Please specify the group

THE BLACK VENUSIAN SCROTUM-WORM

 

Beyond the plague-damned world…

 

(1) He awakes. Something is knocking at the sky, trying to get in.

She lies beside him. She hears nothing other than his breath, his heartbeat, the warm pulse of blood in his veins. He rises with a curious sense of unease.

An endless golden day. He paces barefoot from the shade, across warm sand to the water’s edge where ripples dash themselves across clusters of weed populated by small maroon crabs. They rotate sensory dishes to observe him, before scuttling into the safety of moist weed cavities. The world has no end.

— 0 —

(2) Dormant for a billion years, a random particle-drift infiltrates the air-scrubbers. Circulates on breathe-in breathe-out cycles. To eventually be inhaled. Lured on throbbing body-rhythms to the warm nutrient flow of seminal fluid, to bask in its potassium-rich testicular organic-bath, revived in spontaneous cellular division to multiplication and growth. A black slug-worm. Then two.

In order to proliferate it acts upon its host, increasing sexual desire that will result in ejaculation into further hosts. Swarming within its tight scrotal incubator in its millions. On the return flip there is love… and a lover. Two carriers. On Earth there is love, and there are more lovers. In the madness of an induced global orgy the Scrotum-Worm spreads around the world before its presence is even identified. Because humans are always driven by the reproductive imperative. Then the worm begins to modify its host’s spermatozoa to better serve its needs. Evolving from parasite to symbiote. Into a fused devouring hybrid intelligence, with each grotesquely deformed gonad slapping soft and wet, squirming, coiling and slithering with a million black worms.

— 0 —

(3) The sterile orbital habitat alone survives uncontaminated. It is sealed and isolated as a human last-chance refuge. With artificially inseminated uncorrupted embryos reared free of all social contact.

He awakes. Something is knocking at the sky, trying to get in…

 

 

 

BY ANDREW DARLINGTON

 

 

‘VOICES FROM THE FIRE:

DUMPSTER FIRE PRESS’

 

 

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Alien Soundscapes

Red Exposure, Chrome (Futurismo remastered reissue 2022)

Chrome were the speed-freak brain-damaged sonic fallout from San Francisco psychedelia, an acid-punk-rock band addicted to science fiction, noise, studio trickery (especially samples and effects), and guitar: lots and lots of loud, deviant guitar.

Formed in the mid-70s, the original incarnation of Chrome, formed by Damon Edge, recorded 1976’s The Visitation, a trippy, bluesy album that only hinted at the greatness to come. I actually love it as an album, but it’s not really Chrome; they didn’t exist until guitarist Helios Creed decided that Chrome needed him, whether they liked it or not. It was the nucleus of Edge & Creed that would be mostly responsible for a run of stunning albums that put Chrome on the map, particularly in England and Germany, where post-punks, old hippies, indie-rockers and sonic explorers would all embrace the band’s music.

Their next album, Alien Soundtracks, was actually a gathering-up of an aborted pornographic film soundtrack and outtakes from The Visitation, woven together with distant voices, drum machines that sound like gunfire, and layers and layers of additional sounds, all fading in and out, busily panning across the stereo field. And if that wasn’t weird enough, Half Machine Lip Moves upped the ante even more: this record is even louder, weirder and stranger. There’s more feedback, more demented metallic drumming, more fragmentation, and an insistent cyberpunk/horror theme running through it all. Tracks like ‘TV Eye’, ‘Zombie Warfare (Can’t Let You Down)’, ‘March of the Chrome Police’, ‘Zero Time’ and ‘Critical Mass’ mix Cold War paranoia with the overcrowded future worlds of Soylent Green and Bladerunner, conspiracy theories and sensory overload with bad trips and drug-fuelled dreams.

Those nightmares reached their ultimate fruition on the band’s Read Only Memory 12″ EP, which came clad in a grey collaged sleeve with pink highlighter amendments, and a similarly strange fold out poster. In just over 20 minutes (it seems much longer) it is, as The Seth Man’s review on Julian Cope’s Head Heritage website says

     set several steps beyond into alien territories of riotous interstellar pulses,
     abandoned synthetic treatments, shards of broken guitar FX and collages
     of Edge’s tape-recorded nighttime obsessions. It’s damaged, distorted and
     disembodied beyond belief as the wormholes in the sonic fabric just keep
     opening up and closing down without warning while a persistent backing
     (and backwards) rhythm track just keeps nudging throughout at
      inconsiderate intervals.

Playing with backwards tracks, loops, strange layers and juxtapositions, Read Only Memory remains both the band’s most far-out statement and also the pinnacle of their career. Nothing else comes close.

The Half Machine Lip Moves album actually shifted units and got good reviews, which attracted the attention of record companies such as Britain’s Beggars Banquet, who signed Chrome, presumably without hearing Read Only Memory! Red Exposure, the first of only two albums for the label, offers up a subversive set of better produced tracks, which offer some semblance of song format (things like verses and choruses) and pretends to be a (very) distant cousin of the most out-there new wave music. Having said that there were still the usual strange and inexplicable samples, muted vocals, degenerate guitar solos and an overall sense of musical dislocation and deconstruction.

It is this 1980 album that has got the remastered deluxe reissue treatment from Futurismo. Although there’s a CD digipack reissue with a bonus track, what you want is one (or all) of the three different coloured vinyl editions, which come with a neon poster featuring previously unseen photos, wrapped in a gatefold sleeve printed on heavy mirrored card, which only adds to the strangeness of the original Pollock-esque band images.

The album kicks off with ‘New Age’, which features a relentless marching beat with drums to the fore, and only hints of splintered guitar and some chanted voices to ease the tension, before ‘Rm. 101’ kicks off with burbling synthesizers which gradually give way to a gloomy keyboard fugue. Then the mood is shattered as ‘Eyes On Mars’ kicks in. Sounding as though it was recorded from the other end of the room on a single microphone, possibly onto a cassette recorder, it feels like the bastard mutant offspring of Motorhead and Hawkwind: distant vocals, jangling drums playing at double time, hissy synths and weedy vocals, with outbursts of whining, fluid guitar solo. It’s astonishingly disturbing, as is ‘Jonestown’ which follows, a brief evocation of the mass religious suicide at the People Temple’s Guyana farm.

Side 1 ends with the upbeat ‘Animal’, which pits garbled vocals against pulsing synthesizers, random noises, and needling guitar. The track simply fades out after 2 minutes, and when you turn the album over ‘Static Gravity’ plays the same trick in reverse, fading in before flanged bass or guitar booms and echoes over a riff-heavy guitar and a distant hypnotic keyboard sequence. The vocals here are declaimed, almost a foreshadowing of rap, but – as expected by now – only odd phrases come through in any clarity: ‘I see the future’ kicks the song off and there’s a muffled chorus too:

     No decision no corporation
     The sun isn’t dead tonight
     Fool formation

Clouds of sound perform a hypnotic dance as the chorus is repeatedly chanted. At only three-and-half minutes it begs a longer version or some sort of extended remix, but no, we swiftly move on to ‘Eyes In The Center’, another jaunty rhythmic excursion which eventually allows vocals and synthesizer noise into the mix. Four minutes in the intensity increases before the track executes a quick fade and we are faced with the babble of voices which introduce ‘Electric Chair’, a cheerful song of lust and torture, whose narrator is insistent that his victim loves the current and wants to fry. The upbeat and addictive perversity includes the obligatory acid guitar and distant speech, which is at odds with the natural sounds that kick off the next track, ‘Night of the Earth’.

Gradually, however, the animal sounds and tinkling piano are subsumed by whiplash synthesizer, layers of indistinct chatter and dark percussion. Just as the track builds sonically into a busy dark mood, it gently fades away before the final track, ‘Isolation’, arrives with a similar sonic stew that is soon ripped apart by, a monster guitar riff, pounding drums and (you guessed it) vocal samples. The intensity builds and builds, as does the highlighted guitar solo, before the layers are finally stripped back again to reveal the continuing babble of voices and muted drums before a swift fade ends the song and album.

I’ve never thought of it before, but in a way this could be regarded as an ambient (or illbient) album, it’s certainly far more concerned with texture and mood than songs or rock music. Many of the tracks feel like tentative experiments or excerpts from longer jams, worked on and treated in the studio; for me, most of them are too short, and the whole album is only just over half-an-hour long. But if I don’t agree that it’s their ‘greatest work’ it’s certainly up there with the best. This incarnation of Chrome would go on to make two more albums before Edge and Creed fell out, with Damon Edge moving to Paris and using the band name to issue loads of albums that were more space-rock than experiment. After his death in 1995, Helios Creed picked up the baton and reformed a version of Chrome with some previous band members. Their music is much more what I expect from Chrome, and I recommend 2014’s Feel It Like A Scientist and 2017’s Scaropy.

In retrospect Chrome had far more influence and effect than anyone realized at the time. When I was at college in the early 1980s, the home-tapers and post-punk bands I got to know were listening to Cabaret Voltaire, Hawkwind and Chrome. A heady mix that produced a potent and lively music scene, unafraid to use and abuse sound material and ideas from all sorts of sources and genres. Let’s hope this reissue is just the start of new exposure and more acclaim for Chrome.

 

Rupert Loydell

More information about the Red Exposure reissue can be found at https://www.futurismoinc.com/category/releases

You can read The Seth Man’s full review of Read Only Memory at https://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/thebookofseth/chrome-read-only-memory

A selection of Chrome albums are available as digital downloads at https://chromemusic.bandcamp.com/music

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The Tories, Brexit and the English people

 

The Trussterfuck didn’t last long but the impact will linger for a long time. Rishi Sunak is now prime minister and things appear calmer. How could they not? But the appearance won’t last. The Autumn Statement is coming, and with it tax rises and public spending cuts. More strikes are on the way with civil servants and even members of the Royal College of Nursing opting to add to the already established string of disputes. Sunak has already had to let one of his key appointments, Gavin Williamson, resign after he was accused of bullying, including the suggestion that he told a senior civil servant to go ‘slit your throat’ and ‘jump out of a window’. The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, remains in post, despite being appointed just six days after she resigned from the same position for breaking the ministerial code. Things appearing calmer is entirely relative to the preceding six weeks of Truss rule. It is worth noting that Sunak has inherited a divided party with no hint that he has yet solved those internal issues.

It does, though, provide us with breathing space to try to make sense of all this. It seems to me that our politics has been, for a long time, dictated by a three way relationship. Our politics has followed around the relationship between the Conservative Party, Brexit or the European Union in general, and the English people. I have chosen the English specifically because the relationship between them and the Tories is exceedingly important. The last time the Tories got more votes than any other party at a general election in Scotland was 1959. The Welsh people have never voted for a Tory government. If the UK has to suffer Tories in power, then, it is usually because of the English.

The Tories came to power in 2010, as part of a coalition between David Cameron’s party and Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats. In England the Tory vote was 39.5% and enough to secure 297 English constituencies (with 326 as the winning post). Importantly it was the largest of any party, putting them in pole position for forming a government. The English people were vital in securing this slender victory by buying into the ridiculous arguments that Labour, under Gordon Brown, were responsible for a global banking crisis. They further fell for the ludicrous idea that this banking crisis could be solved by austerity. Instead of trying to rectify the problem at source, Cameron and his chancellor, George Osborne, convinced enough of the English people that closing local libraries and decimating other public services would do the trick. Elections are often settled in less than one hundred constituencies so it doesn’t actually take much in theory to swing things. The Tories are extremely adept at getting enough support. There are, in other words, enough people in England to give them a fair hearing, even when they are talking utter rubbish and offering to harm the people they are appealing to. The media does a fine job in making sure they seem sensible and managerial whilst deriding left wing policies as extreme, when they are actually rather moderate.

Sections of the English population have been very pliable when it comes to immigration. We cannot divorce immigration from the EU and the issue of Brexit, as the referendum result to leave the EU was widely interpreted to be about just that. We now have the bizarre situation that the government wants to continue to be tough on people arriving to the UK (again actually England on the whole), while business leaders, even those that supported Brexit, are complaining of a low workforce and calling out for more people to be let in. As Brexit ‘got done’, the Tories became ever more UKIP like and the sections of English people that followed them expect them to get control of immigration. ‘Taking back control’ became a mantra for the Brexit project. It is likely that people feel less in control over their lives now than they did but it is also unclear whether they will punish any specific politicians for these feelings.

Europe was a problem for the Tories decades before the Brexit referendum. Divisions within the party, particularly evident during the 1990’s, were the reason for the referendum. As UKIP rose under Nigel Farage, the calls on the backbenches of the Tory Party for the UK to leave the EU also rose. David Cameron was arrogant enough that he could win a referendum and unite his party once and for all. It’s easy to forget that just a few short years ago, the Tories were not a fully fledge Brexit supporting party. They wanted a different type of Europe, not to be cast away from it completely. David Cameron’s gamble misread the sentiment of the English people this time. It was a finely balanced result but became presented as a clear mandate for the UK to leave, sowing further division in Scotland where there was a clear majority to remain.

England, the Tories and Brexit will continue to dominate UK politics for some time. For lasting, progressive change within the confines of establishment politics, the reaction of England to the ongoing crises will be pivotal. I’m not remotely convinced by Sunak’s abilities as prime minister yet. He seems a lightweight, out of his depth so far. He and his supporters cling to the idea that he was responsible for the furlough scheme during Covid lockdown and therefore he has proven himself. It’s pretty much all they can point to. Never mind that many countries were also taking the same practical measures. Sometimes prime ministers grow into the role by proving their critics wrong, or just circumstances improve around them and they look better. It is possible that Sunak could develop in the role. It is possible that enough people in England will feel positively enough about him within two years for him to win a general election. It seems unlikely.

When it comes to non-establishment politics, Just Stop Oil are getting all the headlines. It feels like they are the only show in town. I’m tempted to mention the wave of strikes but I think we’d have trouble painting most of these trade unions as anti-establishment. They are playing their part in the establishment battle over the running of the economy. It is a battle they will want to end in a Labour government and the hope of nicer, fluffier legislation regarding strikes. Just Stop Oil is admirable for their refusal to kowtow to debates about tactics. As I write this, a stalling of their actions that have disrupted the normal (not so smooth) running of the M25 is in place. Their own press statement highlights that they have stalled to allow the government time to think. It suggests there is more to come. There should be much more to come, on this and many other issues.

The Autumn Statement is going to need Sunak and his chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, to perform the same trick that Cameron and Osborne did in 2010. While Brexit didn’t really get done, while the economic hardship of many remains and cuts deeper than last time, what will really matter is whether the English people will be fooled again.

 

 

Jon Bigger
Image: Guy Smallman

 

 

Reprinted from freedomnews.org.uk

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The Bamboo Weaver

Save the dates, the days which really matters.
The rolling light passes by, the marked once arrives only twice.
The marked days of the market is fixed, the crafted stalls ready to be displayed.
The labour cultivates it’s hope stringing to Devine.
The earned money flurry their patched pockets in a hurry.
Coins rolling like a bicycle with no handle to direct it’s Id-an paradisiacal slide.
The visit to the hill tops is a routine of daily excavation.
The untraveled paths is a chapter to be explored,
As the shrines of lapping nature weather it’s wheels,
The disguise of sun and wind unfolded every couple weeks.
The autumn to bloom, from buds to fall fruits,
The cock shrills it’s hote and the bamboo-smiths travels distant to fold manoeuvring shoots.
A cluster of bamboo shoots, shrilling in groups.
Letting the wind sliced by sword of the hills.
It’s green tall giraffe-an trunk, a secret bower of the serpent’s king.
The mirror sight of green, light yet reen.
The tattooed hands harvest the needed sticks of green.
Bundle the green, few old, few new and let the baby bamboo shoots to bloom.
The ritual of turning green into a crafted artefact’s.
Shredding of bamboo into fine strip art.
The scaling sound of crafty knife slicing the bamboo rhythm the cracked heels.
Bundled and pressed under the slab of wooden sheet,
To avoid the curly twists of the bamboo tips.
The floating fingers weave the bamboo sheets,
Few small, few big, few round and few as free flowing soul of mist.
Be it box, bowl, mat, fan or broom, the crafty fingers shapes the bamboo into multi hist.
Mingling the power of nature and the creative craft of people of the hills,
Helps and explains the lived experience of sustainable use of nature and needed-hood.
Decade old charm is earned when the brew memories channelled into being.
The decade old glasses hanging with a hope of string,
Fearing the dust of urbanization, not decay the crafty art of artists to behold.
Decades of decay is rewarded to artist who preserve this bamboo-smith’s.

 

 


Author – Sonali Gupta
Gumla, Jharkhand, India.

Bio – Sonali Gupta has currently completed Master’s from Centre for English Studies, JNU New Delhi India. She’s a poet from Gumla district, Jharkhand, India. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Welcome to Bollywood!

Alan Dearling catches up with the Bollywood Brass Band on their 30th Birthday Tour, at the Square Chapel in Halifax

The Bollywood film industry is huge; gargantuan in fact. According to Statista.com, Bollywood is the largest producer of films on the planet, and the second biggest international earner of film revenue after Hollywood, and ahead of the increasingly important Chinese film industry.

The music, the musicians, the Bollywood ‘stories’ from the films, the Bollywood composers… All this is a part of the Bollywood Brass Band (BBB) Experience. This is a carnival, festivals and a processional marching band. And, most significantly, a weddings band. Certainly they are the UK’s premier exponents of Bollywood brass and drum music…and they’ve just been out and about across the UK on tour sharing their love and passion for the music and films.

Formed in 1992, a collection of musicians met the Shyam Brass Band from India and became members of a niche genre of brass and drum bands playing Bollywood songs – the ubiquitous pop music of India. As the BBB told me: “The Bollywood Brass Band started small, playing for chilly Diwali celebrations and spending early Sunday mornings accompanying the groom’s party at Indian weddings.”

On this 2022 tour the BBB celebrate 30 years on the proverbial ‘musical road’.  The BBB show commences on the move, the musicians wend their way in a crocodile procession into the hall, playing lively, dancey music. On stage, they act as musical curators to present a musical tour, a show, and in many ways ‘an education’ about the different styles and film contexts of Bollywood film music from India, in particular the music of composers, A. L. Rahman,  Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Ilaiyaraaja’s Rakkamma. Members of the BBB have also written original brass and drums music in the Bollywood styles.  Along with their concerts and street performances, on their 30th Birthday tour they have also been running educational workshops in schools and colleges, engaging with young people using drums and brass instruments. The live show also featured some mesmeric dancing, adding to the colour and the spirit of their performances. Their albums have featured them alongside prominent Indian musicians and singers, including the two Carnatic connections albums, featuring violinist, Jyotsna Srikanth.

The live show includes back projections of Bollywood film selections. Featuring literally hundreds, and indeed thousands of performers. Bollywood is epic stuff. It’s the stuff of myths, legends, over-the-top spectacle, romance and humour. Imagine scantily attired Indian belly dancers magically appearing out of drums, cakes, whatever really. Whether in black and white or glorious Technicolor, Bollywood films are eye-catching, no, that’s wrong, they are eye-poppingly peculiar.

BBB website and links: https://bollywoodbrassband.co.uk/

It’s a real life story of ‘taking coals to Newcastle’ – the BBB have taken their wedding musical extravaganza repeatedly to India and to Indian weddings across the globe: Bollywood Brass Band have performed in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Rajasthan, South Africa, Thailand and Muscat.

Here’s video of them performing at a wedding in Udaipur, Rajasthan:

https://youtu.be/JXKZfXkK2_U

They’ve also spread their musical magic from festival stages, including the Roskilde Festival, Denmark to Oslo’s Mela festival in Norway, through to the WOMAD festi in the UK.

It’s infectious, exhilarating stuff.

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Whatever Happened to the NME?

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(the diabolist)


“They say she’s the sort of diabolist who gives diabolists a bad name”, he said in a hushed voice as she, the diabolist in question, strolled past us.

“She has such presence, she upstaged a famous and chic writer in a recent film!” he continued, ever so breathlessly.      

“Not Anaïs Nin? I mean, the writer who was upstaged?”

“It would never do to say, my dear! Why do you name that star-struck bitch?”

“Ah, just a wild notion. But is this other woman really a diabolist? Or an occultist?”

He didn’t reply.

I closed my eyes and counted to ten.   I opened my eyes. He hadn’t gone away. Nor had she, she was strolling back again, looking as diabolic as possible.

 

 



David Miller

 

 

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Life and World

Finding something
After striving for it
Is better than an instant gift
Wrapped in a heart shaped box.
No destinations meet
When the journey isn’t exciting.
The belief in an ideal world
Only weakens the imagination.
We seek world
When what we really want is life.
Aren’t we mistaken?
Inner meaning to be something
Is the mantra to find life,
The world follows
And is found in its own spin.
The victory flag
Needs to be fixed to the ground
To flutter way above
And bring the pride of the horizon closer.
The heart doesn’t beat alone
It knows what other hearts seek;
Its beat is heard.

 

 

.

Sushant Thapa

 

.

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The Greatest Gift

 

Care, care for our fellow beings

Help those who are suffering

Refuse to buy dead turkeys, geese, ducks and pigs

In bloody “blankets”

Speak out, save, campaign

To liberate the trembling terrified

Monstrously mass murdered at 6 months for

A single day of Godless gorging and stuffing

Sense their pain, their awareness, their brilliance… their loveliness

 

 

Heidi Stephenson

 

 

.

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Marcus Aurelius Timepiece

 

Old Companions wend down Memory Lane
Imagining their broad Grand Thoroughfare
Christmas lights and Celebration bunting
Corner Shops refurbished fully-stocked
By fondly- labelled jars and retro juju

To have holiday in glancing backward  
Seeking a suspension and repair   –   is natural
But unnatural and dangerous to stare   –  
For soon they shall be sprawling at the curb-side
Roll-ups and super-strength cans as their crutches
A greasy ‘chip’ borne heavy on each shoulder   –

‘Too late’ an owlet hoots above the eaves
Of ‘Grey Chimneys’ and sub-let ‘Viagra Villas’
Memory Lane led to Bereavement Street
By way of low and mean Resentment Alley

I would rather make today the whole of time   –
I can do without their Facebooks faking it
Their Dad-Rock desperation streaming out
Aural pick-me-up Old-Fashioned Humbugs

If I decide to court misplaced Nostalgia
It will be for things that I have yet to see   –
Aliens speaking Goldberg Variations
In Climate Summit straight from Star Omega
Earth Politicians freed from trance
To make and implement Responsive Action

Some suppose time is an Open Spiral
When circles touch a sense of déjà vu
Informs us ‘Patience   –
All returns again’
Today is all that lovers ever need
A fractal of eternity

 

 

Bernard Saint
Illustration: Claire Palmer

 

 

 

.

 

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Ealdwine’s Tale

 

ACT 1

Scene 1

The stage is set on two levels with access to the top level at stage left. It is an English woodland situated on a hill top facing west. Between the trees in the distance, the sun is low in the sky, seen through a haze. On the top level is the trunk of a large tree rising up beyond the field of view.

On the lower level, stage left, is a fallen tree trunk and on the right a spring with running water which falls in to a pool. The roots of the tree above are visible growing over rocks, out of which are growing ferns. Moss grows in proliferation. It is early autumn. The foliage is beginning to turn.

The sound of evening birdsong is present.

Ealdwine, a vagrant of old, enters from stage right. His clothes are more coverings than anything tailored. Bits of animal fur and scraps of cloth make up his costume. All patched and cobbled together. He carries a walking staff and a bundle of belongings comprising more scraps of fabric and a threadbare blanket. His two possessions, a bone handled knife and a wooden bowl are attached to a belt made of twine.

He speaks in a ‘soft country accent’.

Ealdwine’s speech:

‘ I’ll rest here a while to take ‘freshment ‘an contemplate the lane. It’s been a trial of wits, these last few days, the old wind an’ the rain fightin’ it out some’

(Ealdwine moves across the stage to the fallen trunk, sits with a groan and takes a small piece of bread from his pocket)

‘Seems so long I’ve been roving I don’t recall where I began’

(He contemplates for a moment. Taking in the scene.)

‘I recall my Da though. He were a big bugger for sure. Calm though, proper gentle. ‘E did carve the sticks for us little uns. Boats and whistles and sorts. ‘E’d a love ‘is animals ‘e did. Taking the time for ‘em. Love ‘em like they were his kin. Fox,  brock, frightsome hare. Otter in the river and the coney on the ‘ill side. ‘E loved ‘em all. Sing little songs about them ‘e did. How did it go now?

(Sings)

‘Little  Coney come,

with the men o’ Rome,

The boat sails in,

little Coney they jumps out.

When I comes for my supper,

They ‘ops about’.

(Ealdwine gives a chuckle)

‘Aye, that were it. ‘ops about’.

(He chuckles again, shaking his head).

‘My dear old Ma she did love ‘my Da something rotten. She did say ‘e were the kin’est man about the place and that were why she chose ‘im to father her babbys. Cos she did want kine Childs. And she say to us that was why we was all so kine and gentle, on account of ‘im. She had a hand in it too mind. Rockin’ us like she did on them cold morns after old Jack of the Frost ‘ad been and done ‘is work, and on the long summer evenings while the swallow did dip an’ dive around our ‘eads and the door mouse curled in the nest in the long grass about us. She did make us feel as content as those tiny beasts, all wrapped in ‘er arms as we were. Close to ‘er chest like she’d never let us go.

(He bows his head and closes his eyes for a minute)

‘Four of us little ‘uns their were. Two of us didn’t see the turn of age. Little Mildred, she went first. Didn’t stay a week of seven nights she didn’t. My Ma she did a cry an’ cry. I ‘member it clear, being the eldest. My Da, after we’d given the tiny body back to the earth, ‘e did just sit, staring, contemplating his grief. After some time, ‘e put it like this. ‘Tis like all the beasts’, ‘e said, ‘some do come for long, and some for a little. But each do bring us all we need. Our sweet Mildred did bring us the understanding of grief, so we as know it in others. So we may as understand how other folks be feeling when they tell us they be grieving’. I’ve learnt well enough since then, I tell thee.’

(He stamps his bare foot on the floor)

‘With all this wonder I do share it with. The trees, plants, birds and the beasts. The rising and the settin’ of the sun. I figure I’ve known as much grievin’ as any man, and it were our little Mildred who showd me ‘ow’

It were our Ashlee the younger who left us next. Went off one mornin’ hunting eggs, looking to bring us some eatin’. By the time night swallowed us ‘e hadn’t made it back an’ Ma, was a frettin’ summut awful. Knowing like she did, summut bad had ‘append. My old Da, ‘e did set off with first light and sure enough that af’noon ‘e come back carrying the body that used to be our Ashlee’s, all busted about the neck. Cryin’ in ‘is eyes me old Da were and I reckon that boys body were the ‘eaviest load ‘e was ever a burdened with. Grievin’ was somethin’ we was easy with now, thanks to little Mildred, we all sobbed around Ashlee as we laid ‘im deep.

But life went on, an’ we saw as ‘ow Ashlee ‘ad shown us ‘ow to laugh. Always pullin’ stools out from under ye or ticklin’ the feet of the babby when we was trying to settle. It did drive my Ma to distraction. But she loved it really, we all did and the lightness of ‘is ways was sorely missed.

Time was it were me, Ma, Da and me sister Wren. She was Wren on account of her being so small. That and the fact the birds did all love ‘er so. Even when she were tiny, she’d stay so still that the birds would come and perch on ‘er. She could talk with ‘em too. They loved her they did. My Ma knew when Wren was on ‘er way home, she’d say, ‘cos the birds would raise up their song to greet ‘er, so much they loved ‘er. Wren were stubborn too. When Wren made up ‘er mind there was no swingin’ it.

(Ealdwine stands and, taking his bowl from his belt, moves toward the spring to take some water.)

‘Well, time passed without us laughing for a season or two after Ashlee left us until after some contemplating, my Da said this would never do, and that Ashlee had come to teach us how to laugh so we best be ‘membering. And on this ‘e took us to the fayre in the town. It were the first time we’d ever been near the place, Wren and me, and I’m reckonin’ my Da did soon rue ‘is thinkin’ to take us, seeing as we played up so much. Run wild with the ‘citment we did. Gettin’ in to mischief and causin’ strife about the place. Didn’t hurt no one, just silly games, like the spirit of young Ashlee was us in us. Letting chooks out of cages, scratching at the ears of old sows til they squeeled. Pulling on maids apron strings so they do fall in puddles. Tripping up the gentle folk, playing round their feet. Proper little rascals we were. But my Da brought us home tired and content that evening havin’ seen more than we’d ever seen. Jugglers and jesters. Singers an’ the ol’ dancin’. I heard bells and flutes. There was folks from all corners. Some you’d want to pop in your pouch and bring home with you, others, the likes of which, you’d be happy to never see again. All sorts of smells and sights, more than I could tell thee. But, as I sits ‘ere telling thee it all seems real enough for me to touch. Like I could reach out my ‘and to bring one of those jugglers ‘ere to entertain I.’

(Ealdwine moves back to the tree trunk and sits again).

 

‘Time did pass like it do, and my loved ones did pass with it. It was only I that stayed on to be the one to tell the tale. Our Wren, she met a fella who did put the fear in ‘er that we was godless and as such we were sure to burn in some eternal fire. My Da, ‘e did say the man was talkin’ codswallop but Wren had taken on the fear an’ no words could bring her round. Eventually after much yellin’ and rowing Wren left us to be with ‘er God. She couldn’t hav’ known the sufferin’ she left us in. Cos if she ‘ad, she never would ‘av gone. Not like that. The pain led to my Ma fallin’ sick and we couldn’t get ‘er well. No matter what. Soon after, the men came to clear the wood and see to make us leave. Da did tell ‘em we be livin’ in these woods since all time but they says don’t mean nothing, we can’t live there no more. When they made to touch my Ma, who just lay silent in them days, my Da and I did set on ‘em. They was too many for us and we ended up on our arses with bloody noses and nowhere to live. That was the end for my Ma. She flew off to find Mildred and Ashlee. My Da and I wandered like I do now. Harsh times full of grief. My Da’s spirit left behind in them woods. It weren’t long before ‘e lay down ‘im self to take death over the suffering ‘e felt. He couldn’t see no sense in stayin’ when so much o’ what ‘e loved had gone. I made ‘ im a bed of ivy and woodbine, like the ones ‘e was familiar with and I told ‘im tales of the old times, with Mildred and Ashlee. I reminded ‘im of how the birds would sing for Wren and sang ‘im the songs ‘e used to sing us when we was childs. I cradled him like my Ma cradled us an’ ‘is Ma cradled ‘im and how the land cradled all of us since there was a time known to man.

Three days it were, with me an’ ‘im . My Da, the kindest, gentlest man you’re ever likely to meet and me going with him back through ‘is life. Till eventually we came to an end and ‘e slipped off. The love finally leaving ‘im. And then there were only Ealdwine. And no matter how much I bawled and bellowed in my grief, no one came to comfort I. I was going to ‘ave to make this right within my sel’.

(Ealdwine moves across the stage, climbs to the upper level and prepares himself a bed at the base of the tree from the foliage around him. Taking his blanket from his bundle. He sits on his bed to finish his tale).

‘I have lost track of the time they been gone. Aye, Mildred wanted me to learn the most, seeing as I’m the last to have known ‘em. One by one they went to the land from whence they’d come an’ I’d loved ‘em. Every one of ‘em. And they took with ‘em their tales and songs and jokes and all the little ways that made them who they were. My Ma’s fussing, my Da’s singing, Wren’s whistlin’ with the birds and Ashlee’s gigglin’. They is all only in old Ealdwine’s head now, nearly as real as when they was about themselves, but all in ‘ere.

