Old, New, Borrowed & Blue

Tomorrow night all three of the Clinic poets will be reading at Roddy Lumsden's new event at the Betsey Trotwood, check the Facebook here. Fifteen poets will read four poems each, three favourites by other poets (an old poem, a new one and a 'blue' poem) and one of their own which has a borrowed element.

Here's the full line-up, as you can see there's some mighty talent on the bill and several Clinic faves:
Rachael Allen
Liz Berry
Sam Buchan-Watts
Niall Campbell
Kayo Chingonyi
Martina Evans
Katy Evans-Bush
Oli Hazzard
Sarah Howe
Kirsten Irving
Roddy Lumsden
Edward Mackay
Andrew Parkes
Kathy Pimlott
Kate Potts

Entry is £5, which for 15 poets is really not very much at all. The night is broken up into three 30 minute sections at 7.45, 8.30 and 9.10 which gives you plenty of time for a drink and chinwag between all the fine poetry, come along, it'll be lovely to see you there.

Also a little treat for you all this is the old poem I'll be reading (I won't post the new 'borrowed' one up here until some time after the reading so you'll have to come along if you want to hear it). I love Edgar Allan Poe, he's just so good and often talks about death in some really interesting and new ways, which I still find affecting even today. Let's face it most famous for his short stories (although The Raven being a notable exception) and for basically inventing the Gothic. I love his poetry too and this poem is no exception, it's typical of his style, creating a scene awash with Gothic imagery and slowly building tension; its controlled use of metre, along with the interesting use of death, is just great; read him and weep.


The City In The Sea

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West
Where the good and the bad and the worst and best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy Heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But the light from out the lurid sea
Streams p the turrets silently -
Gleams up from the pinnacles far and free -
Up domes - up spires - up kingly halls -
Up fanes - up Babylon-like walls -
Up shadowy long forgotten bowers
of sculptured ivy and stone flowers -
Up many and many a marvelous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye -
Not the gayly-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass -
Mo swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea -
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave - there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside
In slightly sinking the dull tide -
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow -
The hours are breathing faint and low -
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

--Edgar Allan Poe

Anne Morgan is publishing a collaborative poetry anthology for Macmillan Cancer Support under the theme of HOPE.
Get your submissions in before the end of September and support a good cause. Facebook group is here.

"Addictive Sadness" - Less Than Zero, two decades on.

It's been twenty five years since we first met Clay, the bored, frustrated, and hedonistic nineteen year-old college kid with too much time and money on his hands to do anything faintly moral with. LTZ is an unmistakeable cult classic, and defines an era in its minimalist, stark style. It is the literary embodiment of the affluent, drug-enthused, Contax T2-waving photographers we came to see in the nineties (Ryan McGinley and the late Dash Snow, to name but two), and successfully transmuted The Great Gatsby into the Modern Age (instead of the all-seeing eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, we have the rather blatant and figuratively ever-present slogan 'DISAPPEAR HERE' looking down on Clay from a bill board, and rather than Jay Gatsby we watch Clay's sisters mock-death, face down in a swimming pool near to the novel's closure).

Moving on to Imperial Bedrooms we see the same said bunch reach the depths of middle-age, and believe it or not, they haven't really changed. Clay can't emotionally attach himself to anyone and still can't work out quite how he feels about Blair, Rip's equally immoral in his vocational pursuit and Julian is still as wet and reliant as ever, constantly a product of those he involves himself with (both these novels' antithesis to Clay). Yet we have a new addition, the talentless but beautiful Rain Turner that all male-characters seem to fall for, who Clay promises a role to in order to get her in to bed (by the way he's a screenwriter now, a professional interest far from even remotely hinted at in the first novel, which seems more in place so that the author can apply his own experiences to Clay).

The book begins with a semi post-modernistic approach reminiscent of Lunar Park, where the protagonist separates himself from the author, which seems partly in place to simply recap the events of LTZ and partly to slander the 1987 Kanievska film adaption starring Robert Downey Jr. Then as the narrative continues, we are faced - similarly to LTZ - with the prospect of Clay coming home to Los Angeles, however this time it is to help with the casting of his new film - and we quickly learn that all the characters that we have come to know seem to be wrapped up in the film industry in one form or another. Upon return, the narrative seeks to pull Clay from his preferred solitude with the old-fashioned ploy of the unknown follower: he is being watched by a dark blue jeep and receiving texts from an unidentified number. While this element heightens the intensity of the novels' thriller conventions and naturally quickens the pace, it at times stops being the dry, faceless static narrative of of its predecessor (the first novels' most disturbing element being that scenes of the most immoral and violent quality are created in the same drab tone of the dull party scenes) and falls into something that seems reminiscent of the likes of a Michael Mann film - especially following the addition of another follower, the Mercedes after the Jeep. As a result, the novels high points are no longer the alone time we have with Clay, scenes which were of the most enjoyable in LTZ, in the time spent glaring at the Elvis Costello poster.

