I’ve touched on psychogeography here a few times before and, what with it getting mainstream coverage of late, it’s convenient that Manchester is currently hosting not one but two psychogeography festivals.

Territories Reimagined: International Perspectives, or TRIP for short, runs from Thursday 19 June until Saturday (and beyond) and takes advantage of some of the city’s most recognisable locations, both indoors and out, including…

Thursday, 2pm, the MMU John Dalton Building lobby: Identikit Manchester - Mark Rainey leads a walk themed around corporate chain stores.

Friday, 2pm, outside JD’s Refectory at the MMU John Dalton Building: Bury That Dog - A walk around haunted Manchester with Peter Portland.

Saturday, 3pm, at Whitworth Park: Frank Kickball Jesus presents a psychogeographical ball game - US v UK psychogeographers.

Saturday, 8pm, upstairs at the Britons Protection: A Psychogeographic Cabaret - featuring performance poetry with soundscape and field recordings, plus short films, surprise guests and random acts of subversive joy.

Sunday, 2pm, Café Pop on Oldham Street: Postcards from Nowhere - a wander addressing issues of surveillance and CCTV; all participants will receive a unique piece of GPS art by Max Livesey.

There are also art exhibitions at the Royal Exchange, Nexus Cafe and the Zion Centre, and this is just a small selection of the festival events. Here’s the PDF flyer and visit their homepage for late additions - or read the MEN and Metro previews for their recommendations.

TRIP is also running alongside Manchester’s own psychogeography festival, Get Lost, which is organised by the Loiterers Resistance Movement - visit their site for more information on that.

As an aside, it’s good to see the festival using WordPress.com blogging platform for its homepage. Looks much better than your standard Blogger.com site, doesn’t it?

You may recall that a fringe-of-sorts ran alongside last year’s Manchester International Festival. Its organisers then returned in mid-January, for Not Part of New Years Eve - and they’re now makes a third outing for their own arts festival this summer.

Lasting 10 days (3-12 July), the inaugural festival features 29 events - plus four one-day sub-festivals. Again, Not Part of Festival seeks to gain extra publicity for its theatre, comedy, music, poetry, film and art events by placing them under one name.

The Not Part of website, which has a full brochure, keeps timing out for me but, from yesterday’s newsletter, here are some potential highlights:

• Theatre: Below the Belt @ The Waldorf Hotel
• Theatre: 2 Plays, 2 Writers, 1 Cast @ Adelphi Studio, Salford
• Poetry: Latvian Poets @ Central Library
• Exhibition: Hats off to Cheetham Hill @ The Jewish Museum
• Multi-disciplinary: Not Part of NYE (redux) @ Moho Live
• Art and music: Birds Need Trees (Jim Noir, Aidan Smith etc) @ Urbis

The organisers are asking people to be part of Not Part of - so email them if you can film parts of the festival or just want to volunteer generally. You can also visit Not Part of on Facebook and Myspace, or read a Q&A with organiser Gareth McMann here.

The reason for my current blogging lapse isn’t anywhere near as good as Manchizzle’s - but it’s good to know that Mancubist can tick over in my extended absence:

• The Guardian Exchange tunnels continue to generate interest and speculative comments galore
• Urbis now runs a ‘60s Magical Music Tour‘ (wrong city, surely?) on alternate Saturdays, hosted by Brian Allen and finishing up at Twisted Wheel on Whitworth Street. It’s booked up til mid-May, so they must be doing something right
• Manchester has a new record label, Concrete Moniker - and its launch party is on Tuesday 4 March at Common bar on Edge Street. Any label with the Splice Girls on its roster is worth investigating, if you ask me…
• And, finally, one via email: ‘The first issue of if p then q magazine is out in March and the first book, in the if p then q classics series by Tom Jenks, in April. Also keep your eyes peeled for readings and happenings in Manchester. if p then q is keen to talk. We welcome all sorts of experimental submissions of poetry: see the guidelines on the website for more.’

Normal service will be resumed when I’m working less than 50 hours per week again.

A few interesting things are building up again so here’s a quick link dump…

One for you literary types first: Ar’ Back Yard is a triology of books by Anwar Dharma, giving a fictional account of 1980s Manchester. Or at least it will be when it’s published in the next few months. For now, however, you can read extracts - uploaded monthly - on the book’s very stylish website.

And here’s one for you history buffs: Ciara Leeming wrote an article for the MEN about this book by Keith Warrender. It’s fascinating stuff - a theme I’ve touched on before here, here and here - and the book already has plenty of fans here. Definitely one for the Amazon wishlist…

Finally, The Rehearsal, which I saw and actively participated in at the Temple of Convenience during Manchester International Festival, is showing at the Library Theatre tomorrow, Wedneday, at 7pm. Highly recommended if you’re looking for something to do.