Centre for Poetry and Poetics: Remembering the Logoclast - Alan Halsey
- a special memorial event hosted by Dr Agnes Lehoczky, Director of the Centre for Poetry and Poetics; a night of tributes paid by fellow writers, artists, publishers - gathering together from across the country for the evening to remember & celebrate the poet, friend, artist, bookseller and logoclast Alan Halsey, his life and his work.
A fond farewell to the beloved poet, artist, composer, publisher, editor, bibliophile, logoclast, scholar, humourist and staunch toper Alan Halsey (1949-2022). Alan Halsey ran The Poetry Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye for almost twenty years before marrying fellow poet Geraldine Monk and moving to Sheffield where he continued to work as a specialist bookseller. Collections of his poetry include Five Years Out (Galloping Dog 1989), Wittgenstein’s Devil (Stride 2000), Marginalien (Five Seasons 2005), Not Everything Remotely (Salt 2006), Term as in Aftermath (Ahadada 2009) and Even if only out of (Veer 2011). From 1979-97 he ran The Poetry Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye and edited West House Books 1995-2011. Five Seasons also published The Text of Shelley’s Death (1995) and Lives of the Poets (2009). As poet and graphic artist he published collaborations with Karen Mac Cormack (Fit To Print, Coach House 1998), Gavin Selerie (Days of ’49, West House 1999), Kelvin Corcoran (Your Thinking Tracts or Nations, West House 2001, and Into the Interior, Shearsman, 2022), Steve McCaffery (Paradigm of the Tinctures, Granary 2007) and others. He edited Thomas Lovell Beddoes’ Death’s Jest-Book for West House in 2003 and The Ivory Gate, a collection of Beddoes’ later work, for ReScript Books in 2011. He later edited Bill Griffiths’ collected poems in three volumes for Reality Street. His text-graphic work included Memory Screen, shown at the Bury Text Festival in 2005, and In White Writing (Xexoxial 2012). He co-directed the antichoir Juxtavoices with Martin Archer and the group’s album Juxtanother antichoir from Sheffield appeared on Discus Records in 2013. His final full-length publication was Remarks of Uncertain Consequence (Five Seasons Press, 2022) shortly before his death. Other recent publications included Selected Poems 1988-2016, Shearsman and Winterreisen, a collaboration with Kelvin Corcoran, Knives Forks & Spoons. He was an Affiliated Poet at Sheffield University’s Centre for Poetry and Poetics.
Contributors:
Tim Allen
Martin Archer
Andrew Brewerton
Kelvin Corcoran
Ian Davidson
Dan Eltringham
Patricia Farrell
Allen Fisher
Tony Frazer
Harry Gilonis
Jeff Hilson
Elizabeth James
Juxtavoices
Ágnes Lehóczky
Tony Lopez
Geraldine Monk
Simon Perril
Adam Piette
Frances Presley
Gavin Selerie
Robert Sheppard
Simon Smith
Glenn Storhaug
Harriet Tarlo
Scott Thurston
Reading Schedule:
Intro and welcome by Agnes Lehoczky
Adam Piette’s tribute
Juxtavoices:
‘White Persimmon’
‘ONEVERLASTARTLETTERMINALIENDLESSONG’
Geraldine Monk’s welcome and reading: ‘Dear Geraldine’ from Blackbox Manifold 29, Monk Collective, 2023, and Blake’s ‘Sick Rose’
Further readings:
Tim Allen: parts 22 & 23 from A Robin Hood Book, West House Books 1996, repr in Marginalien, Five Seasons Press 2005
Andrew Brewerton: '55 Texts for the Journey' from Perspectives on the Reach, Galloping Dog Pess 1981, repr in Wittgensteins’s Devil, Stride 2000 and Not Everything Remotely, Salt 2006
Kelvin Corcoran & Adam Piette: from Winterreisen by Alan Halsey & Kelvin Corcoran, The Knives Forks And Spoons Press 2019, repr in Wittgensteins’s Devil, Stride 2000
Ian Davidson: ‘Noughts and Quandaries’, Blackbox Manifold 29, University of Sheffield
Dan Eltringham: ‘Letters on Change & Exchange’ / in ‘Six Letters of Change & Exchange’, Perspectives on the Reach, Galloping Dog Pess 1981, repr in Not Everything Remotely, Salt 2006
