Table of Contents

nevermind 1
Covode 1: the people's disease 3
Covode 2: a planetary testimony 7
Covode 3: the little lockdown: a synthetic meditation 13
Covode 4: the pleasure dome 19
Covode 5: double exposure 27
Covode 6: risky business 31
Covode 7: a stranger cluster 35
Covode 8: the liberation of Paris 41
Covode 9: synchronicities 45
Covode 10: bang to eternity 53
Covode 11: an eco-system south of Portland 59
Covode 12: our little universe 63
Covode 13: et in arcadia ego 71
Covode 14: space milestones 75
Covode 15: something in the air 85
Covode 16: a more perfect union 91
Covode 17: after 100, 000 deaths 95
Covode 18: out of this world 103
Covode 19: out of the blue 111

Promotional Information

Artery Editions are proud to publish a sequence of 19 experimental odes, written by Robert Hampson. These offer a documentation of Covid-19 from multi-faceted perspectives in the form of fragmented, 'public voice' poems: "nothing lost here amidst the welter, nothing gained by strong arming it" (Jeanne Heuving).
The sequence explores the experience of lockdown through the evocation of a series of enclosed spaces - a bunker, a submarine, a space-station, a colony on Mars, drawing parallels between these and our domestic, day-today spaces. Hampson investigates the necessarily mediated experiences produced by lockdown and the corresponding reliance on the technologies of video-conferencing and social media.
The Covodes were recorded, and the process itself was done in lockdown, over zoom calls; Robert Hampson (born 1948) recited in his own living room and the cellist, Joanna Levi (1962), recorded her compositions Suite 1 for Solo Cello with a relatively simple desktop microphone in her study. This quality lends a rawness to the collaborative process - again, part of the new and altered day-to-day life that restricted us in Covid time. For Levi, this project allowed a consuming interest in Bach's music to fuse with Hampson's inspirational poetry. She conveys the sense of monotony and anxiety engendered with a wandering tonality, that takes Bach's Suites as a spring board. This is music we know, but soon enters unchartered waters, and as such represents a distortion of our normal.
Hampson's early work was collected in Assembled Fugitives: selected poems 1973-1998 published by Stride in 2001. His best-known works are seaport (Shearsman, 2008) and reworked disasters (Knives forks and spoons 2013), which was long-listed for the Forward Prize. Joanna Levi studied music at Royal Holloway London University specialising in performance, always maintaining a keen interest in composition, and it was here that her work came to Hampson's attention.
The Covodes book comes in an edition of 250 copies (GBP10.00, ISBN/EAN: 1871671078/9781871671070). This includes a recorded CD version of the Poems alongside Joanna Levi's compositions Suite 1 for Solo Cello. The Covodes book is also available in a signed Art edition of 20 copies (GBP90.00, 12x12", ISBN/EAN: 1871671086/9781871671087), featuring 2 tipped in art prints by twice winner of the Victoria and Albert Museum Illustration Awards, and Folio Society Artist, John Vernon Lord (born 1939), together with the CD. The recording with Levi's Cello is available for online streaming and purchase at www.arteryeditions.bandcamp.com (GBP5.00).
For further information, please email Patricia Hope Scanlan at arteryeditions@yahoo.co.uk +44 7592617190.

Artery Editions
Our Lady's House
43 Carisbrooke Road
St Leonard's-on-Sea
East Sussex
UK, TN38 0JT

Previous publications from Artery Editions:
Spiral (2004) Poems by Fanny Howe, Music by Ken Edwards, Art by
Tom Raworth, Compiled by Patricia Hope Scanlan, CD with Live
Recording
Gifts received (2007) Poem by Lee Harwood, Music by Birdie Hall,
Art by Francis Wishart. CD: Reading by Lee Harwood, Soundscape
by Birdie Hall
Ko - Heartloss-Cuts (2008) Poems by Nikos Stangos, Art
by Jasper Johns, Patricia Hope Scanlan. (A3 Perspex Art Book, A2
Perspex Art Book, Art Book)
Oh, Lac... Oh, Lake... (2008) Poems by Pierre Martory, Translations
by John Ashbery, Art by Francis Wishart, Edited by Eugene Richie
and Olivier Brossard, Compiled by Patricia Hope Scanlan
Scheme dedicated to Panna Grady O'Connor. Poems by Philip
O'Connor, Essay John Berger, Film (BFI), Captain Busby The Even
Tenour of Her Ways (Director
Ann Wolff, 1967), Art by Andrzej Maria Borkowski, edited by
Patricia Hope Scanlan, 2021
Uplift: A Samizdat for Lee Harwood by his friends Tribute Edition,
with Music Composition from Birdie Hall, Edited by Patricia Hope
Scanlan, Assistant Editor Tim Weston, 2008
Strictly Illegal Poems by John Wieners, Art by Gilbert & George,
Selected & Introduced by Jeremy Reed, Biography by George F.
Butterick, Edited by Patricia Hope Scanlan, 2011 General and A2
Art Edition

