The essays included here cover the range of Fisher's career. Redell Olsen and cris cheek discuss Fisher's relations to Fluxus and the documentary. Will Rowe approaches Place in terms of the large-scale poem as a heuristic device, a 'practice of knowledge'. Pierre Joris addresses the important topic of health in Fisher's work. Will Montgomery considers Brixton as a 'sounded space' in the work of Allen Fisher and Linton Kwesi Johnson, while Steven Hitchins tackles one aspect of Fisher's significant engagement with science: fractals as a way of negotiating the discontinuity and noise of everyday life. Robert Sheppard discusses The Apocalyptic Sonnets as the link between Fisher's two large-scale projects, Place and Gravity as a consequence of shape; Scott Thurston offers a close-reading of 'Mummer's Shout' (from Gravity) in terms of its compositional procedures; Clive Bush engages with 'Philly Dog' and the political limitations of Deleuze and Guattari; and Calum Hazell explores Sputtor in terms of collage, quotation and poetic knowledge. The volume closes with two collaborative pieces: an interview between Fisher, Paige Mitchell and Shamoon Zamir, and a selection of documents relating to PhillyTalks #19 with Karen Mac Cormack (17 October 2001).
Introduction (Robert Hampson)
Chapter 1: Siting Place (Will Rowe)
Chapter 2: Toward Health (Pierre Joris)
Chapter 3: Start Place in Flux (Redell Olsen)
Chapter 4: The poet, the document and the documentary (cris cheek)
Chapter 5: Chreods, Catastrophes (Steven Hitchins)
Chapter 6: Fractalising the Front Line (Will Montgomery)
Chapter 7: Apocalypse Then (Robert Sheppard)
Chapter 8: Reading 'Mummers' Strut' (Scott Thurston)
Chapter 9: Lines of Flight (Clive Bush)
Chapter 10: The New Complexity (Pierre Joris)
Chapter 11: Artefactu(r)al Logic in Allen Fisher's SPUTTOR (Calum Hazell)
Chapter 12: Imperfect Fit (Allen Fisher, Paige Mitchell, Shamoon Zamir)
Chapter 13: Philly Talks (Allen Fisher, Karen Mac Cormack et al.)
