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Sam Riviere has been producing a series of very limited edition pamphlets from his micro press, If a Leaf Falls Press<\/em>, since 2015. 34 pamphlets have been published so far (though more are always being added to the list<\/a>), with some first publications and work from poets you might not have heard of listed alongside pamphlets from the likes of Emily Berry, Chrissy Williams, and Rebecca Perry. The pamphlets share an investment in \u201cprocedural<\/em>,\u201d \u201cappropriative<\/em> and arbitrary<\/em> writing processes,\u201d and are produced relatively cheaply on stapled yellow card, each with different symbol on the front cover: Attlee\u2019s Roasting Baby<\/em> has a microwave symbol; Whalley\u2019s RETURNS<\/em>, a hand holding a money bag, and so on. Though the pamphlets are produced on very limited runs (I\u2019m conscious that only 19 other people have a copy of the Attlee pamphlet I\u2019m reviewing here), their production seems to err on the side of convenience and disposability, rather than any particular design commitments or desire to produce the kind of art-object pamphlets we might be used to seeing on such short runs. Riviere explains in an interview with Swimmers Club<\/a>: \u201cI moved to Edinburgh for a two year residency in the autumn of 2015, and discovered I had a staff discount at the University Printing Services.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure how I first heard about the pamphlets, but after missing the first two in the series (including Riviere\u2019s own Cont.<\/em> \u2013 his pamphlets bookend the 23 titles in the 2015-16 series) I managed to keep up with the next five, before losing track again for a little while. This review is the first of two, covering the eight pamphlets I currently have, grouped in the order in which they appeared. Since these pamphlets are in such a limited run, I\u2019m probably going to spend a bit longer than I might normally trying to give a summary of the pamphlet; hopefully this will also make the reviews a little easier to follow. Fama\u2019s pamphlet consists of one long list of names (and a few places\/events), beginning with \u201cMIRANDA LAMBERT,\u201d an American country music singer who I had to google, and ending with \u201cJEWEL,\u201d Jewel Kilcher, another American country singer who I had to google. Most of the people included are celebrities of the first order (\u201cKIM KARDASHIAN,\u201d \u201cCAITLYN JENNER,\u201d and \u201cKENDALL JENNER\u201d all appear on the first page) though \u201cPOPE FRANCIS,\u201d \u201cSILVIO BERLUSCONI,\u201d and \u201cNEIL YOUNG\u201d also make an appearance. Sometimes individuals are paired with their current partners (\u201cCARMELO AND LA LA ANTHONY,\u201d \u201cKRIS JENNER AND COREY GAMBLE\u201d) though sometimes the \u2018and\u2019 pairings are slightly different: \u201cJENNIFER LAWRENCE AND AMY SCHUMER\u201d are supposed to be writing a film together, while \u201cSCOTT DISICK AND KIMBERLEY STEWART\u201d had an affair while Disick was married to Kourtney Kardashian. There\u2019s no clear link between the names in the list, though sometimes a pattern or grouping by association or sphere seems to accidentally emerge: \u201cGEORGE AND BARBARA BUSH | ANTHONY WEINER | HILARY CLINTON | RAY KELLY,\u201d then we\u2019re distracted by \u201cTOM HARDY | JOAN LUNDEN | CAITLYN JENNER.\u201d <\/p>\n When I first read PAGE SIX<\/em> I spent a while trying to work out the mad ways in which the names in the list might be related (had Berlusconi dated Bethany Frankel? was Bryan Cranston working on a single with Avicii? did Nicki Minaj play in the US Open?). After trying a few combinations of names I googled \u201cAretha Franklin\u201d + \u201cGabrielle Anwar,\u201d and got a link to an article<\/a> about the 2017 Kennedy Center Honors gala, which Franklin and Anwar both attended. At that point I decided that the names\/items weren\u2019t necessarily linked by actual\/IRL goings-on (though maybe they hung out, who knows) \u2013 but by their proximity on a particular web page. After this revelation, this unpunctuated, capitalised list suddenly seemed like a kind of index or keywords list, which led me to try and see if the names were linked through Wikipedia pages (i.e. the US open is mentioned somewhere on Nicki Minaj\u2019s Wikipedia page) or if there was some kind of Wikipedia game<\/a> going on…but this didn\u2019t work either. I was pretty stumped on this question of the pamphlet\u2019s procedure, until I googled \u201cMaria Menounos and Catt Sadler,\u201d who turned out to be two E!