"The Order is All Things Happening Now" (Tom Raworth)

Several things, all occurring at once:

1/ The Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference, where there were more film and film theory books than I can begin to describe. Yup, I spent most of my time in the book room -- although I did go to several panels and events about Web 2.0 happenings, including great papers by Julia Lesage and Paul Hertz as well as meeting the excellent crew from academic multi-party blog Dr. Mabuse's Kaleido-Scope -- interesting things afoot!

I was particularly drawn to the tables set up by Wallflower and Continuum, whose respective editors Yoram Allon and David Barker were both very friendly. Duke University Press's table was also heaving; I don't know who their designer is, but the books in the Next Wave series are highly desirable. I bought Amy Villarejo's Lesbian Rule, which should really be called Lesbian Drool, -- it's so beautifully presented and gorgeously written.

Duke were celebrating the 30th anniversary of Camera Obscura, which is probably my favourite film journal. Certainly the one I consult the most. And it's now online for subscribers. Among other things, Camera Obscura published the first academic article on Thriller by Jane Weinstock. Also, they had chocolate-covered strawberries at their party.

When I wasn't rambling round and round the book room desperately trying not to buy things (other accidental purchases included Geetha Ramanathan's Feminist Auteurs from Wallflower and Petra Kuppers' The Scar of Visibility from Minnesota, whose Visible Evidence series could have caused serious wallet hemorrhaging), I also caught Michelle Citron's new media project, Mixed Greens, a choose-your-own-structure set of intertwined films each identified by a salad vegetable icon on the home screen. Each story comprises the same number of sections featuring the same themes (heartbreak, family, desire, etc). There are two strands: Citron's Irish-Jewish family history, conveyed through interviews with relatives and footage shot in Ireland as well as historical photographs; and a history of lesbian America, and specifically coupledom and changing butch-femme dynamics, from the 1950s to the 21st century. Like many of Citron's films, this latter is composed of intermixed found and staged footage, using voice overs to narrate the intimate histories. My primary reaction to it was emotive - charmed, moved, engaged, sad and happy, aroused and amused - so I'm not ready to write anything analytical yet.

Her analytical voice is one of my favourite in film theory: Home Movies and Other Necessary Fictions is probably the only volume of film theory I've ever given as a gift, for its wisdom as well as its style. It moves between film script, essay, double-column essay a la Kristeva, autobiography, confessional, photographic essay, arranging an act of witness without insisting on a binary of truth and fiction. Speaking, as Cathy Caruth says, from the wound. It's one of the beautiful Visible Evidence series, so it's a deeply seductive book to handle, even as its disturbing narrative demands that you keep reading and avert your eyes.

2/ Speaking of -- I read two incredible books while I was at the conference that have become entwined in my mind with each other, with the experience of SCMS and with my travels. The first was Stevie Davies' The Eyrie, which I saw reviewed in the Guardian by AL Kennedy, who could sell me on walking over a cliff. Suffice to say that I sobbed over the blazingly sunlit Great Lakes, utterly immersed in and gripped by the narrative of connections and disconnections between three different, anarchic women. As great as the characters were, and Red Dora is one of the most seductive and persuasive portrayals of an outrageous old age I've seen since the Auntie in YES, it was the waves and wash of language that kept me in the novel.

Similar yet different, the precision of Jenny Diski's On Trying to Keep Still astonished me. Her descriptions of travel through the landscape of the mind made me think of Kay Redfield Jamieson, but also reminded me of Maya Deren's films, in which impossible spaces are united by dream logic and editing -- it's a particular mind that is stepping between beach and ice and wooden floorboard with such elegance to carry you along. It's worth checking out her blog to see that this finely crafted, spiky and witty writing is going on all the time, and to contemplate the blog as a form of going out (public) while keeping still (private), of moving not moving, of engaging community while hiding away.

3/ Community always makes me think of the Toronto Women's Bookstore, where I spent a merry afternoon supplementing the weight of my luggage with a supermarket sweep. As I'm travelling and hanging out with good friends, I haven't had much time to enjoy my booty, but I am so looking forward to Nalo Hopkinson's newbie, The New Moon's Arms and Joanne Arnott's Steepy Mountain Love Poems. Drawn and Quarterly's beautiful newest book Aya is a treat for a rainy day (a fairly safe bet that it won't be long on the shelf in the UK, then), and I'm holding out for a delivery of Betsy Warland's Only This Blue after reading about it in the most recent Herizons.

