When Pressed » When Pressed Editors http://whenpressed.net things made by people Thu, 19 Aug 2010 07:15:53 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.3 en hourly 1 Movement in Language http://whenpressed.net/collections/editors/movement-in-language/ http://whenpressed.net/collections/editors/movement-in-language/#comments Sun, 09 Aug 2009 02:00:00 +0000 When Pressed Editors http://whenpressed.net/?p=87 If writing is the mere conversion of ideas and emotions into a scripted form, then translation eases those ideas and emotions from their signifying shells, and slips them into the shells of another tongue. But for some writing involves a struggle with language. Failure, noise, slippage and the unsaid are as prominent as expression and meaning. If we take Walter Benjamin seriously as we take on a task, and believe that translation can fleetingly regain language, or give us a glimpse of it, what does that mean? Not just for writing and poetics, but for our everyday speech, and for our formation of communities through shared signs in motion. There tends to be a gulf between translation theory and practice. Writing by practicing translators on the topic is often confined to entirely anecdotal forewords, as if the only interesting thing to say about the process was the heartbreaking choice between one word and another. But surely there is more (or less) to say. And perhaps it can only be said from a space between theory and practice, between original and copy, between languages. By what means can we criss-cross the gulf between translation theory and practice? How can translation and translation theory engage with what is covered over, left unsaid, obscured and erased, not just in translation, but in every act of writing and speech? Not only between languages but within them.

Keep checking in; new work will be added from time to time as it comes to light.

]]> http://whenpressed.net/collections/editors/movement-in-language/feed/ 0 The Twentieth Century Never Happened http://whenpressed.net/collections/editors/the-twentieth-century-never-happened-2/ http://whenpressed.net/collections/editors/the-twentieth-century-never-happened-2/#comments Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:00:00 +0000 When Pressed Editors http://whenpressed.net/?p=124 The first issue explores some of the non-traditional media, processes, and interventions that have been used to make poetry – code, sound, installation – along with those themes that have been explored throughout poetry’s many literary traditions. It is a special feature on (and takes its name from) the work of Sydney poet and vocal artist, Amanda Stewart, presenting a selection of her work from the last twenty years.

]]> http://whenpressed.net/collections/editors/the-twentieth-century-never-happened-2/feed/ 0 Introduction http://whenpressed.net/work/editors/the-twentieth-century-never-happened-introduction/ http://whenpressed.net/work/editors/the-twentieth-century-never-happened-introduction/#comments Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:30:32 +0000 When Pressed Editors http://whenpressed.net/work/an-introduction/ We are sitting in Pat’s backyard, tapping away on three laptops, Nick is fielding calls. Pat has just made some excellent gnocchi, and now empty bowls with stains of red sauce are on the table with the computers. We are splicing sound, cropping images, shaping code, writing; trying to work out how to show this work best. We have tossed back and forth words like this – ‘showing’. ‘arranging’, ‘curating’ ‘exhibiting’ – trying to find out what it is we are doing.

We began gathering work for this collection simply by asking people whose work we admired. Issues grow in this way.

After a tragically predictable six months of namelessness ended, Pat and Nick quickly knocked up the ‘puzzle piece’ When Pressed icon by taking out the shape formed from the space between the E and the S in PRESSED and turning it on its side. This shape seemed to work as a talisman for the approach this collection has since taken. We all wordlessly agreed to allow design and language to talk to each other, an approach that was only natural given our different backgrounds and interests.

This collection is both an exploration of the diverse practices being used by poets today, as well as a special feature on the work of Amanda Stewart. The selections chosen here look particularly at the correspondences between visual and aural inscription in her work. As anyone who has seen Amanda perform knows, her work pushes at the limits of what the voice can do, exploring voice as the fabric of speech, utterance and life-force.

Jason Nelson is one of the most adept artists at bringing language poetry and cultural geography, always playfully, into the digital context, and his collaboration here with Christine Hume continues to ply its wonderful messiness in an age of inviolable pixels. Dan Disney’s three poems function like meditative documentaries on three northern cities and the experience of travel, while Keri Glastonbury’s short sharp lines return to your mind like lines in an askew pop gem. Prague-based poet and artist Louis Armand has three pieces in this issue, including the exquisite long poem Circus Days. In Derek Motion’s essay, he looks openly at his own writing and the inventive processes that keep it awake and moving; while Tom Lee’s series of poems create hypnogogic spaces within the domestic. Michael Farrell’s poems continue an interest in exploring and remixing and thinking again about colonialist poetry. Patrick Jones work says: Stand on a city street at an odd angle, and this – of course, why not? – is poetry.

The first issue, like the first pancake, can look a little strange (but no less delicious, uncovered from the bottom of the stack). Be patient. Give it time. It’s a test, a stretch to see what can be done. The website will go on to be different things that we, always anterior, couldn’t have thought of.

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