The Other Room reading

Here's my (dimly lit) reading at The Other Room in April 2011. I read a couple poems by other poets in Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets before reading from my collection, Divining for Starters. Thanks again to James Davies, Tom Jenks and Scott Thurston for inviting me. 

Tonight on The Verb

Tonight's edition of The Verb with Ian McMillan (BBC Radio 3, 9:15 p.m.) includes Infinite Difference contributors Harriet Tarlo and Carol Watts, as well as poet Ira Lightman. Listen in!

A splendid new review of Infinite Difference

appears online in Horizon 5, written by Ruth Jenkins.

2010

As I approach every birthday and New Year's Eve, I find myself reckoning the last year. Here's 2010 (well, the expurgated version for public consumption....):

This is the year I won the London Festival Fringe New Poetry Award for my first book, The Tethers (Seren, 2009). I cannot explain why it has meant so much to me, but it has given me greater confidence (don't let the American exterior fool you).

This is the year that two of my nieces, Katelyn Etter and Josslyn Casperson, were lost to me. Their mothers, my sisters, had signed over their rights to the state on account of the fierce intimidation and pressurizing they received from state representatives (following my sisters' struggles with drug addiction), and their other parents decided to cut off contact with the entire Etter family, both around early autumn. I long to hear from my nieces but have no expectations.

This is the year the anthology I began working on in August 2007 was published by Shearsman Books, Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets, and widely reviewed as well as commented on in the Times Literary Supplement (3 times!) and on the London Review of Books blog. I've been pleasantly surprised by the number of truly positive reviews and only rarely disappointed by small-mindedness, when I thought the proportions would be reversed. Thanks again to all the contributors for their good work.

This is my first whole year without my father, but the lawsuit for medical malpractice against BroMenn Hospital drags on. I long for its settlement for the closure it will bring for my mother most of all, not to mention reimbursement for huge medical bills.

This is the year I was creatively devoted to my second book manuscript, Divining for Starters. After much work, feedback, and more work, I'm heartened by the result.

This is the year I had laser eye surgery. I began wearing contacts at the age of 15 and had to switch to glasses at 35 when my eyes would no longer tolerate the contacts. I've only had this new vision a matter of days, but I'm awed to see unaided for the first time in 26 years. It's--sorry, it's the right word--awesome!

Infinite Difference on the TLS Books of the Year 2010

Jeremy Noel-Tod writes in Friday's issue, "In the year that Rae Armantrout won the Pultizer Prize in Poetry, it was good to see the thinking Briton's woman poet represented by Carrie Etter's rich and intelligent anthology, Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets."

Hurrah!

Two more (last?) readings for Infinite Difference at Greenwich and UEA

There are two more readings from Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets forthcoming; I expect they'll be the last ones for some time.

On Friday, 17 December at 7 p.m., Sascha Akhtar, Emily Critchley, Frances Kruk, Rachel Lehrman, Sophie Mayer, Wendy Mulford, myself, and others to be confirmed will read at the University of Greenwich as part of their term-end student reading. Thus selected students will read in the first half, anthology contributors in the second. The reading is free. I'll post the exact location and an updated list of readers on the Infinite Difference page as soon as I have them.

On Tuesday, 22 February, at 7 p.m., Sascha Akhtar, Anne Blonstein, Rachel Lehrman, Wendy Mulford, Frances Presley, Anna Reckin, Lucy Sheerman, Harriet Tarlo, myself, and others to be confirmed will read in the Drama Studio at the University of East Anglia. The reading is free and open to the public.

Take down the dates! These will be great nights.

They just keep on coming--Steven Waling's rave review of Infinite Difference

"This is an important anthology of often dizzingly innovative writing, going from the relatively straightforward poetry of Claire Crowther to the stranger shores of Caroline Bergvall's more conceptual verse....[T]his is a brave attempt to represent poetries that are often excluded from the usual conversations about the art form....New approaches to landscape, to the personal lyric, to the political, abound in this challenging and fascinating anthology."

