Duende

© JStadnicki, 2020

It looks like a lorry’s parked outside, just by a flower pot. I am arguing with online friends about class differences, ideologies, lack of revolutionary zeal, young-black versus white-old. Reversing over the pot, the lorry crashes into my neighbour’s house. I pause the argument to look for a quote from On Disobedience in the pile of books due to go to charity shops. Police and fire brigade should be on their way. There might be questions needing answers about circumstance, and whether anybody tried changing the course of events. My neighbour and I, maybe the driver, would have. The writer of this account would have too, by swiftly changing the lorry’s position from here, to somewhere at the far back of the landscape. Yet some would argue that for centuries barbarism solved all our problems by force and violence, proving to be such a success.

© Maria Stadnicka 2020

CRASH #2 CARDIFF

Saturday, 15 February 2020 at 19:30 / @ The Flute and Tankard, 4 Windsor Place, CF10 3BX.

This is the second night of CRASH – Cardiff’s brand new poetry night with a passion for the weird, funny, imaginative, dark, experimental and dreamy.

A fantastic lineup of poets awaits – Luke Kennard, Jess Mookherjee, Thomas Stewart, Peter Daniels, David Turner and Maria Stadnicka.

There will also be open mic slots.

The event is entirely FREE and there will be open mic slots.

Come, drink, bring friends, enjoy!

Seeds of Melancholia

2020 catches me off guard. I finish a glass of red wine and start my list of New Year resolutions brushing my teeth. My dentist suggested it, to prevent staining. Spitting paste foam in the sink I notice my second watch shows one past midnight. British time. On the other wrist, my first watch shows one past two. The time in the country I grew up. Youngsters already pissed pints on street corners, on the way home after celebratory fireworks. The end of a decade and all I’m thinking about is how lonely must have been for Ian Seed to share a hotel room with a woman he’d never met. And all due to a booking error.

© Maria Stadnicka 2020

! Recommended reading: Seed, I. (2018) New York Hotel, Bristol: Shearsman Books.  [TSL Book of the Year 2018]

 

‘Somnia’ launched in Stroud

 

‘Somnia’ was launched last night at the Museum in the Park, the Pavilion Garden Room. Beautiful photography from Nikoletta Monyok and it has been a joy to  share the evening with the gifted writers Caroline Shaw, David Clarke, Adam Horovitz and Philip Rush. Thank you Uta Baldauf for a memorable performance, and to Caroline Rush, Philip Rush and Fred Chance for making the launch possible. Thank you for the generosity of our host, The Museum in the Park, to painter Mark Mawer for his artwork, Alec Newman and The Knives Forks and Spoons Press. It felt so special because there were so many people who attended, despite the bleak and windy weather on a Thursday evening. ‘Somnia’ THANKS YOU!📖

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Photography: © Nikoletta Monyok 2019

Cover art: © Mark Mawer 2019

Publisher: Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, UK

Editor: Alec Newman

Further details, on the ‘reviews’ and ‘books’ pages.

‘Somnia’ is available here and here.

Gallery

Edinburgh 2019

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© Maria Stadnicka, November 2019.

Somnia launch in Stroud / 5th December 8pm / Museum in the Park

SOMNIA Knives, Forks, Spoons Press / Sep. 2019

About SOMNIA:

Writer Ian Seed (author of New York Hotel, a TSL Book of the Year) wrote: ‘one of the best books of poetry I’ve read this year is Maria Stadnicka’s extraordinarily vivid collection, Somnia.’

‘Stadnicka’s poetics is one of craftmanship, wherein she carefully walks the tightrope of surreal poetic metaphor and the gritty realism of investigative journalism and broadcasting.’ (Briony Hughes, writer and critic, Stride Magazine, October 2019)

‘Somnia is consistently alluring and enigmatic in its poetic voice. What compels it’s Stadnicka’s calm creativity in conveying the horrors and/or abstractions of these – her poetic voice completely comfortable in its suggestiveness: inventive, provoking, highly visual.’ (Mike Ferguson, writer and critic, International Times, September 2019)

Somnia will be launched on 5th December 2019, 8pm. Free entry.

Publisher: Knives, Forks and Spoons Press.

Editor: Alec Newman

Cover artwork: Mark Mawer

 

November, 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…where once was a meadow…

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Photographs: © Maria Stadnicka, Stonehouse, 2019

The SHIFT Project / 12th – 16th Oct / St. Laurence Church

 

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The SHIFT Project started with an art installation created by the young Tasmanian artist Robin Watkins-Davies. It developed in a set of events taking place 12th-16th Oct 2019 at St. Laurence Church, Stroud, which bring together contemporary art, music, dance, exhibitions, workshops, presentations, poetry. It supports young people’s mental health, bringing awareness of the artistic potential of our movement. Further details about SHIFT and the oncoming events here.

Maria Stadnicka, October 2019

Falling / 12th Oct / Berlin Zeitgeist / at Atélier

Berliner Zeitgeist Programme / Oct.2019

Thirty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall which marked the end of the Cold War.

Performers: Maria Stadnicka, Brenda Waite, Mike Adcock and Uta Baldauf.

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Saturday 12th October at 7.30pm. Atelier, Stroud, Glos., UK.

As part of the Berlin Zeitgeist program, artist Uta Baldauf is putting on a performance event with writer and poet Maria Stadnicka, performer Brenda Waite and musician Mike Adcock to respond to the theme of falling in they own creative practice.

Come along for something unmissable. For tickets and further information click here.

Shearsman issue 121 / 122

 

Shearsman Magazine, Issue 121 / 122 edited by Tony Frazer.

 

It includes poetry by: Clark Allison, Miranda Lynn Barnes, Andrew Duncan, Adam Flint, Jeri Onitskansky, Paul Rossiter, John Seed, Andrew Taylor, Rushika Wick, Annemarie Austin, Alison Brackenbury, Chris Emery, Mark Goodwin, Alasdair Paterson, Alexandra Sashe, Robert Sheppard, James Turner, Benjamin Balint, Rachel Clyne, Gerry Fellows, Lucy Hamilton, John Philips, Kate Schmitt, Maria Stadnicka, Rimas Uzgiris, Tamar Yoseloff. Plus translations of Greta Ambrazaite by Rimas Uzgiris and Toon Tellegen by Judith Wilkinson.