(He taps his head)

If I wants some fussing or needs a little caring I do call on my old Ma and sure enough there she be all smilin’ all rosy an’ apple like. And if I wants a song I ask my old Da to come and sure enough he do come with ‘is old whiskery face raising up to the big old sky and letting loose some old tune for the clouds to dance along with. When I hear the birds chiruppin’ and singing away I do see my sister there holding out ‘er ‘and to bring down the Sparrows from the hedge. If it’s wet and cold and the birds be in short supply it ‘s Wren I call on to whistle for me to cheer my heart. When it’s  a laugh I need I shout for Ashlee and there ‘e be. Mischievous like, eyes still bright with the fun and ‘e do make I laugh some. And little Mildred’s face do come to I when I’m needing to understand summut all innocent and peaceful as the day we laid ‘er back in the earth.

How all those folk comes to be in old Ealdwine’s head I don’t s’pose if I were to see another thousand moons I’d ever know. It do vex me something rotten. So grinnin’ I am there’s room for ‘em, but I’ll be foxed to my end to know how they got there. Love ‘em’

(The sun goes down. The bird song and light fade to nothing)

 

 

Ben Greenland

 

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Rufus

Rufus

After climbing the long
and winding stone staircase
eighty-seven steps that leads
from Compton’s Priory Road
To Hartley’s Hartley Avenue
you take a seat in the park
try to catch your late sixties breath
but your late sixties hands are too slow
your breath slips away
like a line of poetry
that never quiet seems
to make the transition
from the mind to the page.
As you take a deep shot of air
from the lips of a hurricane
talking in its sleep
you ask yourself
and you ask the wind
how much of your breath is Katrina?
How much of it is Imogen?
but the wind isn’t talkative
or the wind is secretive
or the wind doesn’t know.

You take a landline out of your pocket
with the longest extension lead in the world
call the Katrina line to ask
if they’re going to call the next hurricane
after the girlfriend who blew you away
with her beautiful smile
while waiting patiently
a hand at the other end
of the rainbow hangs up
a hand covered in red Sellotape
a hand covered in raindrops.
Disappointed, you call the switchboard
down at the Tumbleweed Hotel
for a mythological alternative
an indigenous fairy tale
the name the wind gave itself
gave its invisible siblings.
A magpie calls out a suggestion
from the other side of the park
calls a name with too many syllables
a name longer than a freight train
a name which even
the invisible troubadours of Hartley
the chatter-boxing sparrows can’t pronounce.
The name of the wind
is a lovely long jazz-like solo
playing in the park in the key of crow
a name augmented
by the feather bands of winter.
Yet again you ask the wind
how much of your breath
is the breath of Imogen?
How much of your breath
is the breath of Katrina?
How much the name
a mother gives a child.

Blowing out a little smoke-scented breath
you begin to write a long letter
to the poetic heart of Compton
to the crows flying
from tree to tree
like woodland inspectors
to the ghost of a dog called Rufus
barking peacefully in the quiet rooms
of the house at night.
In homage to Rufus
a tennis ball drops out of your sleeve
another drops into your hand
after dropping out of a bohemian pocket.
You throw them experimentally
until they vanish
like half remembered dreams
gone with the dark
gone with the moon
running at tennis ball altitude
through the long grass.

Its peaceful sitting here with Rufus
the silence only broken every now and then
by the voices of strangers greeting each other
on the other side of the hedge.
Birds sing in the park
trees stir slowly out of winter’s slumber
nothing moves in the air
not a butterfly breaking out of sleep
nothing big enough for the eye to catch
or Rufus to chase.
The sky is jam-packed with clouds
they only sing when it rains
white as primary school chalk
they drift over the distant rooftops
of Crownhill and Efford.

The sun moves in and out of cover
passes over Hartley Avenue
shines down over the stone staircase
that leads back to Priory Road.
The sun brings out
the dark shadows of your lifeline
as it moves across the page
you read the words you’ve written
but predict nothing
cross the palm of your hand
with a strand of silver hair
you call landlines
call Katrina and Imogen
call Rufus through the dog flap
in the kitchen wall.

A pair of sleep-drifting nightingales
pass through this peaceful room of a day
are they friends of Rufus?
Moving in and out of the blue
or mirages in the sky?
You would drift off with them
but your wings are wishes
that wouldn’t make it as far
as a tennis ball rolling across the grass
to meet Venus in Flashing Meadow
to meet Katrina in New Orleans.

Summer moves closer
sunrays run fingers through long silver hair
a shadow stretches out
under a log fire sky
a family of scarecrows
remove hats and coats
creating a charity shop
installation on the grass.
The sun warms
the stone-cold doorsteps
of Compton and Hartley
melts the polar ice caps on your fingers.
Sparrows insert musical chatter
into the soundtrack of the day.
As you wish
you wish you could
read these words to them
in the key of a songbird
or sing like Rufus
barking in dog decibels
resting here in this garden
until spring comes out of the ground
wish a million wishes were enough
to inherit a key that opens a door
to a three bedroom house
a place to drop your name on a doormat
to write love poems in every room
to immortalise its architecture
to write as crows fly home over Hender’s Corner
to write love letters to the dogs of peace
to let Rufus run free
to haunt the leafy lanes
and cul-de-sacs
to lay your head down when night comes
to fall asleep on the wild slopes of Compton.

The voices of dog walkers
bring you back down to seaside level
they slip over the hedge
slip over your shoulder
over the ghostly bark of Rufus
then the quiet returns
as does the sun
yet still you linger
you don’t want to leave
the magic of this place
but know you must.
You wave an orchestral wand in a flourish
to summon a house out of the ground
then remind yourself, you’re not a tree
waiting for birds to migrate
back home to England
waiting for leaves to return
waiting to wear them like gloves
hundreds of green pairs
slipping over long brown fingers.
You’re not waiting for a taxi
you’re waiting like Rufus
for spring to move out of winter
as cherry blossoms begin to fall
at such a young age. 

 

 

.
Kenny Knight 

 

 

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London autonomous bookshop & cafe to open

 

Winter is coming, and that means the autonomous shelter season is upon us once again. Last year a St. Mungo’s hostel in Gray’s Inn Road was occupied from December to April, before exploding into a small network of interlinked shelters across Central and East London. The Autonomous Shelters Network is already back in action in solidarity with the houseless community at an undisclosed number of locations across the city.

This Wednesday will see the opening of the Autonomous Cafe & Bookshop in a former ‘necropolis station’ at 121 Westminster Bridge Road as part of the Autonomous Winter Shelter Network. It will be serving liberated coffee for pay-what-you-can from 2pm, with an open mike from 6 till 8pm. All money raised will be profitshared amongst people working in the cafe, or donated to helping finance the project. Freedom received the following communique from the AWSN:

In this time of crisis, as a collective of people from different backgrounds, we choose to occupy a property as a form of non-violent direct action, not only with the intention to live there but also to help fellow victims of poverty and social injustice.

We wish to start an autonomous open door coffee shop and infoshop to learn and to teach about the struggles in poverty. The aim is to share experiences and material goods in these times of need, as well as meet people who are keen on working together to improve the situation. To open an empty space in order to provide food and clothing is to act in a meaningful way in this time of social emergency. We will not only take good care of a building and make great coffee, but also give it great purpose! Our goals:- We want to create an accessible and safe space for everyone who is interested in autonomous practices.

To educate and organise ourselves and others, and contribute to the Autonomous Winter Shelter Network.

Sharing food, clothes and books, fundraising (books, art, events).

Hosting workshops, skillshares, info-talks, meetings, discussions and debates about issues that affect us.

Great coffee – pay as you like policy. Everyone can afford a cup!”

The buildings form part of the Autonomous Shelter Network – a mutual aid, mutual respect association dedicated to direct housing and the provision of food and necessities.

The cafe is a place of contact for the public, houseless people and the media, but for now all queries and requests can be directed to autonomous_shelters_network [at] protonmail [dot] com. Please contact Victor on the email above if you are able to provide any of the following:

Van/car hire for delivery pick/up

Food, especially canned goods, dried

Cutlery, cooking equipments

Clothing – especially socks, underwear

Mattresses, bedding, blankets

Lamps/lights

Cleaning equipment

Bicycles, parts, tools

Old laptops, computers, phones

Tools, especially screws

Building materials, wood, metal

The shelters also appreciate volunteers who wish to dedicate time to work alongside residents and collaborate. All the spaces are explicitly anti-authoritarian and encourage a collectivist spirit, and although we strive to understand why people perpetuate abuse, it is not tolerated. If you wish to drop-off any of the above, or indeed meet someone from the network, please contact the person listed above.

FOR AN AUTONOMOUS CITY!

SQUAT THE LOT!

OCCUPY & RESIST!

TRESPASS IS FREEDOM!

 

from Freedom Newshttps://freedomnews.org.uk

 

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We Peaked At Paper

We Peaked At Paper is subtitled ‘An Oral History of British Zines’ so we sent the book to Alistair Fitchett, writer of many paper fanzines in the 1980s and 90s and founding editor of Tangents which was one of Britain’s first ezines, for his thoughts. IT’s questions and comments are in bold.

You’ve had the book for a week or so now. We know you seem to spend an awful lot of time reading old detective fiction, but have you found the time to get to this?

Ha! Actually I’ve been giving the detective fiction a break recently and have been ploughing my way through some hefty political histories of the interwar years, so this one provided some light relief.

We Peaked At Paper isn’t a piece of academic research then?

No it’s not, thank goodness. It’s a quick and breezy read. I mean, there is a bit of a sense of the writers, or interviewers or whatever being interested in some kind of common thread across the different fanzines and their writer’s, ah, motivations or whatever, but mostly it reads like a series of conversations in pubs or cafes or wherever. Which of course it is. And it’s ‘edited’, or not, to reflect that, so there are lots of run on sentences and pauses and on the whole it does all read very much as that sounds.

You’ve probably realised we thought it would be good to mirror that whole format in the review…

Yes, I twigged that. I suppose it feels appropriate, although if I’m honest that was always the thing in fanzines that was pretty much guaranteed to switch me off. I used to hate getting a fanzine through the post and discovering that it was nothing but dreary lists of questions and answers transcribed from a quick five-minute chat in a dingy back room of a grubby pub, everyone so full of their own self-importance, the fanzine writer especially. I mean, it was better when they were obviously questions the writer had posted off to the band or whoever. Better still when they were just completely made up. That was a laugh at least. I only ever did one ‘interview’ in any of my fanzines, a mail one with The Groove Farm who treated the whole thing with the contempt it deserved. They wrote quite rude answers, which was funny. I suppose they were trying really hard to distance themselves from that whole ‘twee’ schtick that seemed to be going around.

That was awful, wasn’t it? All those dreadful shambling groups with hair slides and lollipops.

Well, it was, but that was also to large extent a myth that was used by the mainstream music press to, I don’t know, undermine the validity of the fanzine culture. That sounds wanky, doesn’t it? There’s none of that sort of ‘analysis’ in the book though. Well, Peter Perturbed touches on it. He makes some good points about those records and those bands and starts to open the box on how exactly that whole ‘scene’ came into being. People in disparate parts of the UK all seemingly wearing the same clothes, listening to the same records. How and why did that happen? He makes the point about it seemingly being more about what was being rejected rather than anything else, and that certainly, ah, resonates with me. It was all letters and mix tapes and adolescents making fanzines to make some sort of sense of themselves and desperately looking for connections I suppose, trying to feel less alone or whatever, particularly for anyone not living in London, or cities or big towns generally.

Does that mid to late 1980s period dominate the book?

Not really, although I suppose naturally I was drawn most to those chapters with the writers and fanzines I knew, or read at that time. I remember a lot of the titles actually, particularly from around that mid 1980s and early 90s period. Some of the people interviewed in the book I’d have written letters to, although I’m sure they wouldn’t remember and that’s fair enough. Peter Perturbed’s chapter feels hand down the most enjoyable, but that’s maybe because Pete is just so good at that whole balance between being self-effacing but also supremely talented and effortlessly engaging. Not that I’m in any way jealous.

Siân Pattenden’s chapter is also great fun. It’s funny, both those writers make a point about how they were inspired and influenced by Smash Hits at the time, and that connects with me because really Smash Hits was my music press of choice for a long time. Actually I probably went straight from reading Smash Hits to fanzines in one step. The inky music press didn’t really interest me that much. The first fanzine that me and my friend made was basically just bits cut out of Smash Hits and us taking the piss out of things, as adolescents do. And we only did that because I’d started to go to Glasgow and found fanzines in a corner of the Virgin megastore. So things like Juniper Beri Beri, Communication Blur, The Legend! and Hungry Beat. And then slightly later Are You Scared To Get Happy, KVATCH, Simply Thrilled, all that Sha-La-La stuff that, as I say, Peter mentions as being also influential for him and that was wilfully misunderstood at the time by most of the inkies. Siân Pattenden of course went on to write for Smash Hits, which is a great story.

I also enjoyed the chapter with Karren Ablaze! I remember Ablaze! as being a zine on my periphery to an extent. I wasn’t so into all the noisy American Rock stuff like Sonic Youth and later Pavement or whoever. I was very picky about what I liked and didn’t like, which is the prerogative of being young(ish), isn’t it? I always liked how angry Karren sounded in her writing though. Unapologetic. That’s quite a core quality of fanzine writing, isn’t it? But what also comes across in the interview with Karren is the flip side to that ‘writer’s persona’ where there is a lot of anxiety and fragility to some extent. I mean, I might be projecting here, but I really get that whole sense of constantly vacillating between ‘I don’t give a fuck what you think’ and ‘I really want people to like me’ kind of thing. Maybe fanzine writers are just people who cannot connect to the ‘real’ world and desperately look for those connections in alternative realities. Or something. Ha ha. Like I say, I’m really just projecting.

This isn’t about you…

Ha! But it is, isn’t it? Of course it is. That’s what fanzines are all about. They are primarily about the ego. Actually there was a great zine called EGO, wasn’t there? They should have interviewed Robin EGO.

Oh yes, and there was definitely that thing of the writers being named after their fanzines, wasn’t there? So Robin EGO and as you say, Peter Perturbed and Karren Ablaze! What was your fanzine writer name?

Ha, I’m not sure I really had one because I changed the name of my fanzine so often. I believe that Bob Stanley referred to me as Alistair Angst at one point because oh my god, a lot of what I was writing then really was filled with cartoonish adolescent angst. So fair play. Hands up on that one. It’s the main reason I’d never want to read anything from my own early zines. That’s actually something that crops up a fair bit in the interviews. There’s quite a lot of, not exactly embarrassment about their fanzines, but definitely a sense that they were of a time and that the writers don’t much want to read anything from that, or their past. I totally get that, and I’m not at all sure I’d want to dig out and read old fanzines anymore, even the ones that were so inspirational. It does feel very much like something that should remain in the past. I mean, most of these writers were adolescents when they made their fanzines, and that was certainly for me a big part of the appeal at the time, as I’ve said, this feeling that there were other folks dotted around the country that seemed to share something in the same kinds of interests, be that music, politics, art, books, whatever.

So yeah, there are lots of people I’d have liked to have seen interviewed. People like The Legend! and Kevin Hungry Beat. Matt ‘Happy’ Haynes and Clare KVATCH. Maybe they were asked and politely declined, or just ignored the invites. And, I mean, it would have been funny to interview Rob Young about his It All Sounded The Same fanzine wouldn’t it? I loved that one at the time, but I’m sure that Rob has disowned all of that past. It’s certainly difficult to square it with the writer of Magic Box or Electric Eden and being the editor of Wired. But that’s also part of the interest maybe. Our pasts might inform us, but they don’t define us, do they? Or needn’t. It’s a very Punk Rock notion that, isn’t it, that we’re free to reinvent ourselves as whatever…

Which brings us back to Sniffin’ Glue

Yeah, that was a neat little link wasn’t it? Ha ha. I really enjoyed reading what Mark Perry had to say about doing Glue. Particularly the thing about how it looked. The, ah, aesthetic of it and all that. He makes the point that he was really trying to make it look as good as possible with limited resources and, I suppose, experience and knowledge of the whole printing process. So the whole idea that it was this kind of intentionally lo-fi amateurish looking thing was all bollocks. I find that interesting because for me it totally highlights just how quickly elements of what we like to call ‘underground’ or ‘counter’ culture get absorbed by the mainstream and, in modern parlance, ‘monetised’. And I like how Mark had a clear idea about when he was going to stop doing Glue and move onto other things.

Is that idea of fanzines being very ephemeral and restricted to the writer’s adolescence a universal thread?

Yes and no. I mean, certainly it is with respect to the fanzines that I read and remember. You know, that kind of ‘three issues and then we split up’ kind of idea. I like that. But there are others in the book where the ‘fanzine’ has been going on for years. Decades, with some of them. The first chapter basically is this long rambling interview about sci-fi zines from the 1930s or whenever, supposedly the first examples of fanzines although I guess it does depend on your definition. You could probably make a case for the first zines being the penny dreadfuls or pamphlets run out on the first presses. Anyway, I don’t much care for Sci-fi so I kind of skimmed that chapter… There are certainly some chapters with folks who’ve done long running zines. People like Selena Laverne Daye, Elias Nebula, Stewart Home. In those cases though it feels like the zine veers further into the realm of, I dunno, Fanzine as Art Statement or something. Again, that sounds too wanky, but something like that anyway. Certainly quite obsessional, which I think is important for artists to be. Then there are a couple of chapters with soccer and sport fanzines, which, okay, I have to say, just left me cold.

I mean, fair play to them and all that, and fair enough for all those people who are interested in those topics. It’s the same to an extent with the chapters about the Smiths Indeed and Pynk Moon zines. I never much cared for those zines that were so rooted in one band, all the minutiae about whatever. I mean, obviously unless it’s something I actually am interested in. But even then, I dunno, I get bored easily. Maybe I’ve got a bit of ADHD about me. Which for a former teacher is quite funny, I suppose.

Speaking of which, didn’t you tell me you once tried to teach about fanzines to your high school students?

Ha ha, yes, I did. Very briefly. Back in maybe 1993 or so when I was young and foolish. None of the kids gave a fuck of course. That’s part of the whole point of fanzines. People make them because they feel they have to make them I suppose. There’s something very primal and, again, adolescent about making a fanzine. In the book there’s a question that’s asked quite often about what makes a fanzine a fanzine, and there are some interesting answers to that, but Pete makes the best point about a fanzine being ‘something that no-one has asked for’. I think that totally nails it. So if your teacher or whoever is ‘asking’ you to make a fanzine, what teenager isn’t going to say ‘fuck you’? Well, I mean, obviously if they actually had said that out loud they’d have been excluded, but whatever…

And what about a book about fanzines?

You mean did anyone ask for a book about fanzines? Probably just the folks who wrote it, so that feels remarkably appropriate, doesn’t it?

But will anyone want to read it?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, there is a lot of that kind of fascination with nostalgia kicking around these days, presumably because Modern Life is so shit, so I think there’ll be people who remember reading, and probably making fanzines in their youth who might be interested to look back and remember stuff, or whatever. It reminds me a bit of that Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids? book where the author tracked down and interviewed members of all the bands who appeared on that NME tape. It’s just a nice piece of diversionary interest, isn’t it? Nothing wrong with that.

And I’m guessing they’ve printed up a hundred copies or so and that they’ll discover a couple of boxes full of unsold copies under the bed in a few years time. I mean, that’s really the essence of fanzine writing isn’t it? No-one asked for it, and no-one wanted it. Or maybe that was just me.

We Peaked At Paper is published by Boatwhistle Books www.boatwhistle.com

Alistair Fitchett

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Community Watch

 

The local forum fills with questions about the crash, about how the Moon fell, frightening the dogs, and how the rash decisions of minority governments shrink everything, so that by this time next week all our clothes will no longer fit. Someone suggests swap meets, a term we only know from TV imports, but the world is shrinking, so that by this time next month we’ll be able to wave across the Atlantic and refugees will hop over the Channel each time the last guard in actual paid employment is distracted by his phone. I exchange my Turkish dressing gown for a guard’s uniform in order to re-establish my sense of self, and my wife acquires a space suit that belonged to the last astronaut when the Moon fell, as she believes it will offer protection when the next wave hits and the universe has shrunk so much that the whole world will be squeezed inside a five-mile radius. We’re going to the dogs, says Goodneighbour666, but my frame of reference has shrunk so small that the dogs are already in my head, worrying at the Moon’s carcase like it’s the last meal they’ll ever taste.

 

 

 

 

Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor

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Free Reclaim   

The Piano keys, 
Bar and Jazz, 
Lavish lights,
That goes dark and light again. 
Forsaken memories, 
Drunken spontaneity.
Words do any good?
They bleed but heal too.
They dream and wake up too.
When the pebble in your shoes
Become the hill for you
You can rely on the taste of the words. 
Shelter from the snow, 
A cold numb blizzard outside, 
Dreamy stupor 
Visiting a few departed images of a poem. 
The yellow music that wafts like air.
I am taken away
Taken aback to the cold mountains treat
A retreat to the child of cosmos days
When everything felt like close
And green.
A barefoot garden walk,
A free reclaim.

 

 

 
Written by Sushant Thapa 
Biratnagar, Nepal 

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one blue letter

 

the furious sound of steel guitar
  sliding along a lonesome Virginian highway
    en route to the pining country of 1932

resonates amongst the chicken and chitlins
  but ten gallons of corn liquor poured from that white hat
    fail to irrigate the dust bowl

on black nights in the bible belt
  mice and mensches kneel at prayer
    hiding from the lonely hunter

only the mailman has guaranteed income
  knocking at the door to my heart just once
    with his parcel of chauffeur driven blues

 

 

Julian Isaacs

 

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Twilight/Approval 

I have recently learnt that I only have a short time left to live. But a few months, or weeks, or days – what does it really matter? Yet knowing makes it real. 

Preparing my philosophy lecture, I wonder which quotation to open with – the one from the text I’ll be discussing, or one which is from a different text but which expresses my point more lyrically. A colleague insists I use the text I am discussing. That would be fair and logical. ‘Of course,’ I say, wondering at my own stupidity, yet also hankering after the other text, to see its shining white letters on the swirling dark-blue background of a PowerPoint slide, with all lights in the lecture hall switched off. 

 © Ian Seed, 2022

Approval 

I was cycling along the hard shoulder of a motorway in Italy, carrying poetry in a rucksack on my back, when I was stopped by two carabinieri – a nervous-looking man and a woman with her hair in a ponytail. It was the woman who frisked me to make sure I wasn’t carrying any drugs or weapons. She realised my intentions were good, she told me, and even wished me good fortune, warning me not to break the law again. The man blinked in what I hoped was approval.

 

 

 © Ian Seed, 2022

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Home.

Going home with plucked petals
Monsoon passed by
Before it’s a long haul
Chain reaction and smokhauled gains
Blurry blue eyed when night comes
Your fingers smudged with dedication
Carmen everyman ubiquitous trance
Ear phoneed humming among bazaar nights
Keeper of bonhomie and muskrosed gaze
La la land of my native town
Diving deeper than skin dip high
My mourning Electra phase
Jotting scribbling karmic case
What happens when the casement is open
Deep vulnerability that paints
A shipwrecked muddy condition
Moss flared bushes that topples
Kindles l’s la femme cupid arrowed
Sun dizzy fuzzy pixie maniac trance
Skull tripping skin and bones
Femme fatality viping scheming negative
Sly wisdom that ends with digging a soul whole
A single blossom a new Millenium of ragpatched haul
I come home
Kindled fiery furry fuzzy.

 

 

 

 

By Sayani Mukherjee.
Picture Nick Victor

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Dream Garden.

Her transparent naked body shimmered with a myriad of iridescent colour. Walking towards him, she left behind a silhouette of tiny twinkling stars. Her footprints crystallized the grass. While all about, was touched by her radiant glow. A thousand tiny bells tinkled as the breeze playfully caressed her golden hair. He felt her sweet breath against his face. Then she was gone. Walking through one of the many distortions of space-time that were opening up.

As the sun shone down, high above in the sky. He found himself in a big garden with a pond, which was surrounded by a sandy beach. He remembered standing on a mass of ice cubes, which stretched from one side of the pool to the other. Nearby, to where he was stood, there were a number of penguins, who were intent on spreading the ice cubes across the top of the water. The water must have been warm, because the penguins would not swim in it, until it had been cooled down by the ice. Suddenly, feeling as though he was a penguin, he jumped off of the ice and into the water. Then, started to swim towards the beach with the other penguins. Here, being as one with the penguins – not in the way that he looked, but in the way he moved through the water.

Later having returned home, he sat reading the newspaper, when suddenly, the print fell from the page and into his lap.

During the night, winged black shapes flew high above, calling to each other.

Waking from the nightmare, cold with sweat, reaching for his watch on the cabinet next to the bed . . . . slowly lifting it, he noticed that time was running backwards. During the drug induced sleep, he had envisaged two pearl white moons in a coal-black sky. Getting out of bed and walking shakily across the room towards the window. He stood, wide-eyed and staring, there outside in a coal-black sky, moved two pearl white moons, where only one should have been. Turning, looking at the bedroom wall. He read the words there in his own handwriting.

white hourglass
experiments in violent
light, cease to begin.
we will never turn
back these days of doom
shadows.

Whispering, always whispering. He heard the voices around him, starting in a low whisper and slowly getting louder, talking about him, why? Laughing, always laughing. Why did they persecute him when darkness came? Grotesque shapes darted through his mind, their piercing screams filling his ears. ‘Go away, leave me alone. My mind is my own’, he shouted.

In silent light, memories of machines filled his head and footsteps heard on bitter streets. A warm winter was falling from the sun, black rainbows arched across a sky full of holes, as rabbits on the run fled from fields of fire across this strange land. During indigo dreams clocks go backwards as ghosts outside rise again. On a distant horizon through diamonds and dirt her golden hair was radiant against the darkness of an early morning.

Walking into the light of a sunrise in different dimensions, uncertain stands the girl with golden hair, her feet covered with flowers and ashes. Reflections of the cold, still love remained in her eyes, shadows out of time which were once jewels of the forest. Off the leafy pathway shapes and shadows collapse into now, while the undercurrent of crystal sounds echoed like wounded rhymes. Black roses stand in the deep field where the raven is in the grave, stained with the blood of a poet who tomorrow never knew. – Under a black moon will come beautiful dreams for the amber girls before the sweet beginnings of chaos.

During the night he felt the weight of her body on top of his. Her perfect breasts with up-turned nipples in front of him, her vagina smooth white skin. He could not move, did not need to move as she brought him deep inside her. Their tongues hungrily intertwined. He released a powerful surge of semen into her. She maintained her position effectively squeezing out every last drop of semen from him until she slid off his still erect penis.

He stood on the edge of time staring out to sea, black two-piece suit, white t-shirt and red, white and blue converse shoes. Sat at his feet on green grass was a young woman, golden shoulder-length hair, naked. She looked up at him. ‘We did make love last night, didn’t we?’ she asked. During their night of sexual intercourse, she had affirmed her submissiveness to him by swallowing his semen.

He had taken an early morning walk across the fields. Ravens call across the sky, while primordial memories stir. Standing, next to the old hawthorn tree which had been hit by lightning during the overnight storm, at the top of the escarpment, he took in the view across the countryside and the estuary beyond. At the bottom of the hill, he noticed the derelict house with its vandalized windows and exposed charred roof beams. Next to it stood a clock tower.

Dressed in her Elizabethan finery, eyes like deep pools which hid the truth of sadness. No smile on her soft cherry lips. Milk-white skin framed by long straight coal-black hair. Loneliness that precedes the radiance within. She had awoken with the words of a popular ayre running through her head, not knowing why.

‘Why should our minds not mingle so,
When loue and faith is plighted,
That eyther might the others know,
Alike in all delighted?’

The lines came from Thomas Campion’s ‘Book Of Ayres’, she had remembered.

She lived in the old Elizabethan Mansion House, which was built around 1590, on the former site of a 14th: Century house. The layout was U-shaped enclosing a courtyard, brewhouse, bake-house and dairy and it was multi-gabled with dormer attics and mullioned windows. The house was set in extensive landscaped terraces, with an orchard, walled kitchen garden, separate coach house and stables, a lake and a large 13th: Century deer park. Inside were wood panelled rooms, a minstrels’ gallery and a grand wooden staircase leading to many bedrooms, some with fine fireplaces decorated with Tudor Rose carvings. On the top floor was a bacon room with ceiling hooks. Flemish tapestries adorned many walls and a large refectory table stood in the dining parlour. Nearby stood The Archway which was built in the mid-18th: Century. 

Looking out of the window, where tiny pairs of wings fluttered over hanging curtains, weaving together the story of a moonlight wish for lovers. mirage in a handful of dust while trees swayed outside, like songs and curious fragments creating picturesque dreams, towards the top of the hillside where the tree had been struck by lightning during the night. Next to the tree stood the figure of a man. ‘He comes, I must prepare’. She uttered to herself.

Night calls. Under the coal-black night, tall shadowy trees swayed, the call from a lone fox as a dog barked in the distance. How was it that he should always want to look at the soft pink stars, in this digital dreamscape. The present is a foreign land, he thought to himself. For all the days that tear the heart, he knew the sun would not stay after summer. Last night was bitter-sweet with her in his arms, falling into her black eyes. The clock tower chimed midnight, as he stood, watching a wrath of clouds scudding across the purple sky from the west. He was trying not to fall apart in this place. But he knew she was a Scar Weaver, an angel in real-time. He had a fear of the coming dawn. Knew that he must go. To the shadowland of sad cities in the forest. He knew he was on borrowed time if he stayed in this nocturnal wasteland and the taste of belladonna on her blood-red lips. There was an unfinished future in the Ghost Songs that the Alchemist had weaved inside his mind, years ago. Digital roses do not die. Everything was forever. Soon, the rains would come. . . .

Somewhere in a parallel universe where the sky is blue, the sun is warm, not a sound could be heard. . . .

Humanity was so ignorant, it could not see its own extinction looming. Over-population and pollution choked the world. Just 100 companies were the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988 and the world’s largest top five economies were the biggest polluters. Scientists had warned that time was running out and there was only twelve years left to act on climate change before there was a major catastrophe. But, the British Government stated that emissions would be down to 80% by 2050. Extinction had cost the world thousands of species due to human activity, never to be seen on Earth again. The truth could be weathered, eroded; it is every shade of grey that lives in the mist; it is the sunrise and sunset and everything in between. On that evening, Aldebaran had shone three times its normal size in a coal-black sky. Then it was gone from view. What followed was a spectacular meteor shower of varying hues, orange, yellow, blue, violet and red, lasting over several days and nights. Purple sunsets had been seen around the world through a scorched sky. Then, two days later a solar wind from the Sun slammed into the Earth. Storms and tornadoes ravaged the planet causing the seas to rise.

The aircraft touched down at Heathrow from an African state bringing its deadly cargo with it. Within hours the first people became ill and doctors thought it was a type of influenza. But, within a couple of days the virus had spread around the globe. Killing millions as it went. Society started to break down, as not enough people could carry out their functions and authorities in different countries became under-resourced. People lay where they had died, as rats took over the cities.

The man had been ill. But, not like the others. Still feeling weak, he had to get away from this futuristic city of the dead. A city that once had flying vehicles, mega bridges, super-connected street experiences and underground spaces. Which had been powered by big data, the ‘Internet of Things’ and artificial intelligence – that lived, breathed, and even thought with us. Societal collapse had happened quicker in the civilised countries around the world, with its five stages – financial, commercial, political, social and cultural – leading to this demise, despite the warning signs from scientists and social activists. Packing a rucksack, he stepped from the house and onto a street that was scorched from the blazing sun. Brighter and hotter than he could remember. Passing shops and factories which stood empty and ransacked. Some houses having been set on fire were burnt out shells. Cars abandoned in the streets where their owners had left them. Leaving Brigstowe behind, he took one last look at the billowing black smoke and flames high in the sky over the city. He could not find the words which best described what Earth had become.

Out of nowhere walking between worlds, viewing an automatic midnight inside a dream. The eyes in the sky watched the burning cities and creatures in the woods in beautiful despair. Ascending she crept back into his life, viewed through an empty space to a dangerous summer, while spinning wheels started to tear his mind wide open.

She had been ill. The village where she had grown up and known these sixteen years was desolate. All around was scorched earth and burnt trees. Have to find someone, she thought to herself.

