Anna McKerrow

More fortune telling in literature

2012-01-28T15:06:00.003Z

Two other books helped inspire Taropoetics, my experimental poetry project. They were Margaret Atwood's novel Lady Oracle - an interesting essay about it here - and Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle. The former uses the idea of automatic writing to create poetry, and the latter uses the I Ching as a storytelling device in a story-within-a-story:

Dick used the philosophic I Ching (Book of Changes) to determine the plot particulars of The Man in the High Castle, explaining:

"I started with nothing but the name, Mister Tagomi, written on a scrap of paper, no other notes. I had been reading a lot of Oriental philosophy, reading a lot of Zen Buddhism, reading the I Ching. That was the Marin County zeitgeist, at that point; Zen Buddhism and the I Ching. I just started right out and kept on trucking."[4] In the event, he blamed the I Ching for plot incidents he disliked: "When it came to close down the novel, the I Ching had no more to say. So, there's no real ending on it. I like to regard it as an open ending".

The I Ching is prominent in The Man in the High Castle; having diffused it as part of their cultural hegemony overlordship of the Pacific Coast U.S., the Japanese — and some American — characters consult it, and then act per its replies to their queries. Specifically, "The Man in the High Castle", Hawthorne Abendsen, himself, used it to write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, and, at story's end, in his presence, Juliana Frink, queries the I Ching: "Why did it write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy?" and "What is the reader to learn from the novel?" The I Ching replies with Hexagram 61 ([中孚] zhōng fú) Chung Fu, "Inner Truth", describing the true state of the world—every character in The Man in the High Castle is living a false reality.

I wondered whether Atwood's reference to automatic writing, albeit in a slightly comedic novel, pointed to Hannah Weiner's Clairvoyant Journal. This is an avant-garde text which the writer "received" over a number of months. (Another very interesting essay on Weiner available as a PDF here).

In the early 1970s, Weiner began writing a series of journals that were partly the result of her experiments with automatic writing and partly a result of her schizophrenia. She influenced a number of the language poets and was included in the In the American Tree anthology of Language poetry (edited by Ron Silliman). Beginning with Little Books/Indians (1980) and Spoke (1984) Weiner's work engaged with Native American politics, particularly the American Indian Movement and the case of imprisoned activist Leonard Peltier.[4][5]

Interest in Weiner continues into the 21st century with the recent publication of Hannah Weiner’s Open House (2007), "a representative selection spanning her decades of poetic output" [6] This volume was edited by Patrick F. Durgin, who provides an overview of Weiner's art:

“

Hannah Weiner’s influence extends from the sixties New York avant-garde, where she was part of an unprecedented confluence of poets, performance and visual artists including Phillip Glass, Andy Warhol, Carolee Schneemann, John Perrault, David Antin, and Bernadette Mayer. Like fellow-traveler Jackson Mac Low, she became an important part of the Language poetry of the 70s and 80s, and her influence can be seen today in the so-called "New Narrative" work stemming from the San Francisco Bay Area. With other posthumous publications of late, her work is being discussed by scholars in feminist studies, poetics, and disability studies. But there does not yet exist a representative selection spanning her decades of poetic output. Hannah Weiner’s Open House aims to remedy this with previously uncollected (and mostly never-published) work, including performance texts, early New York School influenced lyric poems, odes and remembrances to / of Mac Low and Ted Berrigan, and later “clair-style” works.

Tarot, Art and Literature

2012-01-25T20:36:00.006Z

I'm reading Italo Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies, a novel based on interlocking stories generated by the tarot. A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then a tavern. their powers of speech are magically taken from them and instead they have only tarot cards with which to tell their stories. What follows is an exquisite interlinking of narratives, and a fantastic, surreal and chaotic history of all human consciousness.

Calvino adds a note at the end of the book as follows:

I publish this book to be free of it: it has obsessed me for years. I began by trying to line up tarots at random, to see if I could read a story in them. "The Waverer's Tale" emerged; I started writing it down; I looked for other combinations of the same cards; I realised the tarots were a machine for constructing stories; I thought of a book and I imagined it's frame: the mute narrators, the forest, the inn; I was tempted by the diabolical idea if conjuring up all the stories that could be contained in a tarot deck.

Tarot is in the public mind, the art mind. Suzanne Treister is just about to exhibit her art show, Hexen 2.0, at the Science Museum in London. The blurb from the official site is:

HEXEN 2.0 Suzanne Treister 2009-2011
HEXEN 2.0 is the sequel to HEXEN 2039 which imagined new technologies for psychological warfare through investigating links between the occult and the military in relation to histories of witchcraft, the US film industry, British Intelligence agencies, Soviet brainwashing and behaviour control experiments of the U.S. Army.

HEXEN 2.0 delves deeper into the histories of scientific research behind government programmes of mass control, investigating parallel histories of countercultural and grass roots movements. HEXEN 2.0 charts, within a framework of post-WWII U.S. governmental and military imperatives, the coming together of diverse scientific and social sciences through the development of cybernetics, the history of the internet, the rise of Web 2.0 and mass intelligence gathering, and the implications for the future of new systems of societal manipulation towards a control society.

HEXEN 2.0 specifically investigates the participants of the seminal Macy Conferences (1946-1953), whose primary goal was to set the foundations for a general science of the workings of the human mind. The project simultaneously looks at critics ofJ technological society such as Theodore Kaczynski/The Unabomber, the claims of Anarcho-Primitivism and Post Leftism, Technogaianism and Transhumanism and traces precursory ideas of Thoreau, Heidegger, Adorno and others in relation to visions of utopic/dystopic futures from science-fiction literature and film.

Based on actual events, people, histories and scientific projections of the future, and consisting of alchemical diagrams, a Tarot deck, photo-text works, a video and a website, HEXEN 2.0 takes us to a hypnotic, mesmerising space of early technological fantasy to hallucinate feedback from the past from where one may imagine and construct possible alternative futures.

The HEXEN 2.0 book and separately available Tarot deck will be released in February 2012 by Black Dog Publishing.

I'll be purchasing the book and the tarot set for sure! It's available for preorder on Amazon here.

Witch Fitch: The 2012 Sketchbook Project at the Brooklyn Art Library

2012-01-20T13:22:00.006Z

So I have been a busy bee finishing my sketchbook for the Brooklyn Art Library's 2012 Sketchbook Project. It's a brilliant thing to take part in. A few months ago I signed up and chose a topic - "Fill me with stories". A couple of weeks later a slim 4x6 notebook arrived in the post, ready for me to fill with anything i liked. Drawings, photos, painting, collage, print... just something that related vaguely to the topic.

The sketchbooks will be permanently archived at the library and will also go on tour around museums and libraries in the US.

Being obsessed with witches, I decided to fill the book with excerpts from stories about witches as well as a few random thoughts and ephemera along the way. a meditation on the fictional witch, if you will: hence Witch Fitch.

Here are a few pics of some of my favourite pages. I'm no artist as you can see, so my approach was mostly collage withe some primary school-level colouring in. Great fun.

There are some fabulous entries already online here with arange of topics from cigarettes and alcohol to "27 ways to...". Also check out the Library's online store which has some gorgeous notebooks, vintage photos, art supplies etc... Yay, geeky art heaven.

