URL SONATA

This episode of live poetry was recorded at the Glasgow launch of Cocoa and Nothing, which took place at The Poetry Club on 21st February, 2023. What's on the menu? Poetry readings in order of appearance: Sara Mostafa Leo Bussi Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir Colin Herd & Maria Sledmere Donate to SPAM Buy the book Buy the audiobook Intro and production by Maria Sledmere (with big thanks to Andrew Kenower) Theme music by Max Parnell

What happens when you rhyme apocalypses with irises? With Jac Common in conversation with Ian Macartney and Maria Sledmere, we take a ride on the moody tributaries of anthropocene lyric to encounter Samantha Walton’s Bad Moon: a 2020 SPAMphlet which explores multiple ends of the world through its critical poethics.  Note:  This podcast is haunted by issues with audio due to the boat wifi being intercepted by some bad omens. Nae fear, it’s still listenable! And we did our best to navigate the channelz :’) Jac Common is a writer and recovering scientist from Nottingham, UK. Their poetic and critical work has been published and is forthcoming boh online and in print. Their debut pamphlet, Wetbulb, is coming out with Osmosis in 2023/24. They were also shortlisted for the 2022 Magma Pamphlet competition, which was nice. They are currently driving a boat between cities at walking pace in the wrong direction. https://www.bathspa.ac.uk/our-people/samantha-walton/ Buy Bad Moon for £5 here: https://www.spamzine.co.uk/product-page/bad-moon-samantha-walton Editing and introduction: Ian Macartney Further reading: Un Chien Andalou, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí (1929). Galina Rymbu, Life in Space (New York: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020, trans. Joan Brooks). William Blake, Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793) public domain. William Shakespeare, The Tempest, ii.I Aiskhylos, Agamemnon in An Oresteia (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, trans. Anne Carson) Derek Jarman, Modern Nature (London: Vintage, 1992). Daisy Hildyard, The Second Body (London: Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017). Fred Carter (2022) ‘`Crude Oil Shaping Forms of Writing`: Galina Rymbu’s Life in Space, Ecoes, 4, 56-65. Esther Leslie, Fog, Froth and Foam: Insubstantial Matters in Substantive Atmospheres in Electric Brine (Berlin: Archive Books, 2021, ed. Jennifer Teets). Sophie Lewis (2017) ‘Amniotechnics’, The New Enquiry, link Max Liboiron, Pollution is Colonialism (New York, London: Duke University Press, 2021). Stacey Alaimo, Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Lauren Berlant (2007) ‘Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)’, Critical Inquiry, 33(4), 754–780. Futher noise: Funeralopolis - Electric Wizard Copy of A - Nine Inch Nails Sulfur - Slipknot THE PERPETUAL FLAME OF CENTRALIA - Lingua Ignota Pet - The Perfect Circle Welcome To My Island - Caroline Polachek Save The Dream, Kill Your Friends - Pupil Slicer Autoimmune - Pharmakon Land Disasters - Blanck Mass Enjoy The Silence - Depeche Mode Official Bad Moon playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2mgmUCgMuf2VEknRfFHfpf?si=c933c4c871f04961

In this episode, we time travel back to 27th May 2023 and find ourselves in Berlin for the German launch of Cocoa and Nothing. There are four readings plus bonus raffle outro. About the readers: Max Parnell is a writer and sound artist residing in the urban marshlands outside the ring. Recent works include the cli-fi novel, Type I, and rice the water, a bimonthly radio show on weather patterns, shifting landcapes and sonic ecologies. Sylee Gore is a poet and artist. Her zuihitsu essay, “On Photopoetry,” was recently published in Bat City Review. Colin Herd is the author of too ok (blazeVOX, 2011), Glovebox (Knives, Forks and Spoons, 2013), Oberwilding – with SJ Fowler, (ACF, 2015), Swamp Kiss (Red Ceilings Press, 2018), Click and Collect (Boiler House Press, 2017), and You Name It (Dostoevsky Wannabe, 2019). He has also collaborated on the artist books blots with Susan Wilson (2013) and Press Back Up Help (2013) with Cat Outram. His poem ‘rug design’ was highly commended in the Forward Prizes 2014. Maria Sledmere is an artist and poet living in Glasgow. She is the author of Cocoa and Nothing with Colin Herd (SPAM Press, 2023), Visions & Feed (HVTN Press, 2022), String Feeling (Erotoplasty Editions, 2022), The Luna Erratum (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2021) and other things. A collection of fiction and oneiric memoir, An Aura of Plasma Around the Sun, was published by Hem Press in June 2023. She is editor-in-chief of SPAM Press and a member of A+E Collective. ~ Produced by Max Parnell With thanks to Hopscotch! ❤️ follow them on Instagram @hopscotchreadingroom You can order Cocoa and Nothing at spamzine.co.uk/shop - it comes as an ebook, audiobook or print book.

Readings of gooey-gorgeous sweet sugar-high poems from Colin Herd and Maria Sledmere's collaborative book, Cocoa and Nothing 🍫 - Whole-not by Ian Macartney after Maria Sledmere and Colin Herd’s “Cocoa and Nothing” hullo. have you ever [colin] heard of Marathon bars? they used to be Marathon and now they are Snickers because it’s sort of like you laugh at them a lot, but in a sneaky way. i just read on the greatest wikipedia page of all time that Snickers made 3 billion dollars in 2012, the year of apocalypse, which is crazy, something that could kill me also containing a number that makes even millionaires sugar-sick. i am allergic to all nuts, but peanuts especially, which is why snickers would kill me, that and their 3 billion dollars which can probably be spent on, like, arms dealing or whatever. that or milk. Marathon deceased as a name in 1990 which is funny because Maria Sledmere probably loves that decade and she is here. and then Colin Herd circulates in marathons, 18 times around the Meadows for an Edinburgh variant for example, and mother of chocolately god, he is also here. Kirsty Dunlop is a Snickers unto herself in all her galaxies of taste and jubilant crunch and engaging questions. she hosts. Snickers does nothing but ask questions like, how the hell did i just make 3 billion dollars?! anyway, Snickers don’t come up once in this episode of URL Sonata, the SPAM Press podcast, because the German chocolate Ritter Sport has to magic the moment, a chocolate i (Ian Macartney, hi) discovered only from the book Cocoa and Nothing, which just got published by SPAM, because i am allergic to nuts in a way that dismisses so many delicious experiences when i see shiny wrappers and o, hey, look, Maria Sledmere and Colin Herd confectioned that book and they are here. enjoy - Colin Herd and Maria Sledmere's Cocoa and Nothing - Intro/Outro: Ian Macartney Production: Ian Macartney Music: adios nervosa 

Ian Macartney speaks to Parel Joy, whose pamphlet “The Queen of Cups and other poems” was part of SPAM’s Season 6. But Parel’s practice also expands to editing the ‘Dyke Love’ zine, launched to a packed crowd in Glasgow’s Bonjour, as well as work with the Amsterdam Library’s queer archive, literary translation, printmaking, and more. Over a pot of Moroccan tea on a rainy day in Haarlem, just outside of Amsterdam, Ian and Parel discuss lockdown temporality, translation, “eco-queer grindsets”, Aberdeen hauntology, cottagecore, nostalgia, Scottish community online and off, archive, utopia, tarot, and more. This episode was kindly supported by the Edwin Morgan Trust's Second Life Award. -- The Queen of Cups and other poems Dyke Love -- Intro/Outro: Ian Macartney Music: Max Parnell Production: Max Parnell and Ian Macartney

