Here’s a few clips from September’s Homework event at Bethnal Green Workingmen’s Club:

Back in July this year, I was part of the city-wide translation manhunt, The London Poetry Game. There’s an earlier post about the project here.

I was commissioned by Sarah Ellis (Apples and Snakes) and Alex Fleetwood (Hide and Seek) to write a new poem for the LPG project. Once the poem was finished, every line was translated into a different language found in London: German, Hindi, Russian, Cantonese, Yoruba and Farsi, among 20 others.

On the 5th, the poem was published online, and the game was afoot. Participants were asked to seek out native speakers of each language, and request their help retranslating the poem back into English. The translators phoned through each new interpretation to the LPG answering machine. The person who managed to translate the most lines was declared the winner. 

On Sunday 11th July, a new version of the poem was assembled from these collected audio recordings & broadcast at the National Theatre as part of the Hide&Seek Weekender. I was away doing a gig in Manchester at the time, but Sarah held up her mobile phone to the speaker so I could listen in.  

Three months later, I’ve now remixed this final recording into a short film, using screen capture software, a camera phone, and two seconds of John Travolta’s debut, The Boy In The Plastic Bubble. This film debuted at Revolutions In Form at the Bluecoat Gallery last weekend, as part of the Liverpool Biennial 2010. Thanks to Nafe Jones and Mercy for the northwest support on this.

The song I’ve sampled is “Kt” by Bexar Bexar. If you listen to This American Life on WBEZ, I think you will appreciate knowing this. It’s the incidental music they always use when a character has  an unwanted epiphany. ie. bad sunrise music. The best kind 

I’ve had a longstanding involvement with Liverpool live/art collective Mercy. When I lived in Liverpool at the start of the decade, I was the host of Fiction@FACT: a night of poetry/video collaborations at the art cinema, working alongside Mercy’s resident poet Nafe Jones.

Although now I’ve moved south, I always try to keep one hand in the Mercy thresher. For the last few years I’ve working with the team on their huge live collaborations with the band Wave Machines. Some of the footage of those gigs has recently gone online- Here’s a poem written by Joe Dunthorne with me and Chris Hicks filling in the blanks. This was recorded at St Leonard’s Church in Shoreditch last year:

I’m back up in Liverpool this weekend for two gigs, tied in with the Liverpool Biennial. The first is at Mercy’s new home, The Cooperative: a converted gallery space in the old Rapid Paint Shop. Mercy shares the space with six other Liverpool collectives (so, thats a collective of collectives: Lost Soul, Stranger Service Station, Jump Ship Rat, The Royal Standard, Sound Network, Red Wire & Arena Studios and Gallery.)

Myself and fellow Aisle16 member Tim Clare will be doing a midnight gig at the Cooperative on Saturday 16th October, in collaboration with Liverpool electronica masterchefs HIVE. The event is called DESTROY ALL LINGUISTS- Tim and I will be doing a series of poems, while HIVE digitally distorts and re-interpret the performance behind us. I’ve wanted to do some stuff with voice recognition software for a while, so I’m dead excited about this. Also on the bill, an exclusive set from Forest Swords:

The following night, I’m performing at Revolutions in Form at The Bluecoat gallery. Revolutions in Form is curated by Bluecoat poet-in-residence Nafe Jones and also features new work from Caroline Bergvall, Laura Dockril & Hannah Silva. I’ll be debuting a new animation, which is the culmination of the London Poetry Game project I did in July this year.

Finally, I’ve written a piece for Mercy’s Biennial Audioguide. This is a collection of mp3s that you can download direct from Mercy’s website, and features work from myself, Byron Vincent, Luke Kennard and Jack Underwood, among others. The idea was to ask a series of writers to create audioguides for conceptual art installations that (as yet) don’t exist.

If you live in Liverpool, you can go stand where the artwork should be, stick on your mp3 walkman, and imagine the artwork appearing in front of you. If you don’t live in Liverpool, then you can stand anywhere, I guess. You just have to imagine all of Liverpool as well.