Back on the blog

2012-01-10T10:31:00.002Z

Hello, tiny readership. I'm back. I had some time off to have a baby! Yes! I did. And the parents among you will know that blogging is about bottom of the priorities you can have with a baby.

However, I have not been idle (writing-wise - clearly I haven't been idle otherwise. Idle would be AMAZING. I'd love to do idle), and have finally finished, or near-finished, my teen novel. It is a dystopian work set in the near future after an energy crisis, with witches. More on that soon. My hopefully-soon-to-be-agent is reading it about now.

I was also pleased to see an excerpt from a long poem "Undine" I wrote a while back with illustrations by my friend, witch and all round glamour puss Laura Daligan, in the current issue of new "mermaid lifestyle" magazine Mermaids and Mythology, by the same people who brought you Fae magazine. Check it out at www.themermaidmagazine.com.

Hopefully I'll have more to report on the novel soon. Happy new year 2012!

New review of Spectral Emphatic

2011-05-31T16:31:00.005+01:00

Just found this review of Spectral Emphatic online at Stride Magazine from a reviewer that obviously HATED it. However, in the interests of parity and fairness, I include it here, complete with mis-spellings and grammatical errors :)

Anna Mckerrow's second poetry collection is entitled Spectral Emphatic promises so much in its premise and yet delivers very little. The title poem of this collection contains everything which I find frustrating about the collection, the expectation of narrative which is only ever partly fulfilled, the clichéd imagery and a purposeful obscurity in its language. Mckerrow's language is too often over the top unfortunately, using religious and spiritual images which are not concrete enough to really allow her voice to come through. Therefore the reader gets lost in the abstractions and fails to understand what she is actually trying to say. This quotation from the title poem Spectral Emphatic portrays this:

They roost among its evangelical exhortations for spiritual revolution.

Good poetry is based upon subtlety, precision of language and showing the reader, rather than telling the reader everything, essentially trusting the reader. 'Spectral Emphatic' fails on all three points. The poetry is often didactic, clichéd and her obvious love of language could be used so much better, if concrete images were used. After saying all this, Mckerrow's best poem in this collection comes right at the end of the book, 'A Bibliomantic poem', because it makes an attempt to do all these things, with one of the better lines being:

Without truly understanding her own, motives, the writer
photocopied page 8 of every book on the tree-shelf bookshelf
in her study.

Although I usually have an aversion to meta-poetry, poetry about writing poetry, unless it is done especially well with flair (I still have my reservations) but this poem is adequate in its attempt to tackle the subject. She approaches it well, using definite language, in an almost prose poem style to end up with a poem that is funny and insightful. However this poem is far from perfect, McKerrow slips into abstractions, using adverbs like 'yearning' to try and sound more poetic when a more concrete word would be better. Unfortunately after reading this collection several times I couldn't find much I liked about it. It lacks the clarity and precision of language which is necessary to create good poetry.

---------------------------------------------

Interestingly, the line he quotes above as being a great line of poetry is (weirdly) not even part of the poem itself and is instead part of the explanatory text that precedes it: it should also read "three-shelf" rather than the intriguingly misquoted "tree-shelf" and not have a comma after "own". Nitpicking.

As to the gist of the review, I entirely take on the point that someone looking for an obvious narrative in the poems will be disappointed in many of them. I dislike too much narrative in poetry on the whole: I like it best when it's unconscious, image-rich and slippery, with images auggesting moods and elision rather than wholeness. Dreamlike, really. Purposeful obscurity, as observed. That's often what I'm after. And, actually, poems which were more narrative and had more of a sense of internal unity wouldn't, in my view, make sense within the remit of Spectral Emphatic, which is by definition a "channelled" work - prone to inaccuracy, strangeness, wisps and passing influences. Dreams ARE obscure. Who can fully explain David Lynch's Mulholland Drive??

I personally dislike poetry which is too "clear" and "simple", preferring verbally complicated or bulbous things, so it makes total sense to me that if this is what you like, you won't like Spectral Emphatic. HOWEVER, it's a terrible shame to be a cliche. I shall have to make a mental note to avoid being so in the future when creating unusual conceptual works :)

Oh, and I am DELIGHTED to be found to slip into abstractions.

Update

2011-04-05T16:42:00.004+01:00

I was saddened to hear last week that Flambard Press, the publisher of my first book The Fast Heat of Beauty, have been a victin of Arts Council cuts and will lose all of their funding in 2012. Please support them by having a look at their publications and purchasing one or two! Recommendations: Peter Bennet's The Glass Swarm (a Poetry Book Society choice)and Kelley Swain's Darwin's Microscope.

Some good news came for me a few days ago when Alec Newman at Knives, Forks and Spoons press told me that among my recent sales of new book Spectral Emphatic were the University of Salford, who considered the book to contain "considerable literary merit". Ahem! Marvellous news - deeply humbled.

I've also just heard that a poem from Spectral Emphatic, Desert Sphinx, will be included in the next issue of Carole Baldock's Orbis Poetry Quarterly.

That's it for me right now - until next time...

Spectral Emphatic now available to order!

2011-01-25T14:46:00.002Z

I can proudly announce that my new collection of poetry, Spectral Emphatic, is now available to order from the Knives, Forks and Spoons Press. At just £7 a complete bargain.

Here's a sneak preview of one of my favourite poems from the book, Elf-hill:

Elf-hill

I’m standing on a slip-road, waiting for the elves
on highway one. Mysteriously, the almost-bankrupt kroner
in my pocket is rolled into tight balls: I do not remember
that rounding reflex of my fingers; around us, the air slices
printing-ink and cod cheeks into a cold harmony. My pencil
hovers over the page. The bloody smell of the graphite makes

me nauseous. The Viking, a psychic and expert in these matters, is
squatting by an elf-hill around which the road parts.
This is his routine: consulting elves on plans for new roads
and intersections, settling the conundrums and drinking
coffee laced with something odourless but as warming
as the magic pounding my chakras from the

grass-covered mound. I chafe my hands, though gloved,
against the morning and yearn for an alcoholic or otherwise
effective preservative from the ghostly whims of the elf-folk,
baby thieves and hearth-cursers all, and the black moonscape,
steaming mud magic that I feel creep towards my swollen
belly, smoky fingers conjuring a jump under my

erratic diaphragm. The Viking coughs discreetly; he is ready to
dictate the elves’ terms, invoking shadows of boulders and
ice-floes and the splits in continental plates. Their demands
are simple enough: goats’ milk, bread and fresh seal meat.
My pencil moves across the page in the received
shorthand we use for such occasions, pressing sigils into the

page in the learnt language whose lines and spaces are the
windy plains in my own flat-vowelled fields of words. The
demands of the elves spread over the page like a virus:
observances to be kept with a ken of acceptance on both
sides. We will take this to be signed off, and the Viking is our
only parley, with his heavy fringe and hazel twigs.