Steven Waling in the current issue of The North

"The Verge of a Language"--another appreciative review of Infinite Difference

In The Brooklyn Rail, Barry Schwabsky reviews Infinite Difference alongside the American anthology, Gurlesque: The New Grrly, Grotesque, Burlesque Poetics, edited by Lara Glenum and Arielle Greenberg. In addition to appreciative reviews of both books, the essay also provides perceptive comments on the differences between American and British women's non-mainstream poetries.

A most appreciative review of Infinite Difference

has been written by Ian Seed and appears online in his magazine, Shadowtrain.

And another online review

of Infinite Difference! Rob McLennan calls it "magnificent".

Another review of Infinite Difference

Another complimentary review of Infinite Difference appears online at Eyewear, written by Steve Van-Hagen.

Stephen Burt reviews Infinite Difference on the London Review of Books blog

Read it here.

Women's Poetry Anthologies

I'm off to London shortly for tonight's event at The Poetry Library, "What Every Woman Would Carry: Women's Poetry Anthologies," moderated by Dr Jane Dowson, author of A Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century British Women's Poetry; my fellow panelist is Maura Dooley, editor of Making for Planet Alice: New Women's Poetry (Bloodaxe, 1997). Thoughts?

Damn the Caesars issue N

The new issue of Damn the Caesars includes a good number of British poets, such as Infinite Difference contributors Emily Critchley and Frances Kruk, as well as Allen Fisher, Francesca Lisette, Luke Roberts, and Keston Sutherland. I myself have eight Divining for Starters poems in the issue. The cover art is "Proposal 22" by Fisher.

Dublin reading podcasts

My reading in June on the Wurm im Apfel series in Dublin is now available in two podcasts from iTunes (simply search for my name under the description--not author) or for streaming online on this page of the Wurm im Apfel site. I read selections by Claire Crowther, Frances Presley, Anna Reckin, and Lucy Sheerman from Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets, as well as some of my own work from that anthology and from my pamphlet Yet (Leafe, 2008). Thanks to Kit Fryatt and Dylan Harris for the invitation and their generosity, and to Poetry Ireland for funding the event.

Vive la Différance!

The new Poetry London (Summer 2010) carries, as its final piece, Tim Dooley's full A4-page review of Infinite Difference with the splendid title "Vive la Différance". It has some quibbles about choice of poets/categorization (as with all anthology reviews), the academicism of some of the poetics statements (saw it coming), and the proportion of the parts of entries (strange as the poetics statements are up to one page, the entries up to eight, the biographies no more than 150 words), but the tone manifests interest in appreciation throughout.

On poetics statements Dooley speaks well of Claire Crowther and Marianne Morris; of poems he enthuses about Denise Riley, Elisabeth Bletsoe, and Morris (all the better for TLS's ignorant slighting of her). These are meant as a representative sample, the review suggests, not as the only occurrences.

If I've delayed in commenting on this review, it's in part because I've been drowning in year-end marking, in larger part because of the graciousness of the final sentence, which makes me feel all the hours were worthwhile but also makes me feel (abashed?). It may be one of the best things anyone's said about me. I dearly hope Dooley's right--I aspire to it.

"Carrie Etter has performed a service for the wider readership of poetry in bringing together these distinctive voices."

Another appreciative review of Infinite Difference

appears amid George Ttoouli's essay, "Ineffable Compendia," considering the nature of anthologies as well as reviewing several other new anthologies. The essay's in the new issue of Horizon.

Infinite Difference appreciatively reviewed

Steve Spence's appreciative review of Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets appears in Stride Magazine. NB Helen Macdonald was repeatedly solicited for work for the anthology, but never sent any.

May events

A light month, most fortunately...

10 May 2010, 6-8 p.m. I will read from and speak about my own work and Infinite Difference to the Poetry and Poetics Research Group at Edge Hill University, Ormskirk campus. Free and open to the public. For further details, please contact Robert Sheppard at sheppar at edgehill.ac.uk.

12 May 2010. Bath Japanese Festival launch with numerous poets working in Japanese forms, including a haiga artist. I'll read from my haiku and senryu manuscript, The Broken Kite. Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute, 16-18 Queen Square, Bath. £4, £2 students and BRLSI members.

25 May 2010. I read at York University. Details TBA.

Infinite Difference as "an active and decisive intervention"

Richard Owens comments on the anthology and its possible roles on his blog, Damn the Caesars.