April 20, 2005
Bök Speaks Volumes
Christian Bök, poet, pataphysician and author of the unfractioned Eunoia, came down to our crazy death country from his native Canada and did a great reading at the Writer’s House today. He read some from his first book of poems, Crystallography and presented some new work, including sound poems from Cyborg Opera, mentioned before on here. His new, pun-riddled “Umlaut Factory” really seemed to break new eggs, I mean ground. I also couldn’t help noticing that it contains the word-palindrome “feel a cop cop a feel.”
For volume two, Christian did a Studio 111 interview today after the reading, discussing whether poetry is elitist, formal and material aspects of the composition of Eunoia, poetry and meaning, novelty, Eunoia-like projects in other languages, poetry and computer programming (with reference to Racter), sound poetry, boredom, and Canadianism, among other topics. The interview will be available soon on PennSound, and will be linked from here. (Update: 8pm, 1515 Market Street, enter on 15th between Market and JFK. The reading is free and open to the public.)
Anyway, the reading was extraordinary. If you missed it, too bad, sucker. But actually, no: Christian will be doing another reading here in Philadelphia tomorrow, at Temple University’s Center City campus.
April 20th, 2005 at 6:16 pm
Is word-palindrome some ‘allowed’ expression?
Suggestion: Put it in quotation marks if not.
If it is – forget this comment.
April 29th, 2005 at 8:06 pm
Here’s the audio from the Writers House reading!