I have never seen them, only felt their demands on my energy.
The Viking straightens from his crouch, brushing earth from his
knees, towering over the road like one who commands
lightning: it’s time to leave. As he turns, the sun hits the highway
like an alien visitation, and just for a moment the winter hillock
is alive with hands reaching for my pregnant belly, grasping

for a hold on the child-yet-to-be. I can feel their want like a
belt, squeezing spell-like promises from the foetus, promises
of the elemental to the water-bound. The Viking extends his
hand. “Don’t linger,” he says, and I pull myself away from the
lassitude that has already entered my blood like a sour painkiller,
a soused herring at the back of my tongue, dissolving.

Spectral Emphatic

2011-01-07T11:20:00.002Z

I am excited to announce that my third book of poetry, Spectral Emphatic, will be coming out in early 2011 with the Knives, Forks and Spoons Press. Just earlier this year they were kind enough to produce my book of durational experimental poetry, Taropoetics. Spectral Emphatic is a more conventional collection of poems, in that it is an overall collection of individual pieces written with no obvious method or procedure apart from the traditional inspiration, mulling, crossing-out and sudden imaginative leaps.

It has a theme, though, that threads through all of the poems in one way or another. The idea is that Spectral Emphatic is the sometime journal of an imagined poet and artist collective called The Bohemian Embassy: a small group stamping their obsessive, exhortative writings onto pulpy pages, making short runs of a cult publication. The book begins with their manifesto:

SPECTRAL EMPHATIC: JOURNAL OF THE BOHEMIAN EMBASSY

ITS MANIFESTO:

THE GROUP WILL STRETCH SPECTRAL FINGERS INTO THE WRITERS’ CONSCIOUSNESS AND POSSESS HER.

THE GROUP WILL MATERIALISE AS OCCASIONAL PHANTASMS.

THE GROUP SHALL SLIP IN AND OUT OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

MEMBERS OF THE GROUP SHALL TEETER AT THE EDGE OF THINGS.

WE WILL EMBRACE THE GHOSTLY AND LIMINAL.

THE GROUP SHALL BE LIKE EELS IN MURKY PONDS: SYMBOLS IN THE WRITER’S DREAMS.

INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS OF THE GROUP SHOULD BE AWARE OF THEMSELVES AS RESIDUAL FORMS CONTAINING UNSPENT PSYCHIC FORCE.

WE WILL INVESTIGATE THE WORLD WITH MAGIC PERSEVERENCE.

WE WILL ENCOURAGE THE WRITER TO EMBRACE THE SENTIMENTS OF HER GOTHIC AND SYMBOLIST FOREBEARS.

WE WILL DRIFT IN THE TIDEWINDS.

THE GROUP WILL RESPOND TO OTHER ARTISTS WHOSE WORK CONTAINS LIMINALITY AND THREAT, MENACE OR OTHERWORLDLINESS.

THE GROUP WILL APPLAUD WHEN THE WRITER DELVES INTO HER NIGHTMARES.

WE WILL ENCOURAGE CONSIDERATION OF ICONIC MYTHICAL FIGURES.

WE WILL TRANSMIT ON LOW FREQUENCIES.

The group features two main characters, Valerie and Veronik, that appear in some of the poems – they are ghostly, liminal, gothic, bohemian heroines that stand on the edge of things, transmitting symbols and dreams to those on low wavelengths.

The collection, then, is concerned with the ghostly and liminal; the gothic and symbolist. It also includes poems inspired by artists who might enjoy membership of the Bohemian Embassy: Christine Aerfeldt, Sarah Moon, Paula Rego, Nikki Sixx: artists who have explored the dark and mysterious places where the mind and spirit stray if unchecked. And those dark and mysterious recesses of the mind are where some of the other poems dally – grief, obsession and madness, unspent psychic forces, as well as addressing familiar mythic figures – the Sphinx, the Sirens, the goddess Medea.

Spectral Emphatic also returns to the theme of divination, but this time via bibliomancy, with 8: A Bibliomantic Poem. This is a long work in three parts made as a result of a processual approach to writing – in this case, a poem that investigates the essence of the energy of the number 8 by a writing-through of text from page 8 from every book on a three-shelf bookcase. The Bohemian Embassy also have a hand in this, using the writer’s trancelike state in writing through to transmit some of the mysteries they are concerned with.

The book cover is included above - illustration by the super talented Laura Daligan. Her website: http://www.lauradaligan-art.com/

Review of Taropoetics

2010-12-22T12:28:00.001Z

I am delighted that Sarah Hymas has reviewed Taropoetics on her blog, Echo Soundings. Here's what she says:

I was drawn to Taropoetics by Anna McKerrow (Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, 2010) because of the description of "an ongoing pschyopoetic landscape". For a lover of dreams (and occasional tarot card reader) this idea appealed enormously. It'd be like reading the cards, drawing narratives and dreaming all in one.

I had come across Knives, Forks and Spoons Press earlier this year through Adrian Slatcher's Extracts from Levona. A strange, oddly compelling book. It's a small press that specialises in 'linguistically innovative poetry'. You could argue that all poetry should be liguistically innovative, but let's not.

What you wouldn't argue is how gymnastically innovative Anna McKerrow's landscape is. The Tarot works to cycles and so it's apt her book works to the cycle of a year - weekly readings form the basis of the text. She spent another year collating the weekly pieces to produce the poems in the book.

Not that the pieces feel constricted by rewrites, deadened and deanimated by cutting and tinkering. They pulse on the page. Each respond to five randomly chosen tarot cards, and each create a bauble of shadowy images, filched from streets, the natural world, the body, art, religion and mythology in a bubbling chemistry. Together they make a crazy make-believe laboratory, full of vapours and coloured liquids I was a little wary of at first.

It took me a while to adjust to this world, to learn its language to get over the culture shock of unfamiliarity. I'm a lover of narratives. And this book, a cross between Jane Graverol and Carrie Ann Baade, requires a double take, a step back, a step forward.

Then a slow sinking under, a relaxation of comprehension and an open mind brings a different consciouness, a change of light:

"heart sink/barb cruel/soft eye risk/shadow sword stack cut/glass words/cut like a cat/thick pane/even the strongest men/soft spooled/fur will rip/dire musicality..."

Sensuous, edgy and funny. The path these poems take is narrow and foggy, in the sense that I didn't really know where I was going at any given point in them. This makes for a destablised read, but also a vital one, my senses fully alert as to what may rear up.

Because of the Tarot element, there is also a sense of the imperative:

"...buried skull/space waits to be filled/jewel cries victory/through rubble/ignore naysayers/their mouths are stopped up w/rocks/exploded/rare sunset..."

- a commanding overview, the seer remaining hidden behind the images. Again this distance is unnerving, but it somehow it feels safe enough (once I've accepted the jamming and spacing of punctation that inhabits this lawless landscape). Safe, if I am safe, that is. Reading and rereading the unpredictable scape made me feel exposed to suggestion, imagery and connections I don't normally make within my own life experiences. Stumbling between play and dance, I get the feeling Anna wants us to open new pathways. It is one of the roles of the Tarot.

Anna has managed to balance between the spiritual and domestic, the unsettling and safe, so keeping me reading through her year. As a lover of narrative I did feel the absence of shape to the book, but this is not a collection interested in creating form, this is an expansive book, its form is bound by our Gregorian calendar, but even that isn't evident, there is no neat seasonal references as we pass through the year. The expansiveness is generous in its welcoming spirit, calling you to enter.