<\/em> news presenters. The top search was an article about the pair on a gossip and news site called Page Six<\/em><\/a> run by News Corp. Your source for celebrity news, gossip, entertainment, pop culture, photos, video and more.<\/em> Just to give you a sense of the site, the current front page<\/a> articles include: \u201cPantone creator Larry Herbert to divorce wife of 30 years,\u201d \u201cPippa Middleton\u2019s world-famous backside to walk the aisle again,\u201d and \u201cKevin Hart really bombed his SNL audition.\u201d The likely procedure then, is that Fama\u2019s names were linked by their appearance together on the same page (not necessarily in the same article), but the side bars get refreshed so it\u2019s impossible to tell. This could have been Fama\u2019s procedure though, endlessly clicking between articles to produce the 183 items in the list.<\/p>\n Though I generally enjoy this detective work, my desperate attempt to figure out the mechanism that produced the names (and the assumption that they were linked in some sort of perfect or complete way) demonstrates what kind of reader I am (and the limits of this approach). Fama\u2019s list works then as kind of Rorschach test: not only do the names I know (or don\u2019t) say something about the news sites I frequent and my tolerance\/love of celebrity gossip, but my desire to connect the names in the list and my investment in joining the dots reveals something about my approach to reading poetry. My googling of different combinations of names looking for a connection between them ended up recreating the circuitous, paranoid logic of these gossip sites. The revenue of news\/gossip sites like the MailOnline<\/em> is built on the site\u2019s ability to construct a certain kind of reader, one who hangs on the smallest detail: the photograph in the back of the restaurant, a missing (or concealed!) ring, a nipple under a dress, and so on. Like these sites, Fama\u2019s pamphlet is built on the strange, the tiny (and the non-existent) links between individuals, connections that entire celebrity empires are built on. Isemonger\u2019s pamphlet features 3 sets of 3 stanzas with variations. Each stanza contains a set of placeholders (to give you an idea, my favourite stanza contains: Tom Waits; dumb; teenage; girlfriend; shopping; mall; car; park; surrounds; house; bruise; drive) and these placeholders are modified and recast throughout the poems. Isemonger leads us through a series of increasingly bizarre set-ups, formed out of new variations in and between the placeholders. To give you an idea, here are the first and last variations of stanza 1:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There\u2019s an growing sense throughout the pamphlet that the physical landscape (buildings, car parks, houses etc) is encroaching on or interfering with the people in the poems; a kind of mixing up of bodies and objects: \u201cthe river mouth\u201d seems to \u201cshift\u201d and speak; a car park is so big it \u201csurrounds our house | like a bruise,\u201d and in the art gallery (the setting of the third stanza) the speaker announces, \u201cI still have | your face as my wallpaper.\u201d These confusions only intensify. By the second variation something seems to have happened to Grandma, \u201cshe\u2019s lost how it shifts,\u201d the girlfriend in the second stanza expands until she \u201csurrounds park.\u201d \u201cTom Waits\u2019 dumb teenage girlfriend\u201d on the other hand, has transformed into \u201cTom Waits\u2019 dumb car, a house, a teenage mall.