SPAM Season 7

Over the past few months I’ve had the pleasure of working with two excellent poets, Jack Young and Karólína Rós Ólafsdóttir, on bringing to life their pamphlets in the country garden /the end of england and All in Animal Time. It’s been a fair few months since SPAM published anything physical (our most recent print publication was Cocoa and Nothing back in February) and coordinating everything for season 7 reminded me why I love doing this in the first place. There is something magical and alchemical that happens in the process of getting something from email to book in a series of whirlwind zoom(ies) and frantic whatsapps and editorial ping pong and delicious in-depth reading. I love figuring out solutions to a design problem, shunting things around, letting things bleed into the edges or splash into place, phone calls about word choice and line breaks. Generous margins and snaky wee texts / embarking upon font quests.

We got to know our authors, who are based in Bristol and Iceland, variously over the pandemic through Zoom workshops and the great poetry boulevard that is gmail. You can read one of Jack’s poems in SPAM005 and one of Karó’s in SPAM004. The SPAM editors are big fans of their work and we were delighted that both authors had pamphlets that kind of grew out of the poems in the magazine. This season has a lil rainbow-shrouded eco flavour: poems of the anthropocene everyday, poems of queer pastoral, poems in animal time (as per David Berman’s advice). J&K are poets with a real interest in the scholarly work of poetry as much as the playful. These are really thoughtful works which traverse everything from decolonising botany to Commander Keen, the dietary needs of black holes and the sonnets of rats and punctuation marks. Ugh I really love them! Thinking about these pamphlets is like coming up on coffee with sunlight pouring through the morning and having adequate sleep and remembering why the little things really fucking matter. It’s like the libido of the knotweed exerting pressure to break concrete and escape the walled garden which is like beautiful open source software. I am so lucky to have worked with these poets and also to have collabed with my co-editors Mau Baiocco, Kirsty Dunlop and Ian Macartney in bringing them to fruition. Long live SPAM!

Coordinating this pamphlet series also reminded me that publishing is an act of worldbuilding, brick by paper brick, pixel by pixel. It’s like: how do we give birth constantly to the word-pearls of what you wanted by accident of so many factors to have an idea for ~ ~ it’s like……a gift, a life-changing conversation, a journal entry for the language of flowers, a frolic through girl city’s sugar cubes and the delicious lumpencoal of the poem. Stop to admire the ‘four-star review sycamore’ (KRO) while you’re at it.

We worked with two v talented artists, Maura Sappilo and Sam Williams on cover design. Thank you Jack and Maura!!!

If you’re in Glasgow, please come along to our launch on the 10th November, where we’ll also have a reading from Edinburgh poet Murid L. Keshtmand and there will be many a pamphlet on sale and a lil wine & snack to be had.

PEOPLE OF THE PRESS! If you’d like to review the book, interview one of the authors, have them on your podcast or stock copies of the pamphlets in your store, please email spamzine.editors@gmail.com.

You can preorder the books at inflation-resistant prices => spamzine.co.uk/shop.

You can watch two Instagram live sessions with Jack and Karó here, where we talk about the thinking behind the pamphlets, inspirations and the craft of writing.

Our Amazing Bed is the Future Garden: The Poetics of Dream Ecologies

This performance lecture takes flight from the shape of a question: what is the relationship between poetic language, sleep and dream in the anthropocene? Combining poetry, journaling and critical inquiry towards the ecologies of sleep, I will consider how dreams may be the site of impossibility, drift and low-carbon pleasure in a time of ’24/7′ where, in the words of Jonathan Crary, our ability to ‘daydream’ is blocked by a constant barrage of the internet’s attention economy, the demands of late capitalist labour and ongoing crisis. Taking this as a serious political disempowerment, I look to writers whose work alters the ‘operating speed’ of daily life to make room for dreaming otherwise. Exploring the formal interventions of writers within feminist, New York and Language schools, I focus on how these works tend the unruly future garden through daily reclamations of dreamtime. If many of us are at surge capacity, how might poetry attune to various kinds of ‘slow violence’ (Crary) which often go hidden in mainstream narratives of extinction and climate crisis? How might poets borrow from the logic, content and impulse of dream to offer alternative visions of coexistence, commoning, time and compassion for other species?

Recorded at the University of Strathclyde’s Department of Humanities Seminar Series, hosted by Charles Pigott and Hannah Proctor, 4th October 2023.

Upcoming Sleep Curricula

My research currently centres on sleep as a nexus for thinking about energy transition, low carbon pleasure and chronodiversity (the way our circadian rhythms differ).

Tomorrow I’m giving a talk titled Our Amazing Bed Is the Future Garden: The Poetics of Dream Ecologies. It emerges from a chapter in my DFA thesis which will form part of a book forthcoming with NoUP Press next year. If you would like a Zoom link please drop me an email at maria.sledmere[at]strath.ac.uk.

This autumn I’ve got three upcoming workshops, two of them with the brilliant experimental composer Kevin Leomo.