It was raved about in The Independent this week. So now you have to buy it, you bloody gorgeous automaton. If you’d like to hear a sample before you buy, listen in the the excellent podcast series that Mercy are running throughout the Biennial, hosted by  Nick Holloway (Nick is secretly responsible for all my best work- without him I am a puddle of a man). Episode 2 has one of my contributions at the end of the show, entitled “I Hate Your Mates, Your Mates’ Mates, And Your Mates’ Mates’ Mates.”

October 7th is a traditionally busy day for us lot. Thankfully this year is no exception: from 2 to 6, I’ll be co-hosting National Poetry Day Live at the Southbank Centre, along with the awesome Caroline Bird.

I just got the revised running order through this morning:

Once thats all said and done, I’m heading further south to take part in this amazing lineup:

So, its about four weeks since I put out that call for submissions (see previous post).

As of this morning, I am the proud owner of about 90 versions of The Last Barman Poet. That’s wonderfully ridiculous. A big thank you to everyone that took time out of their day to write a remix / hip hop pastiche / highbrow literary interpretation / etc / etc. The quality was amazing.

The project also got a big push in both The Independent and The Guardian. Thanks!

Here’s a few of the video entries:

Of course, those versions are merely a soupcon of the awesome cocktail of nonsense we’ve created. I’ve set up a blog in order to catalogue them all, which you can read here.

The live event was last night, held at our regular Homework event at Bethnal Green Workingmen’s Club. We compiled and wrote the show in about three days, in order to include as much material as possible. Big thanks to our special guests Mark Grist, Luke Kennard, Salena Godden and Lizzy Dening for amazing performances.

I’ll be posting up some of the video footage over the next week or so. In particular, the terrifying climax of the show, during which everyone in the room put on a Tom Cruise mask and recited the poem together. Shudder.

The project is continuing- please keep sending versions to RossGSutherland@Yahoo.com

We’d really like to arrange a few dates around the country, with different line-ups each time. Maybe we could make a Christmas book? That is, if Tom Cruise doesn’t come through his stargate and strangle us in the night.

I think our third season of Homework has been the best yet. So far this year, our Night Of Literary Miscellany at Bethnal Green Workingmen’s Club has seen the launch for John Osborne’s Newsagents Window, a surprise performance from Kevin Eldon, the debut of Luke Wright’s Cynical Ballads, and an amazing performance from folk legend John Smith.

Tomorrow night we’re back again with another amazing line-up: Joel Stickley reads from his blog How To Write Badly Well, Joe Dunthorne reads an exclusive extract from his new novel, and guest Kate Tempest drops it with the newly-signed Sound of Rum.

NEXT MONTH HOWEVER, we’re doing something very different, and we’re looking for help from as many writers as possible to make it happen.

On the 29th September, Homework is hosting a special event entitled THE LAST BARMAN POET: an evening of writing inspired by the rubbish poem that Tom Cruise reads in the 1988 motion picture, Cocktail.

We are looking for as many writers as possible to contribute homages, covers and remixes of the Cruise poem for this event. These can be recorded for YouTube and played at the event, or performed live at the event by the writer themselves (or by proxy by another performer if the writer wishes- we can sort this out).

The event was originally inspired by the Aristocrats joke: a (pretty unfunny) joke that US comedians use to show off their stagecraft. The joke itself is a test pattern; it’s down to the comic telling the joke to add their own brand of flair, and hopefully make it funny.

We wondered—is it possible to create an Aristocrats for poets? A poem so bad that the writer would have to use all their ingenuity and talent to make it worthwhile? We don’t know the answer yet, but we’re hoping to find out on the 29th.

Here our a few suggestions for things we’re looking for:

• The original poem, reproduced verbatim, but presented in an interesting way, either through video montage, overdubbing, or the poet reading the poem in an interesting place.

• A poem (even loosely) inspired by the original. We’re not just looking for performance poems. We are looking for examples from right across the spectrum of poetry. We’re also keen to have some formal pieces too: a Last Barman Sonnet would be amazing.

• A poem that contains the same structure as the original, but replaces the subject of the poem with another. Ie. ‘The Last Microbiologist Poet’.

