lapsus linguae

This is a Picture of Wind

On 30 June 2020 Sheffield-based Longbarrow Press published my new poetry collection, This is a Picture of Wind. On Saturday 28 November 2020, it was named one of the best books of poetry of 2020 by The Guardian. A month later, I’m only just getting around to blogging about it. It’s been a heck of a year.

In The Guardian, Rishi Dastidar describes This is a Picture of Wind as “title that gives shape to the ineffable […] a digitally tinged pillow book full of staccato language inspired by John Ruskin’s “sky-bottling days”, Francis Beaufort’s wind scale and Luke Howard’s observations of clouds.” And in SPAM Press’s Deep Cuts 2020 Kirsty Dunlop writes: “this collection felt like a necessary breath in the stagnant air of this year.”

This pocket-sized hardback collection is based on This is a Picture of Wind: A Weather Phone for Phones, a web-app optimised for smart phones, commissioned by Iota Institute in 2018. The book features an introduction by Johanna Drucker, and a poetic afterword by Vahni Capildeo and contains new material from me, some of which will be added to the web-app over the course of 2021.

There’s also a Twitterbot companion to the project, posting randomly-generated, poetic, yet plausible weather observations every six hours @apictureofwind.

The best way to purchase This is a Picture of Wind is direct from the publisher, Longbarrow Press. On the Longbarrow website you can also view a series of short videos featuring excerpts of the work.

A General History of the Air

In the blur that was March 2020 the Ottawa-based above/ground press published some new work from me in a single-poem pamphlet called A General History of the Air. The launch was meant to coincide with my appearance at the 10th annual VERSeFest in Ottawa, March 24-29, 2020. Though the festival has been postponed due to Covid 19, the chapbook is available for order online (details below).

the first page of A General History of the Air — The first page of A General History of the Air, J. R. Carpenter, 2020

The cover image and all of the text comes from a book called The General History of the Air, Designed and Begun by the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq., Printed for Awnsham and John Churchill, at the Black Swan in Pater-noster-Row, near Amen-Corner, June 29, 1692. I consulted a first edition held at the British Library in London, UK, Shelfmark 1651/1033.

The General History of the Air, Robert Boyle, 1692.

After some months at sea, my author copies have now arrived in the UK and are available for order via PayPal paypal.me/jrcarp. £8 for shipping within the UK, £10 for elsewhere in Europe. These prices include postage, packaging, and PayPal fees. North Americans would do better to order directly from the publisher.

A New Year of Wind

For the whole of 2018 I posted a new poem at the start of every month to my web-based work, This is a Picture of Wind, a weather poem for phones. These monthly poems were based on weather observations made two centuries ago by Luke Howard. A Quaker, chemist, and amateur meteorologist, Howard is perhaps best known as the author of the essay On the Modifications of Clouds, in which, he gave the clouds the Latin names we still use today. Hendecasyllabic fragments of that essay made their way into my my web-based work The Gathering Cloud. For This is a Picture of Wind, I consulted a later volume by Howard: Barometrographia: twenty years’ variation of the barometer in the climate of Britain, exhibited in autographic curves, with the attendant winds and weather, and copious notes. This large, beautifully printed folio was published in London in 1847. It can be found in the British Library at Shelfmark Tab.817.a.

Detail from Luke Howard, Barometrographia, 1847

Some readers may have noticed as the year progressed, that lurking below these new posts was a second row containing a full year of poems. Those poems were written first. The form the core impetus for the piece. They were written in response to the conveyor-belt of storms which battered southwestern England in 2014, resulting in catastrophic flooding in Somerset and the destruction of the seawall at Dawlish, near where I live in Devon. For 2019 I’ve moved that year of poems up to the top row for greater visibility.

