Tag: Sweden (page 4 of 7)

Lecture invitation: Bonfire of the Vanity Presses

Invitation to: Public Lecture and Poetry Reading: organized by BTH Department of Culture and Communication and the EU-Art Line Project

You are invited to attend the following public lecture and poetry reading sponsored by the Art Line project, Digital Art Platform Initiative, and organized by the BTH Department of Culture and Communication.

Lecture Title: “Bonfire of the Vanity Presses – Publishing and Self-Publishing in the Field of Poetry,” presented by David Prater, Ph.D. (Post-Doctoral Researcher, BTH, Department of Culture and Communication)
Date: Nov 16, 2011, 15.15-17.00
Room: C413A
BTH, Campus Gräsvik (Karlskrona, Sweden)

This lecture will be based on Dr. Prater’s PH.D. thesis, Bonfire of the Vanity Presses: Self-Publishing in the Field of Australian Poetry. The presentation will examine examples of Dr. Prater’s self-published poetry chapbooks and will discuss issues of authorization and reputation raised by the confusion between ‘vanity publishing’ and ‘self-publishing’ as cultural practices. While the thesis does not specifically address the place of digital self-expression within the cultural field, the lecture will offer a chance to discuss the impact of electronic writing on the literary field and on literary arts in the current age of digitalization. Examples of Dr. Prater’s self-published books will be available for viewing during the lecture, which will also incorporate readings from these works.

This lecture is organized by BTH researchers in the Department of Culture and Communication and in the Digital Art Platform initiative within the EU-funded project Art Line. Art Line is an International cooperation between the academy, cultural institutions and tourism within the Southern Baltic region to explore art innovation in physical and digital space. The Digital Art Platform seeks to research, promote, and publish art and creative critical practices informed by developing media phenomena, technology, and artistic expressions.

About David Prater:

David Prater was born in Australia in 1972. He holds a BA from the University of Sydney, an MA from the University of Melbourne and a PhD from Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. His first poetry collection, We Will Disappear, was published by papertiger media in 2007, and Vagabond Press published his chapbook Morgenland in the same year. His poetry has appeared in a wide range of Australian and international journals, and he has performed his work at festivals in Australia, Japan, Bulgaria, Canada, the United States, the Netherlands and Macedonia. He has also undertaken two writers’ residencies in Seoul, Republic of Korea, and has worked extensively as a teacher, editor and researcher. Since 2001 he has been the managing editor of Cordite Poetry Review, an online journal of Australian poetry and poetics. He is currently undertaking post-doctoral research on electronic literature and pedagogy at Blekinge Tekniska Högskola as part of the Electronic Literature as a Model of Creative Practice (ELMCIP) project.

For more information about the lecture/reading, contact: Lissa Holloway-Attaway, Senior Lecturer at BTH (lat@bth.se) or Aje Björkman, Information Officer at Art Line (aje.bjorkman@artline-southbaltic.eu)

Kevin Rudd on Sweden and his poor Swedish language skills

Jag är glad över att vara tillbaka i [Sverige]. Ett land som jag länge beundrat, och där min karriär som diplomat började för nästan trettio år sedan. Australien och Sverige har en lång gemensam historia. Faktum är att Australien kude ha blivit svenskt. Gustav den tredje gav order om en svensk bosättning i Västra Australien i November sjuttonhundraåttiosex, två år innan brittiska skepp anlände för första gången. Men kungens plan stoppades av krigsutbrottet med Ryssland nästkommande år. Så mitt modermål är inte svenska, utan engelska. Och efter trettio år är min svenska inget vidare.

Kevin Rudd, at SIPRI (May 2011)

Cabaret Voltage: Intermission

While I’m in a video posting mood, here’s a performance piece by Talan Memmott and Eric Snodgrass at Cabaret Voltage, an evening of electronic literature performances held as part of our ELMCIP workshop in Karlskrona in June.

Notable, if you ask me, for my own performance as the chess-playing maniac centre stage and that special moment, at 8:25, when I throw a chess piece at Eric’s head, only narrowly missing him.

Sit back and enjoy. It doesn’t get much weirder than this.

Övergången, the chapbook, out now!

I’m thrilled to say that Övergången: Tio Dikter, my new chapbook, is hot off the vanity presses and was launched this week as part of the Södermalm Poetry Festival in Stockholm.

The 10 poems in the chapbook appear in both English and Swedish, thanks to the sterling translation work of Linda Bönström and Boel Schenlaer. I’ll be posting the Swedish translations here shortly.

I gave two readings as part of the festival: on 28 September in Kungsträdgården, and on 29 September at the Stockholms Stadsbibliotek (Stockholm City Library).

Here’s what festival organiser Boel Schenlaer had to say about the event:

The morning papers did not write about the festival, nor did the radio or television news comment on it or welcome the audience to it. In Sweden that is perfectly normal nowadays. It is as if they had some no-poetry campaign going on. The Swedish media, as if with a collective gesture, have done their best to cut off the unseen golden thread between poets and audience, speaking in general terms. The Swedish bookstores have tried their best to do the same; to try to cut off the red thread of poetry from the books to the readers. But what they do not understand is that the poetry thread is both thicker and more difficult to cut off.

Read the rest of her writeup online.