. . . . He had walked for days, down roads and lanes that would have been leafy green, across fields now scorched black, trying to make for the coast or find someone who had survived this catastrophe. There had been two more strong solar storms since he had left his home. Computers and mobile phones were dead and electric cars did not run. Satellites had been the first to go. However, he had managed to find and eat the contents of tinned food he had found in the empty houses. Sometimes changing his clothes and worn-out shoes. Last night, he had seen a firelight flickering in the distance and now he was making his way towards the place where he had seen it. But a blood-red sun in an orange sky made for a hot day and heavy going. On his way to this village he had seen gangs of people with guns and transport in the towns and how they raided the supermarkets of food and killed anybody who they came across that got in their way.

He must go quietly and stealthily.

Creeping along a sparse hedgerow, he kept the girl in his line of view at the back of the house. Suddenly, she was not there. He heard the click of a rifle and felt the cold metal at the back of his head. Damn, he thought to himself. Slowly rising, she kept the rifle trained on him as they walked to the house. Once there and slowly convincing her that he was unarmed and on his own, he won over her confidence. She told him that the coast was only five miles from there. About the gangs that went from house to house taking everything they could find and returning to the old manor house which was Elizabethan and had been built around 1590 and how it had been taken over and became a US Army Camp and housed the 2nd: Ordnance Bomb Disposal Squadron before it fell derelict. It seemed to her that they were going further afield, as sometimes they did not return for days. But, they had left her alone. About the vegetable plot that she had started so that she could survive on her own. She made him a simple meal and a brew of nettle tea. After, he washed up and then helped her in the garden.

Nights were cold there and on one occasion, she came to him for warmth. Her emerald eyes twinkled like myriads of silver stars hung, in a cold black sky, golden gossamer hair, gently swayed caressed by a light breeze, pale fingers entwined, an inviting kiss, a delicate kiss. She moaned and moved softly. He placed his hands on her beautiful round buttocks. Her movement was rhythmic and after some minutes she began moving faster, jumping on top of him, while he held onto her. Their hearts the drums, their breathing the bass. Like a body drowned, he seemed to float gradually upwards, as though from some unconscious depth, towards the surface which was the room. The darkness slowly melted away. Waves crashed over them, as somewhere a shooting star cut across the sky. 

‘Have you ever dreamt of blue butterflies?’ she asked.

. . . . The day had started out normal, or what was normal under the circumstances that they now found themselves in. Snowdrops, shivering in the wind, as grey clouds, scurry across the sky. The technology and skills of their old lives had become obsolete. Knowing that they lived in a post-technological world, they were determined to construct a way of life from the surrounding wasteland. They had managed to repair the old tractor and get some fuel for it. The roof tiles had been replaced so it no longer leaked. Finding some chickens, they had built a coop for them. Repairing items which had broken, tending the vegetables, looking for firewood, making simple meals for each other. He had told her that he planned to head south. Suddenly, there was a roar of vehicles on the driveway. Too late to get their rifles. Men surrounded them, guns at the ready. One bullet was all that was needed to kill him. Covered in his blood, she screamed as they dragged her away and bundled her into the back of a car, heading towards the old manor house.

To her, the world seemed grey. Once at the manor house, she was set to work in the kitchen. Sometimes, she had to work in the vegetable gardens. In the house, one large room was given over to various types of weapons, another was the dining-room. Upstairs the bedrooms. Outside was a tank and other armed vehicles, along with a few cars and a couple of wind turbines. The barn was stockpiled with food and supplies. Enough to withhold a siege, she thought. She found herself part of the National Authoritarian Force, whose self-styled leader dealt out punishments to anyone who questioned his word. 

Nine months had gone past when she gave birth to his child, a boy. She named it after him. Overhearing the others talk of small groups of survivors banding together to relearn long-forgotten skills. Talk of a political conflict that could mean the death or life of a reborn world. Frightened of what she might become. Knowing that one day, they would reach the coast and find a boat, then head south to warmer climes, where it would be safe. It would be a long journey. But she was determined to reach the Mediterranean. She knew they would survive. She would keep his dream alive.

‘I have loved the stars too dearly to be fearful of the night’. She heard herself whisper to the child.

Dawn brought new hope, before the world changed again.

. . . . and on the last day, came the snow.

 

 

 

 

Stewart Guy
Picture Dariah Zatova

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Deleted Scenes. Kevin McCann and Dr. Fran Lock

Social Yet Distanced: A View with an Emotionalorphan and Friends

 

Social Yet Distanced: A View with an Emotionalorphan and Friends

By Jack Varnell

A cross blend of neuroses combining poetry, art, politics, and real-life tales of an emotionalorphan, and oh-so-controversial topics. Sharing news and discussions on Lit, Poetry, the world around us, and the efficacy of manners.

Our primary purpose is to bring the world of poetry and literature with other forms of art to share the work, the history and to inspire those in the audience to investigate the power of survival and healing through the arts.

 

Follow the link below for a PDF of the book
file:///C:/Users/charl/Downloads/CM_book_The_Haunting_Deleted_Scenes_Kevin_Patrick_McCann_FINAL.pdf

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The Gift by the Velvet Underground


A lego stop-action adaptation of the Velvet Underground’s, “The Gift”, written by Lou Reed.

Waldo Jeffers had reached his limit. It was now mid-August, which meant he had been separated from Marsha for more than two months. Two months, and all he had to show was three dog-eared letters and two very expensive long-distance phone calls. True, when school had ended and she’d returned to Wisconsin, and he to Locust, Pennsylvania, she had sworn to maintain a certain fidelity. She would date occasionally, but merely as amusement. She would remain faithful

But lately Waldo had begun to worry. He had trouble sleeping at night and when he did, he had horrible dreams. He lay awake at night, tossing and turning underneath his pleated quilt protector, tears welling in his eyes as he pictured Marsha, her sworn vows overcome by liquor and the smooth soothings of some neanderthal, finally submitting to the final caresses of sexual oblivion. It was more than the human mind could bear

Visions of Marsha’s faithlessness haunted him. Daytime fantasies of sexual abandon permeated his thoughts. And the thing was, they wouldn’t understand how she really was. He, Waldo, alone understood this. He had intuitively grasped every nook and cranny of her psyche. He had made her smile. She needed him, and he wasn’t there. (Awww…)

The idea came to him on the Thursday before the Mummers’ Parade was scheduled to appear. He’d just finished mowing and edging the Edelsons’ lawn for a dollar fifty and had checked the mailbox to see if there was at least a word from Marsha. There was nothing but a circular from the Amalgamated Aluminum Company of America inquiring into his awning needs. At least they cared enough to write

It was a New York company. You could go anywhere in the mails. Then it struck him. He didn’t have enough money to go to Wisconsin in the accepted fashion, true, but why not mail himself? It was absurdly simple. He would ship himself parcel post, special delivery. The next day Waldo went to the supermarket to purchase the necessary equipment. He bought masking tape, a staple gun and a medium sized cardboard box just right for a person of his build. He judged that with a minimum of jostling he could ride quite comfortably. A few air holes, some water, perhaps some midnight snacks, and it would probably be as good as going tourist!

By Friday afternoon, Waldo was set. He was thoroughly packed and the Post Office had agreed to pick him up at three o’clock. He’d marked the package “Fragile”, and as he sat curled up inside, resting on the foam rubber cushioning he’d thoughtfully included, he tried to picture the look of awe and happiness on Marsha’s face as she opened her door, saw the package, tipped the deliverer, and then opened it to see her Waldo finally there in person. She would kiss him, and then maybe they could see a movie. If he’d only thought of this before. Suddenly rough hands gripped his package and he felt himself borne up. He landed with a thud in a truck and was off

Marsha Bronson had just finished setting her hair. It had been a very rough weekend. She had to remember not to drink like that. Bill had been nice about it though. After it was over he’d said he still respected her and, after all, it was certainly the way of nature, and even though, no, he didn’t love her, he did feel an affection for her. And after all, they were grown adults. Oh, what Bill could teach Waldo! But that seemed many years ago

Sheila Klein, her very, very best friend, walked in through the porch screen door and into the kitchen. “Oh gawd, it’s absolutely maudlin outside.”
“Ach, I know what you mean, I feel all icky!”
Marsha tightened the belt on her cotton robe with the silk outer edge. Sheila ran her finger over some salt grains on the kitchen table, licked her finger and made a face. “I’m supposed to be taking these salt pills, but,” she wrinkled her nose, “they make me feel like throwing up.” Marsha started to pat herself under the chin, an exercise she’d seen on television. “God, don’t even talk about that.” She got up from the table and went to the sink where she picked up a bottle of pink and blue vitamins. “Want one? Supposed to be better than steak,” and then attempted to touch her knees. “I don’t think I’ll ever touch a daiquiri again.”

She gave up and sat down, this time nearer the small table that supported the telephone. “Maybe Bill’ll call,” she said to Sheila’s glance. Sheila nibbled on a cuticle. “After last night, I thought maybe you’d be through with him.” “I know what you mean. My God, he was like an octopus. Hands all over the place.” She gestured, raising her arms upwards in defense. “The thing is, after a while, you get tired of fighting with him, you know, and after all I didn’t really do anything Friday and Saturday so I kind of owed it to him. You know what I mean.” She started to scratch. Sheila was giggling with her hand over her mouth. “I’ll tell you, I felt the same way, and even after a while,” here she bent forward in a whisper, “I wanted to!” Now she was laughing very loudly

It was at this point that Mr. Jameson of the Clarence Darrow Post rang the doorbell of the large stucco-colored frame house. When Marsha Bronson opened the door, he helped her carry the package in. He had his yellow and his green slips of paper signed and left with a fifteen cent tip that Marsha had gotten out of her mother’s small beige pocketbook in the den
“What do you think it is?” Sheila asked. Marsha stood with her arms folded behind her back. She stared at the brown cardboard carton that sat in the middle of the living room. “I dunno.”

Inside the package, Waldo quivered with excitement as he listened to the muffled voices. Sheila ran her fingernail over the masking tape that ran down the center of the carton. “Why don’t you look at the return address and see who it’s from?” Waldo felt his heart beating. He could feel the vibrating footsteps. It would be soon!

Marsha walked around the carton and read the ink-scratched label. “Ah, god it’s from Waldo!”
 “That schmuck!” said Sheila. Waldo trembled with expectation.
“Well, you might as well open it,” said Sheila. Both of them tried to lift the staple flap
“Ah sst,” said Marsha, groaning, “he must have nailed it shut.” They tugged on the flap again. “My God, you need a power drill to get this thing open!” They pulled again. “You can’t get a grip.” They both stood still, breathing heavily

“Why don’t you get a scissor,” said Sheila. Marsha ran into the kitchen, but all she could find was a little sewing scissor. Then she remembered that her father kept a collection of tools in the basement. She ran downstairs, and when she came back up, she had a large sheet metal cutter in her hand. “This is the best I could find.” She was very out of breath. “Here, you do it. I-I’m gonna die.” She sank into a large fluffy couch and exhaled noisily. Sheila tried to make a slit between the masking tape and the end of the cardboard flap, but the blade was too big and there wasn’t enough room. “God damn this thing!” she said, feeling very exasperated. Then smiling, “I got an idea.”
“What?” said Marsha
“Just watch,” said Sheila, touching her finger to her head

Inside the package, Waldo was so transfixed with excitement that he could barely breathe. His skin felt prickly from the heat, and he could feel his heart beating in his throat. It would be soon. Sheila stood quite upright and walked around to the other side of the package. Then she sank down to her knees, grasped the cutter by both handles, took a deep breath, and plunged the long blade through the middle of the package, through the masking tape, through the cardboard, through the cushioning and (thud) right through the center of Waldo Jeffers’ head, which split slightly and caused little rhythmic arcs of red to pulsate gently in the morning sun

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NEW PSYCHIC ACTION

Concerning the films of  Luis Bunuel one critic noted a key feature of the director’s later work – or, rather, the social climate of the time as depicted therein – a society that appears ‘thoroughly pleased with itself’ and capable of the ‘firmest suppression’ of any indications of trouble. Crucially, our critic also said, ‘This is a world beyond satire, and the old disruptions of Surrealism are not going to make any mark on it, because ordinary life, in this place, is already as arbitrary and erratic as anything a Surrealist could dream up.’ Are there fundamental problems with Surrealism?

Taking into account Sartre’s critique of a ‘curious enterprise of achieving nothingness through an excess of being’ one might also add that there are significant issues with political idealism, infantile regression, anti-consumerism, post-colonialism, religious primitivism and The Turn To The East which might define Surrealism as a precursor of the regressive Left. Although it should be noted that, for the Surrealists, freedom of expression was far more important than any political dogma which is why an attempted  rapprochement with the Communist Party eventually fizzled out – for, as Andre Breton himself said in 1935: ‘propagandistic poetry’ amounts to a denial of ‘the historical conditions of poetry itself’.

 From our present vantage point we should be able to formulate a ‘post-surreal’ or neo-Surreal perspective, countering, or, neutralizing such vexatious, problematic questions.

The idea of a ‘typical post-Surrealist viewpoint’ is mentioned by Lucy R Lippard in her discussion of the art of Valerio Adami, a body of work, focused on the principle of metamorphosis, but which also draws on the media-sphere, especially advertising. To quote the artist himself: advertising is ‘a language that assails you wherever you go’. He said his aim was to realise a condition where ‘time and space spread out into a new psychic action’.

A new psychic action?

Perhaps there is also a variation of materialism which,  for the sake of convenience,  we might call Subtopian Materialism, a self-consciously decadent form of  Pop originating circa 1955 in the ‘edgelands’ and ‘cultural desert’ of London’s urban fringe.

Subtopian Materialism includes Tabloid Impressionism, a trash-aesthetic tactic, a type of post-surreal Urban Alchemy. The principle of Objective Chance applied to the mass media, particularly in its most disreputable aspects where the Spirit of Seriousness is much diminished, or with luck, completely absent: downmarket advertising, the tabloid press, junk mail, celebrity culture and tacky TV, lo-fi mass production movies, burlesque performance and so on and so forth. Also, a slangy literary style: a form of verbal slumming or nostalgie de la boue often incorporating the disregarded poetry of obscure jargon, argot, lurid journalese found phrases, wacky neologisms and, in a more contemporary mode, Cyber-Junk (1).

Subtopianism finds inspiration in boring streets and brutalist architecture; incongruous electricity substations, deserted allotments, sewage works, seedy flea-pit cinemas, golf courses. in the accidental poetry of rusting wire fences, ‘admass’ (mass consumerism) and all forms of popular entertainment from Cinerama to Teaserama, and inevitably the indeterminate, sub-surreal no-place of featureless suburbia – the commuter belt, an ‘edgeland ‘ locale, a netherworld or interfacial interzone where ‘nothing really happens’.

Mid-fifties Subtopian life was dominated by ‘the balance of terror’, by flying saucers and the fear of radiation but found Sunday lunchtime solace in Family Favourites requests (Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, skiffle, cha-cha-cha, the mambo craze, Shirley ‘the Zither Girl’ Abicair), horror films, Jet Set glamour, and exciting, new gadgets – like the Xerox Copyflo and the Polaroid Instant Camera. For exoticism, fashion, scandal and thrills, Subtopians looked to the Blond Bombshells, to the Sweater Girls (bless ‘em!) and divas such as Diana Dors, Julie London, Gina Lollobrigida and Jayne Mansfield; to Nabokov’s Lolita or to TV starlet Sabrina. Yet, to a critical observer like Ian Nairn, Subtopia was merely an anonymous liminal zone or tract of anomic space – a product of bad urban planning lacking in distinctive character or ‘spirit of place’ – an interstitial ‘middle state neither town nor country’. In hindsight it seems that ‘Subtopia’ (‘inferior place’) was an incitement for the imagination; although it might also have been that its bizarre strangeness was not a subjective projection but a discovery – the edgeland of Subtopia was bizarre in itself, the locus of a new quasi-surreal  psychic action.

 

  • Cyber-Junk (or Cyber-trash). Subtopian Materialism meets kitsch and creepy B-Movie Sci-Fi in cyberspace littered with cosmic debris. Well, sort of.

 

Bibliography

Breton, Andre, Manifestos of Surrealism, University Of Michigan, 2007

Lippard, Lucy R, Pop Art, Thames & Hudson, 2001

Nairn, Ian, Outrage. On The Disfigurement of Town and Countryside, Architectural Review Special, 1955

Sartre, Jean-Paul, Modern Times: Selected Non Fiction 1938-1973, Penguin, 2000

Wood, Michael, Belle de Jour, BFI, 2005

 

 

 

A C  Evans

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damaging ink stains among the ancient global ruins

 

today’s fornicating bombs

a specialist w/o trunk duties

diving headfirst into pilgrimage

 

     wary winter whiskers

     following dapper glow worms

 

                fish

           a         fish

                      my Midas Touch for

                      the curvature of vase

 

, ! ,    & ‘whom do we speak to

               about all these prepositional subpoenas???’

 

nodding off skunk bitten

curse the electrical outlet preludes

                                       , down it goes

                                               ,

                                             reindeer armies

                                                                  & all.

 

 

 

 

Joshua Martin

 

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SAUSAGE LIFE 250

Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column that doesn’t believe in goats

READER: Are you going to the premier of the new John Lewis Christmas ad at the Leicester Square Odeon?
MYSELF: I am not, and furthermore, rather than scar my retinas with that kind of cynical money-grubbing tosh I would prefer instead to saw my own head off with a bread knife.
READER: Oh here we go, your so elitist. I mean have you no seasonal sentiment in you at all?
MYSELF: Elitist? Moi? On the contrary, I am the very essence of the true Christian spirit as invented by Charles Dickens. I just have to see a turkey to go into a frenzied fantasy of throat-slitting, feather-plucking, stuffing and drinking until I am unconscious.
READER: Ha! You claim to be a vegetarian, but I know you eat fish.
MYSELF: Only if they have been clubbed to death by Eskimos. By the way, I’ve just been handed the shooting script for The John Lewis ad, and despite being threatened with libel, I have decided to reproduce it here in full.

 

 

EXTERIOR NIGHT SNOWING
A small child drags a stuffed badger along a snow covered street. She flips a finger at a policeman cycling past on his way to an armed robbery. She stops outside a John Lewis shop window where a sinister clockwork mannequin got up as Father Christmas swivels its evil head, eyes glowing like hot coals beneath thick white brows.
From inside the shop window, we see the child gazing longingly in. We see that the object of her desire is an aquarium containing snapping baby alligators with rows of  tiny pointed teeth.

READER: Woah! Stop! Spoiler alert! This is going to ruin everything for John Lewis Christmas advert fans!
MYSELF: I don’t care. If you ask me they deserve it.

(cont’d)….
CUT TO:
INTERIOR: A warm cosy living room with a huge blazing log fire and a Christmas tree laden with presents. Enormous piles of gilt-wrapped luxery chocolates cover every surface. A small group of carol singers have been invited in and are being served with mince pies and brandies laced with Rohypnol by a couple wearing rubber corsets as they sing 50 shades of Christmas.
We hear Gloria in Excelsis as though played on a toy xylophone. It is the front doorbell. Over a swelling orchestral version of Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody the man opens the door. It is their daughter, the little girl with the stuffed badger.
In a short flashback we see her smashing the shop window, stealing a handful of baby alligators and cramming them into her coat pocket. She flips the finger at the Santa Mannequin and scuttles off.
In the house, the atmosphere is merry, and as the party descends into a frenzied orgy, we see the child sneaking into the spa room, where she slips the baby alligators into the hot tub.
CLOSE UP:
The child turns and gives a Churchill salute to camera. Fade to out of focus living room as the credits roll.

HANGOVER CURE
Mayonnaise. Yes, you heard it right. Not many people are aware that mayonnaise comes from the spleen of a Norwegian Wild Boar and is not made from raw egg and mustard as is commonly believed. The hard drinking Norwegians can’t get enough of it, as it is widely recognized in Norway as a sure-fire hangover cure. “First the Wild Boar must be lured into a cave with flattering songs.” a spokesperson from the Norwegian Embassy told us, “After the mayo has been extracted, it is vital that the boar must look surprised, otherwise the cure will be ineffective. If he appears nonchalant or displays an air of mild disapproval, the hangover will get worse. Then the only recourse is to lie under a pregnant mare and sip a glass of our famous national drink, Haakenhuurr, which is made from well-rotted fish scales and baby vomit.”

CLARINET BLESSING
Anglican Archbishop Paul Clerihew will be blessing clarinets at Upper Dicker’s church of the Dyslexic Martyr this Thursday from 2pm as part of the East Sussex Annual Festival of Clarinets. He will be joined by Russell Brand who will read passages from his latest bookywook How To Talk Bollocks (Tossa & Windbag £15.99)

Advertising feature
World of Cement is currently offering three bags for the price of two in a drive to encourage cementing. Head of sales Matt Quicklime told us: “It is vital in these austere times, what with stratospheric butter prices and the rising cost of light bulbs, to encourage cementing in all its myriad forms. Not many people realize just how versatile cement can be. For example, one 20kg bag of cement is enough to conceal several dead relatives under a patio and when mixed with porridge oats can feed an average family for a month.” World of Cement is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week and caters for all your cementing needs.

TO THE MANNER PORN
Tit Bingo, former Imaginary Chairleg guitarist turned porn magnate has announced that his company, 21st Century Cocks, is in pre-production on a their latest low budget feature. Lawrence Of A Labia will star Hugh Jarce as archeologist and dogging enthusiast T.E.Lawrence with rising starlet Thrush Bigly making her debut as the bellydancing double agent Tittan Carmen. The movie will be shot on location next Tuesday afternoon at a secluded layby near Cockmarlin.

POETRY NOW

Angus McAlnwyk, poet and naturalist

Born in Milan to Scottish immigrants, Angus McAlnwyck is head researcher at the International Institute of Oranges in Ashford. He is a keen cellist except on Thursdays, when he is an enthusiastic pigeon fancier.

 

THE HADDOCK
by Angus McAlnwyck

The Haddock’s head is
large and blunt
and situated at the front
A fin on top and on the tum
maintains the equilibrium

The Haddock’s life
is short and sweet
And terminated by the fleet
who scoop him out and sell him on
to give us indigestion 

 

 

 

Sausage Life!

Colin Gibson • Emmet Ives • Anita Makris



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Love and Death

ti amo, Hanne Ørstavik (And Other Stories)
My Mind To Me A Kingdom Is, Paul Stanbridge (Galley Beggar Press)

ti amo is a short novel that explores love, loss and mourning. In less than a 100 pages, Hanne Ørstavik dissects sorrow and grief, drawing upon her own experience her husband slowly dying. She remembers the mundane joys of life together, shared moments, problems, discussions and solutions as the novel moves both forward and backwards in time, reliving scenes from the past and watching her partner die as morphine gradually takes over.

It is also writing about writing, a self-conscious text which considers the act of documenting, embellishing and sharing very personal experiences and responses. Mostly, however, it is a book about love and what that really means beyond notions of romance, when love becomes friendship, companionship and shared lives. The opening sets up this discussion:

   I love you. We say it to each other all the time. We say it
   instead of saying something else. What would that something
   else be? You: I’m dying. Us: Don’t leave me. Me: I don’t know
   what to do. Before: I don’t know what I’ll do without you.
   When you’re not here any more. Now: I don’t know what to
   do with these days, all this time, in which death is the most
   conspicuous of all things. I love you.

Love becomes a lifeline for both characters, a catalyst that makes dying bearable for the one left behind, eases the one who is dying. Amazingly, Ørstavik keeps well away from any mawkishness, her writing is effortless, clinical and precise, which helps facilitate our engagement, helps keep us reading even as the narrator is numbed, exhausted and in shock:

   I’ve been feeling so very low. It feels like it’s never going to be
   possible to ever feel happy again, buoyantly happy, the kind
   of happiness I used to know, in which the thought of death
   was quite absent. I think that from now on any happiness
   I feel will be tinged with death.

Gradually everything becomes a normal part of life, ‘death has become an attendant presence, everything’s just the way it is. I’m here with you and soon you won’t be here any more.’ Except of course, he is, embedded and ever-present in this book: ‘it has to do with presence, energy, and I believe in that.’ I think that after reading ti amo I might too.

Paul Stanbridge’s My Mind To Me A Kingdom Is, is also a self-aware and self-conscious book (sometimes to the extent of awkward mannerisms and convoluted syntax), revisiting and documenting various subjects, the layers of interest in obscure and seemingly unrelated topics. ‘Had I been capable of observing myself more clearly,’ notes Stanbridge early on in the book, he would have perhaps acted differently, and at times I wished he had, and spared us the obsessions and trivia he unearths.

The back cover blurb tells us that ‘My Mind To Me A Kingdom Is is a book bursting with the joy of discovery, the beauty of the world, and the rich, warm pulse of life’, but actually it is obsessive and dysfunctional, with Stanbridge following divergent paths and associative networks of meaning. It is also in part another book about death, as the author grieves and mourns for his brother who took his own life back in 2015. It also sometimes about the author’s own illnesses and injuries, both physical and mental.

Mostly, however, it attempts to be philosophical, literary and knowledgeable, the author trying to rely on a never-ending conglomeration of facts and truths, which he eventually comes to realise are not what matters. ‘Even as I worked, I knew that I drew further back from my aim – whatever that might have been’, he acknowledges early on. He is avoiding the issue, seeking diversion by looking away from the problem he is trying to solve. Finally, he has to learn to grieve for and accept the death of his brother.

For this reader it’s slightly disappointing that his way of resolving it all is a long digressionary treatise on trees in nature and mythology, invoking Pan and Yggdrasil en route, which ends up with a desire for mystical and biological union with a tree, where he finds ‘the buds and leaves of him [his brother], where the life is, but where it also ends, where the mystery of it all resides’, noting also that he too will become part of the soil and nature. I really wanted to like this book but, especially in comparison to ti amo, it is obfuscating and annoying, a lot of words and information rather than clear-minded and clear-sighted discussion.

 

 

 

Rupert Loydell

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New Government or Not, the Iraqi State is Still Struggling to Function

 

 

Bargaining over the resources of the government is set to remain just one expression of the struggle for authority in Iraq. Actual sovereignty is likely to continue to be a coercive negotiation backed by various substate militias’ force of arms and financial interests.

New Government or Not, the Iraqi State is Still Struggling to Function
Ministers of the new Iraqi government are sworn in during the parliamentary session to vote on the new government in Baghdad, Iraq, Oct. 27. (Iraqi Parliament Information Office via AP)

 

New Government or Not, the Iraqi State is Still Struggling to Function

 

originally published by the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington

 

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Through its careful examination of the forces shaping the evolution of Gulf societies and the new generation of emerging leaders, AGSIW facilitates a richer understanding of the role the countries in this key geostrategic region can be expected to play in the 21st century.

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John Wayne Was A Nazi (Hip Hop Mix)

Audio Assault, MDC, scott crow

This latest single by Audio Assault/ MDC features a powerhouse of anarchists old and new from the punk rock and hip-hop scenes. Mashing up samples from MDC’s classic including Dave Dictor’s original vocals with new music and vocals from rappers Mic Crenshaw, Sole, and Sima Lee, bassist Chris Dos (Anti-Flag), DJ Pain 1 on turntables, Jason Yawn on guitars and scott crow on chorus.

lyrics

(scott crow, Dave Dictor)
John Wayne
John Wayne

[Mic Crenshaw]
He fought in every world war and conquered the west
In a US uniform and a cowboy vest
Mass murderer naked aggression
The henchmen, lynching symbolizing oppression
Professing to be a force of good
A Ku Klux Kracker without the hood
The full package honkey, I wish you would
Gasoline and Kerosene I’ll douse the wood
Protect private property kill the natives
Being a cop and a racist is not creative
Archetype of the devil personified
Kill, kill, kill, traumatize
Fantasize, romanticize and glamorize
Being a front man for expansion through genocide
Entertainment is propaganda
That blue eyed devil is not the answer

(scott crow, Dave Dictor)
John Wayne
John Wayne
He was a nazi
He was a nazi

[Sole]
The devils in the details
I mean the devil’s in the film reels
I mean the devil’s in the blue suit
Inherited fear in their hearts born ready to shoot
From Sand Creek to Dylan Roof
It’s a lose lose gatling guns break the news
Birth of a Nation wrote the burning cross
Grandmother to Fox News that wrote the news
Every human except them became that
Instead of an immigrant with a made up flag
We’re lost in the desert we paid for that
First in Bedlam with the weight on our backs
Gravity is the only law
Setting of the sun is the only order
If push comes to shove
It’ll be cowboys strung up from here to the border
Why you wanna dress up like GI Joe?
You can be John Brown or Geronimo
Can’t bring back the frontiers you ended
So death to Reagan whenever he’s resurrected
Films are the dreams of societies
Seems that it thinks the world will be Anglos
What do I know?
I’m just a bystander born in a fucking cop show

[Sima Lee]
Remember “Rappin’ Duke”? Duh-ha Duh Ha
Run up on you where you are start a brouhaha
Most of these racists, simple and plain
Reparations, fuck John Wayne
I’m from a place where they made us hang
Still put us on a chain gang
Blue lives are a gang gang
We guerilla minded as we maintain
Bet up on our hip keep that thang thang
It’s the return of the anarchists
Urban cowboys causing damages
Me and my crew got the whole city locked
One mad cracker took out a whole city block
We ain’t forget they stabbin’ shit
Body armor on at the range pass the clips
You ain’t get a stimmy for days? you past the rent?
Still screaming landback bitch we passionate
Matter of fact, no asking, snatching it
Nazi in the street, his jaw we cracking it
Feed all our peeps fa sho’, we Black we lit
We Brown, we proud, ask Scott we on common ground
Gather your people like you John Brown
The BLA , the Weather Underground
Coming to your town, ski mask and feathers
All my Black natives John Wayne could never
I said all my Black natives John Wayne could never
I said I’m a Black native, proud boys could never

(scott crow, Dave Dictor)
John Wayne
John Wayne
He was a nazi
He was a nazi

(scott crow – Calling Tucker Carlson a racist on his own Fox News show)
There’s more fascists that wear red ties, blue suits and white
Shirts on boardrooms, on TV shows and everything then there are
in the streets


credits
released October 4, 2022
Audio Assault, MDC, scott crow: Music
Sole, Mic Crenshaw, Sima Lee, Dave Dictor (MDC), scott crow: Featured vocalists
Chris #2 (Anti-Flag) : Additional Bass
Jason Yawn (Beasts Of No Nation): Additional Guitar
DJ Pain 1: Cuts and Scratches
scott crow, Mark Pistel, Wynne Martin: Production
scott crow: Cover Art
Mark Pistel: Mastering
scott crow: Executive Production

 

 

Buy at https://emergencyhearts.bandcamp.com/track/john-wayne-was-a-nazi-hip-hop-mix

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Graham Edensounds- This England

Playing tracks by

Nicholas Pegg, The Specials, Benza ft. Bias B., Underworld, Benza and more.

Graham Edensound

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My Magical Career

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MEDUZA ‘banned in Russia but here for you’

 

RIGHT NOW by Mirolyubivnoye Morye

   Prisoners of conscience in the hands of bandits and thieves
   Order will be disturbed in reality, not in dreams
   The force of pressure will push the spring of freedom

   Peace to all, not war
   In 100 years, instead of thorns and soot, we will see stars.

Right Now is a new song by Russian rockers Mirolyubivnoye Morye, who now live in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, where they are not affected by Russia’s censorship laws imposed since the invasion of Ukrainian started.

“We can come and give concerts, sing our own songs in our own language and no one tells us not to,” said band member Yevgeny Chuvilin. 

The band are among an estimated 80,000 Russians who have moved to Georgia. “We are more united because of the war,” Pavel – another band member – explained. “We all came to a new country, everyone is in the same boat; we have all left home, everyone is trying to recreate their own worlds from zero, and people help each other.”

