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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'As I sat down to write this, I realised that this is the second project that we’ve worked on together during a lockdown. Although we devised the theme for this issue between lockdowns (sitting in a café – imagine that!), the bulk of the reading and curating was done while the city we both live in was well into its fifth (or sixth – I’m losing count) lockdown. And solitude makes for a strange context in which to work creatively, and collaboratively.' (Sarah Gory and Elena Gomez Editorial introduction)
Notes
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Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
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Stand-up Comedy : A Scene of Paradoxes,
single work
essay
'After one year, 80 gigs and countless nights worrying, I finally told my parents I did stand-up comedy. As the daughter of first generation migrants from India, I’ve always felt like I’ve been living with a dual existence, especially while following and fostering a career in the arts. Like poetry, which I studied passionately at university, what I love about comedy is its ability to explore and express paradoxes, an art form which in itself carries irresolvable contradictions. I’ve been writing and performing stand-up for five years now and in this essay I outline three areas of comedy which include at the same time as they elude, binary thinking. While there is a disproportionate lack of academic writing on comedy (dating back to the Ancient Greeks), people have long been pondering the question of what makes us laugh. Speaking from my first-hand experience and research, I will explore this question with regard to the process of writing and performing comedy, navigating the politics of performing as a woman of colour, and ultimately co-creating each performance with a different audience.' (Introduction)
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House Style Lifestyle, Or: Same. Same. Same. Same. Same. Same.,
single work
essay
'Welcome to the world of snackable content.
'Listen closely: like an ambient soundscape, its soft tides wash over you and you devour it quickly. Sometimes, it repeats an opinion you’ve already developed, affirming previously held beliefs. From afar this tone appears poetic but zoom in closer and you will see that they are generated to trigger particular affective feeling – what Sianne Ngai describes as ‘the aesthetic experience in which astonishment is paradoxically united with boredom’. Did SEO create this monster? Or was it the inner workings of the thing we now call capitalist realism? The answers lie inside your personal algorithm, an enigmatic void that soothes your soul with its mirrors.' (Introduction)
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On the Holding of Spaces for Essaying Into,
single work
essay
'It’s a putting oneself into a space of deliberate uncertainty. Stepping into the unknown. A practicing in that space. Training. It’s about thinking provisionally. Speaking small. Not for all.
'It’s about languaging. Being attentive to words, to meaning. To the meaning that can be smuggled in however unwittingly.
'It’s about taking seriously – which might have nothing whatsoever to do with being serious.' (Introduction)
- ‘Seeking to Be Here, Doing This’ : Po-Essaying into Agro-ecological Thinking, single work essay
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‘Permission to Write’ : Emilie Collyer Interviews Marion May Campbell,
Emilie Collyer
(interviewer),
single work
interview
'In February 2021 I interviewed Marion May Campbell as part of my ongoing research into contemporary feminist creative practice. This text is an amalgamation of the interview that also includes my poetic and critical reflections that emerged as I was transcribing. Many thanks to Marion for her generosity in being open to the interview and the resulting form of our exchanges.' (Introduction)
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‘A Poet Is a Worker in Language’ : Debris Facility Interviews Π.ο.,
single work
interview
'π.ο. is a great poet. He was interviewed in Cordite Poetry Review in 2001, so 20 years later we are able to hear his enlivening words again. π.ο came to the attention of Debris Facility during the course of 2021 and his poetics provide a much-needed structure, formula and horizon from which to orient a practice unseparated from life. To forefront the anarchist politics within poetry is to invest in the liberatory potentiality within the agency of reading and writing. We had instantly been drawn to the power of his practice, its function and what information and meanings we were able to be transmitted through it. The collective modes of publishing π.ο. has committed to resonate with Debris Facility’s methods of multiple agencies and voices. We had bought the available back catalogue of π.ο.’s books, picking them up personally, and paying with cash. The material context of this is relevant, though not the most important. This interview was conducted over a week of emails, at the invitation of Autumn Royal. In acknowledgment of the shared work present, our fee will be divided evenly. This conversation is one step towards what is hoped to be a friendship, which accounts for overlapping and divergent practices, but grounded in solidarity.' (Introduction)
- Aubadei"I am overextended. The poem forgets me", single work poetry
- If We’re Going to Talk about Love, Please, We Have to Talk about Violencei"Half-past ten the sun on its axis.", single work poetry
- I Capture the Cradlei"wherein the proof of my wound a bootstrap", single work poetry
- Golden Shovel, After Sibylle Baieri"Not the animal. Not the evidence, but its assertion, where", single work poetry
- Delugei"I—the sieve through which a rushes was flowing", single work poetry
- Pieman Heads, single work poetry
- Salt Sorei"the sunlight starts without me", single work poetry
- If That Ghost Is Still Here Come Morningi"if that", single work poetry
- Vessel/Vesseli"The wave hits", single work poetry
- An Island Is an Archivei"island as a ghost", single work poetry
- This Lighti"My lover found an internet portal to another world because there was nowhere else to go. It was deceptively", single work poetry
- Etymologyi"fact: the Portuguese surname oliveira translates to olive tree", single work poetry
- A Quiet Garden-Variety Killeri"It creeps along the fence-line, peeping through wooden slats … nonchalant without being bombastic of how", single work poetry
- Evergreeni"Elvis and his dead twin, all grown", single work poetry