Updates Archive: September 2005

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September 30, 2005 4:36 PM The Google Suggest Beta has some poetical potential, as shown by this simple generator by Brad Sucks.

September 30, 2005 4:26 PM The upcoming issue of Tuli&Savu, the poetry magazine, is a special one with 5000 extra copies to be delivered to 100 Finnish high schools, and featuring, among others, a Finnish adaptation of Charles Bernstein's famous Experiments list. More information on the issue, in Finnish, here. (Ja muuten voit tilata Tuli&Savun - 14e/vks - täältä.)

September 30, 2005 2:54 PM i am what i am what i ami / a mia mi ami a miami amen? Reflections on zaroum by Cia Rinne (2001).

September 29, 2005 12:44 AM What does a poet's mouth look like? More stuff from the Helsinki Poetics Conference, August 2005, at Tuli&Savu Net: Finnish, English.

September 20, 2005 1:22 PM More traces from a trip North-ward: two small interviews in Kaleva, the leading newspaper in Northern Finland - on the Ulysses project, by Petri Laukka, and on writing as work, by Miia Honkanen, with me and the singer and songwriters Samuli Putro, of Zen Café fame.

September 20, 2005 12:05 AM Poetry is well alive in the North of Finland (but who doubted it in the first place?). Hallaus ("Embr-race?" "The-Making-Into-A-Frost", "The Act of Doing Harm to Someone?") is a new magazine, or "seasonal publication" as they prefer to say, of Huutomerkki ry., a writers' society in Oulu. The first issue, launched at Muusajuhlat last Friday, features poetry, comics, and pages of handwritten notes that are poetry - advanced stuff throughout. The aim is to come out with a new issue every fifth month. Based on the first issue, it may not be true that "except for the news, tomorrow will bring nothing new" (Toni Kandelin in one of the poems of the first issue). You can buy the publication at least in Kipa Bookstore, at Pakkahuoneenkatu, Oulu - or order a copy from Paavo Heinonen, one of the editors (tel. +358-41-5042842), along with Ville Pohjonen (editor-in-chief), Elina Heiniemi and Katariina Parhi.

September 18, 2005 2:29 PM Elina Siltanen, of Kaikki on hetken tässä, has created a Google poem in French, "Paris est", which was then translated into Finnish (by the author), and English (by Make Copies). The Anthology also features a new activated googlisms poem by Sheila E. Murphy: "shank".

September 18, 2005 2:19 PM Errata. The Icelandic Google poem I posted the other day was wrongly attributed to the title of the author's blog, Rafauga (meaning, evidently, "Electric Eye"). The real pseudonyme in question is Hreinn Hjartahlýr ("Pure Warm-of-heart"), and I've made the appropriate corrections. Also, Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl did not translate the work of Catharina Gripenberg, he only edited an anthology with a poem by Catharina in Valur Brynjar Antonsson's translation. The authors Eiríkur's did translate include John Tranter (of Jacket), Jesse Ball, Mike Topp, Anne Waldman, Bruce Andrews, Amiri Baraka, Attila József, and Charles Bukowski.

September 16, 2005 7:19 AM The man behind Fjallabaksleiðin is Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, one of the creative young poets of Iceland and translator of, among others, Allen Ginsberg and Catharina Gripenberg. He is active in a group of poets called Nýhil (comp. Nihil, for me...). It turns out he knows a bit Finnish, and last summer, when Christian Bök (no Scandinavian background) was visiting Reykjavik, they seem to have initiated a project for an Ö chapter for Bök's famous "novel in sound", Eunoia: "Bök's höpöhöpö"... Just now, Google poetry is booming in the Icelandic province of Blogistanya - one of the results being Rafauga's fantastic "Fyrr var oft í koti remix".

September 15, 2005 12:56 AM Besides featuring this Google poem in English, Fjallabaksleiðin also seems a good poetry site for those among you with some command of Icelandic.

September 15, 2005 7:52 AM Friday, Sept. 16, I'll be at Muusajuhlat, Oulu - as detailed in my updated calendar.

September 15, 2005 7:14 AM We'll still have time to sign this address to oppose the planned "amendment" to the Finnish Copyright Law (which deserves to be rejected, although - as the ever-vigilant Lehti points out - it still wouldn't criminalize scribbling down lyrics on a scrap of paper while listening to a song...). On a parallel (?) development, the newly-reborn Ubu Web is forced to temporarily ice its new reservoir of 150 otherwise-obscure avant-garde films because of complaints from lawyers etc. (who seem to be defending a new right to not to be distributed at all). As to some of my own thoughts about copyright, see this June entry (in Finnish) in my Finnish Ulysses blog (which I hereby swear to pick up again soon...).

September 14, 2005 7:54 AM "jeg undskylder mange gange, at jeg ikke er i stand til at formulere min henvendelse på Deres modersmål" - as a (sort of a) follow-up to the Chinese link to the Google Poem Generator I posted the other day, here's Martin Larsen to Zhen Jianguo, China's ambassador to Denmark, on the censoring of his poetry blog in China. Via Pejk.

September 14, 2005 7:36 AM As Marko sez it in a poem (in Finnish), Ubu is back! And while at Marko's blog, don't miss the marvellous "Writer's block" (also in Finnish).

September 10, 2005 9:12 AM In the Google Poem Anthology: new pieces on cultural topology (John Pickavance) and trade union and mob history (Clint Gardner) - not to speak of this amazing sonnet by Hanhensulka.

September 9, 2005 12:44 AM This page signifies a lot to me, even if the exact meaning is lost...

September 9, 2005 9:19 AM "Nuoruustango" is the name of my new Google poem. You may see it as a challenge to produce something with the same title.

September 7, 2005 10:15 AM Marko Niemi has a new, flarf and Google inspired blog, Elämä on larffii. The first entries, at least, are in Finnish and along the lines of his recent work in the Anthology, "Löysitkö".

September 7, 2005 9:31 AM Juri Joensuu: Chance vs. Author(ity), Meaning vs. Intention. Notes on Leevi Lehto's Päivä from "Dimensions of Authorship", a conference at the University of Jyväskylä, September 1-3, 2005.

September 5, 2005 8:15 AM "Pumped a lot of pain down in New Orleans": Rauno Räsänen has strong reasons to reproduce the text of "Proud Mary" by John Fogerty and CCR.

September 5, 2005 8:00 AM "Löysitkö": a new Finnish language Google poem by Marko Niemi that seems not to leave much unasked.

September 4, 2005 10:30 AM "Äänirunossa kieli on musiikkia." A feature, on me, from yesterday's Savon Sanomat, in Finnish.

September 3, 2005 16:10 PM "zero tolerance for looting shoot to kill" A new Google Poem by Christopher Church.