This is a sequence of nineteen experimental odes. The sequence offers a documentation of the last year in the form of a fragmented, multi-perspectival 'public voice' poetry. With its roots in the socio-historical context of the pandemic - from stripped supermarket-shelves or clapping for the NHS workers through to the Trump presidency and the closure of Philip Green's Arcadia - the sequence opens onto post-apocalyptic, dystopian fantasies. The locations range from warehouses on the Essex estuary and deserted university campuses to barbecues in Portland and bush-fires in Australia, registering the new awareness of the fragility of supply chains and a larger awareness of climate catastrophe. At the same time, the sequence also explores the experience of lockdown through the evocation of a series of enclosed spaces as if the experience of Covid were a bunker, a submarine, a space-station, a colony on Mars, while also attending to the necessarily mediated experiences produced by lockdown and the corresponding reliance on the technologies of video-conferencing, Instagram, zoom.
Recenzijos
I wanted to express my enthusiasm for the Covodes. I had very much the feeling of the enclosed spaces you mention at the end, as if the experience of Covid was a submarine, a bunker . . . transforming into the most restrictive of all spaces, the cruise ship. Each part reads of much intelligence and acumen, a sage and alert politics that does not neglect the incidental for the profound, nor the subtle for the obvious: "you can imagine food disappearing / but not weaponry." "The loss of 'loved ones' / (no one mentions the unloved.") I appreciate your cunning contemporaneity, nothing lost here amidst the welter, nothing gained by strong arming it. By Jeanne Heuving, 2021. I love these! The progression from Kurt Cobain to Dido Harding is quite brutal, and the bit about the earth being fit for filming for some reason this line hit me in the stomach, Gosh! By Nisha Ramayya, 2021. The public voice poetry of Robert Hampsons Covodes places the current/recent/recurring pandemic in a socio-historical context whose linked intricacies build thro the 19 thematically organized sections. Hampson tracks the day-to-day of it: stripped supermarket shelves, everywhere closures but low-paid workers compelled to use public transport as 1%ers ready their bunkers; much helpless waiting while we boost randomly back / into the network; a doctor who confronts yet another atline beeping in an attempt to silence / the reasons for fear that inhabit the condition: unnerving to think / this could be the end. But the insistence is pervasive that globally, the ruling priorities remain unchanged: in Britain the NHS has long been a target for asset-stripping, and the violence of the policy-makers / lingers in the blood long after recovery. Covodes is a multi-experiential text replete with ashes of humour, touches of low-key surrealism, extreme poetic compactions alongside deceptively simple statements (people get bored / & break things), and a sober ripple of apocalypse. Its documentations are crafted through a critical imagination which establishes it as an informed deance of helplessness, that is, as news that stays news. Gilbert Adair, 2021
Daugiau informacijos
Artery Editions are proud to publish a sequence of 19 experimental odes, written by Robert Hampson. These offer a documentation of Covid-19 from multi-faceted perspectives in the form of fragmented, public voice' poems: "nothing lost here amidst the welter, nothing gained by strong arming it" (Jeanne Heuving). The sequence explores the experience of lockdown through the evocation of a series of enclosed spaces - a bunker, a submarine, a space-station, a colony on Mars, drawing parallels between these and our domestic, day-today spaces. Hampson investigates the necessarily mediated experiences produced by lockdown and the corresponding reliance on the technologies of video-conferencing and social media. The Covodes were recorded, and the process itself was done in lockdown, over zoom calls; Robert Hampson (born 1948) recited in his own living room and the cellist, Joanna Levi (1962), recorded her compositions Suite 1 for Solo Cello with a relatively simple desktop microphone in her study. This quality lends a rawness to the collaborative process again, part of the new and altered day-to-day life that restricted us in Covid time. For Levi, this project allowed a consuming interest in Bach's music to fuse with Hampson's inspirational poetry. She conveys the sense of monotony and anxiety engendered with a wandering tonality, that takes Bachs Suites as a spring board. This is music we know, but soon enters unchartered waters, and as such represents a distortion of our normal. Hampsons early work was collected in Assembled Fugitives: selected poems 1973-1998 published by Stride in 2001. His best-known works are seaport (Shearsman, 2008) and reworked disasters (Knives forks and spoons 2013), which was long-listed for the Forward Prize. Joanna Levi studied music at Royal Holloway London University specialising in performance, always maintaining a keen interest in composition, and it was here that her work came to Hampsons attention. The Covodes book comes in an edition of 250 copies (£10.00, ISBN/EAN: 1871671078/9781871671070). This includes a recorded CD version of the Poems alongside Joanna Levis compositions Suite 1 for Solo Cello. The Covodes book is also available in a signed Art edition of 20 copies (£90.00, 12x12, ISBN/EAN: 1871671086/9781871671087), featuring 2 tipped in art prints by twice winner of the Victoria and Albert Museum Illustration Awards, and Folio Society Artist, John Vernon Lord (born 1939), together with the CD. The recording with Levis Cello is available for online streaming and purchase at www.arteryeditions.bandcamp.com (£5.00). For further information, please email Patricia Hope Scanlan at arteryeditions@yahoo.co.uk +44 7592617190.