Forthcoming Artery Editions include:
Le Madame Poems and Recordings by Deborah Levy, Mine Kaylan,
Patricia Hope Scanlan & Art by Louise Bourgeois, Introduced by
Griselda Pollock. Recordings & Soundscapes by Joseph Young,
Introduced by Paul Khimasia Morgan
Brighton Blues A Poetry Tribute to the Poet Lee Harwood by
Jeremy Reed, Art by Derek Jarman, Recording of Lee Harwood's
Landscapes by Stream Records. Brighton Blues also features an
Essay by Lee Harwood on the Poet F.T. Prince & Letters from Lee
Harwood to Jeremy Reed, & from John Ashbery to Lee Harwood,
& Poems from Anne Waldman, & Patricia Hope Scanlan. Film
Tribute from Patricia Hope Scanlan, Starlings over Hastings Pier,
2021.
Pente Poems by John Wieners, Art by William Blake & John Cage,
edited & compiled by Patricia Hope Scanlan
Reprint of Oh, Lac... Oh, Lake... Poems by Pierre Martory,
Translations by John Ashbery, Art by Francis Wishart, Edited by
Eugene Richie and Olivier Brossard, Compiled by Patricia Hope
Scanlan
A Hole in the Sky Tribute to Gustav Metzger and Yoko Ono, Work
DVD by Patricia Hope Scanlan
Explosive Cornelia Parker, Interview with Patricia Hope Scanlan,
Work DVD

About the Author

Robert Hampson was formerly Professor of Modern Literature in the
Department of English at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is
currently Professor Emeritus at Royal Holloway; Research Fellow at the
Institute for English Studies, University of London; Visiting Professor at
the University of Northumbria; and on the faculty of the New School of
the Anthropocene.
He has been involved in the field of contemporary innovative poetry
since the 1970s as editor, critic and practitioner. During the 1970s he coedited
the magazine Alembic with Peter Barry and Ken Edwards. He coedited
(with Peter Barry) the pioneering volume New British poetries: The
Scope of the Possible (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993);
and, more recently, has co-edited (with Will Montgomery) Frank O'Hara
Now (Liverpool UP, 2010); (with Ken Edwards) Clasp: late modernist poetry
in London on the 1970s (Shearsman 2016); and (with cris cheek) The Allen
Fisher Reader (Shearsman 2020).
His own poetry has appeared in a range of magazines including Cid
Corman's Origin and Alan Davies 100 Posters in the 1970s. More recently,
he has published poetry in The Cafe Review, Long Poem Magazine,
Junctionbox, Molly Bloom, Mercurius, parmenar, The Wolf, tentacular
magazine, and Rewilding: an ecopoetic anthology (2020). His early booklets
included degrees of addiction (Share 1975); How Nell Scored (Poet and
Peasant 1976); a necessary displacement (pushtika 1978); a feast of
friends (Pig Press 1982); A City at War (Northern Lights 1985); Nevsky
Prospekt (with David Miller) (hardPressed poetry 1988); a human measure
(hardPressed poetry 1989); unicorns: 7 studies in velocity (pushtika 1989);
dingo (with Gerlinde Roder-Bolton) (pushtika 1994); seaport: interim
edition (pushtika 1995); a new hampshire sampler (with Gerlinde Roder-
Bolton) (pushtika 1996); and the artist-book, C for Security (pushtika,
2001). Assembled Fugitives: selected poems 1973-1998 was published by
Stride (2001). His best-known work is seaport (Shearsman, 2008). More
recent publications include pentimento (pushtika 2005); an explanation of
colours (Veer, 2010); the long view / wish you were here (artist-book with
Leena Nammari) (2011); out of sight (Crater Press 2012; reworked disasters
(Knives forks and spoons 2013); and Liverpool (hugs &) kisses (with Robert
Sheppard) (ship of fools / pushtika 2015).
He taught with Redell Olsen on the MA in Poetic Practice at Royal
Holloway. For many years he ran the TALKS series that Bob Perelman set
up in London, and has been co-running the Contemporary Innovative
Poetry Research Seminar (which replaced it) ever since.

Reviews

I wanted to express my enthusiasm for the Covodes. I had very much the feeling of the enclosed spaces you mention at the end, as if the experience of Covid was a submarine, a bunker . . . transforming into the most restrictive of all spaces, the cruise ship. Each part reads of much intelligence and acumen, a sage and alert politics that does not neglect the incidental for the profound, nor the subtle for the obvious: "you can imagine food disappearing / but not weaponry." "The loss of 'loved ones' / (no one mentions the unloved.") I appreciate your cunning contemporaneity, nothing lost here amidst the welter, nothing gained by strong arming it. By Jeanne Heuving, July 2021