\u201d Something terrible is happening by the third cycle, \u201cthe horrible river shifts the grandmother | bag,\u201d and the sense (and maybe even sassiness) of the second stanza breaks down into a kind of incoherence, though the speaker has achieved some sort of mastery or control over the variations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n These final stanzas create new variations in the placeholders: the grandmother is finally separated from her kitchen sink (she previously always appeared \u201cby<\/em> the kitchen sink\u201d), which transforms into the horrible command for us to \u201csink it<\/em>,\u201d and while \u201cTom waits, I park.\u201d This Waits\/waits shift suggests that Hip Shifts<\/em> is not just interested in generating or accumulating new content. Instead, Isemonger\u2019s manipulations of the stanzas create uncomfortable, lasting scenarios. The speaker is a \u201cdumb teenage girlfriend,\u201d never that far away from \u201cour bruise\u201d or the \u201cbruise house,\u201d and the \u201cstroking and swiping\u201d in the art gallery moves between a cultural critique and an account of abuse.<\/p>\n Unlike my experience of reading PAGE SIX<\/em>, the success of Isemonger\u2019s pamphlet was clear to me when I realised that I had stopped being interested in any procedure or mechanism behind the poems, and was more invested in the scenes Isemonger constructs and directs our attention around. If you think you\u2019re sophisticated enough to need more than a Tom Waits pun then the irony of the flat, unsatisfying last line will be lost on you (think here of every time you\u2019ve been told that \u2018not getting it\u2019 is the point): \u201cI discovered, we are the still life.\u201d Since Attlee\u2019s pamphlet was printed in an addition of just 20, and unlike the other pamphlets, it consists of 6 pages of prose, I\u2019m going to give a quick summary of the plot. We begin with a narrator travelling on a train through the countryside, thinking about a hat they\u2019ve just bought in London. Innocuous enough.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The narrator (a young girl, we later realise) throws the bundle back up in the overhead rack a few times over. Miraculously, the baby remains unharmed. This is an indication of the kind of universe Roasting Baby<\/em> in. After throwing it around some more, she decides \u201cto study the odd package and found that it wasn\u2019t a bundle at all but a small compact and moving baby.\u201d She ends up taking the baby home, and on the way some strangers on the bus explain that the baby \u201cneeds some cheese.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The story moves with all the pace (and none of the explanation) of an infocom game<\/a>.<\/p>\n We know something terrible is going to happen (bearing the title in mind) when we end up in the kitchen, looking among \u201cbags of flour\u201d for baby clothes. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is a key moment, since here the salt seller behaves as the miraculously unharmed baby does; as in a video game, only certain, agreed upon actions are possible. When the narrator returns to the baby after looking for clothes, we\u2019re told (with all the clarification of a ‘Game over’ screen): \u201cI found the baby on the table where it had turned dark blue with cold.\u201d At this point I was beginning to feel uneasy. In a panic, the narrator decides to fashion a dress for the baby out of empty flour bag packets, fastening the packets with string, and with no further explanation, she puts the baby in the oven.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n With the usual speed and lack of elaboration, \u201cat this point,\u201d the narrator\u2019s father suddenly comes home and unbelievably, \u201cfinding me in the kitchen covered in flour asked what was for lunch.\u201d Dutifully, the narrator explains \u201cthat there would be nothing for him to eat as we could not open the oven door lest the baby should get cold.\u201d Oh god, we think, acutely aware that there\u2019s only one page left. Here we go. I had already conjured up some of the worst dead baby jokes from my school days…some distant memories of Something Awful…and then finally, the only thing that makes sense happens.