By the simple act of not checking first, the tri brodyagi turned up at Newcastle's Victorian City Pool on Ladies' Night, or rather on the evening selected for women to use the Turkish Bath. Says it all, really. Disgruntledly making do with the seventies sauna arrangement next door, the Myetromen discussed final arrangements for the book, including that vital stanza Bill still hadn't written, and readings and other promotional work -- including a First Thursday Reading on October 1st in Newcastle University.
They then transferred to the hot plastic tube of the steam room, a kind of anti-igloo in smooth cream and steam, and considered the possibility of using recordings of the metro and a few nifty slides to announce transitions in the readings, reminded Bill he still had to meet with the cartoonist about the Stations of the Dog strip, and considered a Moscow launch.
Sprawling on the pleather recliners after a refreshing dip in the main pool, they reflected on recent Russian-based reading and news items, including the railway-related issue of renaming Leningrad Station after the tsar, another touch of resurrectionary conservatism; and the unfortunate attempt to close down access to historical resources on the net, another touch of reactionary control-freakery. (You can still access a parallel site by the same author, Vyacheslav Rumyantsev, here, though I can't find an English version.)
They then repaired to a nearby Turkish restaurant to gargle Efes and consume mezes, looking forward to a meeting with their publisher somewhere in York Station to Finalise Everything! Sample stanzas to appear soon...
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
Monday, 6 July 2009
Space Dogs
This BBC4 documentary features extraordinary footage of the Russian spaceflights involving dogs.
There are a number of interviews with the scientists who trained them, sent them into space, and mourned the ones that died -- almost half the complement of 48 told to sit whilst being hurtled through the sky.
Among several bizarre quotes, the scientist Aleksandr Seryapin said he was told, 'We're asking you to do something outside your area of expertise... we want you to sew clothes for dogs'; and the rocket scientist Korolyov (who, it was claimed, was deeply attached to his canine cosmonauts), exhorting his fellow workers, 'Remember, Comrades, that a time will come when our trade unions will offer ordinary people holidays in space.'
And the little detail that Stryelka ('Little Arrow', part of the team (with Byelka) that first orbited the Earth and returned safely, had a puppy, Pushinka, that Khrushchev gave to JFK, ostensibly for his children, but obviously so that, every time he watched them play, Kennedy knew that Russia had got there first.
It's repeated a few times this month.
There are a number of interviews with the scientists who trained them, sent them into space, and mourned the ones that died -- almost half the complement of 48 told to sit whilst being hurtled through the sky.
Among several bizarre quotes, the scientist Aleksandr Seryapin said he was told, 'We're asking you to do something outside your area of expertise... we want you to sew clothes for dogs'; and the rocket scientist Korolyov (who, it was claimed, was deeply attached to his canine cosmonauts), exhorting his fellow workers, 'Remember, Comrades, that a time will come when our trade unions will offer ordinary people holidays in space.'
And the little detail that Stryelka ('Little Arrow', part of the team (with Byelka) that first orbited the Earth and returned safely, had a puppy, Pushinka, that Khrushchev gave to JFK, ostensibly for his children, but obviously so that, every time he watched them play, Kennedy knew that Russia had got there first.
It's repeated a few times this month.
Saturday, 9 May 2009
Victory Day
Recent news: Three Men on the Metro secures a publisher. Five Leaves Press is in discussion with us about bringing the book out later this year. Cover image and (finally) a few poems to follow.
Breaking news: Russia celebrates the first public reading from the project by Andy Croft, myself, and Paul Summers, at the Hexham Festival last weekend.
The general announces that, although my first poem went on a bit long, it picked up once we cracked a few jokes. The minister agrees that I should've stopped before the gratuitous Orphic section, but the other two were on cracking form.
Breaking news: Russia celebrates the first public reading from the project by Andy Croft, myself, and Paul Summers, at the Hexham Festival last weekend.
The general announces that, although my first poem went on a bit long, it picked up once we cracked a few jokes. The minister agrees that I should've stopped before the gratuitous Orphic section, but the other two were on cracking form.
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Myetrodog!
The metrodog website is entirely in Russian, but for those who, like me, either can't read Russian, or are prepared to spend hours transliterating Cyrillic into English they then can't read either, it does have lots of pics of Metro dogs. These invariably look mad, desperate or dazed (visitors to 'Tri brodyagi' sometimes describe themselves as having the same reactions).
