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Rebecca Tamás
REBECCA TAMÁS is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at York St John University. Her pamphlet Savage was published by Clinic, and was a LRB Bookshop pamphlet of the year, and a Poetry School book of the year. Rebecca’s first full-length poetry collection, WITCH, was published by Penned in the Margins in March 2019. She is editor, together with Sarah Shin, of Spells: 21st Century Occult Poetry, published by Ignota Books. Her collection Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman was published by Makina Books in October 2020.  

Articles Available Online


Interview with Ariana Reines

Interview

July 2019

Rebecca Tamás

Interview

July 2019

I first became aware of Ariana Reines’s work through her early poetry collection The Cow (2006), which went on to win the prestigious Alberta Prize. I...

Essay

Issue No. 24

The Songs of Hecate: Poetry and the Language of the Occult

Rebecca Tamás

Essay

Issue No. 24

  I have gone out, a possessed witch, haunting the black air, braver at night; dreaming evil, I have...

Artist James Richards appropriates audio-visual material gathered from a range of sources, which he then edits into elaborate, fragmented collages   But whereas his art-historical forefathers favoured a conceptually-driven, emotionally-distanced approach – in the case of materialist film artists like Hollis Frampton and those of the London Filmmakers’ Co-op – or followed an overtly political agenda – like the ‘Scratch’ filmmakers of the 1980s – Richards’ video works are more personal endeavours, seemingly steered by feeling rather than theoretical argument or point-proving Intentionally insular, his works disrupt narrative conventions, offering little that can be straightforwardly understood The disparity of his sources betrays an aggressively curious mind – obscure TV clips, scenes from famous films, advertising segments, internet memes and CGI animations are accumulated and redeployed with great precision The content seesaws relentlessly from the oblique to the clichéd, the mystifying to the mundane Meaning is generated through abundance, by way of allusion, ellipsis and unity of tone; the lack of legibility counterbalanced by a strong sense of mood   His recent work at London’s Chisenhale Gallery, Not Blacking Out, Just Turning the Lights Off, sees him add his own material to this characteristic medley of found-footage In these passages, Richards’ camerawork is deliberately amateur, the camera handled with a lustful belligerence Whether using cheap in-camera effects or shoving the lens hysterically close to the subject of his regard, the result is a fevered fanaticism, Richards’ desire to capture becoming an assault on the image, the camera akin to a crude prosthetic extension of his body Sound is used in a similar way, with songs, poems, and spoken segments seeming to verbalise on the artist’s behalf The volume is shockingly loud in parts, climaxing with the poem ‘Slowly: a plainsong from an older woman to a younger woman’ by American writer and activist Judy Grahn A curdled lament conducted by the same women at different ages, unable to understand one another across the generations, it is a deeply moving rendition   A two-channel projection shown on opposing screens and separated by rows of backless benches, Not Blacking Out… shows an astute sensitivity to the sculptural concerns of

Contributor

July 2015

Rebecca Tamás

Contributor

July 2015

REBECCA TAMÁS is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at York St John University. Her pamphlet Savage was published by Clinic, and...

Interrogations

poetry

Issue No. 14

Rebecca Tamás

poetry

Issue No. 14

INTERROGATION (1)     Are you a witch?   Are you   Have you had relations with the devil?   Have you   Have...

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Prize Entry

April 2017

Two Adventures

Ari Braverman

Prize Entry

April 2017

I. A Cosmopolitan Avenue   …where a girl pretends the whole city is dead. She is too old for...

fiction

September 2012

Sarah Palin Night

Agustín Fernández Mallo

TR. Michael McDevitt

fiction

September 2012

It was a Sunday afternoon, siesta time: my phone buzzed in my pocket. ‘Is this Agustín Fernández Mallo?’ ‘Yes,...

fiction

July 2013

univers, univers

Régis Jauffret

TR. Jeffrey Zuckerman

fiction

July 2013

I. You remember your childhood. Your tow-headed, reddish-tinged mother, who yelled after you all day like a Paraguayan peasant...

 

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