• canvas 7 marks the closing chapter of tabula rasa’s spring residency at @___presenttense turning towards fabric and gesture for an evening woven through sound, movement and cloth. Esther Kehinde Ajayi and Misseti Huth join black:ECHO for a collaborative performance titled Threads: A Silk Hymnal ; an audio-visual movement piece meditating on the poetics of dress, exploring clothing as ceremony, as shield, as second skin. wardrobe courtesy of Tasnim Chowdhury. — join us on may 28th for the final instalment tickets available via presenttense.co.uk / link in bio 🌱

APPLIED POETICS : time (lines) Join us for this month’s poetry workshop exploring line as a record of temporal experience. Meaning; how does line move time, how does time move the line. We’ll look at lien breaks, no breaks, wild alignment styles, and straight slabs of text to triangulate what feels like a line to follow for our personal practice(s). Looking at Jorie Graham, Ariana Reines, Cy Twombly, Jimmy Robert’s, Anges Martin, William Basinski, Virgina Woolf, and Maggie Nelson… exhale. Fun fact, it’s also our Bday on Saturday, so you can hang around for some cake after the workshop. Session facilitated by @bianca___pina Saturday 16th May 3-5pm Tickets £12 Programme page at @___presenttense

An evening of them/femme exuberance. Part 2 of Erotomania, an ongoing exploration of eros & mania. Is writing always a manic act – the results of an inner energetic surplus made external. The femmes we know (that write) seem to have an overabundance of desire; writing, art making, & performance become the depository site for this overflow. For this evening we have readings from sage a-o, Harper Walton, Galia Admoni, Pheonix Yemi, Thais Mendes, Charlie Brogan & Bianca Pina. A performance piece by Jackie Lipman & Scarlett Woolfe titled “BUSY”, and some moving image by Aarony Bailey. All offerings circling themes of femmeness and personal (expanded) erotics. 22nd May from 18:30 Present Tense, Newington Green Tickets via presenttense.co.uk

helloo london!!! Join us on Wednesday 27 May at Present Tense @___presenttense for the launch of New Contexts for Sound — a new zine developed through ongoing research into contemporary sound practices and the grassroots conditions that shape and enable their dissemination. The publication results from a conversation held at Auto Italia @autoitalialondon in March 2025 with Eduard Solaz (IKLECTIK) @iklectikartlab and Sara Sassanelli (Conditions, Alice Agency) @sara.sassanelli , hosted by the Art/Work Association. From 6 PM, we’ll begin with a speculative conversation open to all, imagining ideal, possible, and even impossible scenarios for experimental and performative sound today, in London and beyond. A shared space to think, drift, and reimagine new utopian contexts for sound. We’ll then move into a collective listening set by gravemere @mort_drew RSVP via link in bio gravemere is a London-based experimental ambient producer and sound artist hailing from Huddersfield. Their work includes samples of bat echolocation, photosynthesis bubbles through hydrophones, and the electromagnetic hum of hand-soldered induction microphones picking up frequencies imperceivable to human ears. Blurring the boundaries between the real, the present, and the remembered. Present tense is a place for writers, thinkers, & tinkerers alike. We are a co-working space and a creative community for exploration & encounter; using poetry as a linchpin to explore meaning-making across mediums, ideas & practices.

•• a glimpse into the audio/visual textures of canvas 6 unveiling a collaboration by @moonchile & @bianca___pina ; a dive into liquid language and the poetics of water alongside @bettycfan & @kitgordon_ join us for an evening of tactile sounds at @___presenttense tickets available via presenttense.co.uk / link in bio 🌱

Applied Poetics APRIL : Brutalist Poetry Let’s enquire into the materials we have at our disposal, Glyn Maxwell has them reduced down to White and Black, in On Poetry. Let’s pour come concrete slabs of memory and see what we can build. We’ll spend two hours, stripping it all back, and making structures with words, or for words to live in. Saturday 25th 3-5pm Present Tense , Newington Green £12 ticket, or 3 sessions for £30

Many people come through our doors slightly confused at the space, “does someone live here” a guest once asked. & I suppose, in a way, they do. We are an unfunded space trying to offer an affordable, nourishing & meaningful programme around poetics. All of this is made possible by our core community of residents. We operate independently, supported by those who work from the space, and shaped as much by practice as by programme. At present, we have a poet, a choreographer/curator, a futurist, a professor of publishing, a fashion designer, a short film journalist & graphic designer creating here. Each practice holds multiple dimensions, which is perhaps what unites them/us; the liminality, the resistance to be contained within a single genre. We, PT, are on a pathway towards sustainability; we believe we can achieve it by creating concentric circles of mutual support & community. If you or someone you know are looking for somewhere to practice from, & would benefit from an extended home to think your thoughts within, we’d love to hear from you. -> [email protected]

