- Benjamin Morris editor-at-large here at ForPub, has just been awarded an Artist Development Fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Council! The grant, which is partially supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, is in support of his first collection of poems, titled “The Singing River.”

- Well done Mario Petrucci who has just completed a major commission to write the poetry script for a new film and installation due to be opened soon at the Natural History Museum. The video/ poetry installation is entitled ‘Amazonia’ and will run from 6 October to 12 December, starting just in time for National Poetry Day. More info in the Events section below!

-The Times ran one of our pal Ewan Morrison’s Tales from the Mall stories, alongside an article by himself on the Mall project in the books section Friday 13th. Check it out to read small snips from new stories. It’s also the first time Ewan’s attempted to put malls and the stories into a bigger perspective.

- Check out 2 reviews for RED like our room: at Scott Pack’s Meandmybigmouth, and on the Albums section at Unpeeled.  Then pick up your copy in the ForPub store! You know you want to.

- Our friends in Paris join up with our friends in Greece! Kilometer Zero are  pleased to announce the launch of Paravion Press! This is a publishing venture by our friends at Atlantis Books of Santorini, Greece, a bookshop perched on the cliffs of this small island in the south of the Aegean Sea.  Atlantis Books is run by a group of designers, educators and book lovers who’ve long dreamed of doing more than just selling books, so now they’re making them too. Five titles are available now: beautiful short stories by Katherine Mansfield, Anton Chekhov, Saki, and Sherwood Anderson, as well as an essay by Mark Twain. Additionally, you can pre-order the Paravion Compendium edition, a hard-bound collection of their first complete series of stories.  Every order and kind word will help Paravion Press and Atlantis Books stay afloat in the Mediterranean Sea.

ForPub recommended EVENTS:

- 26 August. 8:30pm – 9:30pm. £10.00/£8.00. Peppers Theatre. MODERN LIFE ISN’T SO MUCH RUBBISH AS JUST A LITTLE ODD – SIMON CRUMP AND EWAN MORRISON. Simon Crump’s Neverland features seventy two standalone yet unifying chapters which present various aspects of Michael Jackson’s life. Spookily, the book was completed just four hours before its subject passed away. and was nominated for the Guardians not the booker prize – read an extract HERE. Event hosted by the ever charming Aly Barr. Click here for EVENT DETAILS.

- 31st August. 7.30pm. At The Rugby Tavern, WC1N 3ES (nearest tube Russell Square). FuseLit 5th Birthday Party! Cake guaranteed, along with splendid poetry and storyship.  Three cheers for five years for FuseLit!

And a date for your diary:
- 6 Oct – 12 Dec 2010. FREE. Natural History Museum. AMAZONIA. Specially commissioned work inspired by the Amazon rainforest of Peru.  Footage by influential artists Lucy & Jorge Orta, with poetry by award-winning poet and broadcaster Mario Petrucci. The multi-media installations include photography, sculptures, ceramics, video, sound recording and diaries from the artists’ 2009 Peruvian expedition.  The centrepiece is a remarkable audio-visual experience on immense split screens, involving poetry and rainforest sounds. More details here.

Hope you’ve had a stellar festival season!  See you in September!

THE GOLDEN HOUR goes to Faclan Book Festival in Stornoway!

Saturday, September 4th
22.00
Faclan Book Festival, Stornoway
Free!

The Golden Hour returns to Stornoway to make magic in the lovely An Lanntair venue. Here’s who is performing:

Words:

Ryan Van Winkle – Short poems, long stories

Kei Miller – poet, novelist, award-winner. Really, you love him already and you don’t even know.

Music:

Hailey Beavis – an angelic voice, but devilish on six strings.

Foxgang – punked-up reggae and pop and Fox Gang stap your dancing wellies on!

Get yourself to Stornoway!

Now available for a bargainous £2 is the fifth issue from Forest Publications’ Chapbook Series, Volume 2: a collection of poems entitled, Mosquitoes by Krystelle Bamford.