The relocation has offered both hope and uncertainty, but Pavel is upbeat and optimistic: “I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Who could have imagined we would survive two years of a pandemic, and then there would be a war? I am going to live life, do what I like; write songs, perform concerts, be with friends. In these times you can’t be alone.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSImjkKinQg

(Sourced from The Moscow Times. Independent News from Russia. Band photo by Anna Perelygina)

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Dream

Fallen leaves ashen branches
Candy cream by nightswim high
Pinky promises candyfloss gardens
My beautiful headlines floor
Penguins swarm around
A lethe ward booking river
My mushroom floor
Icy clouds roadside shadows
Horses catching for the cherry blossoms swim
Newly renovated daydreaming gardens
Nothing to do with reality bites
For smacking paperflowers high
From the ceiling top
Little bunnies and Alice dream
Down the rabbit hole dream
For moonstone and ruins of paper work
My eyes fleck
Raining hard over the open skies
Purple hibiscus disc and tulle flowers
The nightstand of fallen leaves
Potential for the first time
Trying my Cinderella shoe.

 

Sayani Mukherjee

 

 

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There is no Dewey System of Governance

Do not confuse the falcons with the doves.
All rulers govern by fraud, by force.
Yes, librarians do organize — but books, not power.
It is the bibliophobes — barbarians —
who are in charge, and their conning allies
(the ones we call parliamentarians)
who write the lawbook in their favor (they call it justice)
while dressing raptors in silver quills.

 

 

 

Duane Vorhees

 

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Blue Camisole

Weather notwithstanding she undressed in view of
Lattices protective of near history
Of her fictional heart she overtoned westerly
Endearments catalogued inputs according to her study
Of the integers the Rubicon more silhouettes
Than can be counted she immerses her
Hologram in drowned things moments from this
Endowment she has named to mean
She means to separate from foundations stilts
Including generosity brought home to her
The limits of indulgence and the seedlings
Sprinkled like blessings upon a newly joined
Couple of individuals instead of
Rice

 

Sheila E Murphy

 

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The curious glasses


The glasses were there on the bench in the park where he regularly sat to eat his lunch and contemplate the world passing him by. He had sat as he normally did without noticing their presence alongside but his hand brushed their frames as he placed his sandwiches beside him in readiness for unwrapping and savouring their flavour.

His choice today had been smoked salmon and cream cheese but his recognition of the unexpected and unfamiliar drew his attention away from his food and toward these glasses abandoned on his lunch bench. They were nothing special to look at, a pair of black steel-rimmed beatle glasses, but they raised questions in his mind. Who was it that had left them? How had they been left – overlooked or discarded? Was someone even now searching for them or negotiating existence with impaired vision for the loss of them?

His curiosity awakened, his hand reached out to grasp them and having grasped to raise them to his face and eyes. What he saw arrested his attention.

His gaze focused initially on a sparrow pecking at crumbs on the tarmac a yard or more from him.

In the blink of his eyelid he saw God’s eyes focused on the sparrow, not one sparrow falling without his notice, sparrows pulling Aphrodite’s chariot, Warbeak and his warrior sparrows, psychopomps carrying spirits from the land of the dead to that of the living, Captain Jack Sparrow of the Black Pearl, London’s house sparrows, the playful intimacy of Lesbia’s pet sparrow pecking her fingers and the elegies of Catallus and Skelton, The Sparrow in Edgware, and the wet-footed sparrow hopping along the veranda.

He saw the sparrow’s feathers and immediately saw the wax of Icarus’ feathered wings melting in the heat of the sun, the US eagle feather law, the feathers of angelic wings …

He tore the glasses from his eyes, placing them on the bench, and then rubbing his eyes as if to establish whether he was awake or dreaming. He could not quite believe what he had just seen. Had these glasses enabled him to see the significance of the sparrow or had he suddenly had a mystic revelation of the inter-connectedness of existence?

He wasn’t sure but knew that his next decision would either answer those questions once and for all or leave him forever questioning the reality of that sudden wonder-filled moment. His hand hesitated over the glasses. Put them on again and would he remove them ever again as he explored the depths of multiple signification? Leave them lying where he found them and would he forever regret his rejection of insight and vision?

His hand grasped the frames and trembling hooked them over his ears and settled them on his nose. His eyes remained closed. Could he open them once more? What would he see when he did so? Curiosity triumphed and his eyes lighted on the grass that butted up again the tarmac and spread before him as a vast expanse of solid green composed of billions on billions of individual blades.

Instantly he saw the rush and sedge families, groundspeople preparing the Wembley pitch for Cup Final day, the unstoppable progress of Bermuda Grass, horses, cows, sheep and goats grazing, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, suburban lawns and multiple lawn mowers, the covers on Centre Court at Wimbledon and Cliff Richard leading communal singing, a smoking joint, the rough, the fairway and the putting green, all flesh is grass and man’s days are as grass …

Suddenly, a butterfly flew across his field of vision interrupting his train of signification. That moment, he saw the personification of a soul, a flutterby, a butterfly nut, the stomach’s butterflies, a bow tie, a hieroglyphic butterfly, butterfly lovers, a butterfly fairy. He followed the chain reaction of the flutter of the butterfly’s wings until it caused …

He was found slumped over on the bench, the glasses remained in place and rigor mortis had left a curious look of wonder inscribed on his now-motionless face. The glasses remained in place together with the look of wonder as the casket lid was secured, prayers were spoken, memories shared, earth scattered and shoveled over the coffin, man and glasses. Each one lowered into the grave, into death.

 

 

Jonathan Evens

 

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ALONG WEST FERRY STREET

 

A simple story, left over from the wind, from the chill that penetrates on a November morning, when the frost has settled in the hills and the valley has a certain swift warmth that fills the pores and lifts the spirit, a warmth beneath the cold wind, beneath the currents rising above maple and aspen, a center of warmth remaining from early June, a stillness in the blood, a relaxation of the mind, a coming together of lilac and wheat, chrysanthemum and snowdrop, the coming together of a simple story we have not remembered clearly, a story that calls up streets and smells, textures and patterns, darknesses and light, the pattern of light on the soul swept by autumn wind, the pattern of darkness on the brain when the heart has ceased and the body lingers as warmth on a cold and windy morning, as warmth in the hands when the fire is soft and birch burning creates a pattern of trust the body shares, a simple story running along West Ferry Street in Buffalo, when the trolleys were cold and the sparks set off flocks of birds, down to the lake on a cold November day when the light had already shifted and the river current was too swift for swimming, too cold for lingering, too high to provide any stillness for the mind, a day along West Ferry Street when the ferry didn’t run, when the summer languor had retreated to the south, to a warm spot beneath the waves in Merrymeeting Bay, to a warm spot along the Androscoggin, to a warm spot beneath the covers at night when the faint light of the streetlights covered the sheets and the pages of a book moved slowly and slowly moving went out into the night, bringing another light with the white clean pages, another light with the tracks along West Ferry Street, another light marking the intersection of Breckenridge and Elmwood, a fainter light coming from the crest of the Androscoggin, from the soft sheen off Merrymeeting Bay, from the glancing light in Harpswell Sound, a light found in the late autumn or early in the spring, softness remembered from a simple story that ran along West Ferry Street, that crossed the Niagara River at the base of Bird Island, that ran into Ontario like a fleet dove or fleeing snow goose, a light tracking across the deep streets of Buffalo, following the curve of a young mind out onto the channel between England and France, where the islands were special and Celtic princesses still held court, a simple story, however, that did not assume too much, a story of a young girl in a bright frock, a young girl moving rapidly along West Ferry Street, she was alone and brought with her several books for the long evenings and bright mornings, for the times when the day spun around and there was neither conversation or company, moving along West Ferry Street, in the company of Celtic princesses, in the company of ancient gods and knights and ladies, in the company of northern hawks and owls, in the shadow of Androscoggin, in the bright sun of Merrymeeting Bay, in the warmth of stories told and retold, a summer’s day far to the east of Buffalo, in a house facing Katahdin, in a kitchen smelling of apples and butterscotch rolls, in a kitchen facing the flanks of Katahdin, in a kitchen warm and close where the cold wind did not go, where the cold wind off the lake could not reach, a kind of solace in the scent of apples and rolls, in the warm undertones of a kitchen facing Katahdin, facing the northwest, facing the dreams shed by passing snows, by passing storms on the iron crest of Katahdin, far from Erie’s cold winds, far from the reach of Niagara’s swift current, far from the dusty tracks along West Ferry Street and the busy intersection of Breckenridge and Elmwood south of Olmstead’s park and the sleek silhouettes of museums and tombs, far from the enchanted waters of Erie, the enchanted shadows of Niagara, the swiftness felt within the bones on a cold afternoon under the wind, beside the light, dancing down West Ferry Street as a elm in flower, as leaves shed along the day, bearing the scent of apple and butterscotch rolls, following the trail of Celtic princesses and the first young knights of the Table Round.

 

 

 

 

Andrea Moorhead

 

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Niall McDevitt Obituary

 

CNJ-A-20-10-22-004-E01-1.pdf

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THE ILLUSTRIOUS WORLD OF ANNE PIGALLE. Roxanne Fontana Interviews Anne Pigalle

Roxanne Fontana Interviews Anne Pigalle
A peak into the world of Paris’ born Anne Pigalle.  I spoke to her recently, and asked her some questions ………………..

 

 

You seem to have many mediums for your art— music, painting, poetry..  anything else?  Was it all a metamorphosis from very on in your life?  Do you enjoy one medium more or less than the others?  Do you have an ‘absolute’ favourite artistic medium that brings you the most happiness?

Hi, well my first love is music and singing, songwriting; I started as a guitarist in an all girls punk band at the time called Klaxon Flirt in Paris, but as I was doing most of the work,  when I moved to London, it was inevitable I was going to become a singer. I love the painting and photographing and film making as well , each medium comes from a personal need in my life at the very time and it came to me  later in life, and not as an intellectual decision. The erotic self portraits polaroids came as desire to reconquer a lost lover and to prove to myself that many men react to eroticism rather to romanticism, that’s why I called the photos and the poems âmerotic art , âme means soul in French. It then was easy to translate my music creativity into another medium , so music helped the art and vice versa . After many years of visual art adventures, I now enjoy going back to music as the art world is saturated and music is losing its intent and something has to be done. I have also run a successful club in Soho and organised many events with other performers mainly in Soho because of its history and how the French Huguenots created its spirit of Bohemia as the first self proclaimed immigrants , but now such events  are  getting harder to organise, post pandemic , mainly through venues closing down and the bling lack of interest in talent; the last group show I did was an art show this year called Anne Pigalle and the Mavericks of Naive Fetichism in Soho at Cuts in Frith St opposite to where Burroughs started to cast his spells on a club he didn’t like.

Can we get a glimpse of early memories of Paris.. from Pigalle, you embraced it as your surname …? 

I grew up in Montmartre and Pigalle, I love its artistic output at  the turn of the century, that’s really when modern art started, from Le Chat Noir on; a time I would have loved to live in . People forget cabaret was radical and political , not just tinsels . My father was a jazz musician,  hot club type, and would jam with the likes of Sydney Bechet  and my mother would promenade me in the pram in the gardens of Montmartre, we were very poor, we all lived in a room inside of someone else’s council flat, things improved a bit later on but always lived in council flats in Paris. I don’t know, everything always brings me back to  that place, later on I had  a flat in Pigalle for a while , lots of fun. You can’t argue with the ghosts, they were there first.

Tell our readers why you left Paris originally & a little bit of your journey away from there.

It had to be love of course because I fell in love with a musician, but also because I felt I had no opportunity to do what I wanted to do in France, mostly bimbettes who’s family could introduce them in the business, and comply to macho criteriums, a different scene from London and as it was still the end of Punk and I had been coming to London since the early days of Punk, I knew people and it seemed to make sense to make the move, People like Viv Albertine who I had met in Paris, became one of my best friends in the 80’s in London. I saw the Sex Pistols at the Chalet du Lac in 76 , hence the connection and why Glen Matlock plays on my Ecstase album, the rest is history, or soon to be.

At this point, looking back at your time in LA, what events stand out most? 

Travelling and playing both north and south of the US was a priceless education, meeting Al Green and seeing him sing in his church in Memphis, meeting Donald Cammell in LA and starting a film project, he used to tell people I was a genius and never tried to have sex with me, it was mutual respect, also a short lived interlude with Tim Burton, a great gig at Chateau Marmont with Iggy Pop, Courtney Love and Johnny Depp in the audience ( I discovered Edith Piaf had played there, that made my day ), living the gypsy life in LA from Beverly Hills to downtown LA, having 3 live bands at the same time, one with Leonard Cohen’s musicians, one with John Lee Hooker’s musicians and one with a mormon hard core metal player of 20 years old. I learned to use a gun at the downtown gun club with a gangster. My first exhibited drawing about anti gentrification was in downtown LA at the Spanish Kitchen studios. And of course driving my automatic Silver Bullet Camaro, T top ,  plate 77, V8 engine “ to look at the stars in the sky ”! It was a great  enlightening  journey .

You are still publicly active in Marseille and London.  Along the way, during your life and in your career, what has changed, if anything, about your own outlook regarding the performances? 

The more I go on and the more I try to please myself and have fun, as if I don’t, no-one else will. I always try to have a personal point of view and find new ideas. Venues and music as we know it , are disappearing, we have to find new ways but for me, music is something that has to be experienced in the same room first, the cd or download is the souvenir postcard. Marseille is of lately yes  but it is starting to also get gentrified;  all kinds of proposition  always coming up, like I was going to play the Adelaide festival in Australia in 2020, but  that was cancelled because of Covid, they kindly still paid me in exchange for  film performances  but  it’s not quite the same. I have played most places, Europe, US, Japan, Africa, Mexico, not India, Russia or China yet, which I would love too. There were  some gigs planned for China, but I think the sexy words were an issue or perhaps more the fact that the tax laws changed .

Meaning do you feel the same way about yourself, about ‘the business’ – the venues, and the ‘public’?  Many artists of our generation, seem to fall into normalcy of dedicating their life to their youth.  Where I am from, in New York City for example, they constantly celebrate the past, annual birthday bashes for Thunders, persistent club dates dedicated to the old scene, and the long-gone.  I don’t have this particular view at all.  I’ve done dedications, covered a song by Johnny Thunders, for example, but the constant living in the past thing is abhorrent to me really.  We seem to be on the same wave-length in this regard yes? Is your ability to live in the now and look forward and do work that is un-related to your history, come easily and naturally? 

But these times were more exciting times! How many times have I seen Thunders, one of the greatest but with a bit of a wish death –  I see youngsters trying to emulate punk and they can play it kid of  but their attitude is completely wrong. After Punk , I was a bit disillusioned so I went on doing a bit more of a jazz chanson Tom Waits thing, but now I very much feel like getting back to my roots and doing something with that , a melange of everything I know , it’s the recipe you create that counts, that little something that captures the zeitgeist .

Do you think you will live in London for the rest of your life?  If not, where would you possibly replace yourself to?

It is very hard to say. I do not find London especially interesting musically at the moment but everywhere seems to be brainwashed, We really DO need a revolution! The only place I could relocate is back to France, time will tell, it’s always good to be between 2 places or travelling if one can.

Any plans to do any more recording for release in the near future?  I love the Ecstase cd, your voice especially.

Thank you. A EP called the Deal followed that album  last year, and prior  to that was the Madame Sex Art Cd. I have done some recording with a rock and roll producer in America lately and looking for a label, always working on something and trying to find new ideas and experimenting, a possible book but that has been in the pipeline for 40 years lol .

Your performances are sex-themed and you’ve tapped into erotica your whole life, but maybe moreso lately.  Is this despite your age, in spite of your age, or do you consciously feel it has nothing at all to do with that.

It is something that came to me in LA. I don’t know if it was the testosterones or what! ( just kidding ) And which I developed when I came back to London, it is mostly the poetry and the art. Always from personal experience . And the songs could not translate that. Mentioned earlier, it is âmerotic work, so something to do with the soul, as a kind of romantic erotic, which is more to do with women’s world of dreams than men’s. I wanted to explore that subject. I also used to run salons from the infamous Francis Bacon’s  Colony Room in Dean St  and later on at Glastonbury where I made the audience talk about their fantasies. It is also linked to my love for tarot reading, I like to cultivate the magic side of everything. So it’s not all to do with the physicality . My Mexican fiancé used to say eroticism and sex is not a question of age, well not for me anyway, hoorah to that! We must destroy the stereotypes . People can have sex very late in life.

Like me, you are an independent artist.  There is no fame and fortune, and you call the shots. I am almost certain that you agree with me that you are fine with this freedom.   For me, I am actually oddly grateful and actually thank God that I’m not famous!  Are you as extreme as I am in that view, or do you dream of having a higher public profile and more recognition for Anne Pigalle but absolutely on your own terms, with no compromise?  I read that you spurned an offer to submit music to the BBC and offered a live performance instead.  I love that, you were fine with that weren’t you?  And they found the music and played it anyway.  I love that story.  It isn’t possible for you to do anything in ‘show business’ that you don’t want to do isn’t it?

Well ideally of course it’s best to pick and choose . I am independent at the moment and won’t do any kind of compromise that don’t make me feel  happy. I had my 5 minutes of fame when I was signed to Tevor Horn’s label  ZTT records. It was a kind of compromise as it was not a happy marriage and ended up in divorce but I took a chance , I was very young. I like to have a bit of everything, I am ‘gourmande’ that way. My music has been used in commercials in Japan and I was pretty big there.  It was not a compromise. Then followed the “arty” years which was great and gave me power, but I think it’s very difficult to proceed on certain levels without proper support. This said, I have done major festivals, exhibited with top galleries , worked with some key players and never sold my soul, it’s just not me. I would say I like to oscillate, which is nice if you can get it. I try to be foxy sometimes. When I grew up in France, there was a saying: “ In France, we don’t have petrol but we have ideas”. I try to make it one of my mottos

 

ALBUMS, MERCHANDISE, AND FURTHER INFORMATION AT:  www.annepigalle.com 

 



 

 

 

 

Roxanne Fontana
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Adrift

I float around on the sea of my life, tossed driftwood-like,
the current oblivious to my yearning, no direction known.
Every now and then I cling to something seeming solid,
finding only slippery impermanence or impediment towed.

The means to steer falls away weakened by determined opposition.
Crumbled motive flaps like a tattered net curtain in a broken window,
entropy rules, no-one fooled, a fog of dull acceptance drops.
Hope teases, more a siren call, than an invitation into light.

I crave the certainty of ground beneath, of resolution found.
I grieve lapsed dreams, opportunities fallen as leaves in winter.
The chance of a quiet inlet, of warmth and succour is my prayer,
of stillness and peace, as I let go, let go, let me slip into silence.

 

 

 

Francis de Aguilar
Picture Nick Victor

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Change and Image

I am in a changing world
With my attire of curiosity.
I leave trails behind.
The sweating papers
Write with blood,
My ink of despair.
A mixture of sad and happy
Wake up and kindle
Fires of solitude.
My image stops
In this changing world.
I lose not to time
My prime is inked.
The rhyme reveals
My spontaneity;
In layers of expression
I proclaim.
Sensation emerges
And speaks from the pages.
Bad is yesterday’s good
In moods, the soul talks.

 

 

 

Sushant Thapa
Picture Nick Victor

 

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Coming.

Piano alleyed Mayfair dance
End of October
Stuck in my ear
A rendezvous of opera
I wish my masked font
My gullibility to hold up
A room bit sized up
Etched up every flesh nuanced up
When the floor creaks in
Flooding hoops and
Metaphors of checked tiles
I want to sound bulletproof
Basking in the sun razor blade motion
Reminiscing old selves
Each surfaces with every drink
Old times my biting forgetfulness
My eccentric page turning dog eared
Papers
In full accommodation
As if I live in the hotel
King sized queen sized
Munching each shape as should be done
Under the mattress
Matters of the heart unchecked
Worthwhile
Sky rocketing ambition
When dips down
Makes a glassskin of my knob
A hollow point
To start over
Dark blue guitar strings after the movie
French thoughtful points
Foreign, exotic nuanced way
I bit my lip
A skewed way
My finesse my fingers wet with dew
The coming winter.

 

 

 

Sayani Mukherjee.
Picture Nick Victor

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nap

 

a hired skip tracer fingered a lonely page
  in his old address book
    and plotted disposable conversations.
      he took the razor over his past
        and came back complete.

beforehand the temperature sunk to zip zero
  and stayed that way for decades
   intricately whistling ripped notes of crystal ice.

every morning a swayback nag with elk’s teeth
  turned the tables on the night

[on the radio a little boy hung himself on a string last week
  in a little shack on the plantation]

a female pachuco type remembered the mink coat
  she lost in a flash flood
    and stared at the agent extra hard, distraught.

private eyes blinked
  slowly taking in small
    dreams of somewhere…

 

 

 

 

Julian Isaacs
Picture Nick Victor

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Going Postal

 

To ensure full digital detox, I dismantle my phone and laptop into their constituent parts and post them to random addresses across the world. I don’t know what all these fiddly bits do, so when the person behind the counter asks me about the contents of each padded envelope, I panic and say the first things that come into my head: Kubrick’s script for the Moon landing, the bullet that killed Princess Di, a subliminal message cut into Star Wars, the soul of a prominent figure on the world stage which they exchanged for a life that would make de Sade blanch. The lizard behind the counter doesn’t blink as they slip each one into a sterilised bag which a government drone will collect as soon as I’ve gone. I tell them to keep my bank card so I can’t be traced, though I can already hear a whirr and buzz descending from the chemtrail web and feel the chips in my system chatter in response. Did you know that a stamped postcard weighs exactly 6g and that when 6G comes online the shit will really – I mean really – hit the fan? The longest postal delay ever recorded is 89 years. I shall erase my fingerprints with battery acid and replace my blood with bleach and sterilised water.

 

 

 

Oz Hardwick
Art Michael Petalengro

 

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Ignorance of The Law


 
the long arm of the met police
digging deep in the pockets of conspiracy
calling to murderers of laws
that they must have a bleak face
these cops creating social enterprise
chasing & locking up those whose only crime is to flee
full-throttle angry mobs of protest
ruled with an iron fist from Braverman down
our steel eyes fixed against the criminal interlopers 
but for those who just made a genuine mistake
we offer a chance to rebalance the political scene.

 

Clive Gresswell
Picture Rupert Loydell

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‘Elements’ in the House of Light

 

Some words and photos from this current exhibition: Alan Dearling

In a recent visit to Madeira I spotted a poster for the International Photo Exhibition ‘Elements’ – at the highly appropriately named, ‘House of Light’.  The photo show was housed on the upstairs mezzanine floor at the Museu da Electricidade – Casa da Luz (Electricity Museum – House of Light). It’s located near the famous Mercado dos Lavradores (Funchal’s Farmers Market) and the cable car base near the harbour.

This was organised by UNITED PHOTO PRESS, supported by the UN Environment Programme. Here’s what they say about it in their publicity:

“The exhibition ‘Elements’ gives us another the look at the arts, their contexts, their intra and extra-artistic relationships, their conceptual strata, promote an endless game of statements in which the dense production of meaning constitutes the predominant gesture. It tries to sketch a joint portrait of the arts and the issues that cross the reflection of the different cultural acts of United Photo Press artists from various parts of the globe. The exhibition shows the importance of dialogue between art and other related areas, so that thinking about new stories and new meanings of creative mixtures can be broadened…”

And, here’s a video for the exhibition complete with an exhilarating soundtrack. Well worth watching!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-89vUwBsOc

The following is a selection of photos that resonated with me. Plus one of my own photos of Surveillance Society graffiti, which is actually located just a couple of hundred metres from the exhibition. It seemed to fit in with the overall theme. Sadly, during my half hour visit to the United Photo Press show, I was the solitary visitor. A shame. It includes some powerful and thought-provoking images.

 

 

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Night Gardener

while above most are sleeping
in Olde London Towne
the night gardener I am
in the Underground
train operator stops
scurrying out into
the Tube stations
plucking weeds or
are they remnants
migrating from a lost empire
that arise from their footprints
quenching the thirst of graffitied flowers
watering can and my early morning meal
in my old army regiment backpack
as I nightly loop all eleven lines
was offered an electric lawnmower
but how could I get a fumed buzz
while reading Plath between
the pages & stops before dawn
let off at Kew Gardens
to my day position & see
carelessly herded sheep
that once held my job
along the Thames

 

 

 

Word and image
Terrence Sykes

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Children of Light

Four Winters, Jem Southam (Stanley/Barker)
Midwest Materials., Julie Blackmon (Radius Books)

Four Winters is a book of mornings and mourning, of dawns and dusks, a collection of reflective colour photographs on the River Exe initiated by photographer Jem Southam’s need for a time and place to remember and grieve for his brother, and the recognition that in finding this space he had also found the subject for his next body of work. This book is a selection from the many photographs he made (and continues to make) as a record or diary of his visits, mapping  and recording the landscape near where he lives.

Southam’s images have always been quiet and intense, requiring viewers to spend time looking, just as he does with his camera. In Four Rivers’ often misty riverscapes we see light arriving or departing, swans and other birds awakening or settling down, the water bright or muddy, rippled, still or in flood. Sometimes dark and trees enclose us, at other times silver, pink or orange light illuminates a scene only just coming into being, hills, streams and vistas which are hardly there yet.


     Jem Southam

Soft tones of indescribable blues and greys contrast with the occasional autumnal yellow or browns, pale greens. Birds in formation fly by or cluster in protective groups, swans haul their weight in to the sky, avian ghosts against mist or icy dew. This is primal stuff, wild and uncontrolled. Even a sometimes tamed, often inhabited and developed, river still shapes itself, changing the land it inhabits, as it ebbs and flows through the seasons. I feel lucky to share this unknown world.

Julie Blackmon’s photos seem very different at first glance but, like Southam’s, they show, reveal, imply, tell or create stories, in this case slightly nervy or edgy ones set in American suburbia. Children feature, mostly at play or involved in recreational activities: swimming in the lake or garden pools, playing cards or ball games, holding pets, or just loitering outside shops.

Pay attention and it’s clear these photos are staged and managed images with disruptive or unexpected, sometimes surreal or awkward, elements included. A meat chop is held up inside the makeshift proscenium arch of a garage where a talent show is taking place, with a table for a stage in front of red curtains. Christmas lights are strewn across a driveway of a house that still has a Halloween pumpkin rotting on the steps. A lawn becomes the background for a carefully constructed abstract pattern made with croquet mallet, split watermelon, knife, garden hose, tennis racquet, tricycle, a single garden chair, white paint and three small children in nappies – none old enough to engage with what is spread around them.


     Spray Paint, Julie Blackmon

Many of these photographs are disturbing. I am reminded of early Arthur Tress (not his later, highly sexualised work) and one or two of Blackmon’s images feature similar masks and costumes. The photo actually called ‘Mask’ is especially unnerving, especially in the enlarged detail, where three children pose in rubber masks next to another in a wolf head, on suburban steps next to Halloween detritus. Look closely and there is another child hidden on the veranda, whose hands give him away, and another peering out from the shadow of an open door. Why is there a bare branch leant against the front of the house? Is that a real spider on the sidewalk? Why is there a frog, a swan, a discarded mask included in the picture? Where is the little girl with her back to us going?


     Masks, Julie Blackmon

From Blackmon’s strange arrangements and details we construct our own stories, our own commentaries on how, perhaps, the world appears to children, or to the photographer. Why are these children in such awkward poses, at unnatural rest, so unnerving? What are we scared of? How does Blackmon’s photograph turn balls and their shadows on the wall into a planetary system? Why is Blackmon photographing twins, or sisters, in front of a snow scene in summer, when the following pages appear to show evidence of real snow? Why are another set of twins elsewhere dressed up as chickens?

These are strange and provocative images, that provoke questions about how we observe each other and the world around us, and create narratives to make sense of things, however unsettling or beautiful they are. And that is what Midwest Materials shares with Four Winters: an ability to look and wonder, to provoke us to see and engage more, to look up from the page and begin to notice what is happening around us, however slowly or calmly, whether natural or staged.

 

Rupert Loydell

(part of this review was first published online by Tears In The Fence)

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Windsor’s Funeral

 

“Whose Jerusalem –
at usance for its bones’
redemption and last
salvo of poppies?”

– Geoffrey Hill,
‘Churchill’s Funeral’ (1996) 

 

1.

Mayfair bore me,
Balmoral undid me.

Whose Jerusalem then?
Holyroodhouse mourns
Britannia dis-incarnate.
As the Lamb’s House

knows its brokenness,
& is unable to self-heal.
Flagrant masque-musick,
circumstantial pomp

bouncing off tympanums.
Loreley’s lost kingdom,
a ruptured sceptre-&-ball
sucked into the deluge.

Blue-bloody-mindedness,
duty perched on altars;
curriculum vitae assured
as vocation’s profile-stamp.

Only featureless Mammon
glowers with triumph,
is marionette-adroit,
pulling off richer pageants.

Field-of-the-Cloth-of-Gold
draped over her catafalque,
mortgaged to infinitum;
Lilibet’s teeth: edge-turned

Mayfair bore me,
Balmoral undid me.

 
2.

Ten miles: sluice, sweet Thames.
Black Prince’s ruby’s hard-set,
softer carpets absorb the
bitterness of foot-attendance.

Royals lock-step into rank-
&-file. Is ‘Commonwealth’
a euphemism? For the sins
of the British Raj unpaid,

they have their high estate,
dine from the fleshpots; sip
Ceylon with the pre-requisite
grace, profusely hand-shake.

Remember, Death has collateral,
his tooth’s deep in their all-in-all:
Edward’s baldness, Elizabeth’s curlicues,
with only the worms crying: J’accuse!

 

3.

Windsor is indeed gone & every coin,
copper-cold, zinc-bright that is thrown,
knows that Britannia is utterly blown,
breast-deep in the fiscal Acheron.

Elizabethan segues into
the Carolingian pronto,
even as the twenty-one
grammes are air-lifted.

Bedrock of this post-modern
Britain: immaterialised,
become as insubstantial manna,
as she follows her flame-pillar.

Yet the real wonder is that
she hath endured so long,
only Louis Quartorze longer.
Autumn’s rigor-mortis cleaves

onto Summer; Platinum-
bunting not disposed of yet.
Whose Jubilee? Jerusalem:
a fata morgana almost forgot.

 

4.

Cardinal points occupied,
a pecking-order demarcated
by birth, whilst the philanderer
falls into mock-subservience.

So they ply their final vigil,
four sentries to a gone Albion
addicted to rite & passage.
Chevrons, medals: pomp-embossed.

So whose Jerusalem? When
blood & semen pour down
palace walls; theatre of unjust
celebrity advertised as public

service, privately laughing
with the founders of the Bank
of England. Hear threnodies
thread-needle the Gold Square

Mile. A cleft nation muddied,
inebriate on their imperial
theme, swelling into obeisance
through ten days of tenebrous

unction: Grief is the price
we pay for love. Grief! So,
in this record-breaking heat,
where are snows of last century?

 

5.

Her gun-carriage judders,
finds its lost momentum,
itinerary-knowing schedule
like nations set in her hollow

crown, blood blue-printed
in DNA of Britannia’s
Common Weal. Supreme
commandeering, maritime

suzerainty salmoning along
The Mall, buoyed up by
patriotism’s last refuge
to which a scoundrel clings.

Pneumatic-elect Albion
with his celebrity Camelot,
bringing her home for one
last billion-pound mega-bash,

one ultimate hurrah for
the British Broadcasting
Corporation to perform
to the wide-eyed cosmos

during a cost-of-living crisis.
Live out her lovely symbolism,
this efflorescent choreograph
of history: real & re-enacted.

We who are proud witnesses
in a witness-proof world; so
let the gun-carriage roll now
divested of her treasure-house.

Pomp & circumstance
shaking out of a trance;
beatific HD vision
for sons & daughters
of a riven nation

And did those feet
tramp up to Horse Guards?

& thence up to Wellington Arch?

 

6.

Katabasis at St. George’s,
the vault gapes for her last
descent to Regina Persephone’s
realm. And all those other queens:

Boudicca, Eleanor of Aquitaine,
decapitated Anne, Bloody Mary,
the first Elizabeth who did not
marry, Victoria’s ashen visage

in the incline where asphodels
are more densely gathered:
whispering, grim, conspiratorial,
& their sepals silent-mouthing:

Britannia, Britannia, Britannia . . .

