Had this book been titled “How to listen” or “How to be all ears,” the title would have been appropriate to the content and directly explained the book’s focus. Why, then, does the title prefer to obscure its subject rather than reveal it, running counter to a title’s traditional function? This book is grounded in the experience of the unseen listener. Speakers are seen when they speak, whereas listeners recede into the background of the scene dominated by speakers.

SSS: How to imitate the sound of the shore using two hands and a carpet is, at first glance, exactly what it claims to be: an in-depth manual for staging a private (or public) performance, in which one uses both hands and a carpet to imitate the sounds of water making contact with land. Istanbul-based artist Cevdet Erek’s book also addresses theoretical and methodological issues related to the representation of nature.

In this post-truth era, how does one navigate the endless information available and choose a viable narrative of reality? In How to Know What’s Really Happening Glasgow-based writer and curator Francis McKee looks at various techniques for determining verity, from those of spy agencies and whistle-blowers to mystics and scientists.

In 2011, the astounding personal effects of Entwistle’s grandfather, architect Clive Entwistle (1916–76), emerged from a Manhattan storeroom. This book welds together original text fragments and extensive visual material from the collection and Clive Entwistle’s years in Paris, London, Tangiers, and New York.

The third issue in the Poetic Series takes its title Fear of Language from the work of emerging Slovenian poet Katja Perat, featured alongside poetry by Judith Goldman and excerpts from Eileen Myles’s forthcoming memoir, Afterglow.