As we plough through the total grey of 2023's January, let this episode of URL Sonata take you back to a November just gone, recorded/cultivated posey via the University of Glasgow. From cult heroes doing their thing to table-toppers also doing their thing to doctoring to all else glittering and versed, not only does this episode have it all, it then has heaps extra... - Peter Manson Vik Shirley's Corpses  Fred Carter Mendoza - Intro/Outro by Maria Sledmere Edited by Ian Macartney Music by adios nervosa

To melt 2022's terminal internal thaw, we're casting ourselves back to early summer for lively poetry of the utmost hot quality from the launch for our Season 6 pamphlets and SPAM004/5 @ The Alchemy Experiment!  This episode features work from Ian Macartney, Nasim Luczaj, River Ellen MacAskil, Dan Power, Ciara Maguire, Ali Graham and Parel Joy. Expect sonnets, Charli XCX lyrics, "sex in revolving doors", deer in tupperware, and more.   Warm yourself with these words during this cold snap. Oops - another icicle melts as we speak!!! - Season 6 Pamphlets  SPAM004  SPAM005 - Intro/Outro: Maria Sledmere Production: Ian Macartney Music: adios nervosa If you want to support the work we do at SPAM, consider making a donation by buying us a coffee at Kofi. Thanks for listening!

This is a recording from our ‘Summer Bummer’ evening of po-Ems-de-terre at iconic Glasgow pub, The Doublet, back in October. A deluge delayed this event into the autumn, but summer is a socialist state of mind, whatever the weather, so that’s okay. Expect in these poems weird dreams , homes oceans away, the River Clyde’s posthuman flow, queer decadent Black eulogy, “spinning twinks” and Caroline Polachek as a warehouse worker. Glitches also line the texture of this audio file — fonts change size, poems are screenshotted wrong, Face IDs won’t open in time, etc. These moments are like poems as well. Featuring Hannah McDonald, Srishti Jain, Hannah George, Isaac Harris, Francis Jones and Ian Macartney.  Two debut readers are captured here, so maybe even moments like this, at the tired end of a tiring year, can let new things jolt up to grow? Francis Jones' sacrificial fabric  Isaac Harris' The Ghetty Gospels  ~ Intro/Outro: Ian Macartney Production: Ian Macartney Music: adios nervosa If you want to support the work we do at SPAM, consider making a donation by buying us a coffee at Kofi. Thanks for listening!

Welcome back to the luscious envelope of another episode of URL Sonata! We are joined by writer and editor Aischa Daughtery to discuss the arts of queer epistolary in her new anthology, This is How We Love: a collection of love letters, notes, poetry and artwork shared between lesbians across the globe. Aischa talks to SPAM editors and belles-lettrestresses Kirsty and Maria about the real post in post-internet, queer communities and lineages, pandemic intimacies, handwriting, the art of notes, social media, long distance love, editing and producing her wonderful collection - plus loads more. About the author: Aischa Daughtery is a Scottish writer and editor based in Glasgow. A recent graduate of the University of Glasgow’s Creative Writing MLitt, Aischa’s poetic work has been widely published and her editorial work has received press in publications including The Herald. In 2021, she won the gold Creative Future Writer’s Award for poetry, and she is currently a mentee on the Poetry School's Next Up 2 development scheme. Her first book, This Is How We Love, an anthology of love letters, notes, poetry and artwork shared between lesbians across the globe, came out this year. thisishowwelove.co.uk This episode was kindly supported by the Edwin Morgan Trust's Second Life Award. Please visit spamzine.co.uk to find ways of supporting us, including buying a book, some fresh merch or even donating. Intro: Kirsty Dunlop & Maria Sledmere Music & Production: Max Parnell

As winter snaps the sky to dark by 4pm, churning all water to its special kind of glass, here’s an artefact from the summer just past, hazy already — a wee July 15th-shaped gem beset in Leith’s wonderful Argonaut Books. This is a recording of WITH GHOSTS, a collaborative evening of readings between SPAM and Distribution Coordinator Ian Macartney's small press sincere corkscrew, wherein both outfits launched their respective sets of pamphlets together in a sweltering Edinburgh. An astonishing cornucopia of writers joined in the celebration: Maria Sledmere, fred spoliar, Kathrine Sowerby, Miriam Schülter, Tom Byam Shaw, nicky melville, Jay Gao and Savannah Brown. From dual-channel solar-odes to ersatz epistolaries, cabbage soup to speculative flash fiction, gates to toxic lakes to “the hottest girl in the world”, this sold-out affair really was something to be cherished. Listen out for the ambient sizzle of poured alcohol, arguments and laughter from Leith Walk’s walkers, and the organic wax/wane of literary voices bandied through the mix. SPAM Press Season 6  sincere corkscrew Batch 0 ianmacartney.scot Maria Sledmere and fred spoliar's Sans Soleil  fred spoliar's With the Boys Kathrine Sowerby's Tutu Miriam Schülter Tom Byam Shaw  ncky melville's The Imperative Commands Jay Gao's Imperium Savnnah Brown's Closer Baby Closer ~ Intro/Outro: Ian Macartney Production: Ian Macartney  Music: adios nervosa If you want to support the work we do at SPAM, consider making a donation by buying us a coffee at Kofi. Thanks for listening!

A selection of readings from poems published in our latest peachiest magazine, SPAM005! As in previous editions of our magazine podcast, we begin with a general vibe check as Mau phones up their fellow editors to get a handle on the seasons, tips on using the magazine for divination and SPAM tattoo ideas. This issue of the magazine was edited by Mau Baiocco Artwork: Ian Macartney Music: Ian Macartney & Max Parnell Production: Max Parnell

Warm your sweet lil cockles with this episode, recorded at the height of the summer heatwave and during an unspecified time called ‘lunch’. With chief editrix Maria Sledmere and guest Alexandra Campbell in the studio, we discuss admin, telly and more importantly fred spoliar’s 2021 SPAM book With the Boys. From core values to vomiting sunkings, widgets to broccoli, this is a bountiful episode of close reading, real talk and ~strident analysis. We cover qualitative cheerleading, Alex’s adventures in da club, the new trend for HAULING ICE, the future poetics of herogasms, entropic testosterone, millennial whimsy, piss time, the true goth origins of Maria’s poetry career, burning down the oikos house, why the 2000s are trash fire, the value form of lyric, pisces apocalypse, work, bad men, potato heads and so much more. Listen on to find out whether the chilli peppers ever had a climate anthem, and what hell kind of ecopoetics is this!! Let’s glitch (with) the boys!!  Dr Alexandra Campbell is a Lecturer in Contemporary Literature and Environmental Cultures, based in the School of Critical Studies. Before arriving at Glasgow she held previous positions at Edinburgh Napier University, the University of Edinburgh, and Bath Spa University. She received her PhD from the University of Glasgow. You can find out more about her work here. Order a copy of With the Boys here. Intro: Loll Jung Production: Max Parnell If you want to support the work we do at SPAM, consider making a donation either by buying us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/spampress or through our webstore https://spamzine.co.uk/shop. Thanks for listening!