Go on ....

New Fairy Tales Issue 6

2010-12-19T11:43:00.002Z

Rather belatedly, I admit, I need to tell you about the new issue of New Fairy Tales magazine – my second issue as Associate Editor for Poetry. The November issue was surprisingly easy to focus in terms of poetry – we were fortunate to have received a fantastic experimental fairy tale piece by Tim Mook Sang, a Canadian writer. You can check out Tim’s blog at http://eatingandeffing.tumblr.com. Here’s an excerpt from the poem:

velvet
i

she lives the maiden in her bedroom the top of a tower sleeps & eats there hears
rain outside and counts the drops her parents own her say she cannot leave and
she cannot leave her parents who love her she says combing her hair soft like
velvet blonde like moonlight that stays soft in towers out of weather

ii

she waits for me in her bedroom behind a shut door her father owns her says she
cannot leave and she cannot leave the burly father who needs her she says locked
in the room wrapped in blankets as soft as her skin but I slip under the door like
paper she is scared has never seen me before covers herself in blankets on her bed

iii

she stands in water buckets and pales water to her ankles her mother owns her
says she cannot leave and she cannot leave her mother who shows her the future
in vanity mirrors she says standing in buckets eels swimming infinity around her
ankles she boards up her bedroom window plywood over glass sheets from her
bed she wraps around her torso I am not allowed to enter this room and water
sways against her ankles

iv

she hears me outside her bedroom window boarded up inside she sees only
shadows on the ground I am throwing stones from a cairn to her window a bed of
lilies grows for her to sleep her parents say she does not listen but she hears the
stones clacking against her window

There are also a couple of great other poems by Ruby Ebrahim and David Morgan.

And here's a lovely video promo for the issue:

Sarah Hymas' Host

2010-12-03T13:57:00.002Z

I have been very quiet, haven’t I? But I have been very busy. Very busy indeed, yes. So to bring you up to date with what I’ve been doing, here’s something I’ve been reading: Sarah Hymas’ book of poems, Host. Now, immediately, the title makes me think about alien beings and diseases. Tapeworms, that kind of thing. Admittedly, I have a sci-fi imagination. I’m thinking about Sigourney Weaver playing scarily focused basketball right now. But the idea of a benign or perhaps unconscious structure being inhabited by another organism – and their relationship – is the focus of this multi-layered work. In Host, humans are the gentle or intrusive organisms swarming on the surface of the earth; but also not alien, not foreign: made of it.

The first part of the book, Bedrock, contains a narrative series of poems voiced by members of the Kibby family. Their relationship to their host, in this case the Yorkshire landscape, is explored sensitively by a writer whose appreciation of the nuances of energy in the natural and physical world is highly attuned:

A forget-me-not envelope scents the dark ward
Of a hospital, as honeysuckle stolen from Scarborough.

He writes in soft leaden whispers, long-limbed
Like the wind, sculpting in my mind. (Postmarked Today, 1927)

And

Driving alongside the Nidd, I saw myself
become two rivers, split to navigate the island
of my dead father: one sky-silvered quick,
the trained son; the other muddied with cross-currents.
His chest, rising with grass and rocks,
prevented me from seeing where the two might meet. (Nidderdale, 1934)

The family’s physicality has also absorbed the stone and wind of their environment:

Harold’s sweat speckled resin-bright on his forehead (Suffrage, 1910)

However, I have to say that my favourite part of the book is the second half of the second section, Landfall. Less narrative and not seemingly linked, these poems, for me, have the most intense relationship to nature and landscape. Inspired by extreme environments and preoccupied with air, rock, moss and water, these lovely meditations capture a sensual depth that is relatively unusual to find. And there is a real meditative, spiritual tone here too – holy men that, now and again, appear in the Himalayas, offer silent wisdoms, but it is really the silent ecstatic communion with the skies and the mountains that holds the greatest sense of revelation:

A musical score turned sculptural; filling
and falling through air, ventilating my vertebrae.
I breathe in octaves.
Out in minor chords.

With this dawn they magnify,
unfold like the wings of a griffin,
breasted with lotus petal chain-mail.
Trumpets echo up wicket-thin terraces.
Glaciers steal breath
faster than a knotted plastic bag.

The Himalya crevasse my ribcage,
let in light, scalpeled by this altitude,
as I was, yesterday on the walk here;
will be, tomorrow.

Packed salt in tired muscle,
they turn sharp then blunt in a distant wind.
Everything else, behind and below, melts away,
flesh from bone.

(From Pelling)

These poems do not just host or reside; they make a connection, a highway of energy between the physical, the limits of the body and the indefinable other. The thing I like most about this collection is the so-much-more-than landscape they offer: more, they are a being-in-ness, being-of-ness, that I very much enjoy.

Host is published by Waterloo Press. Sarah’s blog is http://sarahhymas.blogspot.com

Review of Taropoetics

2010-07-25T22:59:00.005+01:00

Hey y'all. I am pumped. Excited to tell you that my ex-tutor, digital poet John Sparrow has kindly reviewed my new book Taropoetics on his excellent Itchaway blog. However, for those if you too lazy to link to his site, I am very kindly reproducing the text here:

Before diving into the poem proper, it is worth drawing attention to the book’s introduction, which cites several poets as influential in the approach to writing these sequences. Though these form the basis of a more personally interpretive strategy, this is crucial to my understanding of the poems, being as I am a lover of procedural methods to produce unpredictable textual combinations. This is not to say that these poems cannot stand on their own merits, but that the poets McKerrow cites have very distinct methodological approaches which, for me, carry their own implications.

The poets mentioned — Hannah Weiner, John Cage, Jackson Mac Low — each employ conceptual or procedural frameworks for their texts. In the case of Weiner, the invasion of external stimuli — a case of the poet working with involuntary synaesthesia to produce a text. In the cases of Cage and Mac Low, the external is again vitally important as both a recognition of the influence of context in writing, but also as a tool for turning away from straightforward egocentric authority in the writing process. Both Mac Low and Cage have on occasion and to varying degrees allowed themselves to edit down the output produced by their procedures.

What McKerrow’s methodology shares with these processes is a welcoming of the external influences that are not merely influential but consequential — the use of outside systems that inform a new one. Using card combinations as stimuli for textual creation, and setting clear tasks across specific timeframes, the poems in Taropoetics come to form a whole sequence that simultaneously interacts with remapped systems and produce “fractured” narratives, whilst at the same time inviting the very linguistic frictions that allow for varied personal meaning-making. Like the card system that acts as a catalyst for her poems, McKerrow’s resultant texts are open to interpretation specifically in relation to the personal context in which they are uncovered. The systemic producing a radical personal.

If the methodology suggests the above assumptions, the texts themselves enact them. The poems are threaded with double meanings and the occasional subtle neologism. Whether planned or not, it becomes difficult not to see thematic relationships jumping across textual fragments. Perhaps the most successful moments for me are the completely shattering intrusions of mundane urgency that disrupt the momentum of imagery. For example, in poem 3, the majority of the language is disjointed in a way that encourages associative visual triggers. Phrases like “robotic feathers,” “sarcophagus glow,” “rage hopping,” “red knuckle bouquet,” — phrases that remind me of Maggie O’Sullivan’s short textual fragmentations — are suddenly undercut by the intrusion of the very real “dollar”. This is compounded by the following poem launching almost immediately into the everyday “regret cracked lino,” “regret” here being either the noun that cracked, or the verb, perhaps caught mid-sentence.