Gloriana-bereft, baleful, grimacing,
no pretence of a great-hearted
magnificence to defeat behemoths
of misrule (aka republicans):

disorder of the Garter,
katabasis at St. George’s;

yet hardly a triumphal-entry
into Jerusalem flying the

three lions, the harp,
the red dragon, O Lioness

rapping hard at
chalcedony-gates.

 

 

.

Mark Wilson

 

Mark Wilson has published four poetry collections: Quartet For the End of Time (Editions du Zaporogue, 2011), Passio (Editions du Zaporogue, 2013), The Angel of History (Leaky Boot Press, 2013) and Illuminations (Leaky Boot Press, 2016). He is the author of a verse-drama, One Eucalyptus Seed, about the arrest and incarceration of Ezra Pound after World War Two, as well as a tragi-comedy, Arden. His poems and articles have appeared in: The Black Herald, The Shop, 3:AM Magazine, International Times, The Fiend, Epignosis Quarterly, Dodging the Rain, The Ekphrastic Review, Rasputin and Le Zaporogue.

 

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Reader’s Digest

Alice is a drag queen, Bowie’s somewhere in between
Other bands are looking mean, me, I’m trying to stay clean
I don’t dig the radio, I hate what the charts pick
Rock and roll may not be dead, but it’s getting sick
All over the world disc jockeys sound the same
And every town I play is like the one from where I came

The Rolling Stones are millionaires, flower children pallbearers
Beatles said All you need is love, and then they broke up
Jimi took an overdose, Janis followed so close
The whole music scene and all the bands are pretty comatose
This time last year, people didn’t wanna hear
They looked at Jesus from afar, this year he’s a superstar

Dear John, who’s more popular now?
I’ve been listening to some of Paul’s records
Sometimes I think he really is dead

It’s 1973, I wonder who we’re gonna see
Who’s in power now? Think I’ll turn on my TV
The man on the news said China’s gonna beat us
We shot all our dreamers, there’s no one left to lead us
We need a solution, we need salvation
Let’s send some people to the moon and gather information

They brought back a big bag of rocks
Only cost thirteen billion. Must be nice rocks

You think it’s such a sad thing when you see a fallen king
Then you find out they’re only princes to begin with

And everybody has to choose whether they will win or lose
Follow God or sing the blues, and who they’re gonna sin with
What a mess the world is in, I wonder who began it
Don’t ask me, I’m only visiting this planet 

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Some Old and New Work

 

 

WE’RE TURNING BUSINESS CLASS GREEN

 

I made this #BanFossilAds poster for the new Brandalism campaign about airline advertising alongside some great work by other artists. My poster focused on greenwashing and business class travel. The posters went up in hundreds of sites across Europe. There’s also an Italian translation of my poster that went up over there, which I’ll post on my website in the next few days.

More details here: http://brandalism.ch/projects/airlines-airports/

 

 

HELL BUS IN LIVERPOOL

 

I was delighted to be able to show Jeremy Corbyn my Hell Bus exhibition at The World Transformed last month.

We had a chat about nuclear weapons, the Daily Mail and solar powered tanks. He really liked my Don’t Believe Everything Billionaires Tell You image which I made during the 2019 election so I gave him a sticker of it and a Mini Daily Mail lol.

 

 

MILLIONS OF DEAD CYCLISTS CAN’T BE WRONG!

Put this one together super quickly in response to British Cycling’s catastrophic decision to help Shell launder their PR image for the next 8 years.

One of the most absurd parts of this deal is that they’re claiming Shell are going to help British Cycling reach net zero! An oil and gas giant, one of the world’s largest polluters, helping a cycling organisation reduce their carbon emissions! I’m losing my fucking mind.

My only hope with stuff like this is the backlash is actually creating more bad PR for Shell than if they’d simply not done this. 8 years of bad PR for Shell from millions of angry cyclists, sounds like it could be a net positive?

 

HELL HOODIE PRE-ORDER

To help with on-going Hell Bus expenses I’m doing a new pre-order only batch of Hell hoodies printed up, you can pre-order yours here until the 20th November when I’ll close the sales page and get them printed to ship out the first week of December.

 

MUSEUM OF FREE DERRY

I was stunned to find out that my print about the Bloody Sunday massacre has been added to the Museum of Free Derry collection.
It’s such an honour to have my work included in a museum as important and close to my heart as this.
Thank you to the museum and Raymond and Maureen Houston for donating it.

 

I WROTE A THING

 

I wrote something for a recent issue of DOPE magazine (published by Dog Section Press) about how making satire in a dystopia means it’s frequently overtaken by reality.

You can read it online here.

 

UPCOMING EVENTS

Next week on the 9th Nov I’ll be representing the Museum of Neoliberalism in a discussion with Migration Museum at Conway Hall. Tickets are free both for in-person and virtual attendance, and can be booked here:

https://www.conwayhall.org.uk/whats-on/event/museums-that-make-a-difference/

I’m also coming back to Merseyside on the 19th November with the Hell Bus at MAKE Hamilton in Birkenhead. You can see the bus, grab a drink and I’ll also be doing a talk about my work and answering questions about all of it. Book tickets here.

 

NETPOL DONATION

I was very happy today to donate £1000 to Netpol, the network for police monitoring, which was raised from sales of these ACAB badges and stickers.

I’ve also had a few t-shirts with the design printed up to see if there’s enough interest for a full run of them. You can order one here.

This update is public and shareable so please feel free to pass it on. If you’re not on my mailing list but would like to be you can sign up here.

 

Eternal thanks to anyone who’s ever backed my work on Patreon or through the shop!

And thanks for reading!

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SAUSAGE 249

Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column which is rated PG and may contain scenes of brief strong sex

READER: I can’t wait to see Matt Hancock on “I’m a Celebrity”, can you?
MYSELF: Me? Yes, I can wait. All my life if necessary.
READER: Don’t be so hard on him! He’s only doing this to raise people’s awareness
about dyslexia.
MYSELF: Of course he is, he’s a genius. And can there be a better way of raising dyslexia
wareness than sticking your head in a bag of angry scorpions or munching on a pair of raw
oat testicles?
READER: Goat testicles aren’t nearly as bad as some people make out. They are versatile and like mushrooms, very absorbent. They can take on the flavour of whatever they are cooked with.
MYSELF: I know, that’s why they are so good at languages.

ART THEFT BAFFLES POLICE
Staff at Upper Dicker’s Pink Triangle Gallery were left reeling today after a valuable piece of work was stolen from an exhibition when no-one was looking.
The famous gallery was targeted by what police believe to be an international art theft syndicate run by a sinister mastermind with a fluffy white cat. They stole what gallery curator Alistair Milqueflote described as “an irreplaceable masterpiece”.
The piece was part of a mixed exhibition, and featured a photograph of a straw hat with the words “kiss me quick” written around the rim, on a pale green background.
Mr. Milqueflote sobbed as he told us “The 12x24cm picture is the work of local conceptual artist Bandy Sponk, famous for his miniature depictions of candy floss, and is estimated to be worth between £200 and £24,000,000. I’m gutted”

HOW MUCH?
The thieves are thought to have gained access by entering through the front door of the gallery during opening time. Detectives believe that the gang then removed the picture from the wall, left the building, and made their getaway either on foot or in a vehicle, possibly a municipal bus. As Sussex police appealed for witnesses, a devastated Mr.Milqueflote described the theft as “a tragedy which could set art back 2,500 years, to a time when people had to use brushes and paint and be able to draw”
Officers at Upper Dicker police station remain baffled by what they describe as a “sophisticated and well planned robbery”. Police Chief Hydra Gorgon gave us this statement:-
“I would like to speak directly to the heartless mob who stole this sculpture, some of whom may be reading this paper. Bring it back at once and take your punishment like men, or women. We are appealing for witnesses.” She added that although she knows quite a lot about art, she doesn’t know what she likes.
©2010 Guano Associated Press

 

Capricorn (22 December-20 January) Rising sign of Jupiter will meet falling Sun in Teahouse of August Moon. Cancel travel on 12th and check roof tiles. In case of exterior, hard hat must be worn. Or head-cage if not raining.

Aquarius (21 January-19 February) The moon in conjunction with Aries will reverse fondly, bringing cheese. Love battles have no appetite for worms.

Pisces (20 February-20 March) Insecurity of stock market may precipitate funds. News of razor-fish will arrive like speedy cruiser-boat on 23rd. Beautiful snake withers by October month however.

Aries (21 March-20 April) Mid-month, Gemini and Mars will bump heads in a cusping, which may abbreviate to unfortunate news of Venus awake but not getting out of bed. Sacrifice pig for best holiday bargain.

Taurus (21 April-21 May)  Saggitarious is your escalator, stalked by angry Pluto, so this month’s atomic plan could be medicinal to dried grape money illnesses. August will fetch happy seawater of a lengthy misplaced relative

 Gemini (22 May-21 June) The Tiger Penis brings health for doctor advising. A houseboat means good fortune, although water danger. Big job with company perhaps? Or unexpected falling wind.

Cancer (22June 23 July)  Strong advice heeding will be good news for electronic keyboard. Press flashing light button at all times to enjoy varied musical tones.

Leo (24 July-23 August) For Leos, may is dread month of the squirrel. Fill watering cans with red dye and sprinkle nuts. Spread glue and wait for squirrels. Fence in squirrels when firmly stuck. Rinse and repeat.

Virgo (24 August-23 September) With feng shui and Mercury absconding, very important for Virgo to rearrange furniture on the 28th. Chairs must face wall. All fish to be suspended. A wren’s egg under floorboards will repel malodorous relatives.

Libra (24 September-23 October) Difficult month for those born under weighing machine sign. On one side is monkey, on the other, goat. To eliminate goat, press A and C buttons with togetherness, and illuminate screen motivation map. Next, scroll with map signature until pop-up will show yearning to be instructed. Select Yes and No under Why? button, and screen will give hospitality for entry and vanquishing of goat.

Scorpio (24 October-23 November) Good news for Scorpio! Beautiful girlfriend will appear like big surprise unless you are not boy. For ladies, shining beads for ear hanging. or perhaps silk gown in the shape of a ball.

Saggitarius (24 November-21 December) An ill-planned surprise returns fire. 15th and 16th best for love hotel or karaoke party. Product may contain nuts.

 

POETRY NOW
THIS WEEK’S GUEST POET DOUGLAS PANCAKE RSC



Douglas Pancake has been resident principle boy at the Cascara Playhouse Shepton Mallett since 1957. His hobbies include breeding fancy goldfish, stamp collecting and dogging. He is 63, and unmarried.

 


TIME

By Douglas Pancake
from his poetry compendium Streamy Windows

An infinite number of monkeys and
an infinite number of typewriters?
That’s a lot.

The noise will be deafening

think of the neighbours!

What are all those monkeys going to eat?
An infinite number of bananas?

Anyway,
I don’t even like Shakespeare.

 

Sausage Life!

https://vimeo.com/user129836501

Colin Gibson • Emmet Ives • Anita Makris



SAY GOODBYE TO IRONING MISERY!
When added to your weekly wash, new formula Botoxydol, with Botulinim Toxin A, will guarantee youthful, wrinkle-free clothes.
Take years off your smalls with Botoxydol!
CAUTIONMAY CAUSE SMILEY FACE T-SHIRTS TO LOOK INSINCERE


 

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Fawkes

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SAUSAGE 248

Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column which, like the Church of the Dyslexic Martyr, utterly comndemns Santa and all his works

READER: Why is the price of Heinz Baked Beans and Cream of Tomato Soup  going up faster than house prices?

MYSELF: Simple. It’s because all the sugar and red food dye comes from The Ukraine. If you were smart you’d get on the Soup ‘n Bean ladder and grow some pies of your own whilst the growing is good.

READER: Yes, I heard growth is the thing now, particularly where pies are concerned. Let’s hope that the latest PM, Rich E. Sunak, will concentrate on delivering pie growth now that Liz Truss has left government to spend more time with her cheeses.

FIFTY SHADES OF MAGNOLIA
Ex-Imaginary Chairleg guitarist Tit Bingo whose career as a producer of adult films has mushroomed since the pop bubble burst, has announced a new low budget flick which he promises will have an even lower budget than his recent barrel-scraping blockbuster Moby’s Dick. With a working title of Breakfast at Stiffeney’s he plans to start and finish shooting on November 17th. It will be shot on location in Bingo’s home town of Cockmarlin, where he has appealed for local volunteers to be extras in the big orgy climax which takes place at Cockmarlin’s famous Museum of Hosiery (“Everything you always wanted to know about socks but were afraid to ask”).
“I’m going to need 25 Rubenesque women and one enormously endowed man for the scene” he told us at the Upper Dicker headquarters of his production company 21st Century Cocks. “Let’s face it £300 per day is a very good rate for the job. I think most local people can afford that.”

Dear Wendy,
My cat, Stanley, refuses to come out of the airing cupboard since he was frightened by a huge thunderstorm last Thursday. I have tried to tempt him with his favourite food, cottage cheese with chives, but I get the impression he has been surviving by eating the mice, a pair of whom came inside a box of fluffy bath towels from Asda, (which I think are made in China), and have multiplied. Please help.
Medusa Parsimoney

Dear Medusa,
The thunderstorm has likely traumatized Stanley to such an extent that his diet has become confused. Mice are tasty creatures, but lack vitamins D and E, essential for the feline metabolism. Also, as any self-respecting cat will tell you, mouse and cottage cheese don’t mix. In order to give Stanley the courage to re-enter your life I suggest leaving a dish of Baked Alaska or Cuisses de Grenouille if you can catch the frogs unawares, and a side order of English muffins with maple syrup.

Dear Wendy,
in these straitened times, is it advisable to let my friend borrow my vintage Pfaff sewing machine? He says it is just for a quick job, but I noticed his fingers were crossed. Please advise.
Olivia Mongoose
Diddling on-the-Hoof
Dear Ms Mongoose,
My advice is don’t do it. The last time I lent my sewing machine to a friend for a “quick job” they used it to completely rewire their house, insulate the loft, and drain a septic tank. It was never the same after that.

Capricorn (22 December-20 January) The moon may stare at you. Be a mensch and stare right back! It’s only a big shiny rock!

Aquarius (21 January-19 February) An unsuccessful burglary attempt causes severe anxiety. Go round the back and in through the conservatory next time. Gussets provoke mayhem on the 29th.

Pisces (20 February-20 March)  With Coriander on the ascendent, those Piscians looking for love should beware ginger-haired sailors. Carry a sick bucket for good luck on the 17th.

Aries (21 March-20 April)  Arians typically detest octopus, but you should try some on the April 15th, when Taurus conjoins with Venus, causing a huge cusp. Remember, you can lead your grandmother to eggs, but you can’t make her suck.

Taurus (21 April-21 May)  An angry bus conductress may knock on your door. Give her some peppermints. Pluto rules your hair-sign.

Gemini (22 May-21 June)  Leeds and Scunthorpe mean nothing to you and why should they? Paper-hanging on the 12th brings tidings of a terpsichorean nature. Avoid tinned salmon on the 20th and anything beginning with ‘R’ or ‘K’

Cancer (22June 23 July)   Good news from Canada. A parcel containing snow promises to improve your French. Look out for traces of penguin.

Leo (24 July-23 August)  So-called friends invite you to a squirrel-clubbing party. With Venus submerged and Pisces stuck in traffic, go at your peril! A gas leak irritates, especially on the 9th.

Virgo (24 August-23 September) Although you can not wear tartan socks with sandals, you do. A small electric shock on the 30th causes disproportionate mayhem.

Libra (24 September-23 October) Bad news travels fast. Everyone knows where you got that tan and why you are walking like that. The first week in October will bode well for tall Librans, but beware of cows, bicycles, and aubergines on the 9th.

Scorpio (24 October-23 November)  A house guest steals your pyjamas, leaving a small porcelain hedgehog in their place.

Saggitarius (24 November-21 December) Your dining room floor is covered in peas around the 23rd. The problem with peas is they are too round. Unless they are mushy, any sort of slope can cause them to roll off the plate. Tiny weights, glued to the underside of the peas should solve this problem.

POETRY NOW
THIS WEEK’S GUEST POET REG TRUBSHAW

Reg was born in Fiji in 1938, and in 1943 moved with his family to Upper Dicker, East Sussex before emigrating to Sunderland in 1958, where he formed the Sunderland Poetry magazine Whee’s Keys are These? with Carlton Bromide.

 
HEROIN
By Reg Trubshaw

Heroin came in the night
dressed as Humpty Dumpty
and singing songs about alopecia.
Perched at the foot of my bed
he wobbled and fell off.
Alas, my room was too small
for all the king’s horses
let alone all the king’s men
so I just left him there.
Mum cleared it up
in the morning.

 

Sausage Life!

https://vimeo.com/user129836501

Colin Gibson • Emmet Ives • Anita Makris



SAY GOODBYE TO IRONING MISERY!
When added to your weekly wash, new formula Botoxydol, with Botulinim Toxin A, will guarantee youthful, wrinkle-free clothes.
Take years off your smalls with Botoxydol!
CAUTIONMAY CAUSE SMILEY FACE T-SHIRTS TO LOOK INSINCERE

 

 

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Truth

Tilted headings rushed hour
Somnambulism of a talented
Headed for uncovering-
Naked truths, disturbing patterns
Potential that can awaken a nation
Bridges burn under false accusations
Noble cause dies sacrifice for a reason
But then ashes to dust we become
As in common parlance
Nonchalance comes with liberating truth
The crowded clasps for a crumb of a peace
To just taste the bodhi tree a bit
People mob mobility agility rush hour
Global slippage
The soul wears a overcoat and sighs
My chickpeas my smoked smile
LSD cookies for my beaded smile
Waking tipsy hungover
While my camera rolls In naked hours Undercover cop Orwellian bombs
I know the indoctrination and brainwashed fag
They say going to the crowded is righteous
I smack my stone
Over falsehood
My stormy pace to dive down
My driving seat is smudged with Self
My Individuality my awakening
My Soma sacred site.

 

 

 

Sayani Mukherjee
Picture Kushal Poddar

 

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Somebody has stolen Julian Assange: A ‘Choose your own reality adventure’.

 

 

Julian Assange, heavily sedated, confused and squinting in the light, is calmly lifted in to the back seat of a blacked out car. CCTV follows the car as it makes its way across the prison compound. The barrier is lifted and the car pulls off in to the city traffic. Cameras watch as it makes its way west, loosing sight of the car as it turns in to residential streets, five minutes later. Nobody in the car says a word.

Some time later the same day, two members of the intelligence service of the United States army are questioning a British prison officer. ‘Craig’ sits nervously on one side of a small table in a prison interview room. On a chair opposite Craig is one of the members of the intelligence service, the other paces back and forth in front of the door.

Craig tells his inquisitors exactly what happened on the morning of the event. He received a call at his desk, from the governor, that the prisoner was to be moved and that an escort party were on there way to collect him. Craig goes on to say that he was instructed to make his way to the prisoner’s cell and prepare him for immediate transfer, which he did.

The intelligence officer sitting opposite Craig asks him what sort of mood the prisoner was in when Craig arrived at the cell, and how the prisoner reacted when Craig informed him that he was due to be transferred. Craig gave a small laugh, ‘he’s been so whacked out since he’s been here, he didn’t even know I was there, I don’t think’. The intelligence officer pacing the floor came to an abrupt holt, looked Craig in the eye and, in no uncertain terms, made clear to Craig that this was no laughing matter.

Craig swallowed and looked back at the intelligence officer opposite him, who ascertained that ‘whacked out’, was British slang for ‘sedated’. Craig confirmed that it was, ‘yes’. The other officer resumed pacing, the sound of their shoes against the concrete floor began to annoy Craig, who was asked to continue with his story.

Craig told them that a few minutes after he received the call, a group of six men, two in military uniform, four in grey suits, all with prison identification, arrived at the cell and, without a word being said, removed the prisoner. Making their way off the wing, towards the stairway leading to the upstairs landings.

The seated intelligence officer asked Craig if anything seemed suspicious or out of place, or if indeed, Craig sensed that anything might be amiss. Craig confirmed to the negative. ‘Everything seemed alright’. The pacing officer ‘tuts’ audibly and mutters some remark about ‘idiot limeys’. The seated officer smiles at the now angry Craig, who says between gritted teeth, that he had ‘followed his orders to the letter, exactly as his job demands’. At which point the seated officer says that Craig is free to go. Craig stands, the pacing officer opens the door for him and he leaves the room.

The person ultimately responsible for the security of the prisoner was the prison governor. On the morning of the ‘escape’, he was excitedly awaiting the arrival of a delegation of prison service executives from the United States. For some months prior he had been in communication with their organisation, which claimed to promote the ‘modernisation of British prisons to a model more closely linked to the prisons of The United States’.

The governor had been informed that he was to receive an ‘all expenses’ trip to The United States as a member of a British delegation chosen to inspect three of the country’s ‘top performing’ prisons. The governor was told he had been chosen in respect of his exceptional handling of the ‘very special prisoner’, that had been left in his care.

When ‘Future Prisons’ made first contact with the governor, he had his PA, Sophie, research the credibility of the organisation. Sophie, a young woman from the Czech Republic, who came very highly recommended by friends of golfing colleagues, when his previous PA left suddenly due to a family bereavement, a few months before, assured the Governor that the organisation was genuine and provided him with the relevant paperwork.

As far as the governor was concerned, on the morning of the ‘escape’, all was as it should be. He arrived at the office around nine, Sophie brought him coffee and read him his daily diary. When, after a little flirtatious banter, Sophie left his office, the governor swiveled his chair toward the window, cradled his warm mug in his hands and watched as the yellowing  birch leaves dropped to the grass below. In his mind he re-ran all the compliments ‘Brad Moyles’ of ‘Future Prisons’ had paid him, smiling to himself and, for a brief moment, enjoyed a rare feeling of self satisfaction.

The governor was distracted from these thoughts by Sophie gently knocking at the door. The governor swiveled back toward the room to see that Sophie had opened the door just enough to pop her head in, to let the governor know, that the ‘Future Prisons’ delegation were at the gate.

Turning back to the window the governor watched as a blacked out ‘Hummer’ slid across the prison yard toward the reception block. ‘Just like in the movies’, he smiled to himself, ‘these Americans’. He gave his head a little shake, turned back to the room, placed his mug on his desk, before straightening his tie. With his handkerchief over his finger he quickly cleared both of his nostrils by inserting a  covered finger and giving a sharp twist. Inspecting his handkerchief quickly before stuffing it back in to his pocket. After which ritual, the governor sat, happily awaiting the arrival of the man who had, in his emails and telephone calls, shown such acknowledgement and appreciation for the ‘very difficult job’, the governor did ‘so well’.

In just a few minutes, Sophie tapped on the door again, before opening it and announcing the awaited delegation. Six men followed Sophie in to the room. Four dressed in grey suits, two in military uniform. Shutting the door behind them, five of the men spread out across the room, while the other moved towards the governor, reaching out his arm and saying the name ‘Brad Moyles’. The governor stretched out his arm in the direction of the suited man and their hands met, with a sense of pride rushing through the governor’s body.

Within an instant, everything had changed. ‘Brad’, held on tightly to the governor’s hand as one of the remaining suited men, produced a syringe. In moments, Sophie was laid, unconscious on the sofa to her left. Simultaneously, the two men in military uniforms moved behind the governor, blocking the window and aiming their, now drawn, pistols at the governor’s head. ‘Brad’, looking the governor in the eye, tightening his grip said, ‘Stay calm, this will all be over in no time’.

The governor who was assured that Sophie was only sleeping, was then instructed to call the solitary confinement wing and notify the guards that the prisoner was to be readied for immediate transfer. Once this task had been carried out, an injection was speedily administered and the governor was laid out, sleeping, on the floor behind his desk. The military personnel replaced their pistols in their holsters, and dropped the blinds over the window, before all six men, without a word, left the room, heading for the basement and the solitary confinement wing.

So smooth was the operation that not one of the prison staff had an inkling that anything untoward was taking place. The actions around the prisoner had been unusual since he had been placed in the prison, meaning that more unconventional behavior, (ie: an immediate transfer), did not seem out of place. The appearance of two personnel in uniforms of the United States military, aroused no suspicion, being as it was, common knowledge that the prisoner was a captive of the government of The United States.

Not until two forty that afternoon was anything noticed to be out of place. It was quite common for Sophie to spend long periods of time in the Governor’s office, while the blinds were drawn and visitors to her desk that day, made a mind to callback later. When a young prison guard arrived at the governor’s office for a disciplinary hearing, regarding fraternising with inmates, he waited patiently for ten minutes beyond his scheduled appointment time, then, keen to ‘get it over with’, he knocked on the door to the governor’s office, opened it and discovered the two bodies.

Seeing the bodies and immediately imaging the worst, the young officer fell in to a panic state. Stepping over the governor’s body he reached below the desk and pressed the panic button he knew was situated there. He then lifted the receiver on the desk phone and dialed nine four times. After requesting the services of the police and ambulance service to be directed to the prison he replaced the receiver and tentatively moved towards the bodies and, with great relief, found a pulse on both.

Four guards responding to the panic button burst in to the office. The alarm was raised and the prison placed on lock down. Very quickly, the sound of sirens filled the air and a flurry of activity fills the office and the prison yard, as the police and ambulance service do their best to ascertain what has happened. Not until an hour later, when the summoned guards from the morning shift arrive back at the prison, is it realised that the prisoner has been removed.

A plain clothes policeman immediately contacts his superior who swears very loudly down the phone. It is his job to call the chief of police, who in turn expresses her displeasure at the scenario, and must then make a very awkward call to the home secretary.

The home secretary then notifies the embassy of The United States of America . The ambassadorial representative of which, explains to the British home secretary that: ‘shit show hardly comes close’, and that ‘heads will roll’, before notifying her that this event ‘seriously jeopardises’ the ‘special relationship’ between the ruling administrations of the two countries.

A thorough investigation is launched by both the British police and the military intelligence service of The United States of America. Very little fresh evidence is procured. The guards in the prison all tell identical versions of the same story: ‘Six men with the necessary security clearance entered the prison, visiting the governor’s office, before heading down to remove the prisoner from his cell, making their way back through the prison, to their vehicle and leaving’.

The only people who claimed to have heard the perpetrators speak are the Governor and Sophie. When they were well enough to be interviewed they told the investigating officers that the man calling himself ‘Brad Moyles’ spoke with a broad American accent, but couldn’t be more specific. The governor claimed to have heard a Russian voice as he passed out. Sophie, being more familiar with Eastern European dialects, thinks she may have heard Bulgarian or Albanian being spoken between the suited men, as she lay unconscious.

The ‘Hummer’ slipped out of the prison the way it had come. CCTV watched it leave and head West in the city traffic. After ten minutes the car turned in to residential streets, disappearing from view. It is believed the assailants swapped vehicles and the abandoned car was removed in a covered lorry.

The British government tried to keep the story from becoming public for as long as possible. Only when, two days after the event, the prisoner’s legal team informed the press that their client had been removed from the prison without them being notified, did the story break. The prisoner’s legal team were looking in to a case of probable kidnap, with the administration of The United States as their chief suspects. Believing that, becoming weary of waiting for the lengthy court process to ensure the extradition of the prisoner to their own territories, (where the prisoner was to be tried on charges of treason), they had instigated the kidnap and probable execution of the prisoner.

The British administration were forced to issue their own statement declaring that yes, the prisoner had disappeared from his cell. It seemed most likely to them to be a combined plot by the Russian secret security forces and the Albanian mafia. ‘A thorough investigation, the likes of which the country had never seen was under way. If anyone had any information, anything at all, then would they please contact the police immediately’.

In all, seven groups claimed responsibility for the ‘break out’. Photographs and video footage of the prisoner soon began to surface from all over the world. It seemed the prisoner had found employment in almost every chip shop in Britain, every bar in Spain. Not a single full moon party in Thailand or Mexican beach party, was complete without the prisoner in attendance.

His family swore they never heard from him again and asked for their privacy to be respected as they were left to make up their minds, with broken hearts, whether the prisoner were alive or dead.

An overwhelming amount of information came pouring in to the investigation, swamping any hope of ever distinguishing the facts . Ensuring the story’s place among the ‘choose your own reality adventure’ that was twenty first century Britain.

 

 

 

Ben Greenland

 

 

 

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MULTIPLE FRAMEWORKS

‘the objective of the reader, listener, or viewer, is not to unearth and decode
some secret meaning situated outside of and just below the surface of the text,
but to engage with the material of the text itself, to disentangle and trace out
its various threads, and to evaluate the resulting combinations, contradictions,
and resonances.’
   – David J. Gunkel, Of Remixology

Semiotics, etymology, fashion and religion: it’s impossible not to thrill and marvel at the scope of the connective threads. Why don’t you control your metabolic signalling? Why don’t you mind your own business and leave your phone alone? Maps, data and infographics are supposed to help us make sense of the world.

Explore the territory, sink your teeth into the bridge of proof. Everything you need to know: flourish or face extinction. Brainwave and plant music diagrams can help you understand even the most hardened computer geek. By delving into the oceans of everyday medical and debt trauma we have the horsepower to bring it all together. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Take a journey into the curious, unexpected, and downright surreal origins of the data generated so far. The moment goes from bits and electronics to logic gates and circuits, then up into taboo structures of programming languages used to build elaborate mathematical models that inhabit the zone where language and perception overlap. We are taking a little break and will be back very soon.

Beyond the history of art, we touch on physics, chemistry, biology, history, astronomy, folklore, classics, mythology, psychology, literature, linguistics, philosophy, semiotics, etymology, fashion and religion. I’ve digested the legal word salad of privacy policies but like my substance with style. There are no straight answers; a third of everything gets reused.

We are serious about such thing as competition and game theory that doesn’t feed private experience into surveillance machines, and gleefully embrace our cognitive preference for round numbers, found numbers and mystery. They were made using a technique called crypto-electron tomography but please note that some of your personal data may not remain your personal data and you do not have a right to object.

Thinking smaller can help: presentations and discussions will be used to prepare a summary white paper and symposium briefing document to be disseminated more widely. We apologize for unlimited access to processing and future issues. The surveillance apocalypse is a true story waiting to happen: technological developments bring further technological developments offering ever-changing possibilities.

No matter how clever or how skilled clever you are, always be curious. Why do you think you need guilty pleasures? What keeps you awake at night? What do you already know? What do you really want to know? Are you ready for when potential immortality raises new ethical and societal issues that have not yet been fully articulated and we are unprepared to deal with?

Workshops bring together participants from diverse domains and many fields of practice to provide an opportunity to articulate the commonalities in the issues that arise across disciplines and stakeholders. We aim to stimulate debate about how we might work collaboratively to anticipate, manage and prevent the future, to describe complex items in simple words and guarantee safe secure items in a messy storage space a processing engine might safely open.

The ladder of science is all about contestability and replicability, passion and ideas; metadata is the nutritional information on the package. Forget about mind-bending jargon or unrealistic myths, a lot of deep thought is about curation and system harmonisation. The user becomes a data custodian, blends into the background, remains quiet and is taken for granted while secretly making analytics dreams come true. Understanding what your bits do when you’re not looking improves the quality of information collected.

The software dance appears to be true and cannot be challenged. We are moving towards a streamlined world with distributed consensus, a transparent scientific protocol where life is taken for granted until something blows up. Security is survival, but it looks like this project, a longitudinal study of creation and archaeology from many geographical areas, is entering potential failure mode. You must preserve this information and share it, it is a hidden trove of unpublished information concerning candidate, follower and leader.

 

 

    © Rupert M Loydell

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KLEN: THE PIPERS


Klen, those well known freakbeat beatniks of the 4th dimension, have a new single out!

The Pipers sees the band turn into stone and liberating their musical senses one more time, as they circle dance the largest menhirs still standing in Cornwall before returning to the B3315 and the opposite side of the musical road.

