PRESS RELEASE
for immediate circulation
October-December 2020
VANESSA VIE OPENS HER POETIC WINDOWS AND DOORS
FOR THE FIRST PRINTED NEW DEPARTURES ISSUE IN A DECADE
The first New Departures publication since 2007, OpenWindows,
Open Doors by Vanessa Vie, whose launch had been scheduled to
happen far earlier in 2020, is to be flagged up and promoted
between September and December this year instead, assuming the
coronavirus will radically recede. This dateline will mark sixty
years sinceMichael Horovitz originated the experimental imprint
and its performance-based siblings, Live New Departures and the
Poetry Olympics festivals.
Open Windows, Open Doors is Vanessa Vie’s debut volume of
diverse poetic writings, accompanied by a substantial selection of
her varied visual art inventions created between 1997 and 2019. Its
release extends the quintessential commitment of the New
Departures imprint to wonderment, internationalism, and multimedic
cross-pollination in the arts.
This book’s title and contents vindicate and respond to the
challenge ofLawrence Ferlinghetti’s ‘PopulistManifesto’: “Poets,
come out of your closets,/Open your windows, open your doors,/
You have been holed-up too long/in your closet worlds.”
Almost entirely self-taught, as both multi-media artist and poetwriter,
aswell as singer-songwriter-musician,Vanessa grewup on
the coast of Northern Spain, and came to Britain at the end of the last millennium.She decided to stay in Albion
for good in 2000, largely inspired by absorbing herself in the visionary art and poetry ofWilliam Blake. It soon
came naturally to her to converse, and then to write in English, with, as publisher Michael Horovitz puts it: “a
relish for the stimulus of adapting to a second language, whilst still retaining the passionate spirits of her inborn
duende.”
According toWilliam Burroughs: “The techniques of much contemporary writing are 50 years behind those of
musicians and painters”. “Vanessa Vie’s innovations,” says Horovitz, “invariably bring the interplay of her
poetry with highly original musics and visual art to the fore. Her prolific compositions and performances, solo
or in conjunction with others, can amount to a nimbly synthesised dance on two, or sometimes three artistic
trapezes at once.”
VanessaVie has presentedHappenings inspired by the poetries of Rumi andDylan Thomas, aswell as devising
transformative musical settings for those of William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Federico Garcia Lorca and
Horovitz himself.
“Many people have asked me throughout the years why I read and write in English,” says Vanessa: “Samuel
Beckett began writing in French because he wanted to get away from his mother tongue. Living, reading and
speaking in French had bestowed himwith a newpersonality.TheEnglish language has bestowedmewith a new
personality and freed me from my mother tongue. I find its nuances of sound and structure to be a restorative
victual for my intellect, imagination and memory.”
For more information about Open Windows, Open Doors (£14.99, 128 pages, ISBN: 978-0-9026892-7-5),
details of launch events, reviewcopies, use of images, or to arrange an interview, please contactNewDepartures
on 020 7229 7850 or [email protected], or Vanessa Vie on 07956 514 337 or [email protected]
PRESS RELEASE
for immediate circulation
October-December 2020
VANESSA VIE OPENS HER POETIC WINDOWS AND DOORS
FOR THE FIRST PRINTED NEW DEPARTURES ISSUE IN A DECADE
Notes for Editors
New Departures Publications were first launched exactly six decades ago as
miscellanies, in editor-torchbearer Michael Horovitz’s last year at Oxford. Early
anthologies featured works by the innovative likes of Samuel Beckett, William
Burroughs, JohnCage,StevieSmith,LangstonHughes,KurtSchwitters,AlanDavie,
Kathleen Raine, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, to be dubbed by the Times
LiterarySupplement “themost avant-gardemagazine inGreatBritain”.Horovitz has
taken the magazine’s spirit across continents over the last 60 years with Live New
Departures, Jazz Poetry SuperJams and the Poetry Olympics festivals.
VanessaViewrites: Iwas bornMariaVanessa FernandezAlvarez in 1973 inAviles,
Asturias. In 1990 I had been granted a scholarship to study Medicine in Salamanca,
the world’s third-oldest University, before I deserted the socio-academic pilgrimage
and stepped into the unknown. Embraced by circumambient creative circles and
prompted by a dream, I started experimentingwithVisualArt,Music, and Literature.
Two years later I tookmymaternal grandmother’s advice: “If youwant to be an artist,
you’ve got to prepare yourself”, and started taking private music lessons and trying
to complywith the rhythms of two art schools. This ran on for five years, in the course
of which I brimfilled notebooks with poems, songs, and whatnots, and covered
canvases, boards and paper full steam ahead. I formed my first rock band, exhibited
my visual artwork, and enjoyed a fewthrills, aswhen theHardRockBarcelona chose
a drawing of mine for its inauguration t-shirts in 1997. I made London my home in
2000, where I’ve continued to invent, perform and collaborate with diverse and
inspiring artists andmusicians, and to exhibit. In 2012 Imet and befriendedMichael
Horovitz. Our earliest collaborations were rooted, almost solely, in our mutual love
for and experiences of the oeuvre of William Blake. For the last eight years my
creative-writing focus has shifted from song-writing into Poetry (Michael has been
a major catalyst) and become integral to my performances. Poems have come out of
my notebooks’ closets and appeared inmagazines and anthologies in theUSA&UK,
up until the publication of ‘Open Windows, Open Doors’. www.vanessavie.co.uk
