Tag: poetry

INDOCTRINATION: William Kherbek reads in Brussels on 13 March

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Update: This event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

William Kherbek’s chapbook ’26 Ideologies for aspiring Ideologists’ sold out shortly after its publication by If a Leaf Falls Press in 2018. But on Friday 13 March, you have the opportunity to absorb a doctrine of your own – you will leave knowing one of these poems by heart. How this affects your life thereafter is up to you.

Kherbek is an artist, novelist, poet and critic based between London and Berlin – a little like Brussels itself. His most recent novel, Ultralife, was published by Arcadia Missa in 2019; you can find more information on his activities at www.kherbekistan.com.

The evening will also feature other readers, to be announced. It will take place at KANO at 8pm.

This event continues M. E. Grey’s collaboration in organising readings that feature visiting and local writers with the support of KANO.

First poems posted in ‘Pages of an Autumn Journal’ sequence

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‘Pages of an Autumn Journal’ is a sequence of poems written between October and December 2016. The poems offer the perspective of a British narrator based in Brussels, and her/his political, personal and professional experiences during that period. In this engagement with matters public and private during a season of turbulent events, they have a precedent in Louis Macneice’s Autumn Journal of 1938.

The poems are now being published one year later at www.autumnjournal.eu, between October and December 2017, following the timeline of their composition. In this way, they allow the reader to experience how the experiences described in the poems unfolded, as well as finally offering a record, through one poetic interpretation, of their specific period and place in history.

Citizens of Everywhere publishes ‘Power Mediated: Three Poems from Brussels’

M E Grey

The Citizens of Everywhere project, from the Centre for New & International Writing at the University of Liverpool, has published a blog piece by M E Grey, including three poems examining different ways that political or bureaucratic power can be discussed, and challenged or valued, in poetry.

The Citizens of Everywhere project is commissioning writers, artists, scientists, academics, cultural organisers and more to write for the Guardian and the Conversation. Their blog also provides a home for writers tackling issues related to citizenship, belonging and borders in the aftermath of Theresa May’s ‘citizens of nowhere’ speech in October 2016. Content ranges from reflections on the borderless nature of plastic waste, to work on the linguistics of politics that is ripe for rediscovery.