What you’re about to hear is an experimental, let’s call it ‘pilot episode’ of a nascent project that we’re engaging with at SPAM called Brilliant Vibrating Interface: Queering the Post-Internet through Poetry and Practice. Taking its cue from Edwin Morgan’s assertion that ‘Poetry is a brilliant vibrating interface between the human and the non-human’, we want to investigate, publish and spark public conversation around queer literary experiments in the digital age; in turn, expanding the canon to highlight the work of emergent writers. Today’s guest is Ian Macartney, who you can find at ianmacartney.scot. A writer, musician, blogger, bookseller, general renaissance dude and founding editor of the post-post-internet press sincere corkscrew, Ian is one of the most prolific, experimental and hard-working young writers in Scotland today. He's also now a member of the SPAM team, stepping in as Distribution Coordinator and Assistant Editor. In July 2022 SPAM editrix Maria Sledmere had the pleasure of joining him in his hometown of Linlithgow and delving into all things poetry and publishing.From the controversies of pub names to the Aberdeen poetry scene, artist collaborations to geese, coastal geographies, objects, internet histories and analogue utopias, this is a free-ranging and candid conversation that took place al fresco, by a bucolic loch, hence the natural ambience. Apologies for those moments where the aeolian force truly overtook our merely mortal voices. Sometimes being in the irl is worth it. This episode was kindly supported by the Edwin Morgan Trust's Second Life Award. Production: Max Parnell Introduction: Maria Sledmere Music: Max Parnell

Riding the weekend's heatwave, we're bringing you a luminous episode full of sunshine, kazoos, muskrats at feasts and awkward cherubs. This recording was taken on the 23rd June, 2022, at Good Press Glasgow, in celebration of Maria Sledmere and fred spoliar's joint pamphlet, Sans Soleil, published on the summer solstice by Face Press and Mermaid Motel.  You'll hear readings from: Peter Manson Daisy Lafarge Maria Sledmere & fred spoliar To buy the pamphlet or a poster, head over to Mermaid Motel. ~ Artwork type is by Leah Maldano and used with permission. Intro by Maria Sledmere Produced by Max Parnell

URL Sonata #18: Readings from SPAM004 🍑 Welcome to the big peach that is SPAM004! It is so spring to unite some of your favourite poets in a field of glorious virtual plenty. Are we pirate radio or the pistils of a radio flower giving you this lyrical pollen for free? Our readers in order of appearance: Ciara Maguire Peter Manson Poppy Cockburn Nicky Melville Jac Common Sabeen Chaudhry Ollie Southall Dom Hale Joey Frances Kaisa Saarinen Alex Glynne Anne Lesley Selcer Lucy Rose Cunningham Karólína Rós Ólafsdóttir Louis Fabrice Tshimanga River Ellen MacAskill Lou Collins ~ Intro by Mau Baiocco Outro & artwork by Maria Sledmere Sound and production by Max Parnell Full issue available at spamzine.co.uk/spam004 Donate to SPAM at https://www.spamzine.co.uk/product-page/donate-to-spam

In this episode, we delve deep into questions of poetry and artificial intelligence, covering everything from Gerald Manley Hopkins to GPT-3, smart tractors to lyric voice, algorithmic bias to Holly Herndon’s Spawn project. With readings from the authors, reference to prosody, craft and publication, this is a really rich episode.  We ask the big questions: what is meaning, what does the internet look like, wtf actually is AI – so you don’t have to! Dan Power lives in Dundee and is the editor of the visual poetry outfit Trickhouse Press. In 2016 Spam published his first pamphlet ‘PREDICTIVE TEXT POEMS’, and he’s since released ‘more like this’ with If A Leaf Falls, ‘SELECTED DREAMS’ with Steel Incisors and ‘late morning’ with Broken Sleep. Dan is one half of the post-post-vaporwave duo Soulacoaster Tycoon, whose music is now available on Bandcamp. Charlotte Geater lives in Walthamstow in London and is currently working for Hackney Libraries and the Poetry Society. They won the White Review Poets’ Prize in 2018 and the University of East Anglia New Forms Award in 2021. Their poetry has been published in The White Review, SPAMzine, Hotel, and Strange Horizons. They have published pamphlets with if a leaf falls press, Bad Betty Press, Legitimate Snack and a series of free zines of GPT-2 generated neural net poetry are available at tambourine.itch.io. InferKit demo: https://inferkit.com. Charlotte Geater: http://mysteriousobject.co.uk Dan Power: @therealdanpower Introduction: Maria Sledmere Production: Max Parnell Music: Soulacoaster Tycoon

In today's conversation, we drift through different entries from Josh's book, covering topics such as cycling in traffic as a form of surfing, the gamification of work, different modalities of emotional labour, Amazon's failed drone delivery service and why bike couriers remain so efficient, couriers as infrastructure, examining their strategies and tactics for controlling their environments, affective economies of driver rage and how though their swerves, surfs and hacks bike couriers throughout the globe are forced to defy either the laws of traffic or the laws of physics. Josh Widera, who is joining us today from Los Angeles, is a bicycle messenger, writer, and scholar from Bamberg, Germany. He is currently a PhD student in Communication at the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, where he researches bicycle messengers as an embodied part of urban information networks and communication technology. In 2021, his first book, Sign and Return, was published with Verlag für Handbücher. Sound Production: Max Parnell To purchase Josh’s book, please follow this link to Verlag for Handbücher.  If you want to support the work we do at SPAM, please consider donating the price of a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/spampress, or buying directly from our store at spamzine.co.uk. Thanks for listening!

'in love in the bin in love' - where we want to be! (again!) In this episode, we revisit November 2021 for an absolutely huge reading at the Peckham Pelican in London.  In this second and final part of the episode, you'll hear readings from: Ed Luker Jennifer Soong Both of whom are published in one of our online magazines or as part of our recent Season 5 and concrete pamphlet bundles. Editing and production by Max Parnell. Intro by Maria Sledmere. If you want to support the work we do at SPAM, please consider donating the price of a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/spampress, or buying directly from our store at spamzine.co.uk. Thanks for listening!

'in love in the bin in love' - where we want to be! In this episode, we revisit November 2021 for an absolutely huge reading at the Peckham Pelican in London. Editors Maria Sledmere and Mau Baiocco do an introductory breakdown of the event: from the iconic babes in the audience to the astral chart of the night and how amazing it felt to see everyone afk in 'the dawn of the big poetry readings'. In this first part of the episode, you'll hear readings from: Nick Ines Ward Rosa-Francis Jones Alex George Felix Bazalgette Jane Hartshorn Tom Betteridge Emma Gomis All of whom are published in one of our online magazines or as part of our recent Season 5 and concrete pamphlet bundles. Editing and production by Max Parnell. If you want to support the work we do at SPAM, please consider donating the price of a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/spampress, or buying directly from our store at spamzine.co.uk. Thanks for listening!