What is a poem stripped of ideal? Is a poem still a poem without metaphor, without lineation? Is truth harder or softer without flourish? This month in Applied Poetics we turn to the brick-by-brick construction of Richard Siken’s “I Do Know Some Things”, the tombstone accordion of Anne Carson’s “Nox”, and reflections on White and Black in poetry and photography through Glyn Maxwell @glynmaxwell and Susan Sontag. Alongside these texts, we will look to brutalist architecture, Soviet concrete structures that refuse ornament, where repetition, exposure and weight replace decoration. Buildings that do not gesture beyond themselves, but insist on material, form and presence (On Poetry, On Photography) Together, these works become a starting point to ask what is included in a piece of writing, what the bare materials are at our disposal, and how many layers of skin can be stripped away until we arrive at bone. All of this so that when we do reintroduce the tincture of flourish, metaphor and ideal, it lands with precision, like water on a dry palate. This class is open to anyone with a history, a present, a piece of paper, and a willingness to look at writing from within and beyond its usual frame. Facilitator: Bianca Pina @bianca___pina Location: Present Tense, Newington Green Tickets: £12 via programme page at presenttense.co.uk

2.0 of Ned Prizemans “Insect Fatigue” for PTZ2: CRUSH will be munching metal again this Thursday 23rd at Reference Point. @ned_prizeman @referencepoint180 @___presenttense Ned also made the giant star for the new performance by MOMOSTAR title Los Anhelos. Insect Fatique is made with a motor from a paper shredder liberated from an old council building, a past life of chewing through bureaucratic secrecy. This symbol of automated destruction and production in the hive. The stationery, the tool of the clergy. Crunchy, crushing, pushing metal to the tired state of breaking, repetitively designed with linkages: the reliable fixed and spin to enable a scissor mechanism. Instinct to create and destroy, touching on a limbo state of expectations, desire and pollination. Ned Prizeman’s practice combines experiments and inventions that explore how the world works, through both the laws of physics and social, emotional, and human dynamics. Across a network of diverse projects, he remains closely connected to his surroundings and the emotions they evoke. Materials drawn from lived experience become a way to contemplate existence, probe consciousness, and navigate the labyrinth of life.

• tabula rasa returns april 30th for its second of three spring dates. canvas 6 drifts into being with a collective improvisation ; with percussion like weather against wood and air, voices moving between whisper and invocation, objects made to sing, words as fragments weaving through a shifting sonic current ; a dance of rhythm, material and memory. featuring; @bettycfan @bianca___pina @moonchile @kitgordon_ tickets available via presenttense.co.uk / link in bio 🌱

Thursday 23rd. Latex zine cover release & poetry performance of PTZ2:CRUSH at @referencepoint180 With a new performance work by MOMOSTAR, Los Anhelos. Present Tense Zine: Crush is an audio zine of poetry and sound, accompanied by a special edition latex cover. This issue is edited by Bianca Pina @bianca___pina and Maite de Orbe @maitedeorbe With readings and performances by Tallulah Haddon, Flo Ray, Billy Klotsa, Henry St Leger, Marianne Habeshaw, Scarlett Woolfe, Ned Prizeman, Rose McCrum, Juliette Larthe, Suleqa Mohamud and Clara-Laeila Laudette. Los Anhelos (Spanish for “longing”) unfolds through four central desires that shape the MOMOSTAR figure: the release of trauma, the hunger for attention, indulgence, and the impulse toward unity. Drawing on mythological archetypes, these drives are embodied through a sequence of actions, with the star as a symbolic vessel guiding each transformation. Directed by Maite de Orbe @maitedeorbe Performed by Virginia Lopez Valera @molar.28 María Abad @averybadmaria Jackie Lipman @jaka_bby Yasemin Junqueira @yasfantastic Jayda Dawkins @jayda_ang with sound by Lolo & Sosaku @loloysosaku and Vivienne Griffin @vivienne.griffin Tickets: £7 via presenttense.co.uk Location: Reference Point 2 Arundel St, Temple, London WC2R 3DA

@suleqaa performing Course Correction for PTZ2: Crush A second reading and launch of the latex cover edition of PTZ2 will be next Thursday 23rd at @referencepoint180 Tickets and low income access at our programme page #ptz #poetry #presenttense #crush