For me, these are the strongest moments of the work. Composed as they are through “techniques of automatic writing and trance,” the fragments — themselves broken up by the highly visible slash — become absorptive in their consistency of fragmentation, then at times suddenly take one of several turns in new directions and foreground once more the language in play. At other times, ambiguity of, for example, verb / noun creates complex and dense configurations that demand re-reading (“feet the callusy smell”). Articles, objects, are often sparsely contextualized within their fragments, encouraging an interpenetration across fragments, memories of fragments. Colours link dungeons to butterflies, chamber and hair. Language points to senses, whether through implied memory or an actual sense (smell, for example, seems to run throughout, explicitly and implicitly, with “coppery smell,” “smelt sweet,” “smell of caves,” even “clean sheets.”). Then suddenly, there is absolute clarity of voice and direction of object such that clarity itself seems absurd, unreal or simply brutal (“I’m doing this,” “all the work I do,” “fucking bitch.”).

I am again reminded of O’Sullivan in the way that these poems tread a delicate line between the intricate and fragile on the one hand and the brutal on the other. Sonically and thematically, condensed phrases are sometimes gentle on the ear, but just as likely to be cacophonous and jarring. As with the voice dichotomies, this is where the poems foreground their linguistic construction to me and open up the real joy of experiencing the text.

And Taropoetics is a joy to read. For me, this joy lies in the unpredictability but consistently forceful language throughout the book. Whether this is violently forceful or gently persuasive depends on which cards you are dealt.

http://itchaway.net/iablog/anna-mckerrows-taropoetics/

New Fairy Tales

2010-06-02T20:43:00.003+01:00

The new issue of New Fairy Tales is now available to view and download free online here and it's super fantastic! This issue of the biannual ficton and poetry magazine features fairytale-inspired new work from poets Kelley Swain, Ryan Ormonde and Gaia Holmes, and fiction from Nicholas Royle, Emma Matthews and Rebecca Keller among others. Illustrations are by Faye Durston, Adam Clehers, Adam Corbett and Samatha Davey among a raft of amazingly talented artists. Just the contents page alone is fantastically beautiful! Really happy to be involved with the project - it's great. Here's a trailer for the new issue:

Taropoetics

2010-05-24T15:42:00.004+01:00

Great news! The Knives, Forks and Spoons press has agreed (very enthusiastically) to publish my poetic project Taropoetics.

Taropoetics is an investigation of the creation of poetic language utilising the techniques of automatic writing and trance. This was a durational work, lasting a year, which produced a collection of 52 poems, with one written a week between February 2009 and February 2010. Each poem was created as a trance-written response to five tarot cards shuffled and dealt at random. The free-written text was collated over a year and then edited to produce the poems in this book.

For the curious, an index of cards “read” in each poem is given at the end of the book. It is not necessary to understand the given meanings of tarot cards to read this work; merely to understand that the tarot is a series of 78 intensely-imaged pictures that are made to inspire original and creative imaginative and/or intuitive connections.

My hope with Taropoetics was to express an ongoing psychopoetic landscape, with an element of possible prophecy - a text that captured the weekly development of my own oblique and symbolic unconscious.

Taropoetics refers to the stream-of-consciousness methods employed in Hannah Weiner’s Clairvoyant Journal, and the aleatoric processes used in the compositions of John Cage or works such as Jackson MacLow’s The Marrying Maiden: A Play of Changes, which utilized a tarot-like "action pack" of 1,400 playing cards with a series of "commands", structured on the principle of the I Ching. It aimed to disassemble language and reassemble it in ways that would surprise both MacLow and his listeners or readers.

Taropoetics works on the principle that not only are there a vast number of possible combinations of 78 tarot cards that can be the basis of poetic inspiration, but that also, meaning is as dependent on the moment of dealing as the cards themselves; the moment of the psychic state and its bearing on interpretation is as important as the cards themselves.

Taropoetics takes a holistic approach both to the creation of text and the inclusion of the artist within the work. Like Weiner’s Clairvoyant Journal, there is a direct connection between the personal and the work. Recognising the tarot as a valid and rich system of signs that can be used to generate an avant-garde text that speaks to prophecy and the individual, personal (postmodern and fractured) “narrative” also seems relevant in today’s newly-revived new age culture, which is seeking answers to modern life in ancient traditions. I think there is also a close relationship between psychic/seer/sibyl and artist/writer/poet that this kind of work reminds us of – both are tasked with decoding the “truth”, if it exists, for society and self.

So that's what it is: copies available in a month or so; I will post links. Hurrah!

Updates

2010-04-01T15:36:00.003+01:00

Here's a pic of me reading at the Storytails event at the end of Feb - yes, that really is me!

My second book is done and currently waiting for a decision from Flambard as to whether they'd like to publish it. My editor likes it, which is good news.

I've been working on a fairy tale-inspired project with my illustrator friend Laura Daligan so watch this space for more about that. I hope to do some more work on it next week in Glastonbury when I spend a little creative/reflective time there. Can't wait! Very, very excited, and of course have to make a supreme effort to resist the retail opportunities there. I might re-read Dion Fortune's Glastonbury: Avalon of the Heart.

Lunar Baedeker

2010-03-17T19:32:00.002Z

Lunar Baedeker
A silver Lucifer
serves
cocaine in cornucopia

To some somnambulists
of adolescent thighs
draped
in satirical draperies

Peris is livery
prepare
Lethe
for posthumous parvenues

Delirious Avenues
lit
with the chandelier souls
of infusoria
from Pharoah's tombstones

lead
to mercurial doomsdays
Odious oasis
in furrowed phosphorous

the eye-white sky-light
white-light district
of lunar lusts

Stellectric signs

WING SHOWS ON STARWAY
ZODIAC CAROUSEL

Cyclones
of ecstatic dust
and ashes whirl
crusaders
from hallucinatory citadels
of shattered glass
into evacuate craters

A flock of dreams
browse on Necropolis

From the shores
of oval oceans
in the oxidized Orient

Onyx-eyed Odalisques
and ornithologists
observe the flight
of Eros obsolete

And "Immortality"
mildews
in the museums of the moon

NOCTURNAL CYCLOPS
CRYSTAL CONCUBINE

Pocked with personification
the fossil virgin of the skies
waxes and wanes

- Mina Loy

Wham! Bam! Story! Slam!

2010-03-08T17:02:00.003Z

Continuing my recent run of literary activity, this Wednesday 10th March I am reading at Nikesh Shukla's excellent short story event, Wham! Bam! Story! Slam! at the Free Word Centre in Farringdon. Come along! Also reading are Stuart Evers, Nirpal Singh Daliwal, Sophie Cameron and Nimer Rashed.