This bumper, two part conversation with poet and Woolf scholar extraordinaire Jane Goldman is really a deep dive. It was Friday the 13th and a holy trinity of Geminis -- Maria Sledmere, Jane and fellow editor Mau Baiocco -- the vibes were strong.  This conversation celebrates the recent publication of Jane’s debut poetry collection, SEKXPHRASTIKS, released by Dostoyevsky Wannabe. If you head to dostoyevskywannabe.com (that’s Dostoyevsky with a y!) you’ll be able to order it from pretty much anywhere in the world! It’s a rich and scintillating, foamy wonder of poems compiled over several years in response to art, desire, friendship and love, with brilliant cover art from the late artist Caroline McNairn. CAConrad says of the book: ‘Jane Goldman raps from inside our heads, do you get it, do you hear this, it is time to understand these things, these raw-lipped dadas without you-At the same time, her book pulls itself around us, and we get a new feeling about poetry, a subject we thought we knew well. I LOVE THIS BOOK!!! WOW RIGHT FROM THE START AND IT JUST GOES GOES GOES!!!’ Jane Goldman, poet and academic, lives in Edinburgh and is Reader in English Literature [Avant-Garde Poetics and Creative Writing] at the University of Glasgow. She is a member of the 12 collective of women poets Her poems have appeared in many magazines and anthologies; her pamphlet Border Thoughts (Sufficient Place / Leamington Books, 2014) is ‘a little theatrical box of spectacle and light […] the living underworld of Brecht’s Threepenny Opera translated into raucous girlish post-war wayward ways’ (Lisa Jeschke, Hix Eros 6). SEKXPHRASTIKS (Dostoevsky Wannabe, 2021) is her first full length poetry collection. She is also a General Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf and publishes widely on Woolf, modernism and the avant-garde. This is part two of a two-part interview. Production and editing: Max Parnell Introduction: Mau Baiocco Episode graphic is adapted from the SEKXPHRASTIKS book cover, which features Caroline McNairn's artwork.

This bumper, two part conversation with poet and Woolf scholar extraordinaire Jane Goldman is really a deep dive. It was Friday the 13th and a holy trinity of Geminis -- Maria Sledmere, Jane and fellow editor Mau Baiocco -- the vibes were strong. We talk about everything from productivity and plate spinning to being a girl of slender means in the eighties, poetry and life modelling, the struggle of being the child of the only bohemians in the village. We talk about translation, the choice between learning greek and having a social life, the politics of Latin and Jane’s iconic translation of Sappho. You’ll also hear a wee reading from Mau, as a treat. Because you deserve it! This conversation celebrates the recent publication of Jane’s debut poetry collection, SEKXPHRASTIKS, released by Dostoyevsky Wannabe. If you head to dostoyevskywannabe.com (that’s Dostoyevsky with a y!) you’ll be able to order it from pretty much anywhere in the world! It’s a rich and scintillating, foamy wonder of poems compiled over several years in response to art, desire, friendship and love, with brilliant cover art from the late artist Caroline McNairn. CAConrad says of the book: ‘Jane Goldman raps from inside our heads, do you get it, do you hear this, it is time to understand these things, these raw-lipped dadas without you-At the same time, her book pulls itself around us, and we get a new feeling about poetry, a subject we thought we knew well. I LOVE THIS BOOK!!! WOW RIGHT FROM THE START AND IT JUST GOES GOES GOES!!!’ Jane Goldman, poet and academic, lives in Edinburgh and is Reader in English Literature [Avant-Garde Poetics and Creative Writing] at the University of Glasgow. She is a member of the 12 collective of women poets Her poems have appeared in many magazines and anthologies; her pamphlet Border Thoughts (Sufficient Place / Leamington Books, 2014) is ‘a little theatrical box of spectacle and light […] the living underworld of Brecht’s Threepenny Opera translated into raucous girlish post-war wayward ways’ (Lisa Jeschke, Hix Eros 6). SEKXPHRASTIKS (Dostoevsky Wannabe, 2021) is her first full length poetry collection. She is also a General Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf and publishes widely on Woolf, modernism and the avant-garde. This is part one of a two-part interview. Production and editing: Max Parnell Episode graphic is adapted from the SEKXPHRASTIKS book cover, which features Caroline McNairn's artwork.

A little treat from the IRL realm… Today’s episode is a recording of a reading that took place at Mount Florida Books, Glasgow on the 10th September 2021. It features readings from (in order): Maria Sledmere Kirsty Dunlop Andrew Spragg Gloria Dawson Peter Manson If you’re ever in the neighbourhood, please do go and explore MF Books (they have lots of SPAM stock now as well!). If you want to support the writers, please look for their work online :’) and as for SPAM, you can support us by buying from our store, subscribing to our mailing list or donating to our Ko-Fi account. Thanks for listening!

Readings from our third issue of the magazine, SPAM003. Listen on to hear what vibe and flavour our editors detect from these poems, what kind of substance SPAM is when it grows and how curating a magazine is like pickling onions. Introduction: Mau Baiocco and Alice Hill-Woods Production and artwork: Max Parnell Music: Ben Deans.  All readers: Rhiannon Auriol Alli Warren Honor Grigson Jane Hartshorn Go Sing Brandon Brown Nicks Walker Jeremy Hawkins Mai Ivfjäll Max Henninger Tawnya Selene Renelle Keir Batchelor Michael Black Azad Ashim Sharma Rae Phillips Smith Julia Rose Lewis Charlotte Heather Read the magazine at spamzine.co.uk/spam003 Support SPAM at https://ko-fi.com/spampress 

'Apocalyptics. what a fucking rush' - so goes lyric in fred spoliar's new book (100pp!!!) from SPAM Press, With the Boys. There’s no escaping adjacency to the boys as an institution (so invulnerable! so fragile!) but are the boys themselves our enemies? Can they be lovers, even comrades? In this beautiful and playful book fred spoliar unravels worlds of gender and work to tease a poetry of pain and joy from the smouldering present.  Find out more by picking up the book yourself through the SPAM store.  In this episode, we present to you the recording from our Zoom launch of the book on the 12th August. It features readings from Rhiannon Auriol, Brandon Brown, Ali Graham, Verity Spott and fred spoliar.  Ali Graham lives and works in Norwich. Their poems have been published by Cambridge Literary Review, Datableed, The Tangerine, and HVTN, and their essays have been published by or are forthcoming from Stride, SPAM, and Futch Press Journal. They can be found on Instagram as aligrhm and on Twitter as A__Graham. Rhiannon Auriol is a writer interested in the creative-critical, post-internet hybridity & the experimental interdisciplinary. Her work is influenced and inspired by, among other things: esoterica; the devotional unlyric; internet kitsch; female mystics; mythology; the hyperconfessional; the psychedelic medieval; royal core;  Žižek’s ‘masochistic theatre of courtly love’; the operatic; mental health; digital fashion & queer theory. Editor of Daughterhood Zine & postgrad student on the MA creative & life writing @ Goldsmiths UoL :~) Brandon Brown's most recent books are Work (Atelos) and The Four Seasons (Wonder). He is a co-editor at Krupskaya Books, and edits the occasional zine Panda's Friend. He lives in the Bay Area of California. Verity Spott is a poet from Brighton. Their most recent publications are ‘Coronelles Set 1’ (Veer Books) and ‘Hopelessness’ (The 87 Press). fred spoliar was born in London in 1992. Magazine publications include DATABLEED, Erotoplasty, Tentacular, Pigs zine, SPAM zine, Adjacent Pineapple and amberflora. With the Boys is their first full-length book. Introduction: Alice Hill-Woods Production: Max Parnell Thanks for listening pals! 