This is a Picture of Wind || J. R. Carpenter

Initial research for This is a Picture of Wind was made possible with the support of the Dot Award for Digital Literature. The finished work was one of three web-based works by Canadian women commissioned for #IOTADATA by IOTA Institute in 2017 with the support of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. In December 2018 IOTA released a free e-publication about the #IOTADATA project containing an introduction by David Clark, a three-way interview between the artists, and an essay about each artist’s work. I am deeply indebted to IOTA curator Mireille Bourgeois for commissioning this work in the first place and all the more so for convincing Johanna Drucker to write about it.

By choosing a calendar grid to organize the presentation of observations in This is a Picture of Wind, Carpenter puts the dialogue between the phenomenal world and its connection to human frameworks of perception into immediate, graphical view […] the wind cannot be caught in calendar frameworks any more than the waters of the sea are held in a net. The wind rushes through the rational structure, even as it leaves behind, in this case, a residue of poetic notes, observations formulated in relation to fleeting sensations of the volatile atmosphere.

~ Johanna Drucker, DYNAMIC POETICS: JR CARPENTER’S THIS IS A PICTURE OF WIND

Drucker’s full essay is available for free download. It begins on page 20 of this PDF.

In 2018 This is a Picture of Wind won the Opening Up Digital Fiction Competition People’s Choice Award 2018 and was shortlisted for the Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature 2018.

In 2019 I will be presenting the work at Land Lines: British Nature Writing, 1789-2014.

Twitter users can follow a remix of the work as it unfolds year-round. Fragments of text from the project are blown about but a Twitter bot posting variable poetics of wind into new configurations every six hours through this account: @apictureofwind

a ria – a poem for National Poetry Day

This autumn I’m writer-in-residence at Greenway, the former holiday home of Agatha Christie, now run by the National Trust. Greenway is situated high on a hill overlooking the River Dart near Dartmouth in Devon. As part of my residency, for National Poetry Day, Thursday 4 October 2018, I Tweeted fragments of writing about the River Dart near Greenway. The thread grew throughout the day to form a poem. Here it is in its entirety:

a ria

a rise
a river runs
green in the shadow
of a steep wooded bank

deep roots tangle in dense strata
the rucked sheets of the Dartmouth beds
the ancient stone of the Lower Devonian
a dark strip between water and leaf

slate slants askance at the falling tide
mist eats green leaves alive
cloud shadows the far shore
counterfeits the coast

the river rolls out its yardage
bolts of shot silk shiver silver
pocked pewter
puckering grey

rain like we haven’t seen for some time
stains the parched fields green
pummelled plums fall
purple eggs from the sky

a ria || a poem for National Poetry Day written as writer-in-residence at Greenway

Upcoming activities:

Join me at Greenway on Saturday 13 October 2-4 PM for an informal discussion on Writing and Weather. Bring along a short piece of writing by you or your favourite author to share with the group. Please also bring proof of booking with you. Booking info.

On 15 November I will be leading a creative writing workshop at Greenway on Writing and Time. The aim of the workshop is to provide writers at all levels with strategies for getting started, getting going, and getting inspired, which can then be used for future writing projects. Open to writers at all levels. Booking info.

This residency is co-sponsored by Literature Works and the National Trust. For more information about upcoming activities happening at Greenway as part of this residency please visit Literature Works.

An Ocean of Static Highly Commended by the Forward Prizes 2018

I’m thrilled to share the news that my debut poetry collection, An Ocean of Static, has been Highly Commended by the Forward Prize 2018. Congratulations to all the other Highly Commended poets for their fine works.

Many thanks to my wonderful publishers Penned in the Margins for supporting this book. The book launch was held at the British Library in London in April 2018, thanks to the Eccles Centre for American Studies. An Ocean of Static has been presented at Cuirt International Festival of Literature and Edinburgh International Book Festival. It has received excellent reviews. Ian McMillan from Radio 3’s The Verb called it: “A marvellous firework of a book … a Moby Dick and Ancient Mariner for our times.”