4/ And after all that Canadiana (yes, it's allCanCon!), to end with a (slight) return to the US and media studies: Buffy Season 8 the comic. I am hyperventilating as I write this, and also predicting a panel at SCMS next year (oddly, Michael Franti is singing about vampires as I write this - the BtVS uncanny is back in business!). Can a comic be a TV series and vice versa? What does it mean when the paratext is rapidly becoming the text (tee hee)? The Buffy is My Life essay contest on Dark Horse's MySpace page is a curious example of the ways conventional publishing is harnessing online fan community energy and new media convergence. SCMS panel for sure (any takers?)

I Want!

I'm really used to wanting books (for example, the WACK! exhibition catalogue) but less used to wanting web magazines - after all, how can you own them? -- but Drunken Boat makes me feel all weak at the knees. It's the cutest kid at the prom, totally desirable and totally aloof. Want! Thanks to the fabulous poet and community activist and all-round grrl riot Sandra Alland for bringing it to my attention.

Addictive - but proactive?

Terrible things are afoot. Instead of writing a really cool short story riffing on Icelandic folk tales, I've discovered Squidoo via the lovely people at Artsphere, who offer the persuasive argument that if I Squidoo, I will make money, find a job, be elected president of the Galaxy and not be such a late adopter when it comes to social networking...

So far, so non-literary. But I think Squidoo could be a pretty good tool for writers looking to do lo-fi promo, and readers looking to pick up new titles. No-one's really cracked how to make the internet work for writers - don't buy the lulu hype - but maybe this self-generating, soapbox/storefront will be the way forward?

One R out of 3 Ain't Bad

Long time coming... But really, I've been doing more writing than reading of late (in the fun sense). I have been wearing grooves in the seats at the British Library and the BFI library, but somehow reading Derrida just isn't that fun anymore... Although I have been re-reading a lot of Ursula Le Guin, and thinking about why she's so amazing. How can you not love someone who reads and reviews so brilliantly and justly. I'm hoping that a little of her hard-earned charms will rub off on me...

Thankfully, for the time being, my writing is actually making waves. "They like me, they really like me!" [You can hear the parodic Hollywood hysteria there, right?]

So this is an utterly self-disinterested posting plugging the wonderful Stride magazine where I may have some poems in a recent online issue.

Look out for a familiar name cropping up in new issues of Seam, Staple, Equinox, Frogmore Papers, Interpreters House, Avocado, IOTA and Velvet.

Thanks to the lovely folks at the Poetry Library, Staple, Equinox, Frogmore Papers, Interpreter's House and Iota - along with other excellent magazines - can be read for free online.

Most small magazines are put together by volunteer editors, and most can't afford to pay their writers. If you can afford to buy or subscribe to any of these magazines, you're not only helping sustain a publication, but an entire community. But reading online and enjoying is all to the good :)

Double Poetry Whammy

from the Guardian this morning, treating Review readers to an interview with the magnificent Anne Carson AND a resolved Ruth Padel arguing that poetry is better than the gym as far as happiness indices are concerned. Both of them make a bid for the importance of 'difficult' poetry -- or indeed, claim that all poetry should be difficult. I can't really add anything to their contributions so... yeah... If the articles inspire you, look out for Padel's A Poem and a Journey, a follow-up compendium of poems and reading guides to her 52 ways of looking at a poem which is an English degree (except more fun and with fewer deadlines) in a book.

Jordan, Lorde, Sontag, Butler, Willis... Who Will Be Left to Speak?

Feisty, fabulous feminist essayist Ellen Willis died yesterday. The silencing of a major leftist voice in the US is a cautionary note after last week's midterms victory for the newly centrist Democrats. Willis was a pioneering voice for abortion, an expanded definition of family, workplace rights, pro-sex feminism and cultural radicalism.

She was also one of the first people to bridge academia and activism, and one of the last of a generation of feminist essayists who included Susan Sontag. Katha Pollitt is one of the few remaining feminists writing regularly for US national publication and receiving global attention (OK, Naomi Klein and Noreena Hertz are the newbies). Don't even mention Caitlin Smith or Ariel Levy, who Willis would have torn to shreds in seconds.

Where are the feminist essayists of our generation, trained in the humanities and thinking politically? Lots of brilliant women write for Bitch and Bust, many of them combining academic or professional careers with activist writing. But not the New Yorker or Salon.com. Why is that? And why are so many of the voices that do get heard those of attractive white middle-class women?