Sarah Hayden's Teacher Voice Treatment is a set of 3 lectures, in two voices. What follows is an experiment in undermining the presumed point of powerpoint, and a faux-pedagogical, rampantly parenthetical pondering of what it means to “attend” (to) a lecture. Channelling the teacher voices of artists Tony Cokes, Laure Prouvost, Jayson Musson/Hennessy Youngman, David Blandy, Grace Weir, Hito Steyerl, Carolyn Lazard, John Baldessari, Nancy Holt (and Pythagorus), TVT tracks a course through voice-driven artworks (voiceworks) that stage scenes of instruction. This sound piece is an accompaniment to Lecture 3 (w/ slides), which you can read on the SPAM Plaza here. An earlier iteration of Teacher Voice Treatment was written and delivered in February 2020 for the Sound/Text seminar series at Harvard, chaired by Sophie Seita and Alex Rehding. Hearty thanks to Sophie, Alex and the seminar participants. Their generous responses prompted me to think harder about access, attention, reading-while-listening and what a powerpointed presentation presumes of its receivers. This sound, text and alt-text presentation of a revised, expanded, quasi-translated TVT for SPAM is indebted to our conversation. It is indebted, too, to conversations real and remote with Nisha Ramayya about voice in teaching and unteacherly talking. To explore more of Sarah Hayden's work, you can go to: www.voicesinthegallery.com.

Sarah Hayden's Teacher Voice Treatment is a set of 3 lectures, in two voices. What follows is an experiment in undermining the presumed point of powerpoint, and a faux-pedagogical, rampantly parenthetical pondering of what it means to “attend” (to) a lecture. Channelling the teacher voices of artists Tony Cokes, Laure Prouvost, Jayson Musson/Hennessy Youngman, David Blandy, Grace Weir, Hito Steyerl, Carolyn Lazard, John Baldessari, Nancy Holt (and Pythagorus), TVT tracks a course through voice-driven artworks (voiceworks) that stage scenes of instruction. This sound piece is an accompaniment to Lecture 1 (w/ slides), which you can read on the SPAM Plaza here. An earlier iteration of Teacher Voice Treatment was written and delivered in February 2020 for the Sound/Text seminar series at Harvard, chaired by Sophie Seita and Alex Rehding. Hearty thanks to Sophie, Alex and the seminar participants. Their generous responses prompted me to think harder about access, attention, reading-while-listening and what a powerpointed presentation presumes of its receivers. This sound, text and alt-text presentation of a revised, expanded, quasi-translated TVT for SPAM is indebted to our conversation. It is indebted, too, to conversations real and remote with Nisha Ramayya about voice in teaching and unteacherly talking. To explore more of Sarah Hayden's work, you can go to: www.voicesinthegallery.com.

Sarah Hayden's Teacher Voice Treatment is a set of 3 lectures, in two voices. What follows is an experiment in undermining the presumed point of powerpoint, and a faux-pedagogical, rampantly parenthetical pondering of what it means to “attend” (to) a lecture. Channelling the teacher voices of artists Tony Cokes, Laure Prouvost, Jayson Musson/Hennessy Youngman, David Blandy, Grace Weir, Hito Steyerl, Carolyn Lazard, John Baldessari, Nancy Holt (and Pythagorus), TVT tracks a course through voice-driven artworks (voiceworks) that stage scenes of instruction. This sound piece is an accompaniment to Lecture 1 (w/ slides), which you can read on the SPAM Plaza here. An earlier iteration of Teacher Voice Treatment was written and delivered in February 2020 for the Sound/Text seminar series at Harvard, chaired by Sophie Seita and Alex Rehding. Hearty thanks to Sophie, Alex and the seminar participants. Their generous responses prompted me to think harder about access, attention, reading-while-listening and what a powerpointed presentation presumes of its receivers. This sound, text and alt-text presentation of a revised, expanded, quasi-translated TVT for SPAM is indebted to our conversation. It is indebted, too, to conversations real and remote with Nisha Ramayya about voice in teaching and unteacherly talking. To explore more of Sarah Hayden's work, you can go to: www.voicesinthegallery.com.

Sarah Hayden's Teacher Voice Treatment is a set of 3 lectures, in two voices. What follows is an experiment in undermining the presumed point of powerpoint, and a faux-pedagogical, rampantly parenthetical pondering of what it means to “attend” (to) a lecture. Channelling the teacher voices of artists Tony Cokes, Laure Prouvost, Jayson Musson/Hennessy Youngman, David Blandy, Grace Weir, Hito Steyerl, Carolyn Lazard, John Baldessari, Nancy Holt (and Pythagorus), TVT tracks a course through voice-driven artworks (voiceworks) that stage scenes of instruction.  This sound piece is an accompaniment to Lecture 1, which you can read on SPAM Plaza here. An earlier iteration of Teacher Voice Treatment was written and delivered in February 2020 for the Sound/Text seminar series at Harvard, chaired by Sophie Seita and Alex Rehding. Hearty thanks to Sophie, Alex and the seminar participants. Their generous responses prompted me to think harder about access, attention, reading-while-listening and what a powerpointed presentation presumes of its receivers. This sound, text and alt-text presentation of a revised, expanded, quasi-translated TVT for SPAM is indebted to our conversation. It is indebted, too, to conversations real and remote with Nisha Ramayya about voice in teaching and unteacherly talking. To explore more of Sarah Hayden's work, you can go to: www.voicesinthegallery.com.

On today's episode, Maria and Max welcomed Grafton Tanner, a writer and musician from Georgia, on to the podcast. Grafton Tanner is the author of The Circle of the Snake: Nostalgia and Utopia in the Age of Big Tech and Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts. His work focuses on nostalgia, Big Tech, education, and neoliberalism, and his writing has appeared in such venues as The Nation, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and We Are The Mutants. He also hosts Delusioneering, an audio series about the myths of capitalism, and he writes and performs music with his band Superpuppet. Grafton is currently writing a book on nostalgia, titled The Hours Have Lost Their Clock: The Politics of Nostalgia. Grafton's second book, and one that we focus on closely in this episode, is The Circle of the Snake: Nostalgia and Utopia in the Age of Big Tech, published by Zero books last year. In this work, Grafton explores how nostalgia today can partly be understood as a consequence of the attention economy. Covering as diverse areas as cultural canonisation, virtual reality, Black Mirror and worker resistance to digital corporations, the book examines how Big Tech's algorithms are so effective at instilling nostalgia within us and allowing us to slip into such feedback loops. In doing so, this highlights many of the issues such weaponization and marketisation of nostalgia can lead to. Audio Production: Max Parnell Introduction: Max Parnell  Music featured: Prayer - Supperpuppet - https://superpuppet.bandcamp.com/ VCR Menu - Soulacoaster Tycoon - https://soulacoastertycoon.bandcamp.com/ 

In this episode of lunch club, Maria and Kirsty were joined in the ZOOM studio by Aaron Kent, poet and publisher of the brilliant Broken Sleep Books. We discussed Calum Rodger's PORTS, which came out with SPAM in 2019, in which classic twentieth century poems are reimagined as videogame texts. The episode also includes a reading from Calum.  Listen on to hear our thoughts on the generosity and pedagogical potential of Calum’s work. We ask what does it mean to score points in a poem? , and unravel the pamphlets connection to a kind of  maze poetics and Choose Your Own Adventure. We discuss the nostalgia of early video games and their connection with folklore, our gaming memories of accessing ports and the ongoingness of  play and desire in the pamphlet, with an omniprescent feeling of unlocking treats in the language. Also, stick around to hear some wonderful new writing from Aaron, which we felt very lucky to hear. Aaron Kent is a working class poet and publisher from Cornwall, though he currently lives in Wales with his wife, Emma and their two young children. He runs the Michael Marks Publishing Award winning poetry press Broken Sleep Books and has recently finished his debut novel, Council. He had several poetry pamphlets published, and his debut collection,  Angels the Size of Houses, is out in July with Shearsman. He has had work published by Blackbox Manifold, Butchers Dog, 3:AM, BAX (2020), Wild Court, Prototype, The Scores, and Prelude among others. Introduction: Kirsty Dunlop Editing, production and original theme: Max Parnell Physical copies of PORTS are back in stock on spamzine.co.uk/shop for £4!

Readings from our sophomore issue of the magazine, SPAM002. Introduction: Kirsty Dunlop and Max Parnell Curated by Kirsty Dunlop Produced by Max Parnell All readers, in order of appearance: Meredith Grace Thompson Fred Carter Natalie Cortez-Klossner Cassandra Troyan Alex Grafen Astrid Alben Ezra Mars Ian McCartney Sam Weselowski Caitlyn Main Naomi Morris Raian Oliveira Abelomai Luncheon reading works by Emer McGinnity William Gee Rachel Cleverly Ollie Tong Alex MacDonald gentian rhosa meikleham Tom Betteridge Imogen Free etaïn zwer Alex Noble Read the magazine at spamzine.co.uk/spam002

In this strange and special episode, recorded on the 17th June 2020 and recently unearthed from our audio archive, we invited the artist Livvy Bryant to talk about a ‘poem’ from issue #4 -- Astral Projections and Talismanic Persuasions. This poem is in fact an untitled essay by Matthew Nosal, which performs a close reading of Ed Sheeran’s chart hit, ‘Shape of You’.  Listen on to hear more about situationist sloganeering, imperative modes in disco, the poetics of WhatsApp critique, embodied art criticism, how MSN taught millennials to type fast, the struggles of music journalism, why aquarians are often successful artists and the ironies and sincerities of ‘a brilliant poetic choice’. What is the  link between John Constable and the ginger pop star, Suffolk’s ‘primary cultural export’, that problematically cut his teeth in the grime open nights of the late noughties? Livvy Bryant is an artist and writer from London and Suffolk. She currently writes for the magCulture journal, reviewing magazines, journals and occasionally the odd book. In her visual art practise she is a self-described post-internet artist, creating biodegradable 3D prints using a combination of traditional and novel techniques, including (but not limited) to iPhone photography and videography, watercolour paintings and calligraphy.  Introduction: Maria Sledmere Editing, production and original theme: Max Parnell Digital copies of Astral Projections and Talismanic Persuasions are available from spamzine.co.uk/shop.

A collaboration between Scott Morrison and Maria Sledmere, in response to Lana Del Rey's poetry collection/album, Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass. You can read the full accompanying essay and poem at spamzine.co.uk/plaza. Composition and production: Scott Morrison Artwork: Douglas Pattison Words: Maria Sledmere

Toasting the end of grim January, join Kyle Lovell and Maria Sledmere for a joyously belated double launch of their pamphlets Each Sharper Complication (Legitimate Snack) and neutral milky halo (Guillemot Press). In this episode, you’ll hear readings from: Kirsty Dunlop fred spoliar Mauricio Baiocco Nell Osborne Maria Sledmere Kyle Lovell ~ Kyle Lovell is based in Birmingham and is the editor of Fathomsun Press. They were named a Foyle Young Poet in 2014, and their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Magma, Blackbox Manifold, Pamenar Press, woe eroa, and other publications. Their debut pamphlet, 'Each Sharper Complication', is published by legitimate snack/Broken Sleep Books. Maria Sledmere is editor-in-chief at SPAM Press, a member of A+E Collective and very occasional music journalist. Recent publications include infra•structure – with Katy Lewis Hood (Broken Sleep), Chlorophyllia (OrangeApple Press) and neutral milky halo (Guillemot Press). With Rhian Williams, she co-edited the anthology the weird folds: everyday poems from the anthropocene, forthcoming from Dostoyevsky Wannabe. She's currently finishing a DFA in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. fred spoliar is an education worker in london. recent poems can be found in -algia, amberflora, Pigs Zine, Tentacular and Erotoplasty. their first pamphlet will be available in 2021. follow @debt_bubblebath on twitter. Kirsty Dunlop lives in Glasgow and writes poems, short stories, electronic literature and collaborative work. She is a DFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow and is the poetry and nonfiction editor at SPAM Press. Most recent work is a broadside collaboration with nicky melville, THE FACT THAT, out with GONG FARM. Mau Baiocco is a poet and occasional essayist and translator, ordinarily living in Leeds but now exiled to southwest London. Nell Osborne is based in Manchester. Recent work has appeared in places such as Manchester Review of Books and Bath Magg. She co-runs No Matter, an experimental reading and commission series based in Manchester, and co-edits the zine Academics Against Networking. ~ Introduction: Maria Sledmere Production and original theme: Max Parnell Please consider donating, if you feel able, to Poets Hardship Fund UK over at http://poetshardshipfunduk.com. Each Sharper Complication is available here: https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/legitimate-snack & neutral milky halo here: https://www.guillemotpress.co.uk/poetry/maria-sledmere If you liked this episode, share and subscribe! Stay well, SPAM HQ xoxo

We're delighted to bring you the recordings from our glitterbawl launch party, in celebration of Lizzie McC's debut pamphlet. Alas this was another Zoom affair, when really it should've been a sweaty Broadcast basement stomp, but nevertheless we were blessed by brilliant readings and the warmest audience! The lineup: Asta Kinch Chris Timmins Al Anderson Lizzie McC Asta Kinch is a Danish poet living in Glasgow. Her passions include fat liberation, skin care, collages, and photos of raccoons. This summer she graduated from the University of Glasgow with an MA in English Literature and Theology & Religious Studies. She is now studying for an MLitt in Creative Writing. chris timmins is a queer poet & artist from glasgow. his work deals with queerness, bodies, glitter, the importance of the cowboy emoji and the relationship between poetry and visual art. he runs his own small press, plantbot publishing, which publishes ‘unicorn zine’, a small zine for young lgbtq+ creatives in scotland. you can find him on instagram @plantbot/@plantbotart, and on twitter @_plantbot. ✨🍊🤠 Al Anderson is a poet and artist from Birmingham. His chapbook ’Tenderloin’ will be published by Blush in 2021. Recent poems can be found in Blush lit, SPAM ( four quid! < at spamzine.co.uk/shop.

In this lucky #11 episode of Lunch Club, editors Kirsty Dunlop and Maria Sledmere join poet Sophie Collins to discuss Helen Charman's 'Daddy Poem' (SPAM Press 2019), alongside a reading from Helen. Sophie Collins grew up in Bergen, North Holland, and now lives in Glasgow. She is the author of Who Is Mary Sue? (Faber, 2018) and small white monkeys (Book Works, 2017), and the editor of Currently & Emotion (Test Centre, 2016), an anthology of contemporary poetry translations; a sequel, Intimacy, is forthcoming. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing (Creative Non-Fiction) at the University of Glasgow. She is also the translator, from the Dutch, of Lieke Marsman’s The Following Scan Will Last Five Minutes (Pavilion, 2019). She is currently translating Marsman’s novel, The Opposite of a Person (Daunt Books, 2022), as well as working on new poetry and prose. Listen on to hear our thoughts on clouds and poetic metaphor, our motivation to write pathetic poems, and reflections on Legacy Russels’s recently released Glitch Feminism. We discuss how Daddy Poem functions as a writerly text, engages with Veronica Forrest-Thompson’s notion of ‘bad naturalisation’, and can be read through the lens of Sianne Ngai’s ‘the gimmick’. We also touch upon intention, reception and the ambiguity of utterance in the poem, the work's sticky emotions and engagement with citation and collage, a form that is often denigrated. Also stick around to hear some exclusive new work from Sophie! Content notice: this episode includes discussion of sexual violence and rape culture. ~ Intro: Kirsty Dunlop Editing, production and original theme: Max Parnell ~ Copies of Daddy Poem are still available from https://www.spamzine.co.uk/shop for £4.

In our happy return to Lunch Club, Denise and Maria are in the Zoom studio for a tenth episode with special guest Kyle Lovell, discussing Dom Hale's Time Zone from 2018. Kyle Lovell is a writer based in Birmingham, and they are the editor of Fathomsun Press. Their debut pamphlet, 'Each Sharper Complication', is published by legitimate snack. It's a collection of poems about debt, ghosts, and the lyric reflux. In this episode, we explore everything from anime to fully automated luxury communism: the Trumpocene, the caress of tragic hamsters, poetry and advertising (that old chestnut!), the poet as a lyre for hire, finding poetry’s grooves, the economics of language, fraud, poetic confetti, the twitter poetics of aphorism, poetry that is ‘as zany as it gets’, poetry as hack, sugar rush, seeding and speedrunning, and how Dom’s prosody is all over Denise’s cupboards. Derrida’s hedgehog rolls headfirst into the Sonic the Hedgehog, and you get to witness Kyle elegently sidestepping the question of lyric, as all good poets must. ~ Introduction: Maria Sledmere Editing, production and original theme: Max Parnell ~ Time Zone is out of print, however digital downloads are available at spamzine.co.uk/shop. Proceeds are split between SPAM, the author and Black Lives Matter. If you like this episode, please share it with your friends. : )

>>　ＳＰＡＭ００１　ＨＡＳ　ＬＡＮＤＥＤ　< In this first iteration of our online magazine, enter the expansive poem-capsule with readings and works from: Ed Luker fred spoliar Hannah Macdonald Rory Cook Craig Santos Perez Hannah Levene nicky melville Lizzie McCreadie Amy De’Ath Imogen Cassells Al Anderson Will Harris Alex Marsh Charlotte Knight Shehzar Doja Sameeya Maqbool Charlotte Geater Ali Znaidi Fintan Calpin Flo Goodliffe Ryan Ormonde Eduardo R de Siquiera Nina Ward Betsy Porritt Luca Bevacqua ~ Introduction by Max Parnell and Maria Sledmere Outro by Max Parnell Editing, production and music by Max Parnell (Voice recordings sampled from NASA's audio highlights from the first day of the Apollo 11 mission) To read SPAM001 in full for free, head over to spamzine.co.uk/spam001

In this episode, we bring to you SPAM’s season four pamphlet launch with poets Oli Hazzard and Samantha Walton. There are readings from both poets with introductions from SPAM editors Maria, Kirsty and Denise. The event was held on Zoom on 7th October 2020. Oli Hazzard has published two books of poems, Between Two Windows (Carcanet, 2012) and Blotter (Carcanet, 2018). He lives in Glasgow and teaches at the University of St Andrews. Samantha Walton is a poet, editor and academic based in Bristol. Her first collection, Self Heal, was published by Boiler House Press in 2018, and Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure, and The Living World, an ecocritical study of Nan Shepherd, are both coming out from Bloomsbury in 2021. She co-edits Sad Press, a small poetry press, and is interested in omens, sigils, and the end of the world. You can order copies of PROGRESS: REAL AND IMAGINED and Bad Moon from spamzine.co.uk. Produced by Max Parnell Introduction by Maria Sledmere Link to Samantha Walton’s BAD MOON playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2mgmUCgMuf2VEknRfFHfpf?si=U_5BnwvJQqeYo1UDjFrw-Q

In this episode of URL Sonata, we're stoked to bring you five readings from what was a sunny day on the plaza, where we camped out with a virtual stall for ASP Fair, on the 27th September 2020. Our poets are: Anna Danielewicz Alex Marsh Anjeli Caderamanpulle Dom Hale Loll Jung Introduction: Maria Sledmere Music, production: Max Parnell All of the readers have work published with SPAM, which you can check out at our web store at spamzine.co.uk.

Hop on the Millennium Megabus one last time in episode five of URL SONATA, featuring readings from seven poets in our final Double Issue #10 of the zine. Phoebe Eccles Katy Lewis Hood David Linklater Andrew Spragg Lizzy Yarwood Barney Ashton-Bullock Maria Sledmere ~ Introduction: Kirsty Dunlop Editing, production and original theme: Max Parnell You can order a copy of Issue #10, Millennium Mega(bus) for £5.50 from our webstore: spamzine.co.uk. Thanks for listening!

Coming to you from rainy Glasgow, Maria Sledmere introduces Lotte L.S., who performed a reading for us at the recent launch of Rosie Roberts' 'portals', which took place on 6th August, 2020. Lotte L.S. is a poet living in Great Yarmouth. Her work is forthcoming or published with A) Glimpse) Of), Fathomsun Press, Tripwire, Chicago Review and Blackbox Manifold. She keeps an infrequent tinyletter, Shedonism. In her portals performance, Lotte reads from a poetry sequence composed over lockdown, exploring as she puts it ‘How time weighs on gender and how gender weighs on time’. It’s an incredible movement and poetic slippage through history, ‘the present’, learning, surveillance, solidarity, dreams, survival, loss, attention and sound. As she writes ‘It is a practice of regard’. ~ Introduction: Maria Sledmere Production and original theme: Max Parnell ~ You can find out more about SPAM and order a copy of 'portals' at spamzine.co.uk. Thanks for listening!

Coming to you from Berlin, editor Max Parnell introduces Rosie Roberts, whose lyric adventure in poetry, prose, image and song, 'portals', was recently published by SPAM Press. Max meditates on the generous, rich and beautiful readings from Daisy Lafarge and Lotte L.S., plus a 16mm film from Alex Hetherington, which were screened and performed at the 'portals' launch on Zoom, 6th August 2020. This podcast features words from Max Parnell, Rhian Williams and a recording of Rosie's own reading from the launch. ~ Production, introduction and original theme: Max Parnell ~ You can order a copy of 'portals' from spamzine.co.uk and find out more about Rosie's recommended charity, FIVEXMORE, here: https://www.fivexmore.com.