THEN after that, and looking ahead a bit, I am appearing at the Troubadour Cafe on Monday 10th May as part of the Coffee House Poetry at the Troubadour series of events (who wants to go out on a Monday night? But still...) along with several of my fellow Flambard authors for a lovely evening of err.....poetry reading. As well as me will be the lovely Kelley Swain, Rebecca Goss, Ellen Phethean, Cynthia Fuller, Nancy Mattson, Jackie Litherland and Wanda Barford.

Top Writing Tips in Woman's Own

2010-03-05T12:45:00.003Z

Yes - the womens' glossy mag is mine today with the triumph of a small entry and photo of me in this week's Woman's Own. Page 21. In the interests of megalomania I am reproducing the page here.

Storytails

2010-03-02T13:10:00.002Z

So the Storytails event went really well on Sunday and you can hear a podcast of the stories read as well as read the stories for yourself on the Storytails website. You can also download me reading my story "The True Story of Betty Rizzo" from iTunes - that Gabriella - she's a clever one. If you do listen, apologies for probably: mumbling, falling over my own sentences; breathing too hard. I was dealing with sitting on a twirly stool that wanted to go the opposite way to me for most of the reading.

The venue for Storytails, the Pangea Project in Stoke Newington, is really homey and warm: they also deliver breakfast in bed on the weekends to those lucky Stokey inhabitants that are nearby enough. Stories and breakfast all in one place! It's kind of amazing. My better half and I discussed reasons why there aren't similar establishments in Surrey. We came to no good conclusions.

I have also been in touch with the amazing illustrator Faye Durston who works on New Fairy Tales alongside Andy, Claire and me. Have a look at her beautiful drawings and paintings on her blog. Faye has her first book coming out with Macmillan soon.

New Fairy Tales

2010-02-22T14:46:00.002Z

I am delighted to announce that I am now the Associate Poetry Editor for New Fairy Tales magazine - www.newfairytales.co.uk and excited to be working with Editor Claire Massey and fellow Associate Editor Andy Hedgecock, who also currently works on seminal British Sci-Fi mag Interzone. Check out Claire's blog The Fairy Tale Cupboard which is chock full of brilliant links, articles and thoughts on all things fairytaley.

I also attended Prof Ronald Hutton's talk on the history of the fairy tale in Britain last week at the Barbican which was a useful reminder of the social functions of fairy tales (to stop people from doing dangerous things or meeting dangerous people; to provide a framework that describes psychological and cultural events such as postnatal depression, or as a structure to frame the treatment of disablement, for instance) as well as the more supernatural explanations. The tone of his talk was very open and he at no point rubbished the idea of the faery as mere fantasy, acceding that there is too large a bank of strange experiences on the part of to many people for it to be dismissed out of hand. He made the interesting observation that we are the first culture not to have an explanation of fairy sightings / disturbances, regardless of what that theory might be: our common cultural approach seems to be dismissal. Like Dana Scully, I take the view that phenomenon exist, so dismissal is not an option. Most of the time there is probably an explanation - we just don't have the right frame of reference to address it properly. What we think of as science will doubtless catch up one day.

New Fairy Tales is now also accepting submissions of fiction, artwork and poetry, so if you would like your work to be considered for the May 2010 issue please visit the Submissions page of the New Fairy Tales site for more details.

The Studio of Paula Rego

2010-02-16T17:19:00.002Z

A found/cutup poem "The Studio of Paula Rego" from my now-finished second book is now online at the excellent online magazine The Literateur.

Literateur = "One who is almost obnoxiously well acquainted with literature and takes care to frequently remind you of this fact".

(Cough) I'd never be so bold.

Seeing "arch-historian" Ronald Hutton at the Barbican on Thursday. Can't wait!

Taking a bite out of books

2010-02-09T15:43:00.003Z

I've been working on a writing project called Bookbite recently, and am pleased to say that it has just launched its website, with a lovely printed book to accompany it soon. All glossy.

Bookbite is a project encouraging reading and writing in the over 60s, and I've produced some writing tips sections for it - getting started writing, writing a short story, writing your autobiography and setting up a writer's club. I'm really pleased to help such an impressive and wide reaching project. Encouraging anyone to write is very close to my heart, so it means a lot to me to be involved.

I'm also now talking to the Women in Publishing group on the 14th April - for more information about them, check out their website.

Burning reviews

2010-01-08T14:11:00.002Z

Dee-lighted to see that George Szirtes has pasted my review of The Burning of the Books and other poems onto his website! V V V V V honoured.

I've also been asked to talk to the Women in Publishing Group in February, which is exciting, and a great opportunity for a bit of networking.

My good friend Gabriella Apicella is also starting a new storytelling event, Storytails, every month at the Pangea Project in Stoke Newington, with the first event being on Sunday 31st January. Featuring readings of short fictional stories from some professional, and some not-quite-so-professional writers, Storytails is open to all, and free to attend. For adults who miss being read to there awaits both sparkly new and solidly accomplished storytellers to share their unusual tales with you.

I'm not sure whether I can make the 31st but if not I plan to be reading a story at the February event, hopefully by a roaring fire and sitting in a rocking chair.

T S Eliot shortlist review

2010-01-06T14:03:00.002Z

I've just had a review of four of the shortlisted books for the TS Eliot Prize 2010 uploaded onto the Booktrust weblog: Take a look here.

I loved, in particular, George Szirtes' The Burning of the Books and other poems (Bloodaxe). From his poem "Consuming Passion":

Life is annotation. Hunger and annotation. It is knowledge
We hunger for, letters we drink, desire in our bloodstream
For the fat, visceral, blood-bound flesh of our books.

The reviews are in

2009-11-16T16:41:00.002Z

I've been doing a bit of reviewing for the Booktrust blog recently, which has been a lot of fun. I was very pleased to review the pamphlets of the current Faber New Poets - short collections from Heather Phillipson, Toby Martinez de las Rivas, Fiona Benson and Jack Underwood. You can see my review here.

I have also just finished a review of Emma Jones' amazing debut collection The Striped World which should be online soon. This morning I discussed her poem Pieta in my creative writing class, and we were greatly impressed with Jones' layering of meaning, linguistic dexterity and feeling for her subject.

Also today recorded some poem readings that hopefully are going to find their way onto Alex Pryce's brilliant Poetcasting website some time soon.

Angel Poetry

2009-10-28T14:32:00.002Z

I will be appearing at Agnes Meadows' Angel Poetry night on Thursday November 12th at
Waterstone’s, Islington Green, London N1 at 7pm - looking forward to it! I'll be reading some new work too. Book 2 is coming along nicely.

Inside Out

2009-08-11T13:33:00.002+01:00

I am very pleased to report that a new poem of mine, Grief, now appears on the Inside Out website here.

Inside Out describes itself as a new breed of literary arts magazine. Part literary publication, part therapeutic expression, our aim is to promote creativity for self-development through the publication of a diverse mix of artistic work, all with a focus on self-awareness and self-help. Why? Because we believe that sometimes simply owning something on the page is all it takes to move past it and move on, for both reader and creator.

The site has a very good look, an excellent illustrator.