Meet the band:

Rough Skin – guitar maestro and exfoliator extraordinaire.

Bill-upon-Tubs A.K.A. Sticks B. Slippin – half human, half river, half beat-maker… half sonic macerator.

Orlando Nice – the third limb, hardcore noise specialist.

Melvin Schæfferhoof A.K.A The Financial Ombudsman – Our newest recruit: a cult folk artist who has been hiding in plain sight within the financial regulation sector for a number of years.

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Sweeping The Coastline

Progress has been slower
than expected but this is
a global issue and we’re
failing to face it. “On a

practical level this has
made things much easier,”
she said. Never stop
recording, even when

you’re scared. Is there
no end to the versatility
of this pliable plant? Some-
thing has been lost in

translation but there are
no birds on this island
and we’ve never had a
patient who regretted the

operation. Here we have an
example of plumage aberration.  

 

Steve Spence

 

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The Shadow at the Door – Niall McDevitt


X marks this spot
He tried and did succeed
On his stone of free speech
We gathered around for a plot
Kites sailed; that whispering need
Lessons learned that he did teach                        

A gaggle of friends on the heath
Musicians played a happy tune
Celebrated his wonder & full years
Breathed fresh air; laid a wreath
To let us roam under sun & moon
Gave us joy, allayed our fears

 

 

©Christopher 2022

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A Noise Between the Salads

It could be the
disgruntled sound of carnivores
having lost this argument,

or lettuce leaves
rustling in the alfresco breeze of
summer’s lighter eating.

But radishes are crunched;
celery the same: maybe the Granny Smiths
sliced like a delicacy

remain sour. Not
Misophonia, yet the
phonics of paradox

in a world at crisis

 

 

Mike Ferguson

 

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Desert Swarm

The bees who come from the sun
flow down into the desert spring
and occupy a dark space hollowed in
the bank of an arroyo

where they gather at the end
of their journey from fire to the blooms
on saguaro, that open
to drink moonlight. When the stings

are sheathed and the bees
cluster between their honeycombs
with a sweet buzz ringing
a fragrance floats across the blue lit

landscape rescued in millennia
long past from the ocean, which left
nothing when it went away
but its bed of stone and mystery.

 

 

David Chorlton

 

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Sunak Cabinet

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Finding the colors back

Sometimes
it seems
as if the molder of the clay people
paints everything in gray
and sends the flowers somewhere in the land above…
It looks like he has forgotten to
breathe the light into the souls…
But actually
it just looks like this
the colors are there
but everything is shrouded in mystery
although
it’s actually crystal…
There is no loneliness
there is no gray
if we are still expecting something
and someone…

 

 

 

Dessy Tsvetkova
Picture Nick Victor

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Play This Only at Night – Monsters, Creeps & Freaky Deaks

Tracklist:

Doug E Fresh – Play This Only At Night (excerpt)
The Prodigy – Ghost Town
King Horror – Loch Ness Monster
Byron Lee & The Dragonaires – Frankenstein Ska
The Zanies – Mad Scientist
Napoleon XIV – They’re Coming to Take me Away
The Sonics – Psycho
Meaux Green – Triller
The Frantics – Werewolf
The Cramps – Human Fly
Screaming Lord Sutch – She’s Fallen in Love With a Monster Man
The Bar-Kays – Holy Ghost
Jan Davis – Watusi Zombie
Kip Tyler – She’s My Witch
The Cure – Lullaby

 

I originally did this mix 6 years ago and it was very popular (over 1000 listeners on Soundcloud), but, although I loved parts of it, there were several tracks that felt out of place, so I’ve revamped it, re-recording the good bits in better quality and adding several new tracks. Hope you dig it!

Steam Stock

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Who or what are TIRIKILATOPS?

 Alan Dearling has a quick chat with Bom Carrot, Super Bodreong and Kangcoo

Alan: So, I’ve heard the Tirikilatops described as a Korean K-pop group. Is that part of the ‘story’?

Tirikilatops : No, not really. Though Bom Carrot is Korean and is the singer and we do play pop songs, so, in fairness, you could get away with callling Tirikilatops (티리킬라톱쓰) K-pop. But, in the truest sense of the genre we’re not sure the shoe would fit. Just what shoe would fit we’re not sure of either.

Alan: I’ve seen you live on stage twice. You’re a fun-loving band, you make people smile… lively, bouncy, and oddly off-kilter…

Tirikilatops: Despite the eons, no one knows just why we (the human race) or anything else is here and yet most humans take life all very seriously. So, even if just for the duration of the gig, we like to celebrate the fact that life is wonderfully strange and act accordingly. Usually we end up with a party atmosphere  🙂

Alan: It’s performance – musical theatre, perhaps…is that how you see it?

Tirikilatops: We can see how on face value Tirikilatops could be interpreted as that but, no, that’s not how we view things really. Our stage performance has grown organically and, to be honest, even we are not sure anymore how or why we look the way we do. The band initially started as a bit of fun so I think the roots of the costumes etc. are lost in the mists of time. Now it’s just something we are glad to run with. Also, when we go and see a band ourselves, we enjoy a spectacle. We want magic and to escape into something other than reality. So maybe we just came up with the band we would want to bump into whilst wandering drunkenly around a festival?

Alan: You seem to encourage people to be happy, you really connect and interact with your audience members. Bom Carrot is like a multi-coloured, twinkling Christmas tree decoration. Bouncing around stage, belting out Korean words and songs into a mic, alongside her singing partner, the rather creepy, ghoulish figure, with a third Tirikilatop, the ‘old man’, in the background, controlling the sounds.

Tirikilatops: Encouraging people to be happy, and having fun, are two parts of our main remit. We find that there are usually two parts to a typical Tirikilatops’ gig. Especially if the audience hasn’t been to one of our shows before. Part one is the, “What the hell is this?” reaction. Part two is the “Oh! I’m enjoying myself! Let’s party!”  Of course, part two doesn’t always kick in for some. But we’re as much fans of bemused audience faces as party audience faces. 

Rather creepy and ghoulish? The “old man”? That’ll be Super Bodreong and Kangcoo. Often beauty is in the eye of the beholder but you can be assured that they are both nice and friendly people. Also that their Mothers love them very much.

Alan: Tell me a bit about who you are and where you come from?

Tirikilatops:

Bom Carrot (봄캐롯) is the singer and lyricist. She is from South Korea.

Super Bodreong (슈퍼보드레옹) is the song writer. He is from the UK.

Kangcoo (캉쿠) pushes the knobs. He’s from the UK. All of us are based in the UK.

Alan: I sense that the Tirikilatops could be very popular on festival stages – is that your focus?

Tirikilatops: Yes, we think you could be right there. We do well at festivals and have played a fair few in the UK, the EU and South Korea. We don’t think it would be right to say it is our main focus though. We are happy to play anywhere.

Alan: You’ve been in the recording studio and you have released a single, ‘Popcorn’. Do you want to be recording artists?

Tirikilatops: “I want popcorn”? That’s quite a funny song for you to choose as it was written during the pandemic when we were all frustrated about not being able to play live etc.. So, we channelled that frustration. It is more of a punk song and not really indicative of our sound or the direction we are headed. It is, and was, fun to produce and make a video for though. Not sure what you mean by “Do you want to be recording artists?” though. We are in the middle of recording our new album right now.

Alan: An example of your recent live show at the culmination of the Tor Festival: You called out for one of the organisers, Jake, to come up on stage.  The crowd yelled out, increasingly loudly, for Jake. No sign of the missing Jake. You told the audience, “It’s Jakes’ birthday”, and someone not-Jake, a good fun geezer, came up on stage…the audience was now mega-loud, screaming, “Fake Jake, Fake Jake” and we all sang: “Happy birthday, Fake Jake”. Wonderfully surreal! Yells for Fake Jake continued throughout the show. Is this the essence of Tirikilatops?

Tirikilatops: Yes, it’s about extracting as much fun and surreality out of a situation as we can. Jake isn’t there? Ok, let’s have a Fake Jake then! Let’s ALL sing Happy Birthday to a Fake Jake!

Alan: Later in the live show you waved a new sign a bit like a Roman trident – a symbol of Todmorden and UFOs – it seemed like a symbol of ‘Alternative Todmorden’… it was another transcendent moment…

Tirikilatops: Ah, yes. That’s our UFO prop for our “Hello UFO” song. The best town to play that song given its saucer-shaped history.

Alan: What are your hopes and plans for the future? What are the best links on-line to see and hear Tirikilatops?

Tirikilatops: We recently won an opportunity to have a new song included on a coloured ten-inch vinyl of four Yorkshire bands coming out on ‘Come Play With Me records’. It will be available in Spring. We’re currently recording an album that’ll be out next year. We’ve a few gigs lined up and are back in the EU for gigs in March but I think we’re going to take some time off gigging for Winter and concentrate on the studio and a whole new live set. As for hopes? Just to keep on spreading the good vibes, travelling and meeting good folk.

Here are links to find out more about us!

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/tirikilatops

Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdXQvyAnqZJYh76apm51P0Q

Including the great track, ‘Tomato’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIkBF1mLLrE

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/tirikilatops/

Bandcamp:
https://tirikilatops.bandcamp.com

Includes ‘Hello U.F.O.!’ 

Alan: Many thanks for sharing some of the info, hopes and possible futures. Luv ‘n respect…

Tirikilatops: Thank you, Alan, all the very best to you x

 

 

 

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YOU ARE INVINCIBLE!

Sometimes I feel like a hanged computer
Where computer freezes.
During that period,
I need your help to reboot
It never comes true.
But my love for you is invincible,
And is immortal.
For which it might be marked
As the flow of a mountain spring,
It is like the moon light
On the silver banks of the river of romance.
You are not just my today,
You are my tomorrow and beyond.
If for some reasons
We don’t end up united,
Know that
I would still like
To attend your wedding.
My love for you
Transcend my existence.
Because, I truly want
Your soul to glow,
Your heart to smile.
Even if
It doesn’t directly involve me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monalisa Parida
Picture Nick Victor

Bio:- A post graduate student of English literature from India, Odisha and a prolific poetess. She is very active in social media platforms and her poems have also been translated into different languages and publish in various e-journals.
She has got 80 international award for writing poetry. Her poems have been publishing international e-journals “New York parrot”, “The Writers Club” (USA), “Suriyadoya literary foundation”, “kabita Minar”, “Indian Periodical” (India) and “Offline Thinker “, “The Gorkha Times “ ( Nepal), “The Light House”(Portugal), “Bharatvision”(Romania), “International cultural forum for humanity and creativity”(Aleppo, Syria), “Atunispoetry.com”(Singapore) etc. And also published in various newspapers like “The Punjabi Writer Weekly(USA)”, “News Kashmir (J&K, India)”, Republic of Sungurlu (Turkey)” etc.
One of her poem published an American anthology named “The Literary Parrot Series-1 and series-2 respectively (New York, USA)”. Her poems have been translated in various languages like Hindi, Bengali, Turkish, Persian, Romanian etc. And she is the author of the book “Search For Serenity”, “My Favourite Grammar”, “Paradigm”.

 

 

 

 

 

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Prophecy

an unholy collaged hunger
ravaged marrowed souls
thistles & dandelions
sailing ancient galleons
against oceaned sky
beneath chestnuts & lindens
unforgiving
seeks
forgiveness
shipwrecked
muck & mire

 

 

 

 

Words and Picture
Terrence Sykes

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The Usual Flair

As requested, we sent in the clowns, with their bulbous honking noses and flappy clappy shoes. It was surely some kind of record for the number of buckets of confetti thrown, the volume of water squirted from fake flowers, and the volume of screaming children who would rather be anywhere else but here, but no one had considered the surge in need for traffic wardens, with ranks of ropey jalopies all over the shop. Outside the tent, a symphony of horns cracks the sunshine, like cheeky sealions riffing on Sondheim and Vertov, and you can’t walk in a straight line for wonky wheels wobbling across the pavement. Candy floss and custard pies will make us all rich. Come dance with me in the light of lions’ eyes. But where, you may ask, are the doctors and nurses? Where are the dentists? Where are the men and women to harvest those crops before they nod to rot? Where indeed are the fundamental givens upon which we built this whole damn circus in the first place? Don’t you worry your pretty laughing head. They’re bundled in the bathroom, slapping on the greasepaint to cover the tears.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oz Hardwick

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Monsoon Season

Third Eye (Expanded edition), Monsoon (2 CD, Cherry Red)

It wasn’t until 1982 that an Asian band made it in to the UK charts and on to Top of the Pops, and Monsoon were the band who did it. ‘Ever So Lonely’ was – for want of better words – exotic and strange, arriving well before what became called World Music, with plaintive singing, tabla rhythms and sitar grooves. It was hypnotic and addictive, as was most of Third Eye, the album that contained the single.

Monsoon only ever produced that one album, although Sheila Chandra would go on to release several pop albums before signing to Peter Gabriel’s Real World label and recording some amazing experimental vocal albums. Then she was struck down with a rare disease that made even talking, let alone singing, painful and almost impossible.

Cherry Red’s extensive reissues campaign of intriguing music has now alighted upon that single Monsoon album, and expanded it to include Capital Radio sessions and various remix singles, including a quartet of 1990 Ben Chapman versions of ‘Ever So Lonely’ as well as the original 1981 EP version and version in Hindi.

As ever, it’s debatable what actually adds to the album and what is just obsessive completeness reissue syndrome. It’s certainly interesting to hear that EP version and try to work out exactly what is missing. The vocals are just as sultry but the whole thing feels more acoustic hippy than Asian, and the whole thing lacks the dynamics of the following year’s hit single.

‘Shakti’, one of the other two singles from the album, feels somewhat similar to ‘Ever So Lonely’ but again lacks a certain oomph; the handclaps are very dated too! Best track on the album, and certainly a single that should have been a hit, is the band’s take on The Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, the best version of this song I have come across. The album version is an amazing four minutes of psychedelia, and if the single version rather foregrounds a dumb bass line and some 80s percussion, as well as cutting a minute off, it at least retains the odd keyboard (or mangled treated guitar?) solo that appropriately disrupts and distorts the whole thing.

Actually, the album is amazingly psychedelic throughout. Flute weaves throughout tracks like ‘Kashmir’, there’s lots of piano, complex rhythms and that wonderful soaring voice intoning through and above the music. I’m almost tempted to believe the press release’s assertion that Monsoon were ‘the band that opened up the UK’s cultural consciousness to new possibilities – and changed it forever.’ If they weren’t they should have been, and if the second CD here is pretty dispensable, this is a timely and welcome reissue for a shamefully neglected groundbreaking band.

 

Rupert Loydell

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Tattoed.

Uniquely designed for mainstream
A six figured tattooed butterfly
On my back
A pat at my shoulder
A beam at my poem
Tree house and childplay things
My proof of itsy bitsy rock scissors stone
A friendship bracelets with red ribbon
White washed marooned island
Over my chest
It stays when I form a circle of mates-
Three Pentagons diaphragmatic
Radio shows on for Friday nights
Modernist nonsense and my
Zabberwocky tricks
I form my bracelets with my
Tattooed fingertips.
My jinx my pixie dust my childlike wonder
A little sparkle did no wonder
Red bracelets white washed marooned island
I hum at my lost poem
A sudden Omission at the back
A little pinch of dusty drives
Underneath a new edge control
Completing of a poem for the
Medal gold
I hope my pixie dust will do
Good for nothing
For this electric haze on my tattooed butterfly soul.

 

 

 

Sayani Mukherjee
Picture Nick Victor

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LAUNCH OF LONDON NATION BY NIALL MCDEVITT

 
 

 

 

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New River Press are proud to present a launch night party for Niall McDevitt’s LONDON NATION, an ambitious a four-book work in a beautiful hardback edition with artwork by Julie Goldsmith.

To reserve a free ticket and/or purchase a book or pamphlet, please click here.

McDevitt spent over five years on the work gathered here, then a year carefully editing several poetic projects together along with New River Press. Early copies of LONDON NATION returned from the printers on the day that Niall died at home, aged 55.

Please join us on Wednesday 16th November from 6pm at Ye Old Cheshire Cheese, one of the oldest pubs in London, and the place where McDevitt wished LONDON NATION’S launch to be. Copies of LONDON NATION and a pamphlet of a long, autobiographical interview with Niall, will be available to purchase. We will drink by candlelight and hear readings of McDevitt’s work. A nation of writerly ghosts drink with us: Yeats, Wilde, Orwell, Dickens, Johnson, Tennyson.

It is testament to McDevitt’s emerging mature style; bold, accomplished, dissenting poems that take on as many forms as themes to reveal a linguistic shapeshifter in the Joycean vein.

Book one depicts London as site of homelessness and pandemic, far-right politics, and power-buildings, but also contains some of his most overtly Irish poetry, as well as eulogies to such diverse cultural figures as Thomas De Quincey, Shane MacGowan, Julian Assange, and Ken Campbell.

The second book repurposes ancient Sumerian texts, rechanting strange old songs into crtiques of Neoliberalism. To write these stark, original songs McDevitt travelled to Iraq in 2016, where he participated in a poetry festival staged amid the ruins of Babylon.

The third devles into dark currents of Elizabethan London. Decapitated heads on poles lament; the corpse of Christopher Marlowe throws a hissy-fit; a chorus of puritans hallows the plague. McDevitt revives an old poetic form, the masque, where a rich medley of voices from the past surge.

McDevitt’s self-described ‘lyrical communiqué’ ends with free-form philosophical sonnets that savage orthodixies and take a stab at freedom.

PLEASE RSVP THROUGH EVENTBRITE – LINK AVAILABLE HERE

JOIN THE FACEBOOK EVENT HERE.

 

 

 

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Manchester & Salford Anarchist Bookfair

We are pleased to announce that the 2022 Manchester & Salford Anarchist Bookfair will take place on Saturday 5th November from 10am until 4pm at People’s History Museum, Left Bank, Bridge Street, M3 3ER

Please watch this space for latest updates.
Or that space! Or that space! Or even this space!
(Depending on which, if any, social media platforms you use!)

Manchester & Salford Anarchist Bookfair is run by a small team of volunteers.

The only income we get is from charges for stalls and donations.

If you want to get involved in organising the Manchester & Salford Anarchist Bookfair email [email protected]

 

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ALL GOD’S CHILDREN by King’s X

It came in the water
It came with the flood
It seeped into everything
That we couldn’t be rid of
We bathed in the fountains
And we played in the mud
We breathed as it rotted
It got into our blood

And all God’s children kept believing
All God’s children believed anyway
Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah
Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah

It was down in the basement
You were up on your throne
And while vegetation wasted
We were left picking the bones
But nobody complained
Fact they said it was right
So they all lit up torches
And marched into the night

And all God’s children kept believing
All God’s children believed anyway
All God’s children kept believing
All God’s children believed anyway
(Believed anyway)

Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah
Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah
Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah
Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah

 

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GOOFY MOVIE



Hello good afternoon
A warm welcome back to this region of unbelievers
We went to take a look but we all have our demons
Applicable only to lighter elements under glass hoods
It all gets very messy quite quickly and you might think
Something pretty odd is going on – compulsive repetition
Of snatches of rhyme but also there’s an interesting subplot
Flesh and spirit singing for the purposes of enchantment
To ensure in certain circumstances you flip your vibe
Get it while it’s hot high voltage next day see for yourself.

Cirrus and cirro-stratus clouds haloes round sun and moon
You better be on your way this could be a goofy movie
Egos in suits tuned as drones scenery somewhat similar
To the Surrey hills with visible traces of ancient roadworks
Whence are discharged a shower of invectives denunciations
And satires with a somewhat ungainly appearance
A blast of fresh air swearing like a sailor no half measures
Yet the bar of the storm or spin of the nucleus won’t sass me
A remarkable true tale where the course of external events
Brought about a decisive change direct return of icicles
And the use of accidental poetry: an emotional night for all.
Worried about the danger of image-worship?

You would see history being made with a little bit of push
And slide good day for chasing rainbows of diversified texture
Fine-grained arrangements of intrusive dykes vertical fissures
Of luminous appearance – with scenes of a distressing nature
This jaw-dropping offering has people spooked strong stuff
It gets to move through the gears really how did that fly?
There’s a big ceremonial crescendo of screamin’ habdabs
But sceptics have suggested it was all a mere hallucination
Rapidly deepened to somehow form a wild uncanny valley effect.
Oh my! Sparkling mad! Have a good day yeah?

 

 
A.C. Evans

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Nightingale


For Susmita Bhattacharya

For those of you who don’t like the rain
why don’t you take your umbrellas
and try living out in the desert
living out under the moon
under that lovely light
which can’t be doused.

No atmosphere
but an atmosphere of romance
shining down on us,
up there above the nine to five traffic.
When the homesickness
gets too much
when you miss
the rain on your skin
or fancy a cup of tea
which you surely will
why don’t you come home
and tell us about the mirages
tell us about the camels.
I’ll still be here
looking out of the window
breathing that sweet air
and tapping my rain dancing foot
to that lovely sound
trickling over glass,
cobblestone and tile.
If I ever get married
I’d like to get married
out in the rain
forty feet or so
above the dance floor of the street
jumping up and down in the air
where wild scavengers roost
fishing for free
beneath that honey-less world
above the shop selling science-fiction.
Rain spills out of the sky
as I make my way
from Friary House
after the nightingale
looked into my ears
for signs of the English language
but found only the voice
of Susmita’s parrot
singing a Jerry Lee Lewis song.
When I reach the old bookshop
I sit at the back of the room
but don’t hear much more than a whisper.
Right now I wish
I’d looked more closely
so I could now read sound
as it passes over lipstick.
Right now I wish
the nightingale were here
to translate your stories into song
to make cobwebs out of beauty
sticky enough to catch words.

When the nightingale was young
it chased the shadows of everything
through the flooded streets of Winchester
now it drifts above the city
passing through a flock of balloons
a birthday party in the sky
filled with the sweet shop breath of children.
Here in the house
of long and short stories
I open your book at random
every page is a window that takes me
to various parts of the world.
Mumbai. Cardiff. Singapore. Venice.
Literature is my passport.
Here with your collection
of short stories in my hand
I close my eyes
and imagine rickshaws and saris
men with firefly auras
walking through railway stations
with suitcases on their heads.
I imagine your parrot
talking on my shoulder
the wind taking us on its travels
bringing the other side of the world
to this sleepy town
this island made of rain
where the sun does set
falling every night
into the darkness
that makes us invisible.

 

 

Kenny Knight 
Picture Rupert Loydell

 

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The Chicken-hood


Miles to walk, feet layered of dust to choose.

The birth of new History into being; walk, walk, walk

Till the stomach rises it’s fire to storm.

The walk of miles, blurs the sight of village green.

The roads of concrete cannot rejuvenate the lives within.

 

The ticking clock of hunger peaks, how to deceive the plague-full thief.

Peddling the wheels for thousand miles, for a fistful of rice.

Leaving the walls of nurtured dreams, for the mouths to feed.

Migrating from the land they lived, for the survival of their loved beings.

Hands of constructing cities, lie under the shelter of naked sky over the streets.

 

Back home lies the open doors, waiting for the return of imprinted feet turning to shadows.

The locked faith of tribe women turn the keys around their eyes.

The old, the new and oneself in queue, had to nurture over due.

The scripted tongue tailored in silence, the morning cock awakens the eyes.

The cracked heels kintsugi with earthen clay, hoist the hopes of shunt sounds.

 

The gravity fails to stop the migrating hoods, washing away from the grounded roots.

The sliding lands under the feet turns into concrete, in a moment of an eye blink.

The sword of survival armed within, the women of tribe outride the sun.

The nurturing of local breed, free range poultry of the desi chicken

Cash in their urgent needs, a remote ATM for their patched hoods.

 

The tribe with imprinted tails within, rough it’s clay longing it’s path distant from his cattle sheds.

The sale of chicken boost their wheels of urgent needs, as the flowing demand for the local breeds.

The quake of crisis gets in control, from the instant cash generated from sale.

It’s like a policy of survival, waiting for their loved ones way in back home, as Adivasi lives matters too.

 

 

 

 

Author- Sonali Gupta

Gumla, Jharkhand, India.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Marcus Aurelius Calls His Agent

 

What are your deductions   Philip Marlowe?
When treated royally I find
It is my own poor royalties are paying   –
My publisher subtracts our ‘business lunches’
‘Celebration dinners’ and ‘book launches’   –
On these I was not counting   –
But ‘people’ in ‘Publicity’ insist
While ‘working-out’ my desultory ‘contract’   –
You know the meaning of ‘contract’
In your ‘City of Lost Angels’   Mr Marlowe?

I have no legal agent
But your own self   Mr Marlowe
Some say you are a secular ‘holy ghost’
Or even ‘avenging angel’   –
Though those who thirst for justice
Often find ‘the finger’
Points back at themselves

A Record Label honcho
Likewise pulls his publicist aside   –
‘Present a blown-up figure to the Press
By which we greet all artists newly-signed   –
Not the debt they’ll owe us
When touring takes a toll
On albums that won’t sell   –   and we ‘Move On’

Meanwhile   –   social citizens
Find their income-tax ‘invisibly’
Supports the depth of social immorality   –
Exporting arms and ‘torture aids’
To regimes who love the label and the brand
‘Made In England’

Mr Marlowe…
Have they never seen the play?
Not by Mr ‘Saint’   –   I mean by…
Mr ‘Priestley’   –   It concerns
A Spectre Inspector
Who calls while all are feeding their smooth faces…
Halloween or ‘All Souls’ Eve’
‘An Inspector Calls’

 

 

Bernard Saint
Illustration: Claire Palmer

 

 

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Students occupy University of Sheffield to protest involvement in arms trade

A group of students at the University of Sheffield have occupied the Diamond (a prominent engineering building) to protest the University’s relationship with arms companies.

 

The University claims to have divested from arms companies, calling investment in them irresponsible. Despite this, they have failed to cut all ties with the arms trade by still receiving research funding from arms companies and welcoming them at their careers fairs.

 

Between 2013 and 2021, the University of Sheffield received close to £47 million from arms companies, with Rolls Royce providing 72% of this alone. Rolls Royce is the second largest arms manufacturer in Britain, after BAE systems which the University also receives funds from. Rolls Royce’s fighter jets have been used by Israel during numerous attacks on Palestinians in the Gaza strip. Whilst BAE Systems supply Saudi Arabia with weapons directly used to commit ongoing war crimes targeting Yemeni civilians. Without the continual supply of weapons from these companies, these wars would not be able to continue.

 

One of the student occupiers said: “The University of Sheffield is complicit in war crimes. Every year the Uni accepts millions of pounds from companies that supply weapons used to kill civilians. By accepting money from these murder factories the University is endorsing an industry that is directly causing the deaths of millions of people.”

 

They say that they have been forced to take direct action because student groups, such as People & Planet, Fund Education Not War and the Students’ Union, have been campaigning tirelessly for years and have been ignored.

 

The students demand that the University cancel all contracts with arms companies, refusing to take any more funding from them, and stop bringing them into the careers fairs.

 

They currently have no plans to leave and say they will stay as long as is necessary.

 

(from freedomnews.org.uk/ )

 

 

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John Hegley…

…is an alchemist. Spinning pain into laughter without losing profundity, finding the profound in the mundane (paper bags, spectacles, celery stalks) without whimsy – and sending up the portentous.  Hegley was poet in residence at Keats House, Hampstead London in 2012. The resulting collection A Scarcity of Biscuit is a poetic conversation between the Johns Hegley and Keats, where peosy, letters, musings and the facts and feelings of their lives intertwine.  The contents page reads like a stacked series of haiku; tempting treats like the maps you used to get in boxes of chocolates.  We open with a ‘celerbration’ of celery stalks – here is John Keats from a letter to his bother and sister on 16/12/1818

‘nothing particular happened yesterday evening, except that when the tray came up, Mrs Dilke and I had a battle with celery stalks – she sends her love to you.’ 

Which triggers this opening poem from Hegley –

You played the way you worked, John Keats
played hard.
With Mrs. Dilke
With celery
en guarde
On the landing
With your landlady
A new event was marvellously made.
With the greenery
a lunging in, leguminous.

…and then four more lines. I can only quote so much under copyright, but it is funny and good, and accompanied by one of John Hegley’s drawings.

We move onto their shared melancholia, and the circumstances that brought Hegley to Keats House

I was down in the dumps and the dark
And then Maureen was there with a spark.
She explained I could come
And be John Keats’ chum
And how meeting that young man would mark me

Yet preceding this a fragment of a letter from Keats to his publisher on 16/5 1817

I have a swimming in my head – And feel all the effects of a Mental Debauch – lowness of Spirits – anxiety to go on without the Power to do so which does not at all tend to my ultimate progression – however tomorrow….

After these expressions of vulnerability – and who has not felt like this?  – is a collection of delights, of ‘interviews’ with John Keats, imaginary collaborations, one of them a poem  Devonshire Raining where ‘words from John Keats’ letters are of the upstanding type.’

It’s a delight when we find the origin of the title – from a letter where Keats encounters a woman …‘half starved from a scarcity of Buiscuit’… and Hegley takes it from there

My history is blustery
The winds of change came after me.

Her wretched situation though is not delightful.

Had these Cockney Londoners (definition, born within the sound of Bow bells) met at a point in time half way through their birth dates, say in 1872, I imagine they would have been ‘muckers’, beating a path to the door of the young Thomas Hardy for poetry – or the social reformer William Morris for politics.  Who knows?  But they’re good friends in a Scarcity of Biscuit.  

Get a copy from – https://caldewpress.com/

 

Jan Woolf

 

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LOUNGE FOR LIBERTINES Necessary Animals: ‘Summer’s End Revue’ – REVIEW.


An eclectic ethereal treat. From new artists to seasoned musicians, the ensemble performances curated at The Beacon, by Keith Rodway for Necessary Animals, was a special treat with more than just the music. Having two performance areas gave the event an art gallery feel, where people could mill around inside and out amongst the garden fires and change seats for different performances. Unlike most showboating bands, Necessary Animals give the impression the music is almost complementary to your freedom to explore and commune. It resembles the kind of informal gathering encountered by Maurice Ronet visiting Jeanne Moreau in Louis Malle’s ‘Le Feu Follet,’ only with every artist aware of and countering self-aggrandising pretension. No stuffed shirts here. It is a work of art to make such an event with diverse musicians and varying setups a relaxed affair. The Beacon’s atmosphere lends to the notion all the bands have visited to give you a special performance in your own lounge.

Set 1:

Holly Finch and the Minor Dents got everyone settled in with the gentlest heart-warming guitar and vocals, accompanied by Ryan Bollard’s caressed kit and first ever live performance with Holly by Al Strachan doing things with trumpet and loops that found sumptuous unpredictable melodies and chord combinations with Holly’s guitar. Delicious alchemy. Rhythmic deep beats and electronica of Philip Sanderson compounded his pondering reflections, rippling and tickling the entire nervous system and air; oblique perspectives for the synapses; aural and neural reflexology. Next in line were the inimitable Simon & The Pope, with Keith Rodway’s sinuous oscillating synth tweaks, advocating “smoking at the bus stop” and “jumping the queue” in their winking sardonic word-play, deftly delivered on syncopated skins and filtered sample-pad, along with the coolest 50s suitcase kick drum for compact packing; traveling light lizards on the lounge-groove express. Lee Iggelsden then treated us to soulful guitar musings serenading Kim Thompset’s quintessential woodland folk tales from ‘The Hollows’ album.