'Sobachki,' as I understand it (see first sentence for amount of credence to give to this), not only means 'dog', but also the @ sign, a symbol for which we in miserable English have no word. I imagine it as having something to do with a dog curling up to go to sleep in the warmth of the Metro, but then this could also apply to a number of flexible mammals with tails. Squirrels, for instance. There are uncountable hordes of those in the tunnels.
'Sobachki,' as I understand it (see first sentence for amount of credence to give to this), not only means 'dog', but also the @ sign, a symbol for which we in miserable English have no word. I imagine it as having something to do with a dog curling up to go to sleep in the warmth of the Metro, but then this could also apply to a number of flexible mammals with tails. Squirrels, for instance. There are uncountable hordes of those in the tunnels.
Wednesday, 7 January 2009
Apologies for My Divagation
I'm sure there are no regular visitors to this most irregular of sites, but should anyone be mildly curious about the yawning gaps between entries (and indeed between stated intentions and actual achievement), here's the answer: I lost the notebook.
To be precise, although I still have a hundred photos, fifty recordings, pages of journal entries, numerous sketches, and about five sheets of paper noting conversational topics embarked on during our stay in Moscow, I lost the small moleskine in which I was actually making my notes on the staions as we visited them.
In the meantime, therefore, I've been going on about that on the Lost Notebook site (link to your right), and haven't been able to face updating this blog. But now, as the project moves on, it's time to chat amiably with that particular demon, and come to some arrangement.
The latest news is both Andy and Paul have produced drafts; I'm struggling towards a few sketchy versions of my own, and we're meeting up to discuss the book and its future next week. In a banya. Or rather, in Newcastle's magnificent Turkish Baths.
There's a nice coincidence in this respect in that a parallel project, the 'Balkan Exchange' interaction between NE poets including Andy and myself, and a number of Bulgarian writers, has now acquired a banya-related aspect. Always interesting when such things, like bubbles in the bathtub, spontaneously arise.
Another coincidence that has arisen recently is this photo diary by Linda Nylind, who was evidently in Moscow at around the same time as us, taking snaps of almost the same things: cosmonauts, parades and myetro stations.
Immediate plans for discussing on the deckchairs of the City Pool include: organising the order of the book, discussions with publisher(s), and a reading of material produced so far.
To be precise, although I still have a hundred photos, fifty recordings, pages of journal entries, numerous sketches, and about five sheets of paper noting conversational topics embarked on during our stay in Moscow, I lost the small moleskine in which I was actually making my notes on the staions as we visited them.
In the meantime, therefore, I've been going on about that on the Lost Notebook site (link to your right), and haven't been able to face updating this blog. But now, as the project moves on, it's time to chat amiably with that particular demon, and come to some arrangement.
The latest news is both Andy and Paul have produced drafts; I'm struggling towards a few sketchy versions of my own, and we're meeting up to discuss the book and its future next week. In a banya. Or rather, in Newcastle's magnificent Turkish Baths.
There's a nice coincidence in this respect in that a parallel project, the 'Balkan Exchange' interaction between NE poets including Andy and myself, and a number of Bulgarian writers, has now acquired a banya-related aspect. Always interesting when such things, like bubbles in the bathtub, spontaneously arise.
Another coincidence that has arisen recently is this photo diary by Linda Nylind, who was evidently in Moscow at around the same time as us, taking snaps of almost the same things: cosmonauts, parades and myetro stations.
Immediate plans for discussing on the deckchairs of the City Pool include: organising the order of the book, discussions with publisher(s), and a reading of material produced so far.
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
Arjen Duinker's reading from the underground
Perhaps this is the way we should deliver the poems from this project:
Arjen did a version of this performance on an elevator in the shopping centre in Durres, where the shortness of the ride meant he could read the sequence from Sailors Home, doing a poem on the way up, then another on the way down. He maintained this for the ten part sequence, to the delight, bewilderment and, yes, elevation of many passersby.
Arjen did a version of this performance on an elevator in the shopping centre in Durres, where the shortness of the ride meant he could read the sequence from Sailors Home, doing a poem on the way up, then another on the way down. He maintained this for the ten part sequence, to the delight, bewilderment and, yes, elevation of many passersby.
Wednesday, 3 September 2008
Slava Laika!
To celebrate a new era in the history of this blog, ie I am back from my holidays and will attempt to post some entries, here is an image of Spacedog Laika encountered at Nicolai Tesla Airport in Belgrade.
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