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This aha<\/em> on the last page, and it\u2019s implied judgement (jesus, you thought she\u2019d actually put a baby in the oven didn\u2019t you<\/em>) is the real skill of Attlee\u2019s pamphlet. Though the narrative seems arbitrary enough (women buys hat, finds baby) and the narrator repeatedly tries to explain that the baby doesn\u2019t belong to her and isn\u2019t her responsibility, the events unfold with a careful predetermination. Attlee\u2019s strange universe is as disconcerting and inviting as Isemonger\u2019s. Whalley\u2019s pamphlet is a kind of poetry data dump. It lists the 806 (I think) recipients of Arts Council England (ACE) awards for poetry between April 2003 and December 2015, on an almost weekly basis.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The pamphlet collates the National Portfolio and Grants for Arts funding figures\/data for \u2018poetry,\u2019 and is based on Whalley\u2019s earlier work on ACE poetry funding<\/a>. In an age of useless data graphics and visuals, it is striking (and surprisingly enjoyable) to see this information presented in its \u2018raw\u2019 form. Whalley\u2019s unpaginated, overwhelming list resists the kind of reading experience you might have with the Isemonger or Attlee pamphlets, and instead it\u2019s probably fairer to say that you \u2018read over\u2019 this material like Fama\u2019s list. I\u2019ve found that I occasionally go back to it every now and then to see if I can find a particular press or individual, or see what the highest award was that year. Despite reading it in this way, I became weirdly \u2018invested\u2019 in some of the narratives these awards inadvertently tell: the data tracks the rise and decline of organisations, publications, festivals, projects etc. Some of the awards can be traced back to first publications while some mark one off reading events or writers\u2019 groups. Riviere himself is in there (as are other poets in the IALFP<\/em> series).<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\nBen Fama, PAGE SIX<\/em>, 16pp.<\/h5>\n
\n<\/p>\nHolly Isemonger, Hip Shifts<\/em>, 12pp.<\/h5>\n
Grandmother by the kitchen sink. She\u2019s lost
\nthe tea bag and I make horrible sponge cake.
\nLater, down by the river mouth at low tide.
\nThe water and how it shifts.
\n…
\nTide water down at tea, the lost kitchen.
\nShe\u2019s by the mouth and later, the cake
\nand the horrible river shifts the grandmother
\nbag, sink it. How I make it low.<\/div>\nWe live to drive a car in a bruise house.
\nTom waits, I park. Our surrounds
\nlike a dumb teenage girlfriend
\nI am a shopping mall.<\/div>\n
\n<\/p>\nEdwina Attlee, Roasting Baby<\/em>, 8pp.<\/h5>\n
At this point a bundle fell suddenly into my lap. It was heavy and frightened me and seemed to have rolled from the luggage rack above my head. I tossed the bundle back up on the rack and tried to pretend that it was nothing to do with me, it was grubby and smelt badly of soured milk.<\/div>\n\u2018Did you say cheese?\u2019 I asked her.
\n\u2018Bees.\u2019 She corrected me.<\/div>\nI next found myself at home through still with the baby. The grubby shawl had disappeared. I thought about what to do, I had no food to give it and no clothes for it to wear.<\/div>\nIn my anger I threw one of the salt sellers hard against the floor but it was made of thick and dusty glass and did not shatter. I picked it up and put it back on the shelf.<\/div>\nI carefully placed the baby on a shelf in the oven, shut the door and made a rip-roaring fire in the hearth. I sat back on a chair in an attitude of relief. I was exhausted.<\/div>\n\u2018What baby?\u2019
\n\u2018The baby in the oven.\u2019
\nHis wrath was terrible to behold. He pushed me aside rather violently and opened the oven door. We both peered in to see but inside the oven, in the dark of the shelf, there was nothing, only a pool of melted wax and next to that, a very small, very burnt steamed rice pudding.<\/div>\n
\n<\/p>\nCharles Whalley, RETURNS<\/em>, 28pp.<\/h5>\n
On 22nd April 2003, Arrowhead Press received \u00a39,040.
\nOn 22nd April 2003, Other Poetry received \u00a35,900.
\nOn 6th May 2003, Redbeck Press received \u00a32,500.
\nOn 13th May 2003, Torbay Poetry Festival received \u00a34,800.
\nOn 27th May 2003, Colpitts Poetry Durham received \u00a34,950.
\nOn 27th May 2003, Fiona Friend received \u00a3425.<\/div>\n