Set 2:

Following the interval the entire audience were at once arrested and transfixed by Lucy Brennan’s spooky theatrics, performing a compelling tale of a woman who buried her husband neck-deep in sand and waited for the tide to turn. Brennan ‘pre-possessed’ held the space captive. A Halloween tale made more haunting by the accompaniment of Necessary Animals to the aerial and transcendent ‘Tian Tan Tiananmen’ from the album ‘Chi’ by gloppaddagloppadda – as Alan Bennett would likely describe, “the only word in the English language employing double ‘p’s and ‘d’s, repeated again with every other letter to make the ‘p’s and ‘d’s actually quadrupled. Knowledge that will no doubt comfort you whenever you discover your tights laddered in public, or you’re forced through the indignity of shopping at Tesco Express during a school run.” The plops and squiggles added by Nick Weekes’ sundry objects, Fritz Catlin’s percussive trickery and the band’s supple instrumentation transported the audience into a near-religious experience, but refreshingly free of the navel-gazing narcissistic preaching that now constitutes the woke political farce that has become the BBC’s Mercury Prize, with its obligatory contemporary soft Jazz concession. No such contrived compromises to NA’s forthcoming ‘Unkempt Magic, Dark Jazz 2‘ inclusive collaborative album. Lucy then elucidated on James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses,’ the subject of the next three numbers by Necessary Animals, from the album ‘Playboy of the Western Word’ with the sublime ‘Molly’s Soliloquy’ romancing the atmosphere in an unctuous glow; before NA rocked The Beacon’s foundations with some recent originals that will no doubt become their timeless cool classics; with Amanda Thompson and Kim Thompsett’s undisturbed disarming harmonies. Then some old covers: add 1 x Pink Floyd + Syd Barratt; 1 x Frank Zappa; and 1 x Bailey’s Machine, showing that if he chose to Keith could still brandish a megaphone over a ‘Multi-story Car Park’ and you have an audience shouting for more.

It all added up to a noise that would possibly attract your neighbours, rather than annoy them. Socially engaging euphoria and a thoroughly imbibing experience without anything pushed down any throat except the Thai supper and heart-warming Beacon Glow. A synergetic way to welcome in a balmy star-lit autumnal sky.

 

 

 

 

By Kendal Eaton.

 

 

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Unlucky star

On day two of a tour of Istanbul, Tristram and Mathias, both fans of P’s book La Disparition, couldn’t avoid noticing a suspicious-looking Turk following along. Anxious this musulman, with his barbarous facial hair, was part of that bloodthirsty clan familiar from P’s classic roman, our pair sought a hiding spot, moving at night to an unassuming flat in a distant suburb.  

Two days prior, a film star from Tokyo had sought anonymity and privacy by moving into a room upstairs. This star, known as Aika, was typically cast as a diva but was actually shy, bookish, and by a lucky quirk also a fan of P. Aika was unfamiliar with gas in cans, and two rings on hand for cooking would not light. Without a way to fry or boil provisions, our incognito luminary had to go out for food.

Moving in, our twins ran into Aika coming downstairs. Notwithstanding a pink wig, both gallants, longstanding aficionados of films from Japan, could spot Aika instantly. All soon got talking, and quickly found a bond in a common passion for P’s writing. Tristram and Mathias got Aika’s gas to work and lashings of udon in broth with prawns, mushrooms and pak choi soon lay in front of that happy trio. ‘Nutritious,’ Aika said. ‘Try with katsuoboshi. Good for flavour.’ Our star could now stay in and avoid risk of sightings by annoying paparazzi. Our twins, also craving obscurity, had Aika for company and companionship. All found stimulation in discussing books, and had in common a profound intuition of a void, a vacancy, a chasm P’s witty output had sought to highlight.  Sadly, four days following, Aika’s gas tank had a malfunction causing a colossal blast, fatal to our unlucky group.

 

 

 

Simon Collings
Picture Rupert Loydell

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Imaginary Homeland

 

My new housemate is from Kerala, India. He moved to the UK for a master’s degree in management. He is a Manchester United fan, he likes dancing, and he makes great tea. He jokes about how disappointed he was with the tea when he first arrived in the UK. “The land of tea,” he says, making speech marks in the air and shaking his head. He brings tea over from India, in large plastic bags which he stores in his room. We have developed a daily ritual where he knocks on my door in the afternoon when it is time for a cup of tea. He makes it by boiling two cups of milk, mixed with some water, and two spoonsful of tea. As it boils, the surface layer of the tea rises like a mushroom and then collapses on itself. He blows it down to keep it from overflowing until it is brewed enough. When the mushroom collapses, the tea is ready.

In the courtyard, he tells me about the different types of tea in India. We don’t have much in common, but there is always something to laugh about. He works at McDonalds and is currently applying for jobs in the corporate world. I have just started a master’s degree in poetry at the University of York and I work part-time in a pancake house. His dream is to find a good job and settle in the UK. My dream is to be a writer. Over the last month, we have become close friends. Now I always look forward to that knock on my door in the afternoon.

For a long time, I have wanted to go to India. After the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, my family left India to escape the violence that ensued. They went to Kenya, where my father was born. When the UK opened its borders to the former colonies because they needed workers after the Second World War, my grandparents decided to resettle again in Derbyshire. This time for good. I only have vague memories of them, because they passed away when I was young, but I remember drinking tea in the house where my father grew up. My aunties used to make it in the pan like my flatmate does now, but they would add spices as well. We sat on the floor in the living room because there was not enough space on the sofas and no dining table.

The front of the house used to be a shop, but that has long since closed. Growing up there, my father always wanted to escape the claustrophobic environment. He went to London for university and met my mother, a Portuguese student on one of the first Erasmus programs. Portugal joined the EU in 1986, when my mother was starting university, so it was through a convergence of historical forces that both were sitting in the library one afternoon on a table opposite from each other. A few years later, they got married.

When I was two, my mother was offered a job in Belgium. They moved together and for a few years we lived in a nice house with a big garden in a Flemish suburb. My father moved out after they got divorced, so I lived with my mother for most of the week and saw my father on Thursdays and Fridays. I would spend the school holidays in Portugal, with my Portuguese grandparents. Occasionally, my father and I would drive to the UK and spend time with my cousins and aunties. Due to these circumstances, I grew distant from my Indian heritage. In fact, I was embarrassed by it, because the Indians in my school were bullied. It always felt like a secret I was trying to conceal – if anyone asked, I was Portuguese.

It was only later that I began to appreciate the richness of Indian culture and embrace my heritage. On my year abroad in the US, I did an ‘Introduction to South Asia’ module, which helped me to understand a bit more about the history of that part of the world, and why my family had to leave. I was starting to become more curious about my own family history, and the peculiar circumstances that led to my own cultural mix. The term ‘third culture’ has been used to describe the mixed identity a child assumes when they are influenced by both their parents’ cultures and the culture in which they were raised, but having gone to an international school in Belgium, with English speaking parents who are not from England, the term doesn’t seem adequate enough to describe the blend of cultural influences in my childhood. To make matters even more confusing, after my parents got divorced, I had a live-in nanny from Ecuador who only spoke Spanish.

As a result of all this, I have always felt a kind of spiritual longing to return to some lost homeland of my ancestors – a place where I belong. Of course, this homeland is imaginary, because there isn’t anywhere in the world where I am not a foreigner in some sense of the word. I do not think there is a word for the feeling in English, a kind of nostalgia for a place that doesn’t exist. Going to India has been a dream of mine for many years, to finally reconnect with the land of my ancestors, but I know that I would be as much a foreigner in India as any tourist would. The languages and customs are foreign to me. Even the weather is foreign, because I have spent most of my life in this drizzly grey northern hemisphere.

Photos of Lucknow, India by Agrima Singh Parihar

The image of India that I have is pieced together from the second-hand fragments that I have gathered over the years: books, movies, photographs, music, food, tea, etc. I feel closer to India in a cultural sense than I ever have before, but geographically far away. If I went to India, I wonder if that would reverse? I have spent so long building up an image of India in my head and I am not sure if I am ready for this image to be shattered – what then would I have left to stand on, to long for?

But I have recently come to an important realisation. It is not India that I long for: it is a deeper sense of spiritual communion between myself and the world around me. That, I believe, is a common feeling to many people in the twenty-first century – not just third culture kids. In the absence of a shared mythology, we live in a fragmentary world. We do not have an underlying structure of beliefs to provide meaning to our lives, so we are all spiritually exiled in some sense or other. We must find other ways to create our own meaningful experiences with the people around us. Otherwise, life is empty.

I believe the answer lies within our interpersonal relationships. It is through genuine human connection that we can feel a sense of communion again. We should cultivate our relationships with care, because it is only through these relationships that we can come to a better understanding of who we are and bridge the gap between ourselves and the world. This would lead us on a path of self-realization, which I believe is the highest level of spiritual attainment. My imaginary homeland, I have a realised, is not a place on the map – it is a condition of the heart.

 

Gilles Madan

 

More photos by Agrima on Instagram at @agrimasinghh

 

 

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Flight of Words at Airport

Unknown children
Playing with a ball
Passed in an airport lobby,
Harmless contagious smile
Dawning like the waking sun
In their faces.
The lively spirit,
The vigor of soothing sun rays
Penetrating the thick window glasses.
An intimate friendship develops in those children
With exchanging jolly glances and eyes that meet,
A present so demanding of arresting
The moment;
Giving birth to endurable memories
For the days to come.
The hustle and bustle in the airport,
A confident fright before the sky of flight.
How joyful is the touch of the clouds?
The sky defeats its weakness
It grows more immeasurable
It has never lost its being.
I over-boil with words
Before my thoughts also take flight
And touch the measureless self
Of my inner within.
Before I seek,
I observe.
I am just scripting my sight.

 

 

 

Sushant Thapa

 

 

A Nepalese poet from Biratnagar, Nepal who holds a Master’s degree in English literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He has published three books of poetry namely: The Poetic Burden and Other Poems (Authorspress, New Delhi, 2020), Abstraction and Other Poems (Impspired, UK, 2021) and Minutes of Merit (Haoajan, Kolkata, 2021). Sushant has been published in places like The Gorkha Times, The Kathmandu Post, The Poet Magazine, The Piker Press, Trouvaille Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Impspired, Harbinger Asylum, New York Parrot, Pratik Magazine, The Beatnik Cowboy, The Dope Fiend Daily, Atunis Poetry, EKL Review, The Kolkata Arts, Dissident Voice, Journal of Expressive Writing, As It Ought To Be Magazine and International Times among many. He has also been anthologized in national and International anthologies. His poem is also included in Paragon English book for Grade 6 students in Nepal. He teaches Business English to Bachelor’s level students of BBA and BIT at Nepal Business College, Biratnagar, Nepal.

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Staircase in the North Wing

 

She is breathing she is breezing forth
She warms the lodestone centering
Her fantasy the cast of characters
She summons she defines denies decries
Her owned moments lift toward repeated
Skies and shining seascapes no matter
How divine the fine line between
Seek and grasp she draws in equally
The willing and unwilling to stanch
As if blood seasonally flowed as if
Memes could accommodate the variations
She defies all mood all winter all
Off-center variations on a theme
Desire

 

Sheila E Murphy

 

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The Scala cinema

The Scala cinema in London’s Kings Cross was a place to sleep, take drugs all night and throw lit paper airplanes at the screen. It remains the only cinema where as a Barbie doll dressed as the signer Karen Carpenter in The Karen Carpenter Story burned, a man crouched in the row in front began stroking my friend’s foot while the woman behind lobbed a full can of Red Stripe at someone called ‘Malc The Talc’ and bellowed for “skins”.  Now it’s been recalled in a book – Scala Cinema 1978-1993 by Jane Giles is published by FAB Press.

 

Opening night of the Kings Cross Scala, 1981. Photograph- FAB Press

Opening night of the Kings Cross Scala, 1981. Photograph- FAB Press

In the summer of 1981 I was, like Viv, a teenager in the audience with a boyfriend’s arm around my shoulders. We were up from the sticks for a quintuple bill that included Assault on Precinct 13 and Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue. The intermission music was Love Will Tear Us Apart. That night I fell for the Scala’s incredible atmosphere and its eclectic mix of cult movies, horror, hardcore experimenta and LGBT cinema, which became my unofficial film education.
– Jane Giles

 

SCala cinema programme 1986

 

Scala cinema programme 1986

 

The Scala was launched by Stephen Woolley out of the ashes of a defunct socialist collective on the site of an ancient concert hall and theatre in Fitzrovia. Pushed out of its premises by the arrival of Channel 4 television in 1981, the Scala moved to the Primatarium, a former picture palace and one-time rock venue in King’s Cross. A lone operator, the Scala closed down in mid-1993, following a perfect storm of lease expiry, the financial ravages of the recession, the redevelopment of the local area … and a devastating court case.
– Fab Press

 

 

Scala cashier, 1988. Photograph- Matthew Caldwell

Divine Ticket, 1982

 

Divine Ticket, 1982

‘The Scala had magic. It was like joining a very secret club, like a biker gang or something… They could show films uncut because they had memberships, well that’s insane! It’s like they were a country club for criminals and lunatics and people that were high… Which is a good way to see movies’
 John Waters

 

Billy Bell, technician installing projection equipment at Scala King’s Cross, 1981 Photograph- David Babsky

Billy Bell, technician installing projection equipment at Scala King’s Cross, 1981 Photograph- David Babsky

 

“The area felt quietly dangerous. That was partially the inspiration for Mona Lisa [Neil Jordan’s movie starring Bob Hoskins and Michael Caine] – working at the Scala on those all-nighters and wandering around at four in the morning in the backstreets of Kings Cross and just observing what was happening there. It was pretty scary.”
 Stephen Woolley

 

Lux Interior of the Cramps with Scala programmer JoAnne Sellar at the launch of The Return of the Living Dead, 1986. Photograph- Roz Kidd

 

Lux Interior of the Cramps with Scala programmer JoAnne Sellar at the launch of The Return of the Living Dead, 1986. Photograph- Roz Kidd

 

A sleeping punter at Shock Around the Clock, 1989 Photograph- David Hyman

A sleeping punter at Shock Around the Clock, 1989 Photograph- David Hyman

Huston, the cinema’s cat, 1987 Photograph- Mair Payne

 

Huston, the cinema’s cat, 1987 Photograph- Mair Payne

Foyer of the Scala, c1990. Photograph- FAB Press

Foyer of the Scala, c1990. Photograph- FAB Press

 

“I often used to spend the whole night in the Scala, dozing towards the early hours with a boyfriend’s arm around me, drinking double vodkas. The Scala’s where I first saw the films of John Waters, Russ Meyer and Ingmar Bergman. I’ll never forget the first time I went there on my own, to see Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes. I was utterly entranced by the film and loved that I didn’t have anybody next to me to think about or be distracted by.

“I always felt safe at the Scala, so had no qualms about going there alone, whereas I wouldn’t have even considered it at any other cinema. I still remember almost every frame of that vivid, female-led film. I was at film school at the time, and seeing The Red Shoes that afternoon made such a deep impression on me that I went back to see all of Powell and Pressburger’s films and became a lifelong fan.”
 Viv Albertine

 

scala interior

 

Scala Cinema 1978-1993 by Jane Giles is published by FAB Press. Buy it here.

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The Thorns of the Hanging Garden

 

I summon the souls of fishbone
and of arid lands
in the cacti, in the perlite and stones
patterned and potted across my balcony.

Here, birds circle, and it rains.
Here I rush in order to save drought,
haul it to the hideaway.

I stare at the cacti catching 
the delight of sometimes feathers,
arraying them in their crowns,
and shiver – simple pleasures!
An echo ants up and down my spine,
“Your ribcage will look fine
lying inside out on the sand.”

“Someday.” I say.
Winter sends 
hibernation to my hanging garden.

 

 

 

 

 

Words and photo 
Kushal Poddar

 

@amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet
 Author Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/ 
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

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PRESENTS FROM MY BOYFRIENDS

 

PERMISION TO WRITE

Can I write an epistolary novel
on this pale working-class girl
groomed like an estate princess
with Primark’s luxuries then raped
in a circle by men of faith who offer
bargain booze when it’s over then
drop her by an empty shopping centre?

Of course not, the subject isn’t allowed.
You ask is that fair? Study their culture.
Britain’s rapacious rule of India where
a diamond was taken. Don’t bother me
with innocence, such natives have none.

Summer days when she swung up for the sky,
pushed by those who loved her and let her fly?

Just read my report, there’s nothing to say.
You fester in anger as this story drifts away.

I worry if my daughter with a penis which 
swings between her legs will ever play
football that’s not ridiculed or swim races
leading the pack. You want other concerns?
Which pronouns go on badges, how to address
students who are trans in Year 7 plus bipolar
then develop global-warming phobia when
a dealer gets killed in Minnesota or wherever.

I’m studying in my spare-time. I read
Times’ articles – two in Nature – and now
wear masks everywhere, including my car.
Such girls spread it vaping or in their tears. 

DAYS WITH DARK WATER

Prose is too viscous, but I cannot paint;
my words will have to work. I saw her first
going in and out of shops, cars, buses.
Nothing to note but there must have been
something or I wouldn’t be writing. Maybe
it’s not how people stand, but in the way
they move from place to place, skittering,
showing nowhere feels safe.

‘Flitting’ is the word I wanted.
Tuneless whistling of a delivery man
summoning her like some sad bird to
its rattling cage bars. Absurd to have
such fancies, but she tottered around
his van then hopped in the back.

I’ll write my first letter:

Dear Young Lady who Flits,

How odd to address you as such!
I must not rush; this may be my
only chance. Stay slow and calm,
I’ll keep telling myself.

I fear you’re in danger;
you already know it.
Notice how I used a
semi-colon there as
I was once a teacher.

Men from the east are
crueller than any even
you may have met. In
a local garden centre
I bought a paperback on
the Mongol conquests.
I’d recommend The Works –
it’s not just for true crime or
books of different horoscopes.

I don’t think those migration
issues are from the past.
There is grooming and it
will have happened to you:

Days with dark water, summer,
but overcast, some gardens – 
Derby say – by the wide Derwent.
You were Year 8, friendship issues,
so you walked on your own by
the open river, after school
on the last day of term.

Then in an abandoned house
on a dual carriageway?
The outskirts of all towns
in England have one.

Gaunt, high walled,
some barbed wire, 
planks for windows.
Cars speed by yet
no one ever stops.

No one could see what 
happened so I’ll let my
imagination run wild.

Will you write back  
and say you’re safe?

YOU ONCE KNEW

Dear Sir,
I say this as you were a teacher when I hardly did much school. You write like I’m a sad child but it’s me in charge and you are surely a paedo? I found some dumb poem by you about a place like that river where I got caught.
I don’t regret it now.
It’s always too late.

Like a place you once knew but were seeing
somehow for the first time, washed clean in
clear sunlight without your worries. Be still my
memories, those permanent blocks; sudden
is the word needed for anything now entering
this field of view, be it birds or slight movement
in a tree by an empty sky in the late day’s blue of
impossible clarity, holding neither cold nor warmth.

I don’t think it’s no good but might be and would make no difference.
Not to you and certainly not to me.
You could get up and sing about me in some pub.
Either no one would listen, or everybody would and no one would care.
I used ‘would’ too many times – words like that say a lot about me.
I don’t mean Karaoke, which gets them crying, or two-for-one and meal deal extra grill.
Even then I think eating is more important.
Probably makes no sense but write back where you left your first letter.
That house is not what you think.
It’s still a kids’ home and good people work there.
Those boys who lurk also bring takeaways – Tikka sometimes.
Who don’t need it once every while? 

LET ME IMAGINE

In our English towns, how it is to be poor;
staggering like in a Russian novel:
a girl alone with gaping strangers.
Maybe you could go to Greggs
as they do cheap sausage rolls
perhaps a corned-beef pasty?
I had one and vomited it on
the pavement in Kidlington.
When I dropped this letter off
I slowed on the dual carriageway
took a sharp left into closed gates.
Is that usual? I saw faces from upper
windows though not yours. Presumably
you don’t live there anymore. A swift hand
from the gate grabbing for delivery. Thirty
pounds thrust in my palm, which I return for
some healthy food. Greek yoghurt is best
maybe bubble tea. I went behind the house
and saw a lonely garden, a broken swing and
scorched grass around a tin-tray barbeque
from a garden centre. Was there a party? 

NOT MUCH ANYWHERE ANYMORE

Dear Sir,
It was my leaving-do not a school prom exactly but they did what they could!!
As you says parking is hard and access not good so many friends couldn’t make it to the house. 
And who are you to laugh??
Sorry maybe you’re not but it’s easy to drive past and say who’d live on some dual carriageway who’d have a barbeque in a garden with nothing but a broke swing who’d live at all really.
One day I’ll look at you find where you live sit and watch you’d better be careful. 
I know how sick are all levels of men so don’t be fixed on those boys some who loved me as they knew best. 
I can’t complain if I could I’d be giving back so many things I never had till they gave them to me for nothing really. 
I sound so angry when I can’t be now. 
It puts everyone off. 
No need to be some nutjob who loses it in Aldi screaming down aisles shoving at the checkout as eyes all around are rolling. 
I don’t understand any of your letters but it’s better to get them than not to so write again if you want to. 
Such will always find me but as you say I don’t live there not much anywhere anymore. 

I HAD A FIGHT

If you find my letters so meaningless
maybe this will help. I was involved in
an ‘incident’ delivering this one –   
I beat the shit out of some cunt who was
trying to intimidate me. Don’t you

realise that most middle-class people
bubble with resentment, dissolved over
decades? So I struck first, a kick straight in
his cobblers, thumb into an eye socket
then rapid steam-hammering of the bonce.

Well, he lay stricken. If this was one of
your ‘boys’ then you say sorry for me. I
trust this message is intelligible!
You signed off with weary nihilism
so I thought this sign of my physical

willingness to fight in your cause, although
no longer a young man, would release you
from such hopelessness. I send now also
a pamphlet by a man named Nietzsche to
explain how my actions really might help. 

POSTSCRIPT

Bad Sir,
You are a mad sod shithead.
I got your pamphlet – wrote cowardly under some dumb name – saying God is Dead and you have killed him.
It was in that hot garden, no shade, just me.
Too much so I went to the garage for Magnums.
One of my boys read it and no choice but to beat me near dead then eat the salted caramel one.
He tells that’s why I need treating like they do.
There is only one God and that name is whispered in their ear when born and when dead.
He shouted it in my shell then had me hard.
Said I was lucky for that – next time I’d hear it when petrol plus lit match through the letterbox.
Tell Mr Nietzsche, 
I can spell and he is not dead.
He’s coming for you if I tip him your name.
So what is it?
But be careful if you come here again.
Eyes watch us all now – it’s safer that way.

HIS LAST WORDS

Child, I pray you’ll somehow always be safe, 
never awake worrying through the night. 
On this world’s surface, how would I find you
if you’d wandered lost, somewhere all alone?
I’d wind my window down. The lonely moon
shining over scorched fields now cooling and
the taste of meadows after rain. Let the 
wind alone whisper you this poetry –
doesn’t matter where, long after I’m gone;
reaching your ear, taking you safely home. 

 

 


Paul Sutton
Picture Nick Victor

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Steam’s Groove 20

Steam Stock

 

Tracklist:
Herbie Hancock – Wiggle Waggle
Lee Dorsey – Give it Up
Deniece Williams – Free
Johnny Hammond – Tell Me What To Do
Johnny Guitar Watson – You’ve Got A Hard Head
Archie Shepp – Attica Blues
Jimmy Smith – Root Down (and Get It)
Barbara Randolph – Can I Get a Witness
Kool and the Gang – Dujii
The Headhunters – God Made Me Funky
Eddie Bo – Check Your Bucket

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A Logic Problem for the Age of Chaos

 

In a small room, there are twelve identical packing cases, each one heavier than its dimensions suggest. One, for example, contains most European cathedrals from the eleventh to fifteenth centuries, with all their innovations in vaulting and ever-airier walls, their shift from plain to historiated glazing, via delicate grisaille patterns and incorporating such techniques as flashing and even jewelling, and their vicious debates concerning transubstantiation and direct lay access to the Word of God. This is not what I want to tell you about, but just for a moment imagine the mass of all those relics and votive offerings. Can you even conceive of such a thing? Another of the cases holds parks and gardens, which sounds like it would be lighter, but consider centuries of trees and follies, the thunder of falling horse chestnuts, the kids growing from swings and slides to smoking dope in the shelters, and the sheer density of all those held hands and more-or-less sincere promises. To cut a long explanation into a neat rectangle that will fit on a page with white space to spare: if you can’t see it with your eyes, it’s in one of these cases. Now that we’ve established the precise parameters, I ask you – like one of those problems in the paper which allegedly reveals your IQ, only with a ticking clock and the risk of death or life-altering injury – what do you think is outside the room and can you even find the door?

 

 

 

Oz Hardwick,
Picture Nick Victor

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Paris Shadows

paper
flowers
bloom
beneath
ecru’d laced
curtains
more than
this table
stands
between
myself
&
wind blown
passing
grey shadows
as
I sip
strong tea
at this
little cafe
in Paris

 

 

Terrence Sykes.

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John Peel – Top Gear 24th April 1973 ( Captain Beefheart interview )

PLAYING TRACKS BY

 

 

Beefheart interview only, with a few tracks (not all of them complete): it is also available online as a stream at the Captain Beefheart Radar Station site (without the tracks).
On the music front, it appears to be a Sixties and Liverpool night on the Peel wingding, with sessions from two Merseybeat stalwarts of yesteryear (plus Manchester-born Wayne Fontana from the same era), and all the records dating back to the previous decade (other than one track from the first Faces album, released in 1970), including many old favourites. In The Peel Sessions, Ken quotes John Walters’ verdict on the show in 1992 as “must have been one of Peel’s funny periods.” (pg 288).
It might be noted that the Merseybeat theme came just ahead of the closure of the original Cavern Club in Liverpool’s Matthew Street the following month (the final headliner, on 27 May, was Supercharge).

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COME THE REVOLUTION

Which among you will bring sandwiches?
And who’ll organize the selfies?
Which manifesto would you execute?
“The sky must be purged if the earth is to prevail!”
“The earth must be buried for Heaven to reveal!”
Which Utopia would you provoke?
Which of the pasts should be banned?
But don’t be the freak hot on the runway
or the gangster in church,
don’t be the priest caught in the whore house,

or banker man in the line-up.

 

Duane Vorhees

 

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Three Poems from early works by Barnett Newman.


organisms
 
you
blue
in flight
 
swooping
 
or is it
soaring
 
perspective’s the thing
 
as though
the flower mattered
 
vulval
 
flaming red

 


asemics
 
whatever it was
you said
in a scrawl
in darkest black
 
high and low
 
it has somehow been lost
in an avalanche
 
a frenzy of beige
 
a contoured
flickering reflection
of this aging vellum
our skins have become
 


song
 
castrated
 
your evolution frustrated
scored into onto paper
 
arching
 
tearing
 
raw colour swabbed
 
a myth
in the making
and remaking
 
remarking to two minds alike
 
dear god
only knows
how this song will end

 

 

John Mingay

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SAUSAGE LIFE 247

Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column whose restraint knows no bounds

READER: Have you had your covid booster jab yet?
MYSELF: Of course, I’m a national treasure.
READER: Any side effects?
MYSELF:  Intolerance, anger, superstition, deja vu, lost luggage, an irrational  desire to do the Hokey Cokey
READER:  You got off lightly
MYSELF:  I know.

ART NEWS:
FLIM FLAMS HIT TOWN
Local artists are positively bristling at the rumours that the FlimFlams are sniffing around Upper Dicker with a view to adding to their vast art collection. The influential collecters are largely responsible for the rise of artists like Bandy Sponk and Tracy Eminem. Installation artist Sponk who won the Ribbentrop Prize for 2003’s Panting Dog Hairdryer told me: “One commission from the FlimFlams can turn an artist’s career around in a split second. Take Creepé Suzettes the controversial French watercolourist who paints only cheese; no one would have heard of her had she not looked after Cribbins, the couple’s St Bernard, whilst they were meditating at an ashram in Hartlepool.” Irene FlimFlam, who oversees the the couple’s ruthless business empire, was seen recently at Upper Dicker’s Pink Triangle Gallery buying up anything which featured cats, including Jazz Up a Drainpipe by sculptor, explorer and exotic jam maker Hasselblad Van der Voome. Enigmatic husband Derek meanwhile was last seen abseiling down the building and peering into the window of Porno Haiku artist Emphysema Ratatouille‘s 4th floor studio where she is rumoured to be working on a follow up to her controversial 2017 work Cheer Up You Wanker, It’s Only a Fucking Shoe

 

Capricorn (22 December-20 January)
Fear of an afternoon bat attack leaves you with feelings of existential mayhem around the 4th. A telephone call on the 11th triggers swooning.

Aquarius (21 January-19 February)
All aquarians should be wary of the full moon on the 23rd, when an angry confrontation with Mars offers scant relief from the frantic cusping of Uranus.

Pisces (20 February-20 March)  
Whenever there are two pieces of metal being joined together you will find a piscean. If foraging for wild mushrooms on the 21st or 22nd is unavoidable, steer clear of anything which is surrounded by dead animals.

Aries (21 March-20 April)  
Your hair sign is Quango, so stay indoors. A dental appointment on the 23rd turns out to be a trick.

Taurus (21 April-21 May)  
After a long engagement, your fiancee calls the whole thing off, claiming she always hated your mother’s moustache. She returns the ring but keeps the tickets to ‘Cats’ you bought for her birthday. The 16th brings news of a horse auction in Shropshire.

Gemini (22 May-21 June)  
Disastrous miscalculations result in an unfortunate mix up at work, when a pastry chef from your past pops up unexpectedly. Light strife with some misgivings on the 12th.

Cancer (22 June 23 July)   
A postal strike prevents you from hearing bad news on the 19th. The moon’s rising conjunctions coincide with your falling sign, Venus, causing a lack of suspicion and optimistic fancy. Anticipate some bicycle wobbling on the 8th and 9th .

Leo (24 July-23 August) 
Stay away from Greek restaurants during August, as a collision with a roller-skating waitress is imminent.

Virgo (24 August-23 September)
A caustic soda accident renders you temporarily deaf. Leave your shoes at home on the 27th.

Libra (24 September-23 October)
Although a recent fol de rol at the Australian embassy provokes embarrassment, an impulsive flirtation with pigeon fancying comes to nothing on the 5th.

Scorpio (24 October-23 November)
Scorpios yearn for company as Pluto leaps over Taurus on the 7th. An abundance of seasonal vegetables causes surprise on the17th, but a timely intervention by a pork butcher saves you from humiliation.

Saggitarius (24 November-21 December)
Your saggitarian nature demands unswerving loyalty in others, sometimes resulting in unnatural acts with geese. A small package containing an endangered species is intercepted by customs officers around the 8th, much to your relief.

 

POETRY NOW

THE SPORT OF MASTURBATING MILLIONAIRES
By this week’s guest poet Cuthbert String

Soccer’s hot
it hits the spot
it shoots it scores
so hell why not?
its sexy, cool
it breaks the rules
It throws its cash
at tattooed fools

in porno terms
its got the lot
the balls, the legs
the money shot
The tangled limbs
The girlfriend’s whims
The inappropriate synonyms
The heads, the tails
the raw details
the tosser’s call
that never fails

Theatre news
BOP TIL YOU DRIP
At the opening night of Haircream, the Andrew Lloyd Webber 1950s tribute musical, fans of The Buddy Holly tribute band Peggy Zoo gathered outside Cockmarlin’s Theatre of Clones to shed crocodile tears after learning that the group had been killed in a fake plane crash. Newcastle’s Yes tribute band, Why Aye stood in at the last minute.

MINE’S A DOUBLE
Did you know that everyone has a doppleganger? Mine is an ioniser salesman from Detroit who during a course in anger management developed a device for modifying the inside of old milk cartons so that they could be used by squirrel rockabilly groups to make tiny tea chest basses. The prototype was stolen by Al Quaida terrorists (disguised as rockabilly squirrels) who are still trying to figure out whether to convert it into a weapon of mass destruction or just sell it on Ebay.

 

 

Sausage Life!

Colin Gibson (vimeo.com)

Colin Gibson • Emmet Ives • Anita Makris



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By Colin Gibson

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Earth.

 

Ocean’s bed and pearled moonlight
Under the riverbed beams
Of Musk Roses and Hawthorn bliss
Come vapours of cemetery sweet.
A ringing sunshine of a joyous basket
Two three foldings that give light
A simplicity to the matters of the heart
And paintscapes of singing
Light as light
Night as darkness.
Red and ruins
Instincts and inner joy
Burnings, labyrinths of mazy flow of life
Run havoc to the earth’s summit
My mystery moon and riverbed clouds
Hung a simple sweet bliss.