2009-07-10T14:45:00.001+01:00

The ICA’s current exhibition Poor.Old.Tired.Horse is an interesting one for poetry lovers and anyone interested in text and art crossovers. It:

"takes an expansive look at text-based art practices, inspired by the concrete poetry movement of the 60s which explored both the literary and graphic potential of language." ICA website

Concrete poetry, for anyone unsure, is poetry that explores the typographical arrangement of words as well as the meaning, rhythm or rhyme of those words. It also uses typography in part to comment on the fundamental instability of language – or the inability of language to adequately express an object. One of my favourite examples is Eugen Gomringer’s Silencio, which shows the ironic inadequacy of the word “silence” to express silence, but which also features an authentically silent space in the middle of the words. Arguably, blank space to express silence could possibly be the best relationship of concept to representation/language I can think of. Which is somewhat depressing, as a poet, to be honest.

Anyway, if interested, I would recommend checking out Mike Garofalo’s Garden Digest website
for lots of other interesting examples of visual and concrete poetry.

As far as Poor.Old.Tired.Horse goes, I hope that it reminds the world at large that this language we use is less a usefully transparent system of tags and more a bizarrely symbolic development of evolved grunting which has only a tenuous relationship to the real world. I’m sad that (according to the ICA) “most people have forgotten concrete poetry”, because it remains a philosophically important mode of questioning language itself; a valuable approach, especially in these days of scarily-approaching-Orwellian-doublespeak. I really feel like we are about two months away from the instigation of the Ministry of Love most of the time. And in all seriousness, political language is a really great example of the sheer unrepresentative nature of language to reality. I always think political language is the art of understatement and translation – rioting bloodbath becomes regrettable event, screaming dying thrashing becomes multiple fatality, fucked banking mismanagement and mammon-worship is a recession. Which suggests gently receding, like the hair of the people who wrote this particular dictionary of perverted mildness.

Although I am a poet (note: I wrote “post” then – interesting Royal Mail-oriented/self-as-blogpost slip, what could it mean, what could it mean?) and therefore engaged in the pursuit of sparking associations and meaning via juxtaposition and imagery in the mind of the reader, I am under no illusion that conventional poetry can ever really interrogate reality at the level of reality – it can, however, represent a stylised version of possibility which may well have an impact on the reader.

So therefore, in these conventional days of poetry that tends to rely on describing things in frequently boring ways, it is good to remember that there are artists who were and are working at a more symbolic level.

I am a post.

(silence)

Spoken Space

2009-06-24T17:56:00.000+01:00

As part of Wet Ink, I am performing at this.

Articles

2009-06-23T11:30:00.002+01:00

To diversify my output, and for fun, I have been writing articles on poetry for the Booktrust weblog, and you can see my most recent effort here, discussing Tim Atkins' Folklore and Sascha Aurora Akhtar's The Grimoire of Grimalkin. Clearly, I am over the lunamoon just at the thought that "Grimoire" and "poetry" can be expressed within the same paragraph. Whoopty. Both brilliant books, both addressing language as material and as a system to be moulded and eviscerated, artistically of course. Perhaps that's too strong a term: fiddled with. The G of G addresses many postmodern philosophical concerns, among them ideas of the rhizome and polyglossia - both of interest to me and certainly familiar, esp. with reference to the rhizomatic nature of the internet, communal virtual texts and the construction of many-voiced many-linked text. MA flashback.

I can now also be found on New Writing South's Pirandello writer's database as a writer looking for writing wordwork.

Updates

2009-05-17T00:11:00.002+01:00

I am pleased to say that a new poem, Sirens, will be printed in the next issue of Trespass Magazine, and that I will be reading at the launch for the issue in June.

Also pleased to say that extracts from 8/8/8: A Bibliomantic Poem will be published online on Streetcake Magazine, the journal for experimental and innovative writing.

Twitterific

2009-05-05T13:29:00.003+01:00

Twitter updates now blam their way onto this blog! Tweet, tweet against the dying of the light...

Making a poem in twitter is an idea more than one person has had, and is quite interesting as a durational kind of work, as well as the potential for creating a collaborative piece. If I had more time i might do it... not right now as there's another durational piece I'm working on but shhh ... it's under wraps for now.

In other news, my editor describes part 1 of my new collection as using repetition in a "surprising" way; is this Editorspeak for impenetrable / bad / hopeless / up-itself - or actually quite good? Or, surprising in a kind of "Gooo! jumping off the page at your face like a poodle crossed with a flea" kind of way ? The last I doubt as the poems aren't approaching any kind of the innovative page setups (or totally off-page status) they could be; they are floating in the mainstream with a wet nod to shock and surprise, easily towelled off.

New poem to be published in the next issue of Crannog

2009-02-10T22:29:00.002Z

Just to say that a new poem, You Sleep, will be published at the end of February 2009 in Crannog, the Irish literary magazine - www.crannogmagazine.com for more details.

I am about halfway through book 2 and I feel there's a definite development from book 1 - more structure, more substance perhaps, but just as much oomph. There is more work in response to other work, such as contemporary paintings, photography, landscape.

New work published online

2009-01-12T15:45:00.002Z

A new poem of mine has been published online in Streetcake Magazine here. Streetcake is interested in visual, innovative and experimental writing.

Kaleidoscope Magazine

2008-11-18T21:47:00.003Z

A review of The Fast Heat of Beauty will appear in the first issue of a new magazine for the arts, Kaleidoscope, published by students at Royal Holloway, University of London. There is a Facebook group for those who would like to follow the progress of the magazine.

Updates

2008-10-22T16:01:00.002+01:00

Here's a nice well done from Carole Baldock at Orbis Poetry Quarterly, congratulating me for my entry in the Forward Prize Anthology 2009: http://kudoswriting.wordpress.com/

My reading at the Durham Book Festival seemed to go well, and I had the pleasure of reading with Peter Bennet, whose book The Glass Swarm I would highly recommend. I'm not sure what the Durham crowd made of The Fast Heat of Beauty's blatant sex themes, it may have been a bit racy for them, but never mind.....

Deciding what to read at the Small Press Book Fair this weekend and I think it will be a combination of my treatment of Sacheverell Sitwell's Lily Poems - Polly Sime, as I have been looking at book arts today in the creative writing class I teach in Guildford, and a reading from my final MA project. That should do it.

Small Press Book Fair 25th October 2008

2008-09-26T12:55:00.003+01:00

I will also be reading from some of my MA work at the excellent Small Press Book Fair at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, WC1R 4RL on the 25th October at 1.30pm with one of my incredibly talented poetic colleagues, Becky Cremin. The fair itself is on both days and is well worth a visit, lots of artist's books, graphic novels, cool concrete poetry etc.

Details:

“The book as art form….”
the international event in London celebrating books by contemporary artists, poets, writers, composers, book designers, and their publishers

This year the Fair will be featuring more publishers than ever before –over fifty - with a truly international field -, two publishers from New York – Cuneiform Press and Vanitas and Libellum books; Chax press from Tucson, Arizona; Perro Verlag from Vancouver; Antic-Ham of Korea; and with publishers and presses from France, the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, and throughout the UK.

