Meanwhile…

From an article on the future remix of the novel to a show about remixing TV to make poetry with a healthy stop at near-future sci-fi in the middle. Have a look after the jump at the literary tidbits that we think you should know about. 

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Edinburgh Review: Comedian Dies in the Middle of a Joke – Ross Sutherland

More from our Edinburgh Ones to Watch series. Annexe Editor Nick Murray reviews Comedian Dies in the Middle of a Joke.

The Edinburgh Fringe has become renowned for theatre companies taking experimental and interactive performances and casting them at an unsuspecting audience. They can be interesting and inventive, or they can be an ever-stretching hour of self indulgence. Whether that kind of thing is your cup of tea or not is up to you. However, finally a show is coming to Edinburgh, crossing the boundaries of interactive theatre, spoken word and performance that feels genuine while also trying something really new.

Adventures in Form – A Review

Adventures in Form, ed. Tom Chivers
reviewed by Hannah Rosefield

‘I hear ghostly Academics in Limbo screeching about form,’ wrote Allen Ginsberg in his notes to the 1959 audio recording of Howl. Lest we doubt that this is a bad thing, he follows up with ‘A word on the Academies: poetry has been attacked by an ignorant & frightened bunch of bores who don’t understand how it’s made… [and] wouldn’t know Poetry if it came up and buggered them in broad daylight.’

Ginsberg is not alone: many readers and writers of the past hundred years have regarded poetic form as the preserve of academics whose obsession with counting iambs and spotting spondees acts as a barrier to understanding. Adventures in Form: A Compendium of Poetic Forms, Rules and Constraints, beautifully produced by independent publishing house Penned in the Margins, is determined to prove form’s naysayers wrong. Featuring established (and establishment) names such as Ruth Padel and Paul Muldoon, as well as younger, lesser-known poets, it is a splendid demonstration of how the prioritization of form can provide a freedom absent from free verse.