“What is the purpose of resisting corporate globalization if not to protect the obscure, the ineffable, the unmarketable, the unmanageable, the local, the poetic and the eccentric? So they need to be practiced, celebrated and studied too, right now.” Rebecca Solnit

I'm a UK-based writer, editor, educator and activist with a passionate commitment to arts and social justice. I publish with independent presses Arc, Lark BooksSalt, Shearsman, IB Tauris, and Wallflower. I am a member of queer feminist film curation collective Club des Femmes and feminist film activists Raising Films, a lecturer in film at LCC and Queen Mary University of London, and a film journalist for Sight & Sound and The F-Word, where I focus on independent, experimental, and feminist films and film culture. 

In my critical work, I explore the political potential of experimental literature and cinema, with an emphasis on feminist artists like Sally Potter, who is the subject of my first critical book The Cinema of Sally Potter: A Politics of Love. As well as teaching university courses on topics ranging from transgender cinema to Anne Carson, I've facilitated workshops for youth organisations like Leave Out Violence and taught creative writing at Anglia Ruskin UniversityKing's College, London, and Middlesex University. I have worked with non-profit organisation English PEN and was the Poet in Residence at the Archive of the Now.

For workshops, creative consultancies, editorial or writing work, contact me at: sophie [at] sophiemayer [dot] net

ouroboros review: four poems

ouroboros review: four poems

ouroboros review, edited by the lovely Jo Hemmant, launch their fourth issue today! You can read it online here or purchase a print-on-demand paper copy in their bookstore. I have four poems in the magazine, including one on the back cover, which is inspired by Sally Potter's The Man Who Cried.

Coming Up... Poetry Events, Broadcasts and Blogs

'Tis the season, apparently: in the next fortnight, I'm reading at two launches for excellent magazines: Artesian: The WATER Issue, Weds Nov 11, Horse Hospital, 7pm, and Horizon Review 3 (as part of Ride the Word XVIII), Weds Nov 18, Yumchaa Soho, 7pm. If you're in London, come along! Wherever you are in the world, you can listen online to Nikk Quentin Woolf's Arts Show on Xstream East (Tuesday Nov 10, 3-4 pm), and both live and in the PennSound archive to Leonard Schartz's Cross-Cultural Poetics show on KAOS-FM, date tba. Woohoo!

Also: Michelle McGrane, a wonderful poet, included two poems from Her Various Scalpels on her lovely peony moon blog!

Sally Potter @ the BFI

The BFI's first ever retrospective of a British woman director's work starts on 2nd December and runs throughout the month. Take a loved one (or first date?) to see the studio run of a beautiful new print of Orlando or let a post-Xmas screening of YES fill your heart with peace and goodwill to all. As co-curator, I'm inordinately proud of this fantastic season -- and also very proud to be introducing it in a "beginner's guide" on Friday Dec 4th, in collaboration with Club des Femmes, for Thriller and Potter's early shorts, some of which have not been seen since the 1970s! There's also events with Tilda Swinton and Julie Christie, so book early and I'll see you on the South Bank to reprise the dance from The London Story!

 

There She Goes: Feminist Filmmaking and Beyond -- out now!

There She Goes: Feminist Filmmaking and Beyond -- out now!

Join the TSG Facebook group for updates about filmmakers and book events, and discussions about feminist artmaking!

2009 has been pretty special and it's not over yet: hot off the fine presses of Wayne State University Press comes my third book of the year, There She Goes: Feminist Filmmaking and Beyond. In the spirit of feminist art, this book is a collective effort: specifically, an editorial collaboration with with my friend and colleague Corinn Columpar from the University of Toronto Cinema Studies department, and with contributions from an amazing range of writers, including filmmaker Michelle Citron on digital filmmaking and Kay Armatage on programming women's cinema, and interviews with filmmakers Kim Longinotto and Samira Makhmalbaf -- seen in our cover image, directing At Five in the Afternoon in Afghanistan.

Women Filmmakers: Two Blogs

A preview of all the female-helmed films at the 2009 London Film Festival for Sight & Sound and a review of lesbian shorts DVD Here Come the Girls (order from Peccadillo Pictures) for Chroma. Both blog posts include great stills of hot women!

Three from the new issue of Horizon Review

I've got two essays -- on Salt's Earthworks series and Ruth Padel's Darwin: A Life in Poems -- and a sexy sequence of three sci-fi prose poems in issue three of the magnificent Horizon Review, which ushers in October splendidly by almost capping the tally of four pieces in October's Sight and Sound (two reviews, and an interview with Agnès Varda split into two sections... S&S are a bit rubbish at putting their material online, so I can only link to the Birdwatchers review). Things really seem to be kicking off with the writing (although I've probably jinxed matters by stating the good news in public) (and hopefully unjinxed them by making the jinx explicit)! On the less good side, this means I have five deadlines to produce ten thousand words by the end of the month.

A Conversation with Sally Potter: Now Online

You can hear Sally Potter in discussion (with yours truly) at Cinéphilia West about her career, her new film RAGE, working with Jude Law and how she gets through doubt and despair on the Electric Sheep podcast. If you like what you hear, there are more gems of wisdom from Potter in The Cinema of Sally Potter: A Politics of Love. Cinéphilia West is a truly amazing bookshop-café with an atmospheric event space: to find out about upcoming events, and to become a member, head over to the Cinéphilia website.

Two Readings Next Week

... in two very different settings: Keats House and the Curzon Renoir (although Jane Campion's forthcoming Bright Star connects the two -- check out the film's incredible website). I'm all about the connections between poetry and film so it feels fantastic to be reading...

  • at a screening of Ben Crowe's Je Suis Ici -- and the world premiere of Crowe's latest film, Bound -- at the Curzon Renoir on Tuesday 6th October as part of the excellent PoetryFilm series, London's only dedicated film/poetry night.
  • and at the launch of Brittle Star 24 on Wednesday 7th October, in the hauntingly beautiful surrounds of Keats House, along with a group of excellent writers.

Coming up on November 11th, I'll be reading at the launch event for the second issue of Artesian, an ambitious visual and literary culture journal whose first issue included articles by Anne Michaels and Don Delillo. More details to follow...

All the RAGE!

RAGE premieres this week and (I'm not ashamed to say) I've bought a dress to attend my first-ever film premiere. Find out more about where you can join in with the live interactive screening and Q&A, and read more about the film in my interview with Sally Potter for Bird's Eye View. Read Sally's account of the "wild night" at BFISouthbank here and some of the myriad worldwide reactions to the film, its innovative release strategy and NY and London launches in the articles and blogs gathered here.

A Conversation with Sally Potter: 27 Sept 2009

Hear Britain's most independent director on her career and new film RAGE (premiering on Thursday 24 September in cinemas across the UK & Ireland with a live Q&A [watch online], available on limited edition DVD now, and direct to your mobile phone from Monday 21 September via Babelgum).

Sunday 27 September 2009

7pm :: limited space::come early

Cinéphilia West, 171 Westbourne Grove, London::map

info [at] cinephilia [dot] co [dot] uk

 

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