CAESURA #17

Contact: goodnightpress@gmail.com

THIS MONTH we've got THE most important British publisher, boasting a publishing history of no less than 17 Nobel Prize winners (and Beckett, Burroughs, Trocchi, Dumas... ), Scotland's foremost nature and conceptual artists, a great local innovative poet and producer and one of north England's finest coming for a visit.

That is: John Calder, Alec Finlay, Samanatha Walton and James Oates.

WHAT IS IT? Bespoke spoken word performances at Edinburgh's monthly night of racketeers and raconteurs, experiments and experience, synapses and sounds. Avante-jive for the masses.

...

JOHN CALDER

Without hyperbole, the most important publisher in Britain (and one of the most in the world). John Calder founded Calder Publications in 1949 aged 26. He was Samuel Beckett's publisher; the first man to make the work of William Buroughs available in the UK; he ran (with Sonya Orwell and Jim Haynes) the infamous Edinburgh Conference on the Novel in 1962; stood in a landmark censorship trial after publishing Hubert Selby Jr.'s 'Last Exit to Brooklyn'; was chased from the US under McCarthyism; ran the Calder Bookshop in London, hosting weekly events for several decades with the best of the literary avant-garde; has published 17 Nobel Prize winners... He has also written the autobiography 'Pursuit' and several books of criticism and poetry.


ALEC FINLAY

Alec Finlay is an artist & poet based in Edinburgh. He has adopted such innovative poetic forms such as the mesostic, embedded-poem, and circle-poem. Recent poetic works include today today today (Playspace, 2013), A Company of Mountains (morning star, 2013) Be My Reader (Shearsman, 2012), Question Your Teaspoons (Calder Wood Press, 2012) Mesostic Remedy (morning star, 2009), Mesostic Interleaved (morning star & The University of Edinburgh, 2009), and Says You (Oystercatcher Press, 2009). Finlay established morning star in 1990, a press specialising in collaborations between artists and poets, including the award-winning pocketbooks series (1999–2002). He has published over twenty books and has won two Scottish Design Awards. In 2010 Finlay was shortlisted for the Northern Art Prize. He blogs regularly at www.alecfinlay.com.

SAMANTHA WALTON

Samantha Walton: has published -- Amaranth Unstitched (Punch Press), City Break Weekend Songs (Critical Documents), tristanundisolde (Arthur Shilling Press); co-organises the techno-poetry night Syndicate; most recently published in/on -- Black Box Manifold / Veersomes / Hi Zero / Archive of the Now; working on a book about madness, law and crime fiction (not bloody poetry).

JAMES OATES

James Oates has gained a reputation in the North of England for quality performances on the poetry circuit for over 25 years, more recently gaining the accolade of being one of the most consistently dynamic performers of poetry in the North today. This culminated recently in his representation of the North East in the 2009 Radio 4 Poetry Slam Semi-finals. He won the ‘East Durham Writer of the Year’ competition in 1997 in the
Prose (Open) category and has been featured on Amazing Radio. James had his first full Poetry collection published in 2007 (Wideyback) by Red Squirrel Press and has several pamphlet publications by other publishers.

Entry: Entry by a dontation

Time: 7:00pm