Artery Editions Our Ladys House 43 Carisbrooke Road St Leonards-on-Sea East Sussex UK, TN38 0JT Previous publications from Artery Editions: Spiral (2004) Poems by Fanny Howe, Music by Ken Edwards, Art by Tom Raworth, Compiled by Patricia Hope Scanlan, CD with Live Recording Gifts received (2007) Poem by Lee Harwood, Music by Birdie Hall, Art by Francis Wishart. CD: Reading by Lee Harwood, Soundscape by Birdie Hall Ko - Heartloss-Cuts (2008) Poems by Nikos Stangos, Art by Jasper Johns, Patricia Hope Scanlan. (A3 Perspex Art Book, A2 Perspex Art Book, Art Book) Oh, Lac Oh, Lake (2008) Poems by Pierre Martory, Translations by John Ashbery, Art by Francis Wishart, Edited by Eugene Richie and Olivier Brossard, Compiled by Patricia Hope Scanlan Scheme dedicated to Panna Grady OConnor. Poems by Philip OConnor, Essay John Berger, Film (BFI), Captain Busby The Even Tenour of Her Ways (Director Ann Wolff, 1967), Art by Andrzej Maria Borkowski, edited by Patricia Hope Scanlan, 2021 Uplift: A Samizdat for Lee Harwood by his friends Tribute Edition, with Music Composition from Birdie Hall, Edited by Patricia Hope Scanlan, Assistant Editor Tim Weston, 2008 Strictly Illegal Poems by John Wieners, Art by Gilbert & George, Selected & Introduced by Jeremy Reed, Biography by George F. Butterick, Edited by Patricia Hope Scanlan, 2011 General and A2 Art Edition
Forthcoming Artery Editions include: Le Madame Poems and Recordings by Deborah Levy, Mine Kaylan, Patricia Hope Scanlan & Art by Louise Bourgeois, Introduced by Griselda Pollock. Recordings & Soundscapes by Joseph Young, Introduced by Paul Khimasia Morgan Brighton Blues A Poetry Tribute to the Poet Lee Harwood by Jeremy Reed, Art by Derek Jarman, Recording of Lee Harwoods Landscapes by Stream Records. Brighton Blues also features an Essay by Lee Harwood on the Poet F.T. Prince & Letters from Lee Harwood to Jeremy Reed, & from John Ashbery to Lee Harwood, & Poems from Anne Waldman, & Patricia Hope Scanlan. Film Tribute from Patricia Hope Scanlan, Starlings over Hastings Pier, 2021. Pente Poems by John Wieners, Art by William Blake & John Cage, edited & compiled by Patricia Hope Scanlan Reprint of Oh, Lac Oh, Lake Poems by Pierre Martory, Translations by John Ashbery, Art by Francis Wishart, Edited by Eugene Richie and Olivier Brossard, Compiled by Patricia Hope Scanlan A Hole in the Sky Tribute to Gustav Metzger and Yoko Ono, Work DVD by Patricia Hope Scanlan Explosive Cornelia Parker, Interview with Patricia Hope Scanlan, Work DVD
nevermind 1
Covode 1: the peoples disease 2
Covode 2: a planetary testimony 4
Covode 3: the little lockdown: a synthetic meditation 9
Covode 4: the pleasure dome 13
Covode 5: double exposure 18
Covode 6: risky business 20
Covode 7: a stranger cluster 23
Covode 8: the liberation of Paris 27
Covode 9: synchronicities 30
Covode 10: bang to eternity 35
Covode 11: an eco-system south of Portland 38
Covode 12: our little universe 41
Covode 13: et in arcadia ego 46
Covode 14: space milestones 49
Covode 15: something in the air 55
Covode 16: a more perfect union 59
Covode 17: after 100, 000 deaths 62
Covode 18: out of this world 67
Covode 19: out of the blue 73
Robert Hampson was formerly Professor of Modern Literature in the Department of English at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is currently Professor Emeritus at Royal Holloway; Research Fellow at the Institute for English Studies, University of London; Visiting Professor at the University of Northumbria; and on the faculty of the New School of the Anthropocene. He has been involved in the field of contemporary innovative poetry since the 1970s as editor, critic and practitioner. During the 1970s he coedited the magazine Alembic with Peter Barry and Ken Edwards. He coedited (with Peter Barry) the pioneering volume New British poetries: The Scope of the Possible (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993); and, more recently, has co-edited (with Will Montgomery) Frank OHara Now (Liverpool UP, 2010); (with Ken Edwards) Clasp: late modernist poetry in London on the 1970s (Shearsman 2016); and (with cris cheek) The Allen Fisher Reader (Shearsman 2020). His own poetry has appeared in a range of magazines including Cid Cormans Origin and Alan Davies 100 Posters in the 1970s. More recently, he has published poetry in The Café Review, Long Poem Magazine, Junctionbox, Molly Bloom, Mercurius, parmenar, The Wolf, tentacular magazine, and Rewilding: an ecopoetic anthology (2020). His early booklets included degrees of addiction (Share 1975); How Nell Scored (Poet and Peasant 1976); a necessary displacement (pushtika 1978); a feast of friends (Pig Press 1982); A City at War (Northern Lights 1985); Nevsky Prospekt (with David Miller) (hardPressed poetry 1988); a human measure (hardPressed poetry 1989); unicorns: 7 studies in velocity (pushtika 1989); dingo (with Gerlinde Roder-Bolton) (pushtika 1994); seaport: interim edition (pushtika 1995); a new hampshire sampler (with Gerlinde Roder- Bolton) (pushtika 1996); and the artist-book, C for Security (pushtika, 2001). Assembled Fugitives: selected poems 1973-1998 was published by Stride (2001). His best-known work is seaport (Shearsman, 2008). More recent publications include pentimento (pushtika 2005); an explanation of colours (Veer, 2010); the long view / wish you were here (artist-book with Leena Nammari) (2011); out of sight (Crater Press 2012; reworked disasters (Knives forks and spoons 2013); and Liverpool (hugs &) kisses (with Robert Sheppard) (ship of fools / pushtika 2015). He taught with Redell Olsen on the MA in Poetic Practice at Royal Holloway. For many years he ran the TALKS series that Bob Perelman set up in London, and has been co-running the Contemporary Innovative Poetry Research Seminar (which replaced it) ever since.
John Vernon Lord (born 1939 in Derbyshire) is an author, illustrator and educator. He studied at Salford School of Art and at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. He has illustrated 40 books, his best-known works being The Giant Jam Sandwich (1972) and his award-winning edition of The Nonsense Verse of Edward Lear (1984), both published by Jonathan Cape and still in print. His childrens books have been translated into many languages. He has twice been the overall winner of the Victoria and Albert Museum Illustration Awards, with his Aesops Fables in 1990 and for his illustrations in James Joyces Ulysses in 2018, when he was awarded the Moira Gemmill Illustrator of the Year and the Best Illustrated Book prize. Lords illustrated edition of James Joyces Finnegans Wake was published by the Folio Society in 2014. Two monographs on his work have been published Drawing Upon Drawing (2007) and Drawn to Drawing (2014). Lord has illustrated the Folio Societys Myths and Legends of the British Isles, Icelandic Sagas, and Epics of the Middle Ages. In addition he has illustrated several classics of childrens literature, including Lewis Carrolls Alices Adventures in Wonderland (2009), Through the Looking Glass (2011), and The Hunting of the Snark (2006), published by Artists Choice Editions. Among the 40 books he has illustrated, 15 of them are childrens books including 4 of his own stories. Lord has lectured on the art of illustration in the UK and internationally for the past 60 years. He was chair of the Graphic Design Board of the Council for Academic Awards during the 1980s, and he is Professor Emeritus at the University of Brighton, having been Professor of Illustration there from 1986 where he taught from 1961 to 1999. An Honorary DLitt was conferred upon him by the University of Brighton in 2000.
