Novembre issue 16 literary residency: WORMS

WORMS MAGAZINE TAKEOVER

Beneath the glossy veneer, this issue of Novembre sheds its silk for soil, burrowing deep into the underbelly of the literary with a special special 32-page contribution by WORMS.

At WORMS, we seek out writing that sits outside form and genre, is personal, political, challenges us, confuses us, gets us excited, turns us on, riles us up, and makes us think. We interrupt your regular programming to bring you a very special online feature of WORMS #9: The Psychoanalysis Season.

This year, WORMS has not released a print issue of the magazine. Instead, we’ve been taking the time to reflect on the myriad and beautiful directions WORMS has gone in over its 5 years of life.

This year, it was time to slow down, revisit and recentre the experimental voices at the heart of what we do.

Buuut… we couldn’t resist the temptation to work on an issue of some description. Introducing, WORMS #9 – The Psychoanalysis Issue, our first digital-hybrid issue. It appears that psychoanalysis is having a bit of a ‘moment’ in the literary spotlight. Arguably, it's always been there, but it does make sense that the impulse to dissect our inner workings would emerge in times of crisis, and these are times of irrefutable and unrelenting crises.

MCKENZIE WARK:

“We’re just bodies. Humans are not fallen angels, we’re just monkeys with stupid ambitions.”

“Lacan is super fascinating, but it’s Scientology for smart people.”

“You can actually take charge of your own becoming and become something else, rather than study how it progresses in the literary space alone,”

SOPHIA GIOVANNITTI:

“A lot of my work then is an attempt to transmute things I’m haunted by into things I want to see in the world.”
“For me, the conditions are always part of the work.”

“...making work out of the conditions is also an attempt at a transmutation.”

CACONRAD:

“I worked with rats, squirrels, pigeons, and other creatures, each given a part of my body to activate: knees, arms, nipples; I wanted to feel them in some way to write.”

“I knew I needed a new relationship with time and created what I call (Soma)tic poetry rituals. These rituals anchor me in the present, unorthodox procedures that make me focus on what is in front of me, wherever I am, no matter what is going on.”

“That said, the rituals can bend language as much as they do experience.”

The WORMS takeover of Novembre as part of The Psychoanalysis Season features writer and theorist McKenzie Wark, legendary poet CAConrad, artist and writer Sophia Giovannitti, a powerful poem by Fariha Róisín and an essay by Oluwatobiloba Ajayi on poet and writer Dionne Brand.

The rest will exist via the WORMS website here, in the online space of The Wormhole, as a series of nine digital dispatches released twice a month from September until December 2024. Each dispatch curates a selection of poems, interviews, essays and short stories, from old and new faces alike.

While writing there is sometimes the sense that we are tapping into something deep within ourselves; latent drives or unconscious yearnings.

We have wormed our way into the recesses of the mind and have returned with more than we bargained for. Join us in welcoming WORMS’ Psychoanalysis Season.

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The WORMS 9 readings at the Novembre magazine launch in Paris brought an atmosphere rich with vulnerability, intimacy, and power. Held in a city known for its own cultural layering, Fariha Róisín, with her characteristic tenderness and incisive prose, shared with us her poem How To Make a Terrorist that contends with questions of survival, crisis, resistance, with history and memory; Jess Cole’s reading complemented this tenderly.

From the layered ambiance of Paris to London, we also celebrated WORMS 9 at Biblioteka with a series of readings and performances that brought together voices that encapsulated the nuances of our times, voices that refuse simplification; from Oluwatobiloba Ajayi, Caitlin Hall, Melissa Lee-Houghton, Phoenix Yemi, and Arcadia Molinas.

There was a palpable sense of community, a shared recognition of how words can bridge and bind.

Both evenings underscored the role of literature as a means of both personal reflection and collective consciousness, a fitting tribute to both Novembre and Biblioteka’s own ethos.

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Credits:

WORMS is a female-run magazine and publisher that celebrates and platforms experimental and underrepresented writer culture. At WORMS, we champion creatives impacted by the intersectionality of factors within our industry, including: class, cultural ethnicity and race, disability and gender issues. Subsequently, this is the audience we attract, and our efforts over the years have most recently affirmed our platform as one of London's leading indie presses as featured in AnOther, and Dazed, Service95, and more. @w0rms.w0rld

Biblioteka is a reference library with a variety of rare and special collections of books, zines and other printed materials within the fields of art, architecture and design. It functions as a platform through which to experiment with new forms of knowledge production, collaboration and curation. Biblioteka is open to the public by appointment at the Architectural Association, 1 Montague Street, London WC1B 5BP. @biblioteka_kyiv