An Ocean of Static || J. R. Carpenter, Penned in the Margins, 2018

An excerpt of one of the poems in the collection has been published in the Forward Book of Poetry 2019, which is now available for purchase. This poem started off as a digital text called, Notes on the Voyage of Owl and Girl. This work has been performed at Le Cube in Paris, The British Library in London, The Club at The Banff Centre, The March Hare in Newfoundland, and many smaller venues. A print iteration of this poem was first published in Fourteen Hills: The San Francisco State University Review, in May 2014. Many thanks to all those who helped Owl and Girl along on their long voyage. I’m especially thrilled to see traces of JavaScript grace the pages of the Forward Book of Poetry 2019.

For more information about An Ocean of Static, check out this interview I did with Penned in the Margins in July 2018: J.R. Carpenter talks to Elle Eccles about translation, migration, and variance in her newest poetry collection An Ocean of Static

An Ocean of Static

The launch of my debut poetry collection will take place at the British Library in London on Friday 27 April 2018, 19:30. Join us for an evening of digital projection, live performance, and a conversation with Peter Jaeger. The event is hosted by Penned in the Margins and the Eccles Centre for American Studies. It’s FREE but booking is essential. RSVP now to reserve your place.

Published in paperback by the ever-excellent Penned in the Margins, with silver cover foiling and French flaps, An Ocean of Static, will be available for purchase 24 April 2018.

Pre-order 9-20 April for £9.99. (regular price £12)

From the late 15th century onwards, a flurry of voyages were made into the North Atlantic in search of fish, the fabled Northwest Passage, and beyond into the territories purely imaginary. Today, this vast expanse is crisscrossed with ocean and wind currents, submarine cables and wireless signals, seabirds and passengers, static and cargo ships.

This book transforms the dense, fragmented archive of the North Atlantic into a sea of fresh new text.

What surfaces in An Ocean of Static are arrays of language, “arguments” that can be read as a chorus of subtle alternatives or sometimes like confused cries in a nautical crisis, along with records of journeys from centuries apart. J. R. Carpenter draws language through the icy passage of code’s style, gripping the rigging with a performative voice developed in many presentations of this work. The book that results is in the ancient form of the cento (literally, a patchwork), but one that fits together like whole cloth, functioning as a sail, allowing air, human effort, and machinery to work together to carry us along.

–Nick Montfort, author of The Truelist

This book is made of other books. The poems in this book are composed of facts, fictions, fragments, and codes collected from accounts of voyages undertaken over the past 2,340 years or so, into the North Atlantic, in search of the Northwest Passage, and beyond, into territories purely imaginary. The poems in this book are intended to be read on the page and to serve as scripts for the live performance of a body of web-based works.

Portions of this work first appeared, often in very different forms, in a wide range of print, digital, and live performance contexts. A full list of links and references is available here.

Upcoming Talks – February 2018

I’m hitting the road next week, to talk archaeologies of experimental wind weather writing and unconventionalities of weird web art design to students, faculty, and anyone who turns up really, at Epsom, Southampton, and Winchester school of Art.

On Monday 5 February 12:30-13:30 I’ll be speaking to Graphic Design students, faculty, and members of the public at the University for the Creative Arts in Epsom. I think the event poster gives fair warning of my highly eccentric approach to web ‘design’. I hope a lively discussion of how very best not to do things ensues.

UCA Epsom || J. R. Carpenter, 5 February 2018

On Thursday 8 February I’ll head south to Southampton to give a reading at the excellent ENTROPICS experimental poetry series. In advance of the reading, Sarah Hayden asked me a few interview questions. My answers, along with interviews with past ENTROPICS poets are online here. I am deeply indebted to the organizers for the fabulous event poster, below. The reading will take place at 18:30–21:00 at Mettricks Old Town Cafe, 117 High St, Southampton SO14 2AA, UK. All are welcome.

ENTROPICS || J. R. Carpenter, 8 February 2018

And then onward on Friday 9 February to talk about my new web-based work This is a Picture of Wind at the Archaeologies of Media and Technology (AMT) Research Group at Winchester School of Art as part of their Talking Heads Series. The event will take place at Winchester School of Art, Lecture Theatre A, 15:00-17:00. It’s free, and open to the public. For more information, see the event page Writing a Picture of Wind. Many thanks to AMT director Jussi Parikka for putting the Southampton-Winchester bit of the tour together.

