NOTES

It looks as if various blogspot.uk sites for Bill Knott (collected poems; prose) have been removed and they are also not retrievable on Wayback Machine. The only current links I can find are:

here (rejection slips)

and

here (paintings)

There is a 50pp pdf file of poems

here

and his google+ page is

here

Morons to the left of us, morons to the right of us…..
The National Audit Office report…..

…concludes that going to A&E and then being admitted has become the “default route” for urgent and emergency care.

Watch out! Here comes a quota!

Lou Reed

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Rainy morning traffic accident, Hove.

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Goliard Press announcement for Charles Olson’s ‘West’

front   inside
Fulcrum Press announcement for Edward Dorn’s The North Atlantic Turbine

front   back   inside
Fulcrum Press Christmas card (Basil Bunting poem) 1965

front   list
Trigram Press booklist 1971

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Two-page broadside for Cambridge Poetry Festival 1981 (by T Raworth J Barrell H Guest)

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Le Capitaine Alexis rencontre les derniers poètes Koing, six-page booklet (Franco Beltrametti and Tom Raworth, 1991)

A few images from very old glass stereo slides I’d not seen since the early 1960s.

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This Sullen Welsh Heart (feat. Lucy Rose) Manic Street Preachers Rewind the Film
from The Now Show Steve Punt BBC
Serious Like a Pope Huntsville For The Middle Class
Salaam Alaikum Racine Sall Wale Niouma Don
Balakononifing Super Rail Band Orchestre du Buffet Hôtel de la Gare de Bamako
Been a Long Time Fred Eaglesmith 6 Volts

Direct download: shudden.mp3

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Obliged to not be mobile I have time to check old links and note that one to some collages back in 2005 has decayed. I put the folder on Flickr and updated the link

October 9 2013

Poetry is like music to the mind, scientists prove

New brain imaging technology is helping researchers to bridge the gap between art and science by mapping the different ways in which the brain responds to poetry and prose.

Scientists at the University of Exeter used state-of-the-art functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology, which allows them to visualise which parts of the brain are activated to process various activities. No one had previously looked specifically at the differing responses in the brain to poetry and prose.

In research published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, the team found activity in a “reading network” of brain areas which was activated in response to any written material. But they also found that more emotionally charged writing aroused several of the regions in the brain which respond to music. These areas, predominantly on the right side of the brain, had previously been shown as to give rise to the “shivers down the spine” caused by an emotional reaction to music. .

When volunteers read one of their favourite passages of poetry, the team found that areas of the brain associated with memory were stimulated more strongly than ‘reading areas’, indicating that reading a favourite passage is a kind of recollection.

In a specific comparison between poetry and prose, the team found evidence that poetry activates brain areas, such as the posterior cingulate cortex and medial temporal lobes, which have been linked to introspection.

Professor Adam Zeman, a cognitive neurologist from the University of Exeter Medical School, worked with colleagues across Psychology and English to carry out the study on 13 volunteers, all faculty members and senior graduate students in English. Their brain activity was scanned and compared when reading literal prose such as an extract from a heating installation manual, evocative passages from novels, easy and difficult sonnets, as well as their favourite poetry.

Professor Zeman said: “Some people say it is impossible to reconcile science and art, but new brain imaging technology means we are now seeing a growing body of evidence about how the brain responds to the experience of art. This was a preliminary study, but it is all part of work that is helping us to make psychological, biological, anatomical sense of art.”

Ends

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NOTE: ALL COPIES NOW GONE

Fifty years ago, as Matrix Press, I hand-set, printed and published a few small books of poetry. Going through old boxes this week I found some sets of pages of two of them — Anselm Hollo’s History (with drawings by Ken Lansdowne and Gregory Corso) and Edward Dorn’s From Gloucester Out (with a two-colour illustration by Barry Hall) — enough to make 10 copies of each. This morning I collated, hand-sewed (the originals were stapled) and trimmed the copies in this picture. Although a few of the signed editions turn up occasionally, ridiculously priced, the ordinary copies available are fewer: and when they appear they are priced around £40/$60. When I started printing and publishing my aim was to make work available rather than to make a great profit. I’ll sew and trim them all this weekend and sell them on a first-come first-served basis at £15 or $25 each, including postage. Allowing for a half-century of inflation this is almost the original price in 1963/1964.

There is a yellow DONATE button (used only three or four times in the several years it has been there) in the right-hand menu which will take you to PayPal where you can pay for your order. You’ll need to send me an email (raworthATgmail.com) at the same time with the book(s) you want and your name and address.

LATER NOTE: The PayPal account is set to US dollars as the default currency. My apologies to anyone wanting to pay in pounds sterling. You can enter 25 dollars and it should work.

I’ll pin this entry at the top of the page for a week.

Farewell to General Vo Nguyen Giap. And let’s remember Agent Orange and that those civilians suffering from its effects have still not been compensated by the US.

The Immediate Future by Trevor Joyce. Published by RunAmok Press. No price, and the website has not been updated, but information probably from runamokpressATgmail.com

Che On My Mind by Margaret Randall. Published by Duke University Press. Information here.

And? by Ron Padgett is Number 45 in a series of Trading Cards published by FactSimile. Information here.

I’ve added a few more images to the “Old Photographs” set on Flickr but as they are in (rough) chronological sequence there it’s probably easier for anyone interested to simply go to the photostream here.

  
1966/67 Goliard Press announcement front and inside

  
1967 Goliard Press announcement for Turret Poets reading (triple fold) front and inside

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Reading announcement, Denver 1997.