Longbarrow Press

…speech fills up
prepared corners like sand, the light threshing over
the marsh flats beyond, only the dark sweat of tankers
left for an horizon pushed to its limit.

Longbarrow Press is proud to announce the publication of a bold new work by Andrew Hirst (aka photo-grapher Karl Hurst). HELLO DOLLY is a triptych of long poems (‘Tithonus, 1972’, ‘Chappaquiddick, 1980’ and ‘Welund’s Lament’) presented as three individual landscape-format pamphlets with an accompanying 3″ CD of Hirst reading the poems at home in Sheffield. The themes explored in the poems include power (and its decline), public speech, and the failure of rhetoric, obliquely referencing ancient and contemporary myth through the personae of Tithonus (via Tennyson’s poem), Edward Kennedy and Wayland (or Wēland) the Smith. You can listen to Hirst reading ‘Welund’s Lament’ here. To order the three pamphlets and CD (packaged in a handmade, hand-stamped envelope) at the special price of £10 (inc UK p&p), please click here. Listen to Hirst discussing the poems in the podcast below:

Artist Paul Evans‘ collaborative projects continue with a new response to the landscapes of the Peak District created with Berlin-based poet Alistair Noon. The latest addition to the 2012 series of The Seven Wonders focuses on The Burbage Valley, which lies 8km north-west of Sheffield and is largely formed of millstone grit and shale. Evans has created a sequence of six drawings in response to Noon’s poem; the poem and drawings trace a route through the valley towards ‘the developing relicts’. You can read the poem and view the first of these drawings here. A short film comprising all six drawings, the poem and a soundtrack by Brian Lewis can be viewed here. Alistair Noon has also contributed a new essay to the Longbarrow Blog, reporting from (and reflecting on) the wealth redistribution demo that moved through Berlin on 29 September; click here to read ‘Traces of the Middle Ages’.

Becky Bowley, Nikki Clayton and Mark Goodwin reflect on their participation in Longbarrow Press: Scale (a programme of new films, artworks and performance that took place at Sheffield’s Bloc Projects in October) in a new text by Bowley and an edited conversation between Clayton and Goodwin. You can read and listen to their meditations on From the high ground our own Body here. A selection of Nikki Clayton’s photographs for the recent closer to ground to hear installation (which took place at Bank Street Arts in November) can be viewed here; a recording of Goodwin improvising with (and against) his ‘Stalker’ poem (made in the installation space) is available here.

Our current ‘Featured Poem’ is ‘Last Night’ by Fay Musselwhite; you can read the poem here and listen to Musselwhite reading the poem (on location in Walkley, Sheffield) here.

closer to ground to hear is a new installation in the basement of Bank Street Arts, Sheffield, comprising audio works and poem-texts by Mark Goodwin and images by Nikki Clayton, with sound design by Brian Lewis. This collaborative work will be reconfigured during the residency, with Goodwin reconstituting a number of the poems and Lewis adding new mixes to the multi-channel soundscape each week. closer to ground to hear opens on Thur 1 November and runs to Sat 24 November (10am–5pm, Tue-Sat). For more information about closer to ground to hear, please click here.

The installation comes at the end of an intensive period of activity for Longbarrow Press, following the recent Scale programme at Bloc Projects and the relaunch of Rob Hindle‘s The Purging of Spence Broughton, a Highwayman. Sheffield’s Hill Top Chapel (built in 1629) was the perfect setting for an evening rich in drama and debate, Hindle and Ray Hearne‘s performance of the sequence (given introductory support by Matt Black, James Caruth, Chris Jones and Fay Musselwhite) drawing strength from the gloom and chill of the Gothic building. Click here to read Hindle’s reflections on the event; for more information about the Spence Broughton sequence, please click here.

Longbarrow Press: Scale was no less memorable; a series of newly commissioned films and performances taking place over four days, expertly hosted and supported by Sheffield’s Bloc Projects. The focus of the gallery installation was a 40-minute film loop comprising Cells (Paul Evans, Chris Jones), Skin (Karl Hurst, Chris Jones), The 7 Wonders (Angelina Ayers, James Caruth, Paul Evans, Fay Musselwhite), Cortege (Hondartza Fraga, Rob Hindle) and Cave Time and Sea Changes (Matthew Clegg, Karl Hurst). The closing event offered a mix of live readings, film and a new performance devised by Becky Bowley and Mark Goodwin; an artist’s talk by Paul Evans illuminated the ideas of ‘scale’ at work in the exhibition. The Scale website will remain an active resource for the audio and film works, essays and project reflections; new material will be posted to the site in the coming weeks. Here’s one of the short films:

Matthew Clegg‘s new sequence, Cave Time and Sea Changes, was presented at Bloc Projects as a 20-minute film (with images by Karl Hurst); Brian Lewis has also produced a 30-minute audio podcast of the work based on recordings made by Clegg and Lewis during a visit to a sea cave on the North Landing of Flamborough Head in September 2012. Clegg’s readings of the poems are punctuated by reflections on the writing of the sequence, memories of earlier visits to the coast, observations on the effects of light within the cave, and the constant presence of the tide ‘as it gulps back / Or sighs forward, swell by swell’. Listen to the podcast here.

Also among the new works previewed in the Scale programme was ‘Peak Cavern’, a new poem by Angelina Ayers accompanied by a new painting by Paul Evans (part of The Seven Wonders, an ongoing series of collaborative works). Click here to view the painting and the poem. We’ve also uploaded a new recording of Ayers reading her poem ‘Aseptic Technique’ in the lift area on the third floor of the Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield; you can listen to the recording here.

Poet and photographer Karl Hurst (aka Andrew Hirst) has set up a new blog for his writings on visual culture. The first post, ‘Out on the end of an event’, discusses the relationship(s) between photography and banality (and more besides): click here to read the essay (illustrated with images from Hurst’s ‘Up Against a Brick Wall’ series and photographs by Roger Fenton, Paul Graham and Richard Prince). And finally… Order any Longbarrow Press title during November 2012 and you will receive a free postcard (curated by the artist Paul Evans: a photograph by Karl Hurst and a new, exclusive poem by Chris Jones).