Poem of the Moment

The internal rhyme! The powerful use of the past participle to imply the pastness of its couplet partner. The subvocalic echo of the rush with which the news was received, with its powerful "sh" alliteration of a clean wind bringing change, borne on the wings of dreams...

And the tickertape stutter of "election" bringing us back to earth - openended, reminding us that the war (in the Senate and in Iraq) is not over.

The Evening Standard opted for the headline "Bushwhacked!" with its cowpoke charm and neat Whedon echo (GWB as king of the Reavers, anyone?) but this poster brings more chickens home to roost for me with its dual physical/emotional "crushed."

Waving or Drowning?

I've now been reading Virginia Woolf's The Waves for a month. It's less than 200 pages long, gorramit, but I just can't seem to finish it. It's actually a great book for public transit reading -- absorbing yet non-linear enough to roll with the punches (yup, actual punches sometimes, along with sophisticated elbow blocks and shoulder barges). I have read it before, back in the distant mists of my adolescent Virginia Woolf obsession (inspired by Sally Potter's Orlando) but the impetus to re-read came from the incipient multimedia stage production by Katie Mitchell at the National Theatre. I've wanted to re-read it for a while, since doing some work on how Virginia Woolf haunts contemporary films about women academics -- Charlotte Rampling gives a scintillating reading from The Waves in Sous le sable, very much a film about waving and drowning.

So -- will I finish the book before the show tonight? Or is it a book that - with its cyclical nature - can never truly be finished without beginning it again?

Get Some Chicken

Here I was, planning to be soooooo good and make some headway into the stacks of Delirium's Library (although Marina Warner's Phantasmagoria is so mind-blowing it's like a delirious library in and of itself)... and then: boom! New Marjane Satrapi leaps off the shelf and into my hands at Mega City in Camden. See, I keep trying to be serious and read about 'the role of the archive in contemporary artist's film and video' and an article on Jean-Luc Godard by someone called Frodon (no joke!). But. Comix get in the way.

Chicken and Plums! Chicken and Plums!

K, I'm gonna go read it now. Tomorrow I will be serious and get stuck in.

Small Is Beautiful

Kegedonce has just announced two new titles! Yay for small presses, especially a small press as unique as this - publishing work by First Nations writers, and brave enough to publish poetry AND fantasy fiction. Incredible. Daniel Justice's instant cult classic, Kynship, gets its sophomore sister, Wyrwood. And Rolland Nadjiwon's Seven Deer Dancing continues Kegedonce's run of excellent poetry. If you're thinking about Thanksgiving (and surrounded by Nature's bounty, who isn't), consider giving thanks to and learning from the first folks of Turtle Island by investigating Kegedonce's diverse list. You may just meet a fabulous witch called Denarra, and fall in love at first sight...

Trobadours of Yore (and Today)

There is a fabled place in far-off West London where poetry still thrives amidst the beer drinkers and musicians tuning up in the basement. That place is The Troubadour. OK, so their troubs tend towards the swimmers of the mainstream, but worth a visit if only because all these poets came from one writing workshop. And because Shapcott, Greenlaw and Padel are light years ahead of the Armitages, Farleys and Sweeneys.

Monday 9th October - COFFEE HOUSE POETRY

Many major New-/Next-Gen poets learned their trade at a Notting Hill workshop group founded in the ‘80s by Robert Greacen. Leading names from that group come together for a unique celebration of contemporary poetry— Poetry Society president Jo Shapcott has won the National twice; Her Book: Poems 1988-1998 (Faber 2000) contains poems from her 3 collections— Maurice Riordan edits Poetry London; his 3rd book, The Holy Land is due in 2007— novelist/radio-dramatist Lavinia Greenlaw teaches on Goldsmiths College’s Creative-Writing MA; Minsk, her 3rd collection, was Eliot-prize-shortlisted— Matthew Sweeney now lives in Romania; his many publications include Sanctuary (Cape 2004) and a Selected (2002)— Ruth Padel is Poetry Society chair and contributed, for many years, a uniquely popular poetry column to the Independent on Sunday; The Soho Leopard (Chatto 2004) is her 6th collection.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Readings 8-10pm £5.50 / £4.50 concs

Events A-Go-Go

My pixie ears prick up on hearing of the following... launch of sexy new poetry collection The Allotment at Warwick University, Oct 12th, along with the fabulous "greatest hits" of rock star poet Andy Brown. There'll be a reading in Brighton, November 18th, for all you seaside lovers, too.