From The House at Westerly, Rhode Island

The house was the sea.
Or a ship on the sea.
Or a deer-blind
deep in the woods.
From the deck, they watch bitterns
skulk at the hem of vernal pools,
while green-heads
bomb through the dusk.
He is a wooden Indian
and she is a corn-husk doll.
He stormed the beaches
and she had a thousand sad children.  Read more!

Product details

• Title: Vol.2 Iss.5 ‘Mosquitoes’
• Author: Krystelle Bamford
• Pamphlet: 12 pages
• Publisher: Forest Publications (18 July 2010)
• ISBN-13: 978-0956338891
• Amount: £2

GET YOUR COPY TODAY from the FOREST PUBLICATIONS STORE!:

- Firstly, HOORAY! We just got great news that the Scottish Arts Council (now Creative Scotland) has generously given us a grant to produce our forthcoming graphic novel collection, This Will Explain Everything! This is excellent, excellent news and we are so excited to share the book with you once it’s finished (it’s going to be AWESOME). Thanks thanks thanks thanks again to the Scottish Arts Council for your kind support!  We do appreciate it.

- Nick Holdstock has a piece in the London Review of Books called Burning Books, and an article in the LRB book blog called Discounts for Tories. And Wahay! One more at the time of posting, in n+1 magazine: Pynchon in Poland.

- The new issue of Anon magazine holds poems by our friends Benjamin Morris, Jo Swingler, Dave Coates and Rob A Mackenzie, among others. Plus some stellar articles:  Ryan Van Winkle interviews Scottish poetry star John Glenday; what it’s like to be a poetry apprentice with Chloe Morrish; blind faith and anonymity with Claire Askew.  Hip-hip hooray for Anon!

- The new issue of Gutter magazine features some of our good friends and former GH readers: Rob A Mackenzie, Tracey Emerson, Aiko Harman, Brian Johnstone and Ewan Morrison, so grab yourself a copy asap – it hits the streets on August 10th.

- The lovely Jane Flett has a great article about Poetry Readings at Kelburn Garden Party in the Scottish Book Trust blog. Don’t miss her reading at the Edinburgh International Book Festival as part of the Story Shop, August 14th.

- Check out this radio interview with our pal Billy Liar on The Mindset Show 95bFM, Auckland, New Zealand. He talks about the Golden Hour and Forest early on in the second part of the show: Part 1 / Part 2

- Hear Scottish Poetry Library poet of month for July, Kei Miller, read from his new book A Light Song of Light at last month’s West Port Book Festival on the Scottish Poetry Library podcast.

- Plus a call for submissions:  Pushing Out the Boat, North-East Scotland’s magazine of new writing, is now inviting submissions of poetry, prose and artwork for Issue 10, to be published in 2011. See www.pushingouttheboat.co.uk for detail.

- And a competition!:  The Genomics Forum and the Scottish Poetry Library have announced a poetry competition, open to all, deadline 10 October 2010, on the theme of ‘improving the human‘. Details here. A selection of the winning and shortlisted poems will be published in a special publication of the Forum in 2010. The Scottish Poetry Library will host an evening of poetry readings based on the winning entries.  First prize is £500, second prize is £200, and third prize is £100. Get on it, folks!

Now, some rollicking events in store for festival August!:

- 7th-17th August. 9.30-10.30pm. FREE. Banshee Labyrinth. Check out Helen Mort’s solo show A Pint for the Ghost on as part of the Free Fringe.  Details on Facebook here or at her website.

- 11th-25th August. FREE. Word Power Books, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh. Word Power Book Fringe 2010. Our friends at Word Power have a great programme of events this August kicking off with the poet Tom Leonard giving what is sure to be a rollicking read on August 11th. Also, there’s friend Nick Holdstock reading along-side the esteemed Edinburgh Maker, Ron Butlin, on the 12th. Plus plenty more to dip into – like Louise Welsh on the 14th and Kei Miller on the 22nd.

- 14th August. The Forest Café, 3 Bristo Place. Massive Forest 10th Birthday Party.