Of course, this is by no means an exhausted list, but we hope it gets you started. We’ll condense all the material into an hour and curate the final event, weaving the whole thing together and discussing our findings.

If you’re interested, drop me an email with your idea and I’ll send back a gushing email about how many drinks I’m going to buy you the next time I see you.

I am the world’s last barman poet.
I see America drinking the fabulous cocktails I make.
Americans getting stinking on something I stir or shake.
The Sex on the Beach,
The Schnapps made from peach,
The Velvet Hammer,
The Alabama Slammer.
I make things with juice and froth.
The Pink Squirrel,
The 3-Toed Sloth.
I make drinks so sweat and snazzy.
The Iced Tea,
The Kamikaze,
The Orgasm,
The Death Spasm,
The Singapore Sling,
The Ding-a-ling.
America you’re just devoted to every flavor I got.
But if you want to get loaded,
Why don’t you just order a shot?

As the work comes in, I’ll upload it to the Aisle16 website and the Homework Myspace page so you can keep track of the project.

Submissions, more information, etc, contact me at RossGSutherland@Yahoo.com

“a forensic Stewart Lee-esque disdain for life’s stupidities. A moving and compelling show which might have you swiftly returning for seconds.” - The List (****)

“A distinct lack of hype means too many will miss out on affable music journalist and Fringe first-timer Ross Sutherland’s remarkable offering. The Three Stigmata of Pacman, a quirky mix of comedy, multimedia slides and poetry, puts many more experienced acts to shame with its experimental nature and comic impact.” – Fest (****)

“full of exhilarating Perecian word play, some eerie video and a time capsule that looks an awful lot like a plastic, flip-top bin.” – The Stage

“exhilarating and energising” – Three Weeks (****)

“With talent like this emerging, the future’s never looked so bright.” – Hairline (****)

The fine people at Escalator (to which I owe my presence at the Fringe) asked me if I could write a poem about Edinburgh that could be included in their press packs. I’m not sure if they used it or not (its kinda about me, rather than the Fringe, so I wouldn’t blame them), but here it is:

When I was five
Edinburgh was assembled
from the games I used to play
with my grandparents.
I turned the cold granite
stairwell of their council block
into a missile silo, ready
to launch me with ten seconds
notice into ancient Rome, or
a rain-blanketed prison planet, or
a world where gravity
was tilted ninety degrees.
Each street twisting into
some new narrative
of which I was the only star.

How unexpected, then,
to return as an adult
and find these fantasies
still running.
As if my parents had forgotten
to switch them off
when we left for England.
Worse, the adventures have
multiplied wildly, had grandchildren
of their own, who now meet up
in late-night bars, swap notes
and fall in love with one another.
It seems they do not miss me, never have.

And now eighty dance routines
live in the sanitised remains of the Odeon
where I watched Ghostbusters.
Two hundred elegies to lovers
sing out from the bandstand where I had
once foiled the assassination
of Glen Michaels from STV.
And the Cowgate,
once a huge stone heart
that let me skateboard through
its ventricles,
is now stocked with quiet rooms
where fifty overweight men
talk about how hard it is to
move back in with your parents.

Without irony, this building
is the closest thing I have to home.
Where next door, up in the ancient aorta
some eighty years earlier,
my infant granddad is sleeping
in a cupboard drawer,
slowly beginning to imagine
an Edinburgh of his own.

This morning I am recovering from my worst gig yet at the Fringe: my pitiful attempt to rock the karaoke room at the Rockstar Games Party last night. I chose Phil Collins’s In The Air Tonight, and insisted that the reverb be turned up to 11 so I sounded “like Megatron”. Boos commenced. The humiliation was made all the worse by the fact I had to go right after Tim Clare’s award-winning rendition of If I We’re A Rich Man (Da-Da-Da-De-Da-De-Da-De-Da-De-Da).

But all is not lost- it turns out I’ve had two more four star reviews for The Three Stigmata of Pacman, courtesy of Three Weeks Magazine and Fest. I am super stoked about this, and as soon as the cackling spectre of Phil Collins leaves my head, I will celebrate with a pack of cocodamol and a can of Irn Bru.