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?

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.

I’ve been contacted by Alex Davies, who co-edits the experimental poetry website Openned. The name’s a combination of ‘open’ and ‘penned’, apparently.

Anyway, Alex recently had the good sense to move oop north from London and is now expanding the site to include Manchester. Here’s what he has to say about it:

It’s called opeNned (see what we did there, so clever us poets eh) and it’s just getting off the ground, but it would be a big boost to us if you wouldn’t mind posting on Mancubist about it with a message along the lines of ‘contact the editors if you are interested in being involved in opeNned’.

Besides publishing a rather hefty PDF anthology, they also run poetry nights in London - and it sounds from the website like they may well start doing the same here.

In the meantime, if you fancy getting involved, read the guidelines here and then email submissions [at] openned [dot] com.

Unless you walk around Manchester with your eyes fixed firmly on the floor - or sky - you’ll probably have noticed a series of plain white posters, each containing a poem and little else.

It’s all the work of one Norris Necante, who I’m led to believe is Stretford-based poet Mike Fitzgerald. He’s part of York Road Chorlton, a collective of three artists and creative types who are looking for ‘more talented people with similar interests’.

Always quick off the mark, Manchester’s Flickr community has photographed a few of Norris’/Mike’s poems - Ten a penny Jenny is particularly entertaining.

See Norris’ Myspace blog for a few more prime examples.

I hate hot weather - I can’t concentrate and hayfever pretty much incapacitates me - so logically I’m dead against global warming. These people are too, and they’re doing something about it:

As a retort to multi-million pound, jet set rock stars (see Wembley stadium for details) this Garden City Social is a Climate Camp fundraiser special!

Featuring: Salty Doggg and Waverton Collective in an electroacoustic sound mash up; DeFunkles (fresh off the back of releasing his new EP, expect a storming set); Huckleberry Sound System (banjo-twanging DJ sounds) plus poetry and god knows what else…

Expect drink and snacks, all provided by those nice people from the Climate Camp.

What’s particularly interesting about this event, from 8pm til midnight on Saturday 7 July, is the venue - the Yard Theatre in Hulme. Ever heard of it? Me neither. And, better still, it’s apparently opposite the Junction, which is possibly the strangest pub I’ve visited in Manchester.