Touring Newfoundland with The March Hare

As West Country folks have done for centuries, I’m preparing to depart from balmy Plymouth for blustery Newfoundland for a week on the road with The March Hare, Atlantic Canada’s largest and certainly most eclectic poetry festival, in which:

Traditional stories alternate with contemporary poems, emerging writers appear alongside established writers, local performers share the stage with performers from all over the world, and all of them are accorded the same courtesy. While long-term achievement may be given the nod of respect in the form of an extra two or three minutes at the podium, the time allotments are tight and more or less equal. There are no stars at the March Hare.

I’ve been timing various pieces and it turns out everything I’ve ever written can be read aloud in eight minutes and thirty seconds. I’ll be reading a mix of new and old work, including Air Holes, Notes on the Voyage of Owl and Girl, and Once Upon a Tide, a print iteration of which will appear in Arc Poetry Magazine this month.

Mostly I’m just looking forward to listening, meeting new people, and getting to see more of this wonderfully wild island.

Here are my dates:

Tuesday, March 7th, 8:00
Chidley’s Place, Renews

Wednesday, March 8th, 8:00
St. Patrick’s Parish Hall, Tilting, Fogo Island

Thursday, March 9th, 7:30
Gander Hotel, Gander

Friday, March 10th, 8:00
Swirsky’s, Corner Brook

The full program is online here: http://themarchhare.ca/2017-programme/

## READ WRITE GARDEN ## – an erasure poem un-written in RUBY code comments

Nearly a year ago the American book-artist Karen Randall invited me to contribute to an an international anthology of poems involving computer languages, especially the RUBY language, in honor of the Millay Colony‘s ruby anniversary. The result is The Ill-Tempered Rubyist, pictured below. I can safely say that this is the most physically beautiful book I’ve ever been a part of.

The Ill-Tempered Rubyist
– photo by Karen Randall

The cover collage was created in PhotoShop, then transferred to polymer, and printed by letterpress. The text is printed on Reich inkjet paper using an Epson Stylus Pro 3800 printer. The volume is bound using the Japanese side-slab method. The finished book is housed in a clamshell case covered in red cloth.

## READ WRITE GARDEN ##
– photo by J. R. Carpenter

When Karen first wrote to me I happened to be ensconced on a water-lily farm in the south of France. I had gardens on my mind. The only bit of RUBY code on hand I had on hand was written by Cornwall-based performance writer and programmer Caden Lovelace. Struck by the repeated mention of gardens in Caden’s extensive code comments, I began carving out the following erasure poem. Note that in real life, as in code life, this poem has a fairly strict system of indentation. In blog life, however, these indentations seem determined to disappear.

## READ WRITE GARDEN ##

# erasure by J. R. Carpenter
# source by Caden Lovelace

$dir = File.dirname(__GARDEN__)

def read_texts()
return Dir[$dir+”/texts/*.txt”].map do |garden|
File.read(garden)
end
end

#### we want to split
#### our text into units
####
#### punctuation marks allow us
#### to treat them as words
####
#### consider the ellipsis
#### for example
####
#### spaces
#### on either side of certain

def tokenize_texts(texts)
return texts.map do |text|
text.gsub!(/(\w)([,.:;\/?!]|\.\.\.+)(\W)/i, ‘\1 \2 \3’)
text.split(‘ ‘)
end
end

#### words often come
#### after other words
####
#### we walk through our garden
#### counting pairs

def generate_frequency_table(tokenized_texts, n)
frequency_table = {}
tokenized_texts.each do |text|
text.each_with_index do |word, i|
if i+2 < text.length # is there a word after this one? end end #### we write by deciding #### which path to take #### #### say we have three words #### say we know their probability #### #### [‘walk' => 3, ‘garden’ => 2, ‘words => 4]
####
#### we sum these numbers
#### we pick a lesser number at random
####
#### is the probability of ‘walk’
#### greater than random?

last_word = last_words.join(‘ ‘)
if freq.has_key?(last_word)
# have we any paths to take?