- 15th-30th August. 9pm-11pm, bar open til 1am. FREE (except closing party). Highland Park Spiegeltent in Charlotte Square.  Unbound at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.  Don’t miss Unbound on the following nights – they’re sure to rock your socks right off: A Night in the Gutter: McSex (15 Aug), DiScomBoBuLaTe (16 Aug), Year of Open Doors: New Writing(22 Aug), and of course the GOLDEN HOUR (25 Aug).

- 15th August. 8-9pm. £7/5.  RBS Corner Theatre, Charlotte Square. The Word Express – From Istanbul via Athens to Edinburgh. Ryan Van Winkle at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

- 16th August, Monday. 9-11pm. FREE. Charlotte Square, The Spiegeltent. DisComBoBuLatE – where literature and comedy collide. Your louche host Ian Macpherson likes to put it about at the Edinburgh Book Festival. At 9 PM he’s hosting DisComBoBuLatE. Early next morning sees the launch of his transsexual children’s novel Gran the Man. At DisCoMBoBULate his ears will be caressed by the silken tones of poets Magi Gibson and Billy Letford, novelist Alan Bissett, and artists of the comic word Arnold Brown, Simon Munnery and Jeremy Hardy. In the morning he’ll be torn to pieces by a tentful of screaming infants.

- 17th August. 8pm. FREE. The Forest Café, 3 Bristo Place. Faceplant: a showcase of the brilliantly unpopular. Zorras bring you a fringe-of-the-margin-of-the-edge-of-the-fringe production. Faceplant will feature local and international performers: Manchester poetical musician, Alabaster De Plume; Edinburgh performance poet, Anita Govan; Glasgow wordster, Jim Ferguson; Bermuda writer/performer, Andra Simons; and Zorras themselves, performing their “poetry-music-video-weirdness fusion”. The evening will be hosted by Dublin-based A. Valliard.

- 17th August. The Electric Circus, 36-39 Market Street, Edinburgh. Edge Festival, Withered Hand and Last Battle playing live at Electic Circus.  Buy tickets here.

- 23rd August. 6.30-8.30pm. FREE. Banshee Labyrinth, 29-35 Niddry Street. Utter! SALT - Rob A. Mackenzie hosts SALT publishing’s finest poets – Simon Barraclough, Julia Bird, Jasmine Donahaye, Andrew Philip, Isobel Dixon. By Utter Spoken Word.

- 29th August. 6pm-12am. £4. The Flying Duck, Glasgow. Forge of the Wordsmiths.

Pinky-promise we will be more frequent. Hope you guys have a blast during the festival!

August 25th, 2010
9pm
Highland Park Spiegeltent in Charlotte Square
Free! Free! Free!

Featuring:

Ryan Van Winkle – Reader in Residence at the Scottish Poetry Library

&

Surprise Book Festival Guests

With Music From:

Withered Hand – intense, eccentric, bittersweet and very wry original songs.

The Sea, The Sea – lyrical lushness from Jed Milroy and Hailey Beavis featuring bouncing bluegrass licks and double bass band.

&&&&

Black Diamond Express ‘are like the fastest train of the Lehigh Valley Railroad… a nine-piece band soaked in poetry, myth and bourbon.’ (Mark Edmundson, The List). The Black Diamond Express live and perform in Edinburgh.

Come get UNBOUND with us!

(and check out the other hot free events on as part of the Unbound series at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.)

THE GOLDEN HOUR!

August 18th, 2010
8pm
Forest Cafe, 3 Bristo Pl
Free! Free! Free!
Buy drinks at the Bar – we’re licensed for August!

Reading:
Lidija Haas – stops the presses with her new chapbook

AL Kennedy – novelist, comedian, rude and wonderful.

Ryan Van Winkle – short poems, long stories.

+

Nick Holdstock — they call him “strong meat”.

Music:
Earl Grey and the Loose Leaves – A brawling bar-room  blues band that sounds like Captain Beefheart oan the train over tae Howlin’ Wolf’s hoose fur a bevvy and a brace with Sonny Terry and the Mississippi Sheiks. Contagious.

&&&& loads more!!!!

Very excited!

Here are some of our selected highlights which you’d be a fool to miss. Plus, don’t forget our legendary Forest Fringe Programme (www.forestfringe.co.uk) of new theatre!