In terms of popular culture reference, we have certainly lost the cool and cutting-edge picture of this generation in their youth. We still have a Costello title for the book's name, but the similarity ends there. While it is nice to see the old faces in light of the new tide of iPhones, Lost and Myspace, you get the feeling we've lost the voice that defined a generation somewhere here as it gets rewritten. There's something a little strained in the continual reliance on social media, and references to chart-fillers such as The Fray and Bat for Lashes seem frail in comparison to the eighties underground club-scene we were acquainted with in LTZ. Granted, this might be wholly intentional, but you can't help thinking that a weak holding-onto of 'cool' that all of these characters undego was always inevitable as they age, and that we should never have seen it; that despite the evil and violence of this group when they were in their teens, and regardless of the fact that they will have always inevitably grown up, we should have let them 'disappear there' from the moment the first book ended, that 'these images [that] stayed with [...Clay] after [he] left' should have stayed with us too, but we should have left them to stand eternally, rather than letting them age when they're revisited in context to the Google generation.

The book's conclusion (another meeting with Blair), cyclically brings us back to where we began, and proves that Clay, and, subsequently everyone else, are wholly incapable of ever changing. One question worth taking away from this novel though, is that if not one single character can undergo some kind of development, did we really need it to be proved to us again a second time round?

SOME MORE MORE READINGS

Right-o. First off, a massive thank you to everyone that came down to our Semiotics event last week, and helped, and danced. We all had fabulous amounts of fun, even if the council did shut down our music like some kind of illegal squat rave. Sorry sorry Tall Ships, we love you.

Our friend Emma, who brought down some zines and collage with our friend Ventral took some nice pictures here.

Also thank you to Popshot, who helped us organise and brought down books to sell next to clinic making our table look like a beautiful little library. Buy some Popshots here! Buy some cheaper Popshots here!

READINGS!

DAYS OF ROSES AND FUSELIT TOMORROW
Tomorrow Days of Roses are hosting a reading to celebrate Fuselit's 5th birthday. Fueslit are so brill, they are, in their own words, 'a London-based journal of poetry, short prose, art and music that comes in a handy 'pocket-sized' format.' The reading is taking place at the Rugby Tavern, 19 Great James Street, which is quite near Russell Sqaure and Holburn. Editors Jon Stone and Kirsten Irving will read with Joe Dunthorne, John Osborne, Declan Ryan, Chris Horton, Shiona Tregaskis, David Floyd, Sam Peczek, Mike West and Sarah Hesketh and James Brookes.

OLD BORROWED BLUE 3RD SEPTEMBER

Then on Friday we'll be partaking in a poetry feast at the Betsey Trotwood. Fifteen poets, including us three clinic-ers, will read four poems each, three favourites by other poets (an old poem, a new poem and a poem with 'blue' connotations) and one of our own which has a borrowed element, made specially for the event. We're delighted to have been asked, especially with the prospect of reading alongside some of our favourite poets like Kayo Chingonyi, Oli Hazzard and Roddy Lumsden, and MORE! Come down and we'll all talk about our summers.

21st

exhibition contributor and clinic favourite, Rob Felix, took some snaps of Saturday's show. Look here.

SEMIOTICS / LISTINGS

Here we are gang, the clearer-upperer of confusion.
Here is the set list.

DOORS OPEN AT 3 - FREE ENTRY
ZINE WORKSHOP, BBQ, ELDERFLOWER GIN

£3 ENTRY AFTER 6

DEAD RED SUN- 7-7:40

ANDREW PARKES
...AMY DE'ATH
DAVID TAIT - 8-8:30

MEN- 8:45- 9:15

RACHAEL ALLEN
OLI HAZZARD
TIM COCKBURN-9:30- 10:00

CROOKED MOUNTAIN CROOKED SEA- 10:15-10:45

SAM BUCHAN-WATTS
OLLY TODD
JACK UNDERWOOD
RODDY LUMSDEN- 11:00- 11: 30

TALL SHIPS- 11:45- 12: 15

DJs til 2.


HERE'S A MAP FOR Y'ALL
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TcnzBnVWZ8k/TG1rne0rsUI/AAAAAAAABxs/8uV2QXWAGs4/s1600/Picture+3.png

SEE YOU TOMORROW!

http://www.clinicpresents.com/

entrance ways

you should walk through 136 on saturday