Liar Eccentric City May 2009

Page 22 Economical with the Truth Eccentric In Avignon at the height of its annual festival of theatre and art, people did react differently when I was reading my book Tar From The Madding Crowd* a book that my wife found in a skip and gave to me - in different places. At one point I placed my hat in front of me as I stood and quietly read to mysetf in the middle of the central square. A man put some money in it and once he old that others picked up on my reading to myself as performance and followed suiL Chapter 6 bought me lunch. This was Look I Am Reading - LIAR - was firstperhaps because they were in Avignon performed at the Avignon Festival at Festival time and were expecting 2008. 1 had been asked to read at strange performances but stiH without the festival which meant 'read your a sign the simple act of moving my poems out loud for people'. It got me reading from cafe table to standing in the thinking about the act of reading to square was picked up on as different as performance. oneself as performance: I have become increasingly interested in reading. Not only the text being read but where the reading is taking place. I'm thinking here of reading to oneself not reading aloud to others something that as poet/artist I'm often asked to do. The act of reading something particularly books. Where and when the reading takes place including the difference between doing this personal act in private or public, inside or out.

Where is it acceptable to read to What about somewhere that wasn't oneself in public and what messages hosting a festival? Birmingham Bullring shopping centre was the next piace i tnec are we giving out when we do this? out LIAR. I stood quietly in the centre How do we change the space we are of the Bullring mall aisle and started to read. Exactly 27 minutes into my reading in when we read to ourselves? How do others perceive us when they I was asked by security to stop reacnc and leave. I didn't argue but noted that see us in the act of reading? Does what we are reading change stood not two metres away from me *BS a man on his mobile phone who had beer someone's perception of us? Does where we are change the way there when I arrived and was still there as book in hand I was escorted from the people perceive us when reading? Bullring. The act of reading somehow In LIAR I am exploring all of the wasn't acceptable whereas the actrg of above and perhaps more that will talking on the phone in the same space reveal itself in the act of performing was. LIAR in different places, spaces, and times. I will be taking LIAR out into dgfcicat tocafions over the coming months arc When we read in a cafe, on a train, or would Uce to invite readers of Eccenrc a city bench we are at once draBBBg to, rather than read EC attention to Durse-.-e; : '. =sc places and get perhaps giving out me rressace ~s.: _ i, read it in we'd rather be left alone, it draws norms paces are semi photographs ir, attention to us whilst at the same of themselves ram se.. time rendering us socially invisible. Eccentric C** a In LIAR I move the reading process do perhaps further and further into public spaces and other such aa where one normally doesn't read. photographs to show The act is the same but the space ifs done in is perhaps not what's Suggested reading and readm^ expected. Standing in the middle, of Please email me directly at im- ,,, „« a shopping street In an aisle inside ntlworld.com a furniture, ck>thing or some other non-book related shop. On a public by Paul Conned* stairway.

EXCELLENT, SUPURB ECCENTRIC COUNTERCULTURE, EG visited the Bristol Anarchist Book fair in Sept 2008.