Hedonistic poetry in Aberdeen

Tapsalteerie poet Calum Rodger will be hitting Aberdeen on Saturday 26th July for a whistlestop tour of the city's finest literary showcases.

Lined up first is an appearance on the Literature Show, SHMU FMs weekly broadcast on writing from Aberdeen and beyond. The show has become something of an institution nowadays after going strong for a number of years, with the list of previous guests reading very much like a who's who of the north-east's literary scene. The show starts at 6pm; you can listen live online or, if you miss it, listen again through the show's mixcloud page.

Tapsalteerie do have previous on the show - I appeared with Bill Thom last year to chat about Tapsalteerie's first publication, the Quait Chiel. You can listen to that again too of course (well worth an hour of your time!).

After the literature show it's onwards to Per-Verse, the new incarnation of what used to be called Demented Eloquence, Aberdeen's foremost spoken word night. If you haven't been to one of these nights before then it's highly recommended you do so, there's always a great atmosphere and Cellar 35 is a perfect wee venue for it. Calum will be reading from "Know yr Stuff: poems on hedonism" in support of Richard Tyrone Jones who'll be previewing his Edinburgh Fringe show.

For a wee taster of what to expect do head over to Calum's ever-excellent blog, All Real Culture is Free. To keep you going for now though, here's Calum delivering part two of his now legendary "Burns in Translation" series:

Know yr Stuff Review

"Rodger’s investigation into the hedonistic psyche is powerfully desperate and ironic. On my first reading it made me want to join in, get drunk and simply screw it all into oblivion! It is easy at surface level to relate to the frustration and humorous subjects within but on a second or third reading you are able to ponder the textual depths of the existential void portrayed."

Read the excellent full review by Jennifer Edgecombe in Sabotage Reviews.

(and get yr desperate investigations into the hedonistic psyche)

Know yr Stuff

from "Know yr Stuff: Poems on Hedonism" by Calum Rodger.
Out Saturday March 08.

Stanza poet's market

Tapsalteerie make our first ever appearance at the Stanza poetry festival this year, bringing our stall to the poet's market on Saturday 8th March (which is on between 12 and 4pm). That's the launch day for Calum Rodger's "Know yr Stuff: Poems on Hedonism" too, and we're tremendously excited to have the chance to show it off to the distinguished poetry readers of Stanza. Of course we'll also have "the Quait Chiel" by Bill Thom making its first poetry market appearance, a poem that has proven a great favourite with readers so far. We're currently concocting some special Tapsalteerie cupcakes to give away to the first stall visitors, and are working on a selection of other "enticing" freebies too. So if you're at the stanza festival please pop by the stall for a cake and a chat, we'd love to meet you and hae a news aboot poetry!

See you there!

Know yr Stuff: Poems on Hedonism

Excitement is mounting here at Tapsalteerie for the publication of a first collection by the young Scottish poet Calum Rodger. Called "Know yr Stuff: Poems on Hedonism", it's due out on March 8th and will make its first public appearance at the Stanza poet's market in St Andrews.

One thing we particularly love about Calum is his digital poetry, of which "the worst of my faults is a certain impatient gaiety of disposition" is a prime example. This poem will feature in the upcoming pamphlet, alongside poems written in the more traditional (organic?) manner.

"The worst of my faults..." was created by sending pre-existing text through a poetry generator called Gnoetry 0.2 (developed for Linux by Jon Trowbridge and Eric Elshtain). In this case Calum has mashed together Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ with various MDMA experiences as reported on erowid.org.

The basic pattern is that Calum fires the text into Gnoetry, which has a pretty strong grasp of the grammatical structures of the English language, and Gnoetry fires lines of poetry back at him. Calum then puts the text through an editorial process, finally emerging at a completed poem. While it's rare that the generator will produce a perfect stanza, it does often produce some quite exceptional lines. "And I know that this is only a bovine volume" in the above poem is a personal favourite.

Gnoetry 0.2 is free and available for you to play with by the way, as are other excellent programs such as JanusNode (which helped create another poem in "Know yr Stuff").

While the digital poems are excellent, Calum's original poetry is still superior in Tapsalteerie's humble opinion. We'll focus on that in our next brief preview...