Trombonicle 87 / talk – Trombone Poetry

With or without blizzards, January will get going with a typical range of music: early swing, modern big band, salsa and free improvisation.

As it’s moved to Sunday afternoon, I’ll also be showing up again at Billie Jeyes’ poetry open mic this month, for four minutes of fame and fuddlement. The trombone will not be joining us.

Neither will it be unleashed the following Wednesday, when I will have the rare opportunity to explain what the hell I think I’m doing with various books and that trombone.

As mentioned here months ago, I have been providing poems that are like minutes of a meeting refracted into free verse, documenting the art/science talks and events laid on by Tickbird&Rhino in the Horse Hospital and various pubs.

This time, instead of scribbling in the dark, I will be spouting in the glare, trying to give an account of what constraints can do for creative projects, with reference to Oulipo and the series of books steadily emerging from Redriff Press.

Incurably francophile, I have been reading and writing about Oulipo for decades and have been lucky enough to meet some of the luminaries, like Stanley Chapman, Jacques Roubaud (November 2005), Paul Fournel and Ian Monk, plus Tristan Bastit of Oupeinpo. Three years ago, the Italian variant came to London: Oplepo. Last October, Aubrey Gabel presented her first book, The Politics of Play: Oulipo and the Legacy of French Literary Ludics, at the Centre for French and Francophone Research. A copy was bagged by Beiku barter.

Following my talk, and inevitably making a lot more sense, will be a friend and associate at countless Darwinian meetings, Fatima Maria Felisberti, who will outline some research in neuroscience and psychology in relation to aesthetic experience.

Art, science, drinks, chat: what more do you want?

GIGS