Selected highlights for August 2010:

- Monday, 2nd. Tashweesh are a Palestinian group creating a collision between sound and video field recordings.

- Friday, 6th.  Test Run, Curated a London arts collective called What they Could Do They Did. These are genius friends of ours. They bleed art.
+ downstairs test run “Quirk“, curated by Forest, feat: goto izume, rapskallion, plaster of plaster, pete wylde

- Saturday, 7th. Forest Festival Opening Party “voodoo kiss”. BIG.  Feat: 7VWWVW, Foxgang, White Heath, Rapskallion, Bad Larry +more

- Sunday, 8th. Fashionista catwalk party curated by Glasgow-based Che Camille

- Monday, 9th. Forest Fringe Theatre program opens. Innovative and experimental, multi-award winning: http://www.forestfringe.blogspot.com/

- Wednesday, 11th. 7 till 8pm. 78 speed gramaphone records.  Feat: the zoomerians, danny mullins

- Thursday, 12th. Arctic circle, Dan seizure, the hemulen

- Friday 13th. Jiggery Fuckery featuring: Sink, Dead on a live Wire, Rootmitten

- Saturday, 14th. Forest X, 10 years old birthday party. Featherface, Baptism tank, Granny flats, more bands than is possible to name. The insanity of this project is a closely guarded secret. Feat: Humphrey Wood, Fueldiva, Pigeon Pheutus, Silk, the hemulen, Tokamak, Maybe Murtle Turtle, Bristol Branch (Orchestra del sol, spin off), torn strings

- Sunday, 15th. Humelela sessions – African vybz

- Wednesday, 18th. Golden Hour. Spoken word and music. Curated by Forest Publishing, featuring many up and coming writers and poets. Feat. AL Kennedy!!!

- Saturday, 21st. Ultrachip! The first ever Scottish micro 8bit/chip music festival. Featuring many Scottish and UK artists who make music using gameboys or circuit bent equipment (keyboards, speak n spells etc..)  See website for all band names.

- Saturday, 21st. Forest Fringe Theatre closing party. The last day of the amazing free theatre program, and their blow out party.

- Sunday, 22nd. Ultrachip! Day 2!  See website for all band names.

- Monday, 23rd. Sarah and the snakes, The Leg, Pineapple chunks

- Tuesday, 24th. Foxgang, Outbox, Mobius loop, White Heath

- Wednesday, 25th. dead on a live wire curate.

- Thursday, 26th.  Octopus Diamond versus the Bowery – Two now extinct legendary venues that sprung from the Forest, will lock horns in intense passion to bring a night of musical splendour.
+ Downstairs – Plastik fork – electro noise night.

- Friday, 27th. Ten Tracks curates the evening of bands on the edge.

- Saturday, 28th.  The happening – spontaneous and impossible, Forest closing party, previously held in tunnels or in tents inside buildings, or even in gardens inside your head. In the past our parties have featured giant cakes, and buckets of paint (thrown at the audience), music made by geniuses and illegal dance offs. Naked bouncy castle and unauthorised street parties. The whole building has been covered silver, or in plants. There will also be art and food and workshops and screenprinting. All this stuff will be free.

And speaking of FREE

Forest Records has released a brand new 10-Year anniversary compilation featuring Golden Hour favourites like St. Jude’s Infirmary, Enfant Bastard, The Sea is Salt, Ryan Van Winkle and many many more!

Celebrating 10 years of the Forest. Dedicated to all our volunteers who made it happen August 2000 to August 2010… x

Features 22 tracks – brand new, unreleased or recent classics from members of the Forest Records Collective and a selection of special guests. 500 copies limited edition CD – buy your copy today at the Forest.

Press play, take off all your clothes and prepare to be touched intimately by the sounds of the Forest:  http://forestrecords.bandcamp.com/album/forest-records-presents-x

The Project was developed by Dave Coates and Al Innes, who talk more about how they came upon the idea in a podcast at the World Cup 2010 Poems website.  All of the poems are available to read at the WC 2010 Poems website, but should you fancy a printed copy for your coffee table, the collection is available for you now in the ForPub store or at the Forest shop.