Civil Twilight: Carving Dreamtime – workshop with Kevin Leomo and Maria Sledmere
14th October at 5:30pm, Civic House, Glasgow

Get your brain sticky in the pumpkin meat of the circadian and join Kevin Leomo and Maria Sledmere in carving dreamtime as an expression of creativity and low carbon pleasure. As the nights draw in and the clocks go back, we’ll be thinking about how darkness affects mood and slumber. Civil twilight is the brightest of the three twilight phases, where stars and planets might be seen in the sky as the sun dips just below the horizon. By attending to the ‘nocturne’ as a form in poetry and music, we’ll dwell in the possibilities of liminal experience for cultivating ecological imaginaries.
Please bring: Preferred writing materials, If you have one, a reusable coffee cup, headphones and phone.
Tickets are offered on a slide scale: £15 / £10 / £5.
Part of Civic Harvest at Civic House – an Autumn themed day of family friendly activities, workshops and market stalls with lunch from Parveen’s and seasonal cocktails at Civic House Bar!
Tickets

😴

Design your own sleep demon – workshop with Kevin Leomo and Maria Sledmere
24th October at 5:30pm, Advanced Research Centre, University of Glasgow
While sleep is a source of rest and recovery, many of us wrestle with disturbed sleep. If you’ve ever had nightmares or found yourself sleepwalking, you’ve encountered oneirodynia. The word comes from the Greek oneiros, meaning ‘dream’ and odyne, meaning pain. Sleep disturbance may be caused by a number of factors: from stress to stimulants, environment, illness and temperature. The eponymous protagonist of Donnie Darko is often found sleepwalking or experiencing some kind of nocturnal anguish. In this workshop, which serves as a primer for the film’s upcoming CinemARC debut, we’ll explore hypnagogic states between wakefulness and sleep as premonition, vision and disturbance. Together we will produce a ‘sleep bestiary’ of our (least) favourite nocturnal nasties, and present our findings before the screening on Friday.

Tickets

😴

The Poetry of Somnolence – weekend double workshop with Maria Sledmere and Beyond Form Creative Writing
11th and 12th November at 1-4pm (GMT), Zoom

This 2 part series of afternoon workshops prioritise the relationship between writing and sleep. Exploring cross-genre writing, visual and sonic art, we will look at how daily writing practice can recentre our circadian rhythms. From hypnagogic poetics to dream writing, nocturnal missives, dawn songs and notes on twilight, we’ll consider experimental approaches to writing somnolence. All creatives welcome.

Workshop format will combine reading, writing, listening, optional discussion and two nap breaks.

Tickets

Kevin and I have also been working on this somnolent playlist for your melatonin delectation:

Claire de Luna


☾

Claire de Luna
For Alex

Just found a sequin in my cup of tea
now stuck to the organ
grinding medicine of the morning 
after Claire de Luna declares it 
licking the inside shot
of tequila 
like antediluvians
lining the seabed with SSRIs
did somebody say “free margaritas”
I want to love the salt-rimming margins 
of reading the poem 
liquefied drunk lilac of loving

Smashed the disco piñata of my brain 
just to feel something
logistical about happiness
Blake says “eternity is in love
with the productions of time”
which is why we celebrate birthdays
for age verification under the name
of human nature 
like nobody puts baby on the carousel
ouch, taking half of the pill you are
horse girl summer.

*

Nobody at the wedding was on their phone.
I think we should get married more often,
why not do it over and over
licensed a la carte of loving 
lightning bolts 
drawn on James
that’s how it starts
surrendering mood to the iPod shuffle of the noughties 
what monoculture still plays in thine ears is radio
weight like watching your life salve 
lip-syncing grace of plenitude
tattooed on our ankles
tomorrow I travel 499 miles to witness 
meltwater
come into song.

Julia Cameron says god has a lot of money.
Did Kanye read The Artist’s Way?
Junk bond celestine of autumn goldenness
doesn’t glow like it used to, cash in my pocket
starts to burn ecological moonlighting ruins
on the basis of cigarettes in process
light nutrient water recycling
boosts the release of serotonin from the pre-
synaptic cell party hiya
stuffed pistachio cookie ether,
either way. Drink up baby.

I’m so in love with my friends 
it might become a problem
doing star jumps to 
‘Sugar We’re Going Down’ 
like holding sparklers too close
to the sky, they start 
to think they’re shooting stars.

*

Alex is a gender-neutral name of Greek origin
meaning “defender of humankind”
which is why they sent you to fuck
the anthropocene so hard it turns
to seafoam. 

O God of Wine
lush chromosomes of sleep adequacy 
fill my eyelids with orange
dreamt sexuality of star speak
Yasi is reading Kierkegaard and I’m crying finally
alien pixels of being dumb
emotional girl clutter
surfing the internet permafrost 
people called me a living sim 
supervised by Anna Tsing
I was salon assistant to the 
sadness device 
of forest massage.

It cost so much to let go 
of her leaving.

*

The apocalypse is stylised polyester.
You are wearing a dress of flame and
burning up that slay would leave no
fire behind you, white
hot praxis 
rats with necklaces
of satellite dishes
beam me up softly
to want Carhartt durable 
rent stabilised limbo
of being a work in progress 
touched luminous thot
climbing the ladder charisma

I was told a wild case of golden goose 
bumps a literal golden goose
prone to memorising pop songs
buying shares in Ethereum
stomach pain from the ice crush
of so many bruises.

*

Still going strong in the life morning 
beautiful four-leaf lovers
queen of the lit department
trying to learn 
Luna checking the pee mail of the neighbourhood canines:
Bruce woz ere,
Peanut sayz hi 
I ❤ Keats etc.

*

I mean the kind of snack that happens
upon you, loves you back
happy birthday
foreverie golden surrounds 
finish the cookie to keep the peace
trebuchet of personality
the shape of how I love them is inexplicable 
like math fruit of loving itself 
Cinderace soccer ball of kicking fire 
up in car headlights just to write this
adrenaline voice note 
of Caroline’s hopedrunk everlasting encore 
volcano of yasssified gender

our bar in Berlin translates as 
COMRADE
NEST 3000
playing disco vintage of parataxis 
like putting the word ‘no’ in a poem
as if to image the jagged edge of 
snowflakes snagged in my 
curriculum vitae of oesophageal 
rupture like
hi, a career.

I’ll add that 
to the ADHD craft graveyard 
of my personal sabotage
email embroidery
flavour of the meadow 
we’re in for a bit.
I like having a reason
to be a little 
invisible
dabbing the blue idea 
of what you said 
people should 
scunnersome
boycott
the grade device until they realise
intelligence is weather dependent.

*

I was my own sister
kissed forehead 
a server farm
of purloined bog myrtle
from which 
distress is the same 
gaping brilliantly not 
like a wound just a knot
in a tree made of cloud
as you said of 
ceremony’s gigabyte largesse
gone into orb 
tomorrow
wear something comfortable
and look HOT
out in the plasmatron 
reality holism. 

*

Happy birthday, but like
in four-dimensional waltz time
trying my altitude regret
I stay really high in the hero stage
doing Barbie parkour 
while someone smokes
blunts out the infra-
twilight of being alive
with y’all so much 
spinning around 
flowers in the 
pouring rain
getting lit
lit, lit, lit:
let them 
eat chips.

— September 2023

in praise of red trousers

‘A collection of photographs in celebration of the vibrant and burgeoning red-trousered communities of London and elsewhere.‘

Thanks for D.B. for the tip-off of this excellent archival gem.

http://lookatmyfuckingredtrousers.blogspot.com

Some highlights:

& finally it would be remiss to not bring Jack & Meg into this:

I myself am a fan of the red corduroy flare paired w/ white tee or ribbed tank.

Podcast on Samantha Walton’s Bad Moon (2020)

It’s been a while since we recorded an episode of Lunch Club over at SPAM HQ, but I was really excited to join Jac Common and Ian Macartney in the studio to discuss the 2020 spamphlet Bad Moon by Samantha Walton.

Further reading:

  • Un Chien Andalou, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí (1929).
  • Galina Rymbu, Life in Space (New York: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020, trans. Joan Brooks).
  • William Blake, Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793) public domain.
  • William Shakespeare, The Tempest, ii.I
  • Aiskhylos, Agamemnon in An Oresteia (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, trans. Anne Carson)
  • Derek Jarman, Modern Nature (London: Vintage, 1992).
  • Daisy Hildyard, The Second Body (London: Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017).
  • Fred Carter (2022) ‘`Crude Oil Shaping Forms of Writing`: Galina Rymbu’s Life in Space, Ecoes, 4, 56-65.
  • Esther Leslie, Fog, Froth and Foam: Insubstantial Matters in Substantive Atmospheres in Electric Brine (Berlin: Archive Books, 2021, ed. Jennifer Teets).
  • Sophie Lewis (2017) ‘Amniotechnics’, The New Enquiry, link
  • Max Liboiron, Pollution is Colonialism (New York, London: Duke University Press, 2021).
  • Stacey Alaimo, Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).
  • Lauren Berlant (2007) ‘Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)’, Critical Inquiry, 33(4), 754–780.

Futher noise:

  • Funeralopolis – Electric Wizard
  • Copy of A – Nine Inch Nails
  • Sulfur – Slipknot
  • THE PERPETUAL FLAME OF CENTRALIA – Lingua Ignota
  • Pet – The Perfect Circle
  • Welcome To My Island – Caroline Polachek
  • Save The Dream, Kill Your Friends – Pupil Slicer
  • Autoimmune – Pharmakon
  • Land Disasters – Blanck Mass
  • Enjoy The Silence – Depeche Mode

🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝

Official Bad Moon playlist: