Mercy

Two weeks since last post... busy times... a summary if you will:

1. My Geppetto

We've had another of these bad boys, this time by me, since we spoke to John Smith. Here it is in Flatline issue 6 (aka Mercy Magazine, resurrected as a weekly e-zine).

Flatline issue 7, featuring Gary Daly in the Geppetto hot seat, should be available any minute now. Sign up to the mailing list on Mercyonline if you want to be the first to get your digital mitts on it is also available now.

2. Mercy Live

Bluecoat poet-in-residence and Mercy creative mainstay Nathan Jones is performing at Greenroom in Manchester tonight. The event, Emergency 09, is on for two days, consisting basically of artistic wizards of every stripe descending on a little indie theatre, nestled in the arches below Oxford Road station, to do their thang. Nathan and co - he's accompanied by Karen McCleod, Shelly Atton and Gavin Osborn, who have worked his poem 'Language Stuffs Life' up into something more than your common or garden poetry reading - have a 20 minute slot in the venue's 'Workspace', starting at 8.30pm.

Details of Emergency 09 in it's entirety can be found on the Greenroom website.

3. Mercy Live (again, sort of)

Liverpool types keep your eyes peeled for Chapter&Verse, the Bluecoat's annual festival of all things literary. Mr Jones crops up again performing his poems, and discussing what makes them tick, on Oct 16, while our old faves Tim Clare and Ross Sutherland are up from Cambridge to perform Infinite Lives, a poetry show / lecture / anecdotal ramble about video games, the day after. (If you like Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe, these guys got there first.)

There's lots more besides - Tim is hosting an 'in conversation' event with Brit comedy legend Vic Reeves (Oct 16) , and Nathan and Ross crop up again with 'Revolutions In Form', a showcase of what's new in poetry besides the old poetry/hip hop sort of guff they like to drip over on Newsnight Review.

The full Chapter&Verse programme is here (PDF).

Right, I'm off to watch Wave Machines in Bristol. The band is on tour right now - trip along to one of their shows if you're in the vicinity of Brizzle, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle, York or (phew) Nottingham in the next ten days (the relevant dates can be found on the band's MySpace).