ALLEN FISHER - Gravity Shapes
(STEM 02)
ordering
info
CONTENTS
1. Bel Air (11:21)
2. Watusi (14:36)
3. African Boog (8:23)
4. Break-a-Leg (8:15)
5. Tensor (5:27)
6. Ring Shout (16:58)
PRESS RELEASE
Allen Fisher's Gravity Shapes CD presents 6 poems, all named after old jazz dances: Bel Air, Watusi, African Boog, Break-a-Leg, Tensor and Ring Shout, from his extended sequence Gravity as a consequence of shape, begun in 1982 and completed this year, 2005. Together with the two books Gravity (Salt Publishing) and Entanglement (Gig Editions), the CD helps to recover for the present, work that previously existed in a vast number of small chapbooks, but which now is very hard to track down. Fisher's range of resources is huge, drawing on the discourses of genetics, quantum mechanics, philosophy, topography, mathematics, psychology, zoology, Marxism, hypercapitalism, you name it…. to provide access to our lock-step attempts to define truth, freedom, ethics and, through the transformation of these languages by the aesthetic, performative action of the poem, to search out new ways in which associations can be made, pathways unblocked, so those concepts may be radically re-defined for our present times, kept fresh. These are reports from the front-lines of where we are, tripping over Brixton riots, genetic mutations, environmental meltdown, and the traps of rutted thought-grooves to show our damage and offer our cure. Come and get it. Show you care.Cover artwork by the poet.
PUBLISHERS
Gravity as a consequence of shape:-
Brixton Fractals, Aloes Books, 1985
and tsunami, 1999
Buzzards and Bees, microbrigade, 1987
Breadboard, Spanner, 1994
Dispossession and Cure, Reality Street, 1994
Fizz, Spanner, 1994
Civic Crime, Sound & Language, 1995
Fish Jet, Torque publications, 1997
Ring Shout, Equipage, 2000
Sojourns, Wild Honey Press,
2000
Winging Step, Spanner, 2000
Watusi, Spanner, 2001
Volespin, Spanner, 2002
Entanglements, Gig Editions,
2004
Gravity, Salt
Publishing, 2004
Place, Reality Street,
2004
LINKS
www.allenfisher.co.uk
BEPC
Home Page
EPC Home Page
Philly Talks #19 with
Karen Mac Cormack:- Online Reading, Discussion and Written Responses
Allen Fisher's small magazine Spanner
'A Critical Portfolio on Allen Fisher' by Nate Dorward
Individual Poems: Winging
Step
Slop
Nodding Donkey
Allen Fisher's essay on Cy
Twombly 'The Crowd' (pdf file)
BIO NOTE
Allen Fisher was born in 1944, and has been involved in performance and writing poetry since 1962. A poet, painter, publisher, editor and art historian, he has produced over one hundred and twenty chapbooks and books of poetry, graphics and art documentation. He currently edits Spanner, lives in Hereford and is Head of Art at the Roehampton University of Surrey where he is Professor of Poetry & Art. He has exhibited paintings in many shows including a one-man show at York in 1993 and two-man show in Hereford 1994 and examples of his work are in the Tate Gallery collection and the Living Museum, Iceland. Allen Fisher works with extended projects: his books and chapbooks include: Bavuska (1969), Place (various books 1974-81), The Apocalyptic Sonnets (1978), Blood Bone Brain (installation and performance documentation)(1982), Unpolished Mirrors (1985), Brixton Fractals (1985), Stepping out (1989), Dispossession & Cure (1994), Civic Crime (1994), Breadboard (1994), Now's the time (1995), Fish Jet (1997), Ring Shout (2000). Future Exiles: 3 London Poets (1992), and Worlds of New Measure: An anthology of five contemporary British Poets (1997) provide substantial selections from his work. Clive Bush's book Out of Dissent (1997) devotes one chapter to the discussion of his work. The work Gravity as a consequence of shape, a long work published in many smaller books and booklets, started in 1982, is scheduled for completion in 2005.
from Bel Air
A reader follows the marks up
the path
occasionally losing balance from
may be
synaesthesia stopped short by the figure
of Blake, kicking away sand and pebbles,
joining the path
naked beneath his raincoat,
locks my eyes.
I imagine he has just been
writing a tract on astrology
' Irrational action,' the Painter notes,
From rational self-preservation.
I respond to the stimuli realised
as alien to my experience.
The mathematician adds a calculation
through spurious adaptation to realistic needs
This paternal acre is a colony a usurped matrilocality
' The stars,' Blake could have added, 'Advise,'
mitigating fear of the inexorability
of social processes you create
as reader.
The Burglar moves that
everything negative
is due to the outside
A flight of birds, released to tell the time,
superimposition heat patterns on the star map.
This creates a spatial illusion
One colour appears above the other
through its transparency.
What may have been noise
gets read as fresh knowledge.
It carries understanding that the
collective distribution of virtual utterances
creates the social set-up the
institutions breeding
value judgements about innate tendencies
or irreversible actions.
The Burglar moves over another barrier
behind the window
unaware a camera
records this onto film.