There's also a whirlagig of poetry this coming weekend in Cambridge, with the Experimental Women's Poetry Festival, including Susan Schultz, Kathleen Fraser, Redell Olsen and other lovely luminaries.

For something a bit more hands on, how about a writing workshop with Saradha Soobrayen and Dorothea Smartt as part of The Fire This Time, dedicated to queering - and celebrating - Black History Month.

And, good golly, there's Poetry International, featuring Lorna Goodison, Ulrike Draesner and others.

Enough to make a librarian want to curl up and snooze, er, read a good book :)

I think you mean "What the f*** happened here"

So, Verso are calling What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles "caustic and hilarious." Uhhhhhhhh, well, it's not Jon Stewart. Perhaps hilarious in an evil-laugh-here-is-how-I'll-kill-you Mr. Bond way if you're a Republican, but otherwise just pretty damn enraging as it reveals the systemic destruction of press independence, social security, civil rights and, well, the world perpetuated by the Bush II junta. Weinberger is exactly the kind of public intellectual whose absence from American life and media debate he laments. It's instructive that several of the major pieces in this book originally appeared in European venues. Read it and weep, kids. Then register to vote and get informed. I look forward, in a grim, hiding my face way, to a similarly intelligent, well-written and non-alarmist book about the Blair years.

Every Blog Counts...

even when all seems very silent. Yes, this isn't exactly a political blog and won't save the world/the Middle East/whales (although my recent Shebytches column has some solutions to global war involving Alanis Morrissette and a donkey) but - who knew? - it might actually help sell the books that I love and rave about.
Now, I have no idea if anyone reading this blog actually goes, hmm, yes, I shall go out and experience Delirium's Library, but Random House seems to think that you might. They've just asked if they can quote part of a posting in the shiny paperback edition of The Outlaw Varjak Paw. Wow. Of course, I went through the "oooooooh noooooooo, RH are evil conglomerate German-owned, Da Vinci Code publishing demons" and then thought, myah, knock it off. That's so COOL!
So big happy wishes to SF Said on the paperback publication and, er, get out there and get cat-tastic, yall!

Where to Get ZInes in London

Small and surviving, bookartbookshop is like the ICA's little sister, but cooler. If you like artists' books, paper art, zines, weird stuff and buttons, there's no need to be in London: you can shop online. And if you have zines etc., Kelly, the power-that-is, takes them on commission to add to her cavern of delights.

New SiP day!

Tee hee, what the hell! There's only 7 more Wednesdays left to celebrate, folks... after that no new crazy love triangle from Texas to brighten my life every six weeks. I fear end-of-Buffy-style apocalypticness, and not in the Mel Gibson, Mayan speaking sense. If you've never read Strangers in Paradise, start now and be ready for the final battle, er, issue, in 8 months time...

Queers and Freaks Untie!

It's not often I'm so crazy about a book that I want to run around telling complete strangers to read it (er, except what else is a blog for?) but here goes: Hello, Cruel World is amazing. It's Whedonesque, hopeful, crazy, intense, useful, inspiring, funny, informative, challenging, queer, sexy, illuminating and could form the basis of a very disorganised religion. If you don't believe me, then listen up to author Kate Bornstein doing a way better job that I can of persuading you here. Bornstein for President! And props to LiP for putting the Gender Talk interview in their ever-useful, intelligent, infuriating and ass-kicking Media Picks list.

Read On... Pellinor Three!

You can catch up with Maerad and Cadvan with a free first chapter from lovely independent Walker Books (support the indies!) And that feather on the cover -- it really is a crow feather!

Alternate Realities

An entertaining article about adaptation, counter-histories and truly crazy writer Philip K. Dick -- ignore Scanner Darkly and imagine the Dick films that were never made, including Scorsese's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?...

A working definition of irony

from one of those writers that I loved, then loved to hate, then ignored, and may come to love again, Mr. D. Coupland: "The way I would define irony is this: to have the ability to contain opposing ideas inside your head without going crazy," being interviewed by reliably entertaining Euan Ferguson.

It's a neat punchline to an excellent conference paper on irony that one of my students gave in class, which began with Winona Ryder's failure to define irony in Reality Bites. Proof that Coupland is smarter than the generation of imitation slackers that he spawned.