Read on for more about the project, who is included, what it’s all about, and a lovely sample poem by Coates himself!:

Why World cup poetry? There are only a few events that truly catch the world’s attention. Maybe the Olympic Games, or the Haitian Earthquake Appeal. Maybe even Avatar. The World Cup is unique among sporting events. Unlike the Olympics, where the best-funded, best-equipped athletes usually come out on top, the World Cup rewards positive play. The biggest teams are there, the Italians face off against the Brazilians, but occasionally a second-tier team pulls off a minor upset. Maybe in a penalty shoot-out, maybe a goal-keeping blunder. Whatever transpires, it is on the World stage, with the eyes of every country fixed on it. What makes poetry so powerful is that it has the ability to reflect that attention back onto those taking part, onto the people and places around the globe who make up the store of memories and myths. But the real magic of the World Cup is the fact that millions around the world are focused on one place, in one time. We hope this collection can take that magic, the magic of following your home team or adopted heroes, minnows and giants alike, and bring it to life through poetry. If people take something from a riddling 11-line poem, or climb inside a 22-line narrative and walk around, they may find something that moves them. We hope that both football fans and non-football fans can realise that the World Cup is about more than football, it’s a house party in the global village, and we’re all invited.

Paperback: 36 pages Published: 18 July 2010 Author: Multiple Authors (see below) Genre: Poetry Cover: Ericka Duffy Language: English ISBN-13: 978-1907811050

Amount: £3 + P&P Select a region UK – 1.50 GBP EU – 2.50 GBP Int’l – 5.00 GBP

Contributors:

• Ryan Van Winkle
• Dave Coates
• Al Innes
• Kona Macphee
• Sasha de Buyl-Pisco
• Aiko Harman

Excerpt:

South Africa
Where was I? The sun’s out,
the best day of this year, the colour
on my face has changed from Cooked Chicken
to Raw Steak, I was remembering talk
from fifteen years ago, as though
we could go back, call the whole
damn thing a mulligan and live in that last
few minutes before the stadium drained out
for good. As if we could teach ourselves
again, point to each mark and say here,
let me show you the worst of it
or here, carry it as I do, at least
it will feel lighter. Last night
I breezed through a few of your old papers.
Where were we? What was this place
we had seemed to embody, inhabit,
discover and be discovered like stepping
suddenly into a clearing, or into a warm
and well-lit room? At the opening
ceremony a thousand-and-some performers
rushed forward from the stands
as if sure of where all this was going.

Dave Coates

Now available for a bargainous £2 is the fourth issue from Forest Publications’ Chapbook Series, Volume 2: a short story entitled, Chicks Dig Scars by Katie Craig.

Excerpt:

I will never pull hair from a plug-hole without thinking of the ovarian cyst Celia had. It was made entirely out of hair and teeth – apparently that’s what cells find it easiest to mutate into.

“Did you see it?” She’s been out of hospital for two days but I’m just back. From a week-long training course in Leamington Spa of all God-awful places. The longest we’ve gone without seeing each other in years.  I’ve felt lurching and dizzy, seasick on land with the worry.

Read more!

Product details

• Title: Vol.2 Iss.4 ‘Chicks Dig Scars’
• Author: Katie Craig
• Pamphlet: 20 pages
• Publisher: Forest Publications (18 June 2010)
• ISBN-13: 978-0956338884
• Amount: £2

GET YOUR COPY TODAY from the FOREST PUBLICATIONS STORE!:

Now available for a bargainous £2 is the third book from Forest Publications’ Chapbook Series, Volume 2: a collection of haiku poems entitled, Snow by Chloe Morrish.

A sample:

bare trees, a crow shape
neatly cut out of the snow
behind it, the dark

the snowflake symbols
on the weather forecast
are all identical

Read more!

Product details

• Title: Vol.2 Iss.3 ‘Snow’
• Author: Chloe Morrish
• Pamphlet: 20 pages
• Publisher: Forest Publications (18 May 2010)
• ISBN-13: 978-0956338877
• Amount: £2

GET YOUR COPY TODAY from the FOREST PUBLICATIONS STORE!: