SPAM Zine and Press will use their TSLA grant to fund workshops, podcasts and editorial features in the lead up to a book-length publication and digital exhibition inspired by Edwin Morgan’s assertion that ‘Poetry is a brilliant vibrating interface between the human and the non-human’.
Taking our cue from Edwin Morgan’s assertion that ‘Poetry is a brilliant vibrating interface between the human and the non-human’, this project traces the liquid pixels, folds and veils of various kinds of interface: from language to the ever-present digital screens of our lives. Uniting several concerns of Morgan’s own writing – queerness, experiment, hybridity and technology – Brilliant Vibrating Interface offers a dynamic and multiplatform series of creative outputs and community events based online and in Glasgow. We will investigate, publish and spark conversation around queer literary experiments in the digital age; in turn, expanding the canon to highlight the work of younger, emergent writers. With emphasis on works which engage explicitly, in form and content, with the internet, we will host a series of podcasts, interviews and workshops, leading up to a book-length anthology publication and digital exhibition.
SPAM Press
Brilliant Vibrating Interface highlights the continual influence and relevance of Morgan’s work as a proto-internet poet (who wrote code, computational and concrete poems informed by machines) by placing his legacy in direct conversation with digitally native (‘post-internet’) writers and artists – from Morgan’s instamatics to the Instagram poetry of today. At the heart of this project, we share Morgan’s passion for poetry in dialogue with the visual, with technology, everyday life, sexuality and gender. Expect workshops on glitch poetry, interfaces, the queer poetics of trash, multimedia, collage and procedural forms. Our research and interview phase will explore the media, process and tools behind post-internet poetry as well as its cultural contexts, offering insights into how and why poets are engaging with various technologies in their work. Together we’ll dream more abundant, queer and playful digital worlds through poetry. Envision the virtual world of Second Life colliding with Morgan’s 1968 collection The Second Life: that’s our vibe!
Information about upcoming Brilliant Vibrating Interface events and outputs will be available here very soon!
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Kirsty Dunlop is a multimedia writer, editor, researcher and musician. She is working towards a DFA in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, exploring the possibilities of hybrid New Media writing and glitchful experiments through her concept of ‘Emergent Essaying’. She is a tutor in Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of Glasgow, regularly leads workshops and guest lectures on digital hybrid forms, and is a freelance Games Developer. She is Senior Editor at SPAM Press and recent publications include the collaborative pamphlet Soft Friction (Mermaid Motel, 2021) and multimedia research in ICIDS 2021 (Springer)
Alice Hill-Woods is an (art)writer, editor and researcher working across disciplines. She is working towards an MLitt in Art Writing at the Glasgow School of Art, and is the Poetry and Nonfiction Editor at SPAM Press. She is the author of HOTHOUSE (Saló Press, 2021), and recently published research on trauma ecologies in the Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies.
Loll Jung is a human animal residing in Glasgow, Scotland, with poetic and essayistic creative and critical work published with Dostoyevsky Wannabe, Nothing Personal, SPAM, Adjacent Pineapple, Gutter, and MAP. Their work examines processes of decline and regeneration through hybrid essaying and poetry, grappling with intersections of the queer body and its mythologies, ecologies, and memory.
Dr Maria Sledmere is a poet, critic and artist based in Glasgow, where she is Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde. She tutors at Beyond Form Creative Writing, is editor-in-chief of SPAM Press, a member of A+E Collective and recent writer-in-residence at The Grammarsow in West Cornwall. An exhibition with Katie O’Grady and Jack O’Flynn, The Palace of Humming Trees, was shown at French Street Studios in 2021. With Rhian Williams, she co-edited an anthology, the weird folds: everyday poems from the anthropocene (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2020). Her second collection, Visions & Feed, is forthcoming with HVTN Press.
Edwin Morgan Trust 