#### here we separate
#### the punctuation
####
#### make it a word
#### put it back

def fix_punctuation(text)
return text.gsub(/ ([,.:;\/?!]|\.\.\.+) /, ‘\1 ‘).gsub(/ ” /, ‘” ‘)
end

#### here we use all
#### we’ve written there

frequency_table = generate_frequency_table(tokenize_texts(read_texts()), 2)

# here ‘2’ means word-pairs

#### here we set our seeds

seeds = [“I know”, “I was”, “I have”, “but I”, “if we”, “of his”, “that she”, “allow us”, “the text”, “the other”, “the same”, “what is”, “on the”, “of the”, “in the”, “through the”, “we have”, “we know”, “the probability”, “the frequency”, “a word”, “here we”, “we sum”, “we set”, “our seeds”, “we want”, “we walk”, “we separate”, “we run”, “we read”, “we write”, “our garden”].map {|seed| seed.split(‘ ‘) }

seeds.each do |seed|
10.times do

end
end

In addition to being stunningly beautiful, The Ill-Tempered Rubyist contains contributions and collaborations from an impressive list of well-known code poets, performers, and authors of digital literature from around the world:

Contributors

HAROLD ABRAMOWITZ WITH DAN RICHERT
mIEKAL aND
MEZ BREEZE
J.R.CARPENTER WITH CADEN LOVELACE
CLAIRE DONATO
NATALIA FEDOROVA
CHRISTOPHER FUNKHOUSER
ANGELA GENUSA
SAMANTHA GORMAN WITH DANNY CANNIZZARO
JHAVE
JEFF T. JOHNSON
DEENA LARSEN WITH ROBERT LAVETT SMITH
GRACIE LEAVITT
ALVIN MWIJUKA
JOYELLE MCSWEENEY
NICK MONTFORT
JÖRG PIRINGER
JONATHAN SCHOENFELDER
ALAN SONDHEIM
CHRISTINA STRONG

###

Two new P.o.E.M.M.s by me in Know, a free poetry app produced by Obx Labs in Montreal

They’ve been busy over at Obx Labs in Montreal, and I’ve been slow to report it. Over the summer they updated their Know app (for iPhone/Pad). Know V 2.0 is based on Buzz Aldrin Doesn’t Know Any Better, an interactive touch screen poem by Jason E. Lewis about crazy talking with a street-person outside a pawn shop on a sunny San Francisco afternoon. Know V 2.0 expands on the original by creating a mini publishing platform, hosting texts about the difficulty of knowing, featuring a set of new poems by guest writers including David Jhave Johnston, Loss Pequeño Glazier, Jason Camlot, Jerome Fletcher, and two new poems from me J. R. Carpenter.

Up from the Deep || J. R. Carpenter
Up from the Deep || Know || J. R. Carpenter

Behind the scenes, this update of the Know app involved the creation of PoEMMaker, an interface built by Obx which enables poets to input their texts directly, adjust settings for the size, colour, movement, and speed behaviours of their texts, view the results on their phones, and make as many further adjustments necessary. Download Know for free.

twinned notions || J. R. Carpenter
twinned notions || Know || J. R. Carpenter

The Speak app (for iPhone/iPad) has also been updated. Speak v. 1 was an interactive poem about place, displacements, language and mistaken identity. Speak v. 2 featured commissioned texts on these themes from David Jhave Johnston, Jim Andrews, Aya Karpinska, and one from me called Muddy Mouth. Now, in Speak v. 3, users can enter their own text and interact with it in the Speak way, or they can feed the app with text from a Twitter stream. Download Speak for free

Both Know and Speak are part of Obx‘s Poetry for Excitable [Mobile] Media (P.o.E.M.M.) Cycle. For more information about this and other Obx projects, visit: http://www.poemm.net/ and http://www.obxlabs.net/