Blank Media Collective

blankpages Issue 16

Sunday 1st Nov 2009

This month is a poetry special! Manchester’s queer vegan performance poet, Dominic Berry, treats us to his words, Justin Walsh serves up absurdities and nonsense - and for desert? Poetic treats from John Leyland! And more! Gerry Potter talks exclusively to blankpages in his first interview as himself since ditching his successful alter-ego Chloe Poems.

Music this month comes from Irma Vep, a Welsh born, Manchester based artist fusing a mixture of styles. Stunning guest visual design is provided by Liverpool artist Jack Welsh and our artists’ spotlight falls on Phillip Marsden, a comic illustrator and founder of Compromise Comics Enterprise.

You can download blankpages in PDF format (above) or simply read the fab flash magazine online (below).

Please note: for readers of the PDF version, this month’s featured track: A Bag Full Of Bones (For Ella Jones) by Irma Vep is available by clicking HERE.

We would love to hear from you - let us know what you think to the issue by emailing us at .

This Month’s Contributors  .

Mika Nash is a London based Surface Designer and Illustrator. Mika has exhibited twice at London Graduate Fashion Week in collaboration with Ewa Dauter and printing for Gold Award winning designer Jessica Au. She also featured in an exhibition at the Sayle Gallery in the Isle of Man in 2007 where she exhibited two original prints. Mika is currently working as a freelance Designer & Printer whilst teaching screen-printing at the University of East London and is working toward exhibiting her work in November.

Irma Vep is Welsh born, Manchester based musician/dancer Edwin Stevens. Under this pseudonym, Stevens records and performs his solo material along with sometime collaborator Dylan ‘DBO’ Hughes who both play in the popular nu-reggae group Klaus Kinski.

Justin Walsh is fairly new to the Manchester poetry scene but have been writing for many years. He describes his poetry as “peopled with grotesque creatures verbosely dressed in outlandish imagery; overblown abstractions that lurk in the shadows of the everyday.” The poems included in this issue are pieces of a much bigger work that he has been writing for the last year - PikniK on IlkLy MoOr - of which there is a teaser on the Blank Media website.

Dominic Berry is author of Tomorrow, I Will Go Dancing (Flapjack Press 2008) and co-host of Freed Up (Manchester’s busiest, and friendliest, monthly poetry open mic) Dominic has just won the Commonword Superheroes of Slam 2009 trophy. His one man performance poetry piece Pulse won a Forever Manchester Award from City Life when staged in the Not Part Of Festival in Summer 2009.

John Leyland is Editor of blankpages A graduate from Liverpool John Moores University in Imaginative Writing, he performs his poetry regularly in venues across Manchester and the North West. He has been published in various anthologies, including among others; In The Red (Issues 3 and 4, for LJMU), Poetry Pool 2 and 3 (Headland) and The Ugly Tree (Flapjack Press).

Phillip Marsden is a Liverpool-based artist and illustrator. His current solo exhibition True Stories by PM is at Richmond Gallery in London. His next comic book will be also emblazoned with this title and will contain new work drawing on recent experiences including a strip inspired by his appearance on Antony Gormley’s One & Other Fourth Plinth project earlier in the summer.

blankpages Issue 16 Flash Magazine