The Small Publishers Fair has announced this year's readings and events programme which takes place alongside the Fair. In a varied schedule, highlights include readings from Vincent Katz and Kyle Schlesinger, both poets, editors and publishers from New York, and the launch of the much acclaimed Reality Street Editions’ Book of Sonnets, to be introduced by its editor Jeff Hilson. Bill Griffiths’ The Lion Man and Others will be launched by readers from Veer Books, and for West House books, David Annwn will launch his largest collection to date, Bela Fawr's Cabaret.

The Fair brings together international artists, poets, writers, composers , book designers and publishers to celebrate contemporary artist publishing. Now in its 7th year, the Fair has attracted widespread interest, and praise for the quality of the events, and the immense variety of work on display.

More than 50 publishers are showing work , and all the books and editions are for sale, - an opportunity to buy work at an affordable price. With free admission, there's something for everyone – from top class writing, beautifully printed artists’ editions, multiples, and zines, to inexpensive pamphlets and artists cards. Several young artists’ collectives will be showing their work for the first time.

Organiser Martin Rogers of RGAP said
'The Fair has established itself as the national forum for the many small presses and
independent publishers actively promoting contemporary work. A number of the books and editions on display are special; and may not find their way into conventional bookshops, or sit on regular bookshelves.'

Forward Prize Anthology 2008 and more...

2008-09-09T13:16:00.003+01:00

As a numerological 8 person, 2008 has been very fortunate for me so far. I am happy to say that this continues with the news that my poem Occasional Lover will be included in the Forward Book of Poetry 2008.

Also, the poem R E D E S I G N E D: A Lexical Love Triangle, written especially for Re:think, a creative project by Wardour Publishing & Design as part of the London Design Festival 2008, is due to be produced as part of a limited edition book. I'm really excited to see how it turns out!

And with very, very late notice, I will be reading at Agnes Meadows' Loose Muse at the Poetry Cafe tomorrow night, Wednesday 10th September. Tomorrow will only be as part of readings from the floor, and it will hopefully be followed by a featured slot in the early new year.

Reading at Durham Book Festival

2008-09-01T11:08:00.001+01:00

The fringe programme has now been published for the Durham Book Festival, and I will be reading and doing a Q&A on Monday 20 October 2008, more details here

Review in The London Magazine

2008-07-14T12:33:00.004+01:00

Here it is - a very nice review by Agnes Meadows, if slightly over-focused on the emotional relationship pieces in the book. However, I guess they are what might stand out more than the rest - although, because I am so familiar with it, I feel like the other poems are just as relevant. But great, great review - "razor sharp", "chutzpah" and "McKerrow's clear ability to write with extraordinary perception about all elements of the emotional spectrum".

The Reading Agency

2008-06-14T13:05:00.002+01:00

Apparently I am going to be doing a project with Croydon libraries as part of the Reading Agency's campaign this year to link readers and writers. I am not sure of the details yet but will keep you posted...

http://www.readingagency.org.uk/adults/reading-partners/

Updates

2008-06-06T13:41:00.002+01:00

Just a few updates and things to look out for. I believe that reviews of the book are upcoming in The London Magazine and Spirit and Destiny, as well as Kaleidoscope, a new magazine for student writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Reading at Witchfest UK

2008-05-07T13:02:00.003+01:00

A late notice announcement, but I will be reading from The Fast Heat of Beauty at Witchfest UK this Saturday 10th May at 1.45pm at Fairfield Halls in Croydon. Witchfest is the world's largest pagan-oriented event and features two days of seminars, workshops, music, food and shopping for all things mystical!

I am excited to be doing a reading, especially as I consider myself pagan, and also as the book has a strong spiritual emphasis that I hope would feel relevant to Witchfest attendees......

Launch photos

2008-05-07T12:47:00.005+01:00

The Fast Heat of Beauty was officially launched at Central School of Speech and Drama on Thursday 10th April 2008. It was a super evening and many books were signed, and much wine drunk!

Review in Tribune

2008-04-04T15:05:00.002+01:00

Feedback about the book

2008-03-19T12:20:00.001Z

I am very, very priveliged to have the following feedback from Andrew Motion recently about The Fast Heat of Beauty:

"They have the strange ability to create a kind of ring round experience, where we see you concentrating, delighting in what you're seeing and feeling and thinking, a part of your subject but separate and discerning. It's very appealing, mainly because it creates a mood of urgency which guarantees that you hold our attention."

Book Launch

2008-03-18T11:50:00.001Z

The official launch for The Fast Heat of Beauty has now been decided and will be at Central School of Speech and Drama on Thursday 10th April, 6.30 to 8.30pm.

Sea Mysteries

2008-03-03T23:45:00.003Z

http://community.livejournal.com/goddess_art

A poem from the book that was published a few months ago on an online Goddess hournal seems to be proving popular, and has the great honour to share a website on this link with a wealth of wonderful artwork.

Now available on Zavvi

2008-03-03T23:39:00.001Z

Just another update... I have now found the book available for sale on www.zavvi.co.uk should you want to purchase it there:

http://www.zavvi.co.uk/books-5+to+9.99-Fiction-General-Authors,+M-Fast-Heat-of-Beauty-Anna-McKerrow/9781873226964/cr33ccc.r10.1/p.jsf

Johanna Ward

2008-02-27T11:10:00.002Z

Johanna Ward is the very gifted photographer that took the cover photo for the book and my headshot. Here's a little plug for the book and her photography skills in "quickie", Wardour Publishing's design newsletter.

Amazon delivers!

2008-02-26T13:29:00.003Z

Hello! I have been reliably informed that Amazon is despatching my book to those who have pre-ordered today, so if you have ordered through them you should be receiving it soon! Go Amazon! Although - for the sake of parity and to support small presses, please do also look at the book on http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/i019510.aspx.

Angela Carter; a true inspiration

2008-02-16T16:56:00.003Z

Angela Carter is one of my favourite writers - outstandingly creative, a powerful writer and completely unafraid of subversion. I have always been interested in her work with mythic themes and the way she reappropriated them with a feminist slant. The world is the poorer for having lost her, already 16 years ago. I wonder what she would have made of the state of things now.

My favourite Carter novel is The Passion of New Eve, a blistering journey into the construction of gender and sexuality. In terms of body modification it also makes me think in some way of the work of "Carnal Artist" Orlan (www.orlan.net) , who I recently heard giving a talk at Central School of Speech and Drama. I've also been reading about Marina Abramovic who I find fascinating... more on her another time.

First contact

2008-02-09T12:08:00.000Z

I got my first sight of the book yesterday in all its glory as my review copies arrived in the post. I kind of wanted to involve the postman in the exciting moment of opening the box and jumping up and down shouting "it's here! it's here!" but he probably has enough trauma in his life without sudden shocks from overexcited poets.

The book looks amazing. The cover photo that covers back and front, taken by my very good friend and excellent photographer Johanna Ward, has come out beautifully. It's strange and wonderful to see your work as an entity of its own, in a cover of its own and with a price and ISBN of its own too.

I celebrated with champagne and loved ones.

First publicity for the book

2008-02-06T16:59:00.000Z

Hello and welcome to The Fast Heat of Beauty blog! Very happy to see you. I thought I'd start off proceedings with a very nice interview and photo of me in The Croydon Advertiser last week, though I do have to stress that the babies are absolutely nothing to do with me. Because someone did ask.