Special guest Aoiffe Walsh joins the whole SPAM team in this episode (Kirsty, Maria, Denise and Max) to discuss two poems she selected from Issue #5 of the SPAM Zine, Notes from the Watercooler: an untitled poem by Patrick Blake and ‘Cold Soma Yawn’ by Michael Rennie. Aoiffe Walsh is a second year PhD student at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research is concerned with the intellectual foundations of British Surrealism, examining the intersection between empiricist and poetic practices and the way that modernist poetry corrodes disciplinary boundaries. She has contributed writing to such projects as Avant-Garde Studies and Decorating Dissidence and regular publications of her work can be found in The Modernist Review Listen on for our reflections on office vibes as lockdown escapism, micro environments nestled within industrial landscapes, cats as the antithesis of office culture, slinking out of meetings, and the emotional labour of customer service. You will hear Denise share her love for chairs with Aoiffe as they discuss the role of the chair in Sartre’s ‘Nausea’, you can try and count how many times we bring up blueberries, which links to Kirsty's recent online work training experiences, we come up with a new yoghurt brand name: Delicious Deleuze and you can find out who came up with the iconic phrase ‘your da sells cloud storage'. You also won’t want to miss the many Easter eggs that are revealed about the making of this issue and our various ridiculous office experiences. ~ Introduction: Kirsty Dunlop Editing, production and original theme: Max Parnell ~ You can support SPAM and the poets by purchasing a digital pay-what-you-want download of 'Notes from the Watercooler' from our online shop at spamzine.co.uk. Thanks for listening!

Our guest on this episode is musician and avid poetry reader, Mike Bellis who joins Kirsty, Maria and Denise in the SPAM virtual study to discuss poems from issue #7 of the zine, Prom Date. We chat about several poems chosen by Mike from the zine: ‘Sonnet: Sappho in a Post-Globalised World’ by Ali Znaidi, 'cummerbund’ by Ari Nielsson, 'Teenage Affair' by Polina Riabova and ‘I Left my Corsage in the Rain For You and All I Got was this Stupid poem’ by SPAM’s own Maria Sledmere. Mike Bellis is best known for his work with the independent rock band Clearance, based in Chicago. He’s here in Glasgow for the year on a Fulbright scholarship studying Scottish politics at the University of Strathclyde. His favourite poet is John Ashbery. Amidst our discussion you can hear: everyone get real nerdy about our quarantine listening habits (everything from Jazz Harp to the Fall), we’ll reveal which SPAM editor is the romantic gemini, what the spice boy/fuckboy and vegetal nickname continuum is, what it was like for Mike and his band Clearance to play with Slowdive, which trendy poets were Fulbright Scholars, who has Sappho fresh on the brain, why Denise thinks American Prom is PG-13 and Italian prom on another level of edge. You’ll also experience Kirsty excitedly asking Mike about John Ashbery’s influence on his writing, who they both love and you will listen to Mike read Maria’s poem to her, it’s v cute promise…as a bonus witness the SPAM gals attempt for our listeners a cheeky 'ekphrastic description of [Mike's] visage'. ~ Introduction: Kirsty Dunlop Editing, production and original theme: Max Parnell ~ You can support SPAM and the poets by purchasing a copy of 'Prom Date' for £3.00 from spamzine.co.uk or download a digital copy and pay what you want. Thanks for listening!

In this extended episode of Lunch Club, we are joined by special guest Rhian Williams in the SPAM virtual studio, alongside Kirsty Dunlop, Maria Sledmere and Max Parnell, to discuss Daisy Lafarge's pamphlet 'capriccio' which we published last autumn and launched at Good Press in Glasgow. Alongside our discussion, this episode opens with a beautiful reading by Daisy Lafarge from 'capriccio'. Rhian Williams is a writer and stay-at-home mother who lives in Glasgow. She writes on poetry, ecopoetics, theopoetics, and the everyday. The third edition of her Poetry Toolkit book came out in 2019 and she and SPAM's own Maria Sledmere have co-edited an anthology of new poetry, titled The Weird Folds: Everyday Poems from the Anthropocene that’s due out in August with Dostoyevsky Wannabe. Given Daisy’s interest in air, microbiology and zoonoses (i.e. diseases passed between humans and nonhuman animals), it felt apt in times of corona to turn attention to her work again. Listen on for our hungover lowdown on the Millennium Megabus launch, plus reflections on pine pollen in Scotland, rave in the classroom, ethnomusicology and musical appropriation, Derrida’s hedgehog, Instagram affect, how 'capriccio' oscillates between vaporwave and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and why we should all go to orchid school. ~ Introduction: Maria Sledmere Editing, production and original theme: Max Parnell ~ You can support SPAM and Daisy Lafarge by purchasing a copy of 'capriccio' for £5.00 from spamzine.co.uk Thanks for listening!

In this episode of Lunch Club, we welcome Aaron Skates on to the podcast to discuss Aea Varfis-van Warmelo's 'Flatpack Pastoral' from SPAM's ninth issue, Astroturf. Aaron Skates is a former graduate student of Criticism and Culture. He now lives in North London and works for a record label, while writing and performing music. His poetry was once described by poet laureate Simon Armitage as ‘horrible in the mouth and in the mind’.

In our fourth episode of URL SONATA, we feature readings from five talented poets in our latest (and final!) Double Issue #10 of the zine: Millennium Mega(bus). We launched this issue virtually in ZOOMLAND on Friday 29th May 2020: Eloise Birtwhistle Rosa Jones Sam Riviere Torkel Tennberg Kat Sinclair ~ Introduction: Kirsty Dunlop Editing, production and original theme: Max Parnell You can order a copy of Issue #10, Millennium Mega(bus) from our webstore: shop.spamzine.co.uk. Thanks for listening!

In our third episode of URL SONATA, building on last week's episode of Lunch Club, we feature tasty readings from five exceptional poets published in SPAM's Chips & Cheese themed issue of the zine, which was launched at our beloved Poetry Club in Glasgow in February 2018: Michael Crowe Livia Franchini William Fuller Alex Rushfirth Ruthie Kennedy ~ Introduction: Denise Bonetti Editing, production and original theme: Max Parnell You can order a digital copy of Issue 6, Chips & Cheese from our webstore here: shop.spamzine.co.uk. Thanks for listening!

Today’s episode of Lunch Club is one of clarity, longing and many culinary comforts. With special guest Scott Morrison, Maria Sledmere, Max Parnell, Kirsty Dunlop and Denise Bonetti, we discuss two poems taken from SPAM’s issue 6, Chips & Cheese. These poems are ‘A Day in the Yorkshire Dales’ by Alex Rushfirth and an untitled poem by Michael Crowe. Scott Crawford Morrison is a writer, composer and performer from Glasgow. His writing is interested in experiences of time and memory; musically, he mixes classical training with experimental interests. He performs with Neuro Trash, Instruction Manual, Allowed Noise, and is a co-founder of the Più cafe-concert series. He is Development & Projects Manager at Scottish Ensemble, and an active member of the Green Arts Network, exploring the role of creativity in individual and societal responses to the climate crisis. When he's in a chippy, he will order chips and cheese. You can find him at scottcrawfordmorrison.bandcamp.com. Listen on to hear us reminiscing about our first encounter with Scott at our darkwave inspired issue #3 launch, Vape or Dream, to find out why the price of SPAM might be a convincing economic indicator, why there’s a fine line between poetry and advertising, what famous post-internet poet Denise reads while cooking super noodles and how we might ‘taste the future’. Taking a jaunt around the calorific dystopias of award-winning pie shops, we explore the imperative precision of fast food vernacular, poetry that makes you wince and the question of whether you can ever be a ‘local’ at McDonalds. ~ Introduction: Maria Sledmere Editing, production and original theme: Max Parnell ~ You can support SPAM and our poets by purchasing an electronic version of Issue 6: Chips & Cheese for just a couple of quid from spamzine.co.uk. Thanks for listening!