospective of a joint work of Polish and Jewish young people working together to make an impact within London Communities. It summarizes and celebrates their hard work and what they have achieved during the last a few months.

Menier Gallery

51 Southwark Street, SE1 1RU

London, United Kingdom

RSVP to Olga Glazik: olga.glazik@clickacademy.co.uk, tel: 07840058183

Najnowszy numer magazynu został wydany w formie kalendarza na 2011 r.

Numer jest dwujęzyczny, na zbiór tekstów składają się zestawy wierszy i krótkich tekstów prozatorskich autorów z Polski i Niemiec. Większość zamieszczonych tekstów jest opublikowana w obu językach.

Wydanie papierowe uatrakcyjnia zestaw 12 naklejek przygotowanych na podstawie obrazów Antka Wajdy z cyklu “Z drogi”. Naklejki można przykleić w odpowiednie miejsca w kalendarzu pod koniec każdego miesiąca.

KLIKNIJ NA KALENDARZ by czytać dalej…

O czym jest twoja sztuka?

Nazwałabym ją utworem dramatycznym. Pierwotnie to był cykl wierszy prozą, który został opublikowany w ubiegłym roku w moim ostatnim tomiku „Everyday Angels” przez Waterloo Press. Cykl zatytułowałam „Dziennik demencji”, składa się on z sześciu wierszy. Ich bohaterami jest pięć postaci, mówiących monologami. Mark Hewitt, dyrektor artystyczny Lewes Live Literature (LLL) Production, zaproponował mi wystawienie tych wierszy w teatrze. Stwierdził, że mają potencjał sceniczny i wyglądałby świetnie, jako przedstawienie.  Zaznaczył jednak, że zawarte w moim tomiku wiersze-monologi są za krótkie i poprosił, żebym je rozbudowała, dostosowując do wykonywania na scenie. Taka propozycja przyprawiła mnie o zawrót głowy, bo uważałam, że już skończyłam prace nad nimi. Ale pod wpływem Marka, zaczęłam pisać i rzeczywiście powstała forma o wiele dłuższa. Sztuka trwa niewiele ponad godzinę. Dodatkowo Mark zaproponował Peterowi Copley’owi, żeby napisał do mojego dramatu muzykę. Powstała, więc do moich słów oryginalna, napisana specjalnie na tę okazję kompozycja.

Nazywam moją sztukę dramatem, bo odbiega ona od klasycznych form – tworzą ją monologi bohaterów. Pojawia się pięć postaci i każda z nich mówi jak gdyby do siebie, chociaż może do kogoś innego, ale nie bardzo wiadomo do kogo. Postaci mojego dramatu nie rozmawiają ze sobą, nie zwracają się do siebie, nie zachodzi pomiędzy nimi żaden dialog. Aczkolwiek pomiędzy ich monologami są logiczne powiązania i widzowie oglądający sztukę mogą odnieść pozorne wrażenie, że bohaterowie dramatu jednak rozmawiają. W zasadzie każda osoba dramatu mówi swoje i w pewnym sensie, to jest takie stylizowanie tego, co się dzieje w rodzinie. W stresie, przy jakiś ważnych wydarzeniach – różne są sytuacje w życiu – mówimy to, co mamy do powiedzenia, nie słuchając tego, co mówią do nas inni.

czytaj dalej tu…

click on the image below to see how Electric Literature test the bullet vs bestseller interface…

“Are you reading fewer books? I am and reading books is sort of my job. It’s just that with the multifarious delights of the internet, spending 20 hours in the company of one writer and one story needs motivation. It’s worth doing, of course; like exercise, its benefits are many and its pleasures great. And yet everyone I know is doing it less. And I can’t see that that trend will reverse.

That’s the bad news. Twenty-five years from now, we’ll be reading fewer books for pleasure. But authors shouldn’t fret too much; e-readers will make it easier to impulse-buy books at 4am even if we never read past the first 100 pages.

And stories aren’t becoming less popular – they’re everywhere, from adverts to webcomics to fictional tweets – we’re only beginning to explore the exciting possibilities of web-native literature, stories that really exploit the fractal, hypertextual way we use the internet.

My guess is that, in 2035, stories will be ubiquitous. There’ll be a tube-based soap opera to tune your iPod to during your commute, a tale (incorporating on-sale brands) to enjoy via augmented reality in the supermarket. Your employer will bribe you with stories to focus on your job.

Most won’t be great, but then most of everything isn’t great – and eventually there’ll be a Twitter-based classic.”

Naomi Alderman, novelist and games writer in today’s Guardian – link to full article here