Patricia Farrell: Martial translations from Some Versions Of Martial, Gargoyle 2010, Even if only out of, Veer Books 2011, Versions of Martial, The Knives Forks and Spoons Press 2015
Allen Fisher: An Alphabet of Emblems, Tern Press 1987; repr in Five Years Out, Galloping Dog Press 1989 and in Not Everything Remotely, Salt 2006; Song of the Rowan, Five Seasons Press 1979; and from ’Spells Against Green Field Development’, West House Books 1994, repr in Not Everything Remotely, Salt 2006
Tony Frazer: ‘Dear Roy’ and ‘Lee Harwood had a thing about pangolins’ from Remarks of Uncertain Consequence, Five Seasons Press 2022
Harry Gilonis: ‘Albion’s Policy’ from Perspectives on the Reach, Galloping Dog Pess 1981; ‘Benefit of Hindrance’ from Auto Dada Café, Five Seasons Press 1987, repr in Not Everything Remotely, Salt 2006; selection from Table Talk, Privately 1989, repr in Selected Poems 1988-2016, Shearsman 2017; ‘Summer 1990: An Eclogue’, from Reasonable Distance, Equipage 1992
Jeff Hilson: ‘The Art of Memory in Hay-on-Wye’, Textual Instability 1995, repr in Marginalien, Five Seasons Press 2005
Elizabeth James: ‘Eleatic Alert’ from Marginalien, Five Seasons Press 2005, repr Selected Poems 1988-2016, Shearsman 2017
Ágnes Lehóczky: from A Looking-Glass for Logoclasts in Term as in Aftermath, Ahadada 2009, repr in Selected Poems 1988-2016, Shearsman 2017 and from So Far As To : for Ágnes Lehóczky. [Sheffield]: Gargoyle 2013, repr in Selected Poems 1988-2016, Shearsman 2017
Tony Lopez: Visions of the Western Railways, Gratton Street Irregulars 1996, repr in Wittgensteins’s Devil, Stride 2000
Simon Perril: ‘Lizard Abstract' Short Run 1995 and The Hunting of the Lizopard, Gargoyle 2001, both repr in Marginalien, Five Seasons Press 2005
Frances Presley: ‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning’ and ‘Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’ from Lives of the Poets, Five Seasons Press 2009
Gavin Selerie: ‘Bardo Panavision 1949’ (extract), from Days of ’49, West House Books 1999; ‘William Blake’ and ‘Caroline Norton’ from Lives of the Poets, Five Seasons Press 2009
Robert Sheppard: 'After Spicer' from Wittgenstein's Devil, Stride 2000, Not Everything Remotely, Salt 2006 and Selected Poems 1988-2016, Shearsman 2017
Simon Smith: Martial translations from Some Versions Of Martial, Gargoyle 2010, Even if only out of, Veer Books 2011, Versions of Martial, The Knives Forks and Spoons Press 2015
Glenn Storhaug: ‘The Calligraphy of Madman Chang’ from an edition-of-one compiled by AH, 1979; In Sight of Carnllidi, Five Seasons Press 1979; ‘November Song’ from Another Loop In our Days (1980); first 3 lines of ‘Five Accounts of the Arrest of English Poetry’ from Auto Dada Café, Five Seasons Press 1987, repr in Wittgensteins’s Devil, Stride 2000 ; ‘He kept bad company . . .’ from Remarks of Uncertain Consequence, Five Seasons Press 2022
Harriet Tarlo: ‘Greenhouse Effects: a Calendar’ from Reasonable Distance, Equipage 1992, repr in Marginalien 2005
Scott Thurston: ‘Beginning to End’ in E.ratio echap Beginning to End & Other Alphabet Poems 2011, repr in Even if only out of, Veer Books 2011 and ‘Skips & Charms against Recession’, Even if only out of, Veer Books 2011 and Selected Poems 1988-2016, Shearsman 2017
Closing reading: Alan Halsey (from Remarks of Uncertain Consequence, Five Seasons Press 2022), Centre for Poetry and Poetics, Sheffield, 2020.
Please come and join the celebration in person on:
4th of May – 6pm (on the dot); doors open at 5.45, please come on time.
Diamond, - LT 6,
The University of Sheffield
We would love you to be there in person and the set up of this evening is essentially designed for an in person event but if you are unable to travel to Sheffield, please join us online by no later than 17.50pm so we can start the event on time: meet.google.com/vsj-eauy-jfc