Trombonicle 88 / gaits – Trombone Poetry

The Creative Constraints event at Tickbird&Rhino seemed to go well. Against the constraint of a 20-minute time limit, we rattled through a potted guide to Oulipo and presented various original poetic forms and constraints used in most of the books published with Redriff Press so far.

There will be various outcomes from this, including a rise in the number of people going to the pub to write tankards. The event was definitely a stimulus to get on with making more pages on the website to describe and explain what’s in the books. It was also the seed of another event, Beyond the Haiku, now scheduled for the afternoon of April 8th, where some of those short formats will be presented in an informal workshop/performance, inviting people to play with the constraints and share the results.

Fatima Felisberti’s presentation, mainly about visual perception, was exceptionally engaging and featured some really striking demonstrations of how top-down processing affects what we see as real. The archived description of the event on the Tickbird&Rhino site includes links to Fatima’s research.

Various art events caught the eye this month, thanks to ArtRabbit, such as the neatly-titled Pixels and Poetics: Sudek, Funke, and the Influence of New Technologies on the Development of Photography at the Czech Centre. The launch was in a tiny space outside of the Czech Embassy.

Here’s a sliver of the poem that will emerge someday:

bright lights and cold Urquell
a shuffle in a shoebox
stuffed with view finders

This month brings a batch of theatre shows with Harry Strutters, and a return to Greenwich with Sugarfoot Strut, though there’ll be more schlepping than strutting, bringing shiny new paperbacks to eager readers everywhere.

Plus: advance notice of The Blue Planet Orchestra in Brighton.

GIGS