 

 

 

 Sayani Mukherjee.
Photo Nick Victor
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The Art School Dance Goes On Forever

No Machos Or Pop Stars. When the Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk, Gavin Butt
(290pp, Duke University Press)

The few people I am still in touch with from my time in the mid-80s at college in Cheshire, are – like me – all convinced that we had it good. We studied for our degrees on a Combined Arts course where whichever two out of five subjects we were specialising in (or just one in our final year) we took modules alongside students from all those subjects and everyone had access to things like printing facilities and the music studio. In hindsight the college must have been one of the last institutions still offering a multi-disciplined, liberal arts education, with discussion and ideas as important as craft and end result, endless studio time, and generous, interesting staff and technicians.

I say that because, as Gavin Butt makes clear, the government along with younger artists and lecturers, had already moved away from that, the former insisting that curriculum and clear-cut objectives and assessment criteria were put in place, and the latter demanding that theory be as important as art object. This was certainly the kind of thing going on in Leeds in the mid to late 70s, although it is sometimes hard in Gavin Butt’s book to understand if he is suggesting that Leeds bands such as The Mekons, Delta 5 and Gang of Four formed because of avant-garde events, happenings and teaching at the Leeds College of Art and Leeds University, or in opposition to it.

It’s well documented that British art schools produced a lot of musicians and bands. Roxy Music, The Who, and Eno, not to mention a lot of 1950s and 60s jazz musicians, and many others, emerged from art schools around the country, so it feels disingenuous to suggest that bands in Leeds later on were any different, despite changes in teaching methods and expectations, and the loss of institutional independence.

Butt’s book starts by setting the scene at Leeds in the mid-70s, with weird performances executed in front of small, disinterested audiences (or none at all), and students struggling to navigate their own way – without much direction or instruction – through their studies and art-making. Yet, change finally happens, Butt argues, not only because of the arrival of new lecturers who emphasise theory over practice, but also as a specific response to the December 1976 Sex Pistols gig at Leeds Polytechnic. As ever, there are mixed and contradictory reports of who played what and whether the Clash, the Damned or the Pistols were best (the Heartbreakers weren’t anybody’s favourite), whether it was the music or the event that was important, what it changed and how.

Central to the formation of the Leeds bands are two ideas: anyone can form a band (whether or not they can play an instrument), and that music is a good way to take art to the masses. No-one seems interested in painting or sculpture any more, only a few people like Frank Tovey (a.k.a. Fad Gadget) still engages with performance art, and music can be somewhere that theory can be put into practice and audiences challenged and informed.

The last of these always seems, to me, dodgy ground. One ends up with sermons, polemic, diatribes, slogans and persuasion, akin to the sort of dreary things the likes of Art & Language produced as their ‘art’. Thankfully the bands coming out of Leeds wanted to make pop music as much as discuss feminism, capitalism, genre and identity. Ideas and concepts informed the bands formations and songwriting but weren’t always foregrounded, although the early cabaret or burlesque antics of Marc Almond and Soft Cell would contradict that statement, as would the rhetoric, construction and visual packaging of Gang of Four’s songs and music.

And yet, Gang of Four’s awkward and scratchy deconstructed politicised funk could still be danced to, just like Delta 5’s less aggressive music, along with the songs created and performed by the shambolic and inclusive Mekons. Scritti Politti might stick with the theory in interviews and press releases but it didn’t take long before Green Gartside’s lyrical consideration of Gramsci and ‘bourgeois hegenomy’ was put aside in favour of pop stardom and higher production values on the back of signing with a major label. Bands would soon realise they would be better placed for stardom elsewhere and left Leeds for London or other cities.

No Machos… is a fascinating, informed and highly readable account of a specific geographical example and a specific period of time, but I feel similar events, personal and social upheavals and changes were happening everywhere (if sometimes a few years before or after). In my own case the original big-band incarnation of the Thompson Twins left college as I arrived in 1982, the singer of Half-Man Half-Biscuit was in the year below me, two guitarists in my year were already established session musicians, and there were any number of bands forming, breaking up, practicing, performing and recording. Since these bands included drama, dance, crafts, art and writing students, all sorts of influences and approaches resulted.

Outside my college was of course another world, the 1980s world of zines and DIY cassette releases, and an amazing local record shop; a world of local punk bands, and tape experiments, with outings to Stoke-On-Trent, Liverpool, Manchester and Keele University to see live music. Local gigs could see a hardcore punk band, followed by an event where a wall of flickering detuned televisions was accompanied by noise loops and improvised guitar, with a synthesizer trio to end the evening. I remember one band even broke up live on stage supporting Martyn Bates from Eyeless in Gaza! The main influences (which was a shock to this London boy) seemed to be anarcho-punk, Hawkwind, Chrome and Cabaret Voltaire.

Politics and art theory may have been different then, but they have always changed and evolved to refocus on current issues and debates, as well as adapting to deal with new technologies, art forms and ideas. The university where I teach now is trying to re-introduce more collaboration through cross-curricular modules and inter-disciplinary activities, and there are still debates, questions and discussions, still those who want to be popstars or make new experimental music. And thankfully, there are still some who want to change the world, just like those in Leeds did back in the day.

 

 

 

Rupert Loydell

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SKUNK SMOKE IN THE PARK

skunk-smoke in the park
floats lazy betwixt flowers,
stretches out moments into hours,
past little dogs that crap in the verge while
their humans pretend not to see it emerge,
past girls who glide in their summer clothes,
while old guys watch them with wistful leers,
and the joggers go round and round and round
high on the beat of endorphins and earbuds,
skunk-smoke in the park
is the dance of fragrance
that drifts betwixt the swings
where children swing, and climbs
the climbing wall to touch the sun,
where winos doze on dedicated benches
embraced by the loving memory of the dead,
and the pigeons that stab and preen
at last night’s pizza dream
themselves into peacocks,
and skunk-smoke in the park
floats betwixt flowers,
slows time, digests and devours
drifts lazy on the breeze
with the butterflies and bees
gifts caterpillars the dream of wings
intoxicates the squirrels in the trees,
as the stoned slackers and
pot-heads pixies exhale
the park shifts…
slightly out of focus

 

 

 

Andrew Darlington

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THE FEAR OF THE NEW

One must be absolutely modern – Rimbaud
Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell) [1873], Adieu

Walter Benjamin argued that mass dissemination always depreciates the quality of works of art, that ‘technologies of mass reproduction’ deprive art of a unique aura. It is true that this process partly accounts for the fading dynamism of the avant-garde – we now live in a post avant-garde era – as well as the democratisation of many forms of ‘art’ hitherto the exclusive sphere of privilege and wealth. Can it be that this ‘aura’ is not the aura of aesthetic qualities, but more a patina of ‘value’ that nowadays no one believes in, because everyone can see that ‘high culture’ was a propaganda machine for a wealthy elite of prelates and princes? Is it really the case that a good reproduction of the Mona Lisa is always a poor substitute for the original? Does the reproductive process really strip a masterpiece of its ‘aura’? One cannot fail to detect a certain taint of snobbery in all this. It is the same line of thinking that lead Clement Greenberg to contrast a poem by T. S. Eliot with a Tin Pan Alley – song to the detriment of the song – tbefore attempting to define the role of the avant-garde as protecting ‘culture’ from Capitalism. Heidegger maintained that scientific rationalism and industrialisation has destroyed the basis of art – he called this ‘the death of art’ – because the primordial national culture of olden days can no longer sustain itself, has sunk into a new age of darkness.

There is a fear behind these concerns – an apocalyptic fear – and Neophobia, fear of The New.

 

 

 

A.C. Evans

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Torn Sail live and emotional

 Alan Dearling shares a lively, creative musical performance

Torn Sail is the band fronted by Huw Costin. He is a wordsmith, singer, but also paints with a palette of multi-layered sounds, having worked with the likes of Brian Eno and Mark Lanegan. His singing has been compared with Ian Brown. He also somewhat resembles a G.I., looking a bit like Richard Gere!

Along with a highly appreciative audience, I really enjoyed the C,S,N &Y close harmonies from Huw and his colleagues in Torn Sail. I hate labels, but it’s distinctive Indie psychedelic-rock, with an early ‘70s style. It’s definitely a fully engaged band show, not a group of musicians backing a solo singer/songwriter. There are definite hints of John Martyn cascades of harmonic sounds, loops and delays. Torn Sail is fronted by dual guitars, heavy bass, subtle and varied drumming and synth-keyboard atmospherics. Whist listening and watching I came up with the phrase: ‘Musical mesmerisations’. A veritable tsunami of soundscapes.

Huw’s lyrics tell of places and people. Sometimes a quiet melancholia perhaps, but musically powerful and enveloping. Myriad tonalities – even tinges of Hawaiian music. I’m a bit uncertain of the exact track titles, but I think that some of the standout moments included, ‘Coastal’, ‘Mud People’ and ‘Nutshell’.  Folk from the gig said to me afterwards things like, “Totally memorable” and “Absolute blast!”

Torn Sail (Huw Costin): 2020 Lockdown show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PYryFxMcJc

‘Nutshell’ live at the Bodega, Nottingham. Gentle and beguiling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJYeDJF-1m0

These are tracks selected from the multitrack desk recordings at two intimate Torn Sail concerts in 2022 – Peggy’s Skylight in Nottingham and The Dorothy Pax in Sheffield.

I hope that this is current band line-up: Huw Costin, Henry Claude, John Thompson, Jim Baron, Jeff Davenport.

From Soundcloud website:

“Inspired by Buckley, Cash, Drake, Cope and Kilmister, Costin writes songs for the mystified and heartbroken…

Huw Costin is a British singer-songwriter known for his emotional vocal style, melancholic lyrics, and a penchant for writing nifty pop songs when the mood takes him. He’s worked with both Brian Eno and Mark Lanegan, but mostly, his musical journey has been a ramble around the more obscure reaches of the indie world. Known for his output with leftfield disco artists Smith & Mudd as well as rock bands Manatee, The Kull, and Earth The Californian Love Dream, Costin is currently writing and performing with his band Torn Sail.

As influenced by the folk, country, and rock of the 60s and 70s as the Nottingham ambient scene of the early nineties, Costin has been compared to the likes of Big Star, Ian Brown, Elbow, and Jeff Buckley.

His debut solo album – Regrets – found its way into the NME Yearbook as a top 10 album despite being unfinished and unreleased.

Praise for Regrets: “It’s like the third Big Star album mixed with the Stone Roses… It’ll make you cry.” NME (Yearbook Top 10)”

Support for Torn Sail came from Manchester’s Toria Wooff. Reflective, personal songs. Emotional and intense delivery. The material is quite powerful and Toria looks set to build up a reputation on the singer-songwriter circuit. Her PR tells us that she is, “a painter, poet, songwriter and storyteller, Toria Wooff stands in the crossfires of gothic literature and pained Americana.”

Toria Wooff is certainly in thrall to the late 1960s/early ‘70s American/Canadian folk-rock artists. I heard definite Leonard Cohen influences in her guitar-picking style. Here’s her Live Show-Stream:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buQae61Ls6M

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The Jackfruit Tree

The seeds buried, tell the stories of miles.

The ever widening trunk, tells the nourishment of sunshine.

The hands which watered it, got lost over time,

But the fruiting of blossomed buds is a tempting delight.

 

The courtyard of unfenced walls,

The tall old saints of prosperity stands at the centre of the ground.

A giant, ever growing tree,

Covered with hundreds of jumbo fruits.

 

The sweet aroma blankets the yard,

Crossing the walls unfenced,

Inviting the sparrows from miles,

To enjoy the treat of joyous sight.

 

The hundred of jumbo fruits

Plucked couple at times

Travelled every door,

From distant relatives to neighbours next hood.

 

The summer is about to knock

The rawness of jumbo fruits, is pickle and preserved in jars.

Marinated with rich aromatic spices and floats within mustard oil.

The glowing jumbo pulp poured glee when served with water soaked leftover rice.

 

The sun started to peak over head,  

And the jumbo fruits started to sweeten it’s cells.

The bees and flies hums their orchestra,

And Palm of children are full with ripen pulp of jumbo delight.

 

The chain of fifty people would circumference around the tree, as vastness of it is undefined.

The children circle around under it, waiting for the jumbo feast.

The summer afternoon was reserved for this, grandma would equally pied the slices .

The cheerful faces would dig in the ripen jumbo fruit slices, every tongue and belly of village would cherish the taste of the jumbo fruit.

From a aged seed, decades old.

 

 

 

 

 

Author- Sonali Gupta
Gumla, Jharkhand, India.

Bio- Sonali Gupta has currently completed Master’s from Centre for English Studies, JNU New Delhi India. She’s a poet from Gumla district, Jharkhand,India. 

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Red

Hands on my night brimmed pockets-
Diamonds and rusts as the song said
Penny for unkempt days
Diaries and flash fictions
Dreary and turbulent
Easy enough to pass on the moving choir.

Lullabies of my frisky fall days
My eyes on the outside autumn
A wishful longing
To taste the over brimmed autumn
In a soulful cup
Oversoul and honey quartz,
And homecoming with conjoined hands.

Sometimes my vulnerable steps
Paint ducked off lines
I want to make mandalas of 
Saturated bliss 
As poetry says bliss and autumn come
together.
Two red hats sun beamed musk roses.

Across the new building
A new wall of a graffiti of a modern art
Mon amor days of scented candles
I wanna stick chap sticks
And Paper flowers on my fragile necklace.

My red veined fear 
No more fear of the vulnerable steps 
Autumn will dress us for growth
To make a saturated redness 
Under the heavy fall
And the striped stream that calls on me
Come over and drape in bliss. 

 

 

Sayani Mukherjee

 

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Marcus Aurelius ‘Round Midnight

 

The world turns on her side to dream
To close her eyes still sore
In lucid eulogy of poets ‘dead’
That is to say “Collected” safe away
From England into Dreamland   –   many say
Poetry is childish dreamland anyway   –
The realists and pragmatists have made it scarcely
Mention-able   –   or Refugee
Between their virtual and ‘real’ reality

The outer world seems such a vivid dream   –
A livid ‘waking-dream’ of dramas   –
The inner world so often is denied
But surely now’s the time
The world might shut her eyes
Not in ‘denial’ but in evocation   –
Equal Opportunity of balance and regard   –
For who denies
This urbanised dystopia is nightmare?

And so I say   –   ‘real’ to real
Suppression of our sanctity and sanity
Our common and organic unity   –
That might be lifted now
Redeemed from past ‘mythology’
Into a numinous present
Or future time counts down to shared despair

Here then is my ‘elegy’   –   a bonus in advance
Of biological inevitable audit   –
May it accrue interest in ‘Futures Markets’
Eluding Number-Crunchers’ quantification   –
Some who hate their profits
Overturned by prophets

As one who scorned and scandalised
Temple-Merchandise dot com
Throwing down its tables of exchange   –
They stitched him up by night
Then buried him in a bible   –
Such aphoristic poetry   –   as if
Love can love to love without return?

This ‘elegy’   –   a bonus in advance   –
Stop your hard-drive start yourself a life!
Drop in Tune out Turn off
Livestream Celebrity Infotainment Channels…
Satellite Laser Surgery of asteroids and stars…
Foodbank Warm-Room ‘deserving poor’ Parsimony…

Some buy to sell to buy to sell again
The same re-packaged trash to dupe the poor
To ‘educate’ by dumbing-down the soul
To sit isolate and ‘fit’ a hypocritic culture
Where ‘privacy’ is yesterday where ‘now’ is obsolete
Except as down-load…up-load…loaded dice…
Beach Body Glamour Limited Edition

Here is my ‘elegy’   –   a bonus in advance
Lifetime Opportunity   –   One Week Only
Slaves allowed by law
To march for lighter chains!

Love and Death are duelling   –
West End Theatre-land
Broadway Great White Way
Golgotha Piccadilly to L.A.
This Show May Run Forever   –

Investors   –   “Angels”
How shall you invest?

 

 

Bernard Saint
Illustration: Claire Palmer

 

 

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Choices

 

As the train slid past the outside world, Richard sat, gazing beyond the window. There was nothing as beautiful as England in mid summer. The joyous feeling in his heart reflected the external beauty. With one, well considered decision, he had changed the course of his and his family’s lives for ever. Quite simply, from this morning on, nothing would be the same again.

His mind wandered to thoughts of his family. His grandfather, that austere, Victorian throw back. Then his own father who had inherited so much of his father’s bitterness and anger. Richard could feel traces of them both, stern and agitated by his decision. Horrified to think that one of their own had let go. Still, Richard smiled to himself. It didn’t matter. None of it did.

Charlotte, his wife came to him next. Her calm, smiling face, always so reassuring. Just how he had come to love her so much was a mystery to him. Not the act of loving Charlotte, but the depth of his love. He had had no idea he was capable of such devotion. After years of heartache and suffering disguised as ‘doing one’s duty’, Charlotte had patiently taught Richard how to love, and for that gift alone, he owed her everything.

He thought back over the weekend just gone. How it was the culmination of a series of events that started with him meeting Charlotte while she worked as an intern at the firm. Their awkward courtship and subsequent marriage, followed very quickly by pregnancy and the beginnings of a family.

Then Richard’s father dying and Richard inheriting. He felt out of his depth, but Charlotte was always there to guide and help. The conversion of the West Wing in to their family home and the ‘shutting up’, of the remainder of the house. (Richard thought for a minute on the last game of snooker he played with his brother in the billiard room. He missed those games).

Out the window, two horses galloping across their paddock together, caught Richard’s eye and he smiled to see their playfulness. He turned to continue watching them as the train rolled on. A light, summer shower tapping at the glass.

Resting back in to his seat Richard returned to his thoughts. Yes, Charlotte. She was the making of him. Something as simple as her compassion toward him on Friday evening when he arrived home drunk. ‘Bloody Phillip, what sort of trick was that, to give Richard a triple whisky just before he got on the train’. Charlotte found Richard stumbling about on the platform, took him home and got him in to bed. He loved her for that. Her understanding.

Without Charlotte none of this would have happened. It was Charlotte who set up the retreat centre and organised the Ayahuasca ceremonies. He smiled to himself as remembered that torturous first experience. Purging, what seemed to be his everything, from everywhere. Writhing around on the floor, being terrified as a big cat desperately tried to rip open his chest to tear at the snake around his heart. The facilitator ‘River’, repeating in his ear, ‘let go Richard, let go. Stop fighting’.

Richard felt, that morning, like he had finally surrendered. Not only had he lain down his sword, but he was also making sure that his children would never be expected to weald one. The choice Richard had made had broken a chain forged over nine hundred years ago, when William the Conqueror gifted land to his family for their part in the invasion. Through all those years Richard’s family had remained loyal to the crown. His ancestors had given their very souls in return for that land.

Slowly the green fields were giving way to the suburbs. Sprawling estates and allotments. ‘Garages for the workers’. He felt a pang of guilt at his family’s involvement in the ill treatment of the people of these islands. The ayahuasca had helped to shift his perspective. He’d been raised to believe that the people needed leading and that he and his kind were the natural leaders, chosen by God for the role. Next in line to the monarchs, who the people must serve unquestioningly. The ceremonies and Charlotte’s love had shown him otherwise. He could see now that the land had been stolen from the people and he had the opportunity to make amends.

For a moment, these thoughts made him anxious. Richard was, after all ‘turning his coat’. Becoming a traitor to his heritage and blood line. He would be ostracised from his society. He thought for a minute on the reaction from people at the firm. They’ll think he’s had a breakdown. Treat him like a mental case. What did it matter? Nothing mattered, that was the point. His family had been held to ransom for nine hundred years on the pretext that it all had some sort of meaning. He could see now that their allegiance to the crown, did little more than served to facilitate the ‘establishment’s’ desire to remain in power. Nothing more than that. It was a great game. He felt relief again at the thought of leaving it all behind.

The city became more and more built up. The buildings becoming taller, more modern. Richard swallowed in anticipation, shuffling in his seat. ‘Not long now’. From the over crowded, stuffy carriage, he watched the city go by, through the rain spattered window, that was now misting up.

Wiping away the condensation released a memory from his childhood. His mother clearing the mist from the car window on their way to his first day at school. How she held him, tears in her eyes. Richard had been explicitly forbidden to cry and he was ashamed of his mother for her ‘letting the side down like that’. How archaic and absurd it felt now. How cold and lacking compassion. His poor mother having to give up her children one by one to a system that she knew very well was going to teach them to be cold and detached in order that they may, unquestioningly ‘do their duty’. It made Richard feel nauseas for moment. He’d learnt to love his mother, but how could she do that? ‘It was just the done thing dear’, but no, he mustn’t judge her, she had suffered enough.

Richard heard his station announced and automatically rose to his feet, just as he had every day for the previous fifteen years, but this would be the last time. He was going to walk straight in to Sir Stephen’s office and tell him he was leaving, with immediate effect. ‘Keep it simple’, Charlotte advised, ‘you don’t owe him an explanation. Just tell him you’ve had enough and you shan’t be coming back’. Richard took a deep breath and imagined Charlotte by his side, holding his hand. ‘It was going to be alright’.

The doors beeped and someone pushed the button, releasing a crashing, human wave of grey in to the station.  Richard moved through the door and put a foot on the platform, his heart racing in side his chest. This was really happening. Everything was changing. Nothing would ever stay the same.

 

 

 

Ben Greenland

 

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golden shattered shields on darkened barrows of yore

come, Brigid and Rhiannon
both goddesses whom poets adore,
come, people from Annwn and Silbury too!
worlds of delights and eternal youth.

come, gaze into my crystal ball
calling to me across voids of time,
come, open strange doorways
to your inner mind.

come, my beautiful lady
naked on the ground,
come, jewelled moons
with silver iridescent wings.

come, Elaine, as you drift
downstream to Camelot, forever,
come, wise Taliesin, radiant of brow
servant to Cerridwen, bard to kings.

come, white hart
of the wooded deep,
come, keen kestrel
with eyes like diamonds.
come, running stream, o’er rocks
with your healing powers,
come, Blue Ben old worm
aslumber in your lair.
whence Arthur and Medraut fell
arise again from bloodied Camlann.

haunting the dark levels
like dragonflies with gossamer wings,
wailing thro’ standing stones
dressed in white, long red hair floating.
riding demon horses, hunting for lost souls
with white-bodied, red-eared dogs of hell,
across moors of frozen life
where mists obscure every star. 
sunset blackened silhouette
above our ruined citadels, no more.

come, greet the hour before dark,
where emerald seas
meet the blue moonlight.
myth, once more, will
become our sad memories,
as ravens stir, and call across the sky.

 

 

Stewart Guy

 

 

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DON’T, JUST DON’T

It is all about death at the moment,
along with injury, stress and depression.

DON’T LOOK AWAY

Keep your eyes on everyone who thinks
they are in charge, so you can avoid them.

DON’T SUBMIT

Turn the problems back on them,
learn to live without permission or praise.

DON’T DO WHAT YOU ARE TOLD

We don’t need to save the world,
the world will be just fine without us.

DON’T BLAME OTHERS

Be responsible for your own actions,
consider the effects of what you do.

DON’T GIVE UP

Submission is not an option, depending on
the State or the unknown is a form of defeat.

DON’T DO IT

It is not about death, it is about life.
It is not about despair, it is about hope.

 

 

Johnny Brainstorm

 

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Ways to ruin the boss’s day


 

Looking at those bills creeping up while your wage flatlines and your bosses waddle off with trousers full of cash you may have thought about pushing for a better share.

But strikes are hard work, and may not always help. They need a union recognition agreement and 50% response rates on the ballot, which takes a month to go through and has to be done by mail as though the entire history of the internet never happened. Then once you do get the right to walk out you don’t even get to call the scabs what they are because they’re sooow pwecious. Surely there’s other things to be done?

Well yes, historically there’s been a whole bunch of harder and softer tactics used over the years, mostly needing a bit of a collective organising (there’s other resources out there for getting that bit done). We can’t, of course, make any endorsements one way or the other about how well they’d work for you.

The Collective Letter

Often used as a precursor to (and sometimes warning of) more direct action, the collective letter is a great way to worry a boss who incorrectly thinks the office is full of scared and atomised individuals who won’t stand up for themselves. It’s also a good way to get people to commit to the bit before moving on to other activities, having both the safety of collective action and of being a lighter touch, lower risk initial confrontation.

Marching on the Boss

Often used in conjunction with the collective letter, marches on the boss involve getting everyone together and confronting them at a time of your choosing, not theirs and asking questions collectively. In some cases the workplace will stand as one while the letter is read out. Bosses have been known to lock themselves in their own office rather than front it out.

The Good Work Strike

Everyone likes to be liked. Well with the good work strike you get to be liked and wind up management. Is there anything else I can do for you madam, something time consuming and/or expensive that doesn’t bring in any extra profit? Oh dear, in a slip of the hand I appear to have given you double the normal serving sir, how clumsy. Or you could of course be like Bob from The Incredibles, who in his most heroic act of the entire film simultaneously protected his customer from being ripped off and cost the firm a bucket of extra cash, all while being a very helpful employee.

Whistleblowing

If only everyone else knew what you know about what the bosses are getting up to behind closed doors eh? The way they talk about major clients, the corners they cut, the rules they break – ooh it’s a scandal in the making. It’s amazing it’s not come out before really. Well with your help, it can. And it might remind management exactly which other skeletons, in what cupboards, their workforce are helpfully ignoring. There’s two ways of course, the legal way, and the way in which you don’t get caught – remember to read up on how to do so safely.

Working to Rule

Despite the absolutely cringeworthy right-wing press’s attempt to brand this as a new Gen Z thing by calling it “quiet quitting,” working to rule is an absolutely solid way of letting bosses know exactly how dim a view the workplace is taking of them. It’s not even costing the firm money, it’s just not letting them get extra work for free. In fact it’s them getting exactly what they’ve paid for. Not in the contract? Don’t do it. Outside of normal hours? Don’t even pick the phone up. Show up and leave precisely on time, take your exact mandated breaks and watch productivity per person drop like a stone. And the best part of a mass work to rule? It’s hard to fire someone when you’re short handed.

The Go Slow

An edgier cousin of working to rule, the go slow is exactly what it says. You can use a lot of the same methods, but also incorporate outright delaying tactics to make the hours you are working less productive. Longer loo breaks. Constant stop-starting because of vital questions that only management can sort out. Physically moving more slowly and either being very thorough or making errors which involve lots of work to re-do. Double the length of a report by phrasing the same concept several times over, tangenting etc etc. The possibilities are endless – but bear in mind they’re also easier to get written up for.

The Health and Safety Sticklers

Health and safety is often one of the most powerful tools in the union’s arsenal. Get a union person certified as a health and safety rep and they have a lot of rights to help force proper action. But there’s also less official ways to make sure bosses know what’s up, especially during a dispute. Another relation to the work to rule, this involves not doing any corner cutting which contravenes health and safety guidance. Given how often bosses either unknowingly or deliberately flout theses rules, and the sometimes impractical nature of them, this can be surprisingly effective – for example the piss strike which RMT successfully used on London Underground, in which rather than go in the tunnel, they went all the way back to the station every time they needed a whizz, as demanded by health rules. They won.

The Sick in

Speaking of health, we all need a duvet day once in a while, right? But what if everyone is getting sick? Somebody comes in coughing and sneezing, so much so they get sent home. But oh no, the bug’s gone round now! Everyone’s getting ill! Such a shame, looks like the office is suddenly short on staff right when we’ve been making a point about being poorly treated when we’re the ones who keep the place running. Maybe if we were less stressed folks wouldn’t be so prone to absence through illness, hmm? You certainly can ask for a doctor’s note boss, but there’s something of a shortage of GPs seeing people at the moment and for the first seven days you really shouldn’t.

The Bottleneck

A trickier one as it can get individuals targeted, but if they’re willing and hard to get rid of it can be very effective without putting the rest of the workforce in danger. Every workplace has its bottlenecks, where one or two people are through putting a large amount of work which stalls if they aren’t there. If they go on the sick or are unable to run their equipment, nothing moves. This has been used to great effect on everything from manufacturing lines to office jobs.

Workplace Occupation

A whole genre in itself this one and also often known as a Sitdown Strike. Occupations can be extraordinarily effective, either stopping work completely or, less commonly, re-starting it such as in the famous case of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders. They require a lot of gumption on the part of the workers, especially in the face of likely siege from cops (and the media), and as with any wildcat will have no legal protections, but they can also have a lot of advantages, especially by denying the space to strikebreakers and managers.

Accidentally Breaking Stuff

Not every breakage is as satisfyingly direct as that printer scene from Office Space, but everything has its shelf life, y’know? And stuff does happen. sometimes for example the boss might give you a job that is well outside what you’re actually paid for like fronting some bright idea about an office vlog. And whoops, butter fingers, looks like the ringlight’s been knocked down some stairs. Ah well you are pretty clumsy – and entirely untrained. Historically of course people have been known to go a bit further than that …

Sabotage

AKA breaking stuff vital to the job in a more methodical and obviously catastrophic manner. A method so old its name is based on the word for a wooden shoe and so venerable that the general principle was officially endorsed by the to fight Nazi bosses. If the tools don’t work neither can you. Doing this sort of thing can, obviously, be a sacking offence and liable for some charges at worst, so please note that while it’s so famous we can hardly avoid a mention, this is not a recommendation.

The Barricade

A bit of a step up on the direct action side. Alright these aren’t a common thing for workers in Britain (though green groups like Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion and Stop HS2 have been doing a fair bit to the squealing fury of the tabloids). But head south a bit to Spain and they love it. There’s nothing quite so intimidating to a complacent boss as a burning line of tyres between them and their profits. Beware however, this stuff can cause a fair bit of trouble in a country where it’s less normalised and the Tories are busily trying to criminalise such tactics.

Workplace Annexation

Another one we don’t really do in Britain but which has a long and impressive history in Southern Europe and South America particularly. Probably the most famous example was the Argentine occupation wave of the 1990s which saw everything from ceramics and textile factories to metal casting and, most famously, the Hotel Bauen taken into workers’ hands when they went into receivership, where they went on to be sources of income and movement resources for years to com

Bossnapping

A particular favourite of the French, who have always been more prepared to go the distance when standing up for themselves than us (ironic, really, given the British penchant for thinking of ourselves as being more up for a fight). Pretty muchmost kinds of senior managers have been bossnapped across the Channel, from top CEOs to particularly despised HR managers.

Of course, historically there have been many other forms of workplace resistance, some of which get into the territory of what’s now defined as illegalism or even terrorism. But those are outside the remit of this article and for now, in the absence of cadres of armed workers roaming the streets, we’ll stick with the above. Bon chance, union militants!

Reprinted from https://freedomnews.org.uk

 

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TREASURE ISLAND

Pretty soon we’re going to be loads older.
Thank heavens we thought to bring sandwiches.
But I don’t appreciate ambiguous hand signals or, for that matter,
     unwanted text messages.
This is clear enough, don’t you think?

Beauty is a sure sign of grace.
I’m not ashamed of my good points. Life experience has to count
     for something.
I’m not ashamed of your good points.
Let’s move on. Is anyone listening?

Why the natives don’t want to live here is a mystery.
The weather is set fair, or fair enough for now.
Perhaps a past life is threatening to come around again.
Or am I dreaming?

I’m not crazy about the idea of travelling in pairs.
There’s much to be said for single file.
When I was younger I was more fit for purpose.
Recriminations will follow in due course sure as night upon day.

She looks at her shoes.
I look at her ankles.
We agree they’re very nice shoes.
I remember when I bought them, she says. I was young, carefree,
     and never imagined things would turn out like this.

We’ve been here far too long is the general consensus.
Eternal night is threatening to fall.
That sounds ominous.
But I feel better now I’ve got stuff off my chest.

 

© Martin Stannard, 2022

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As One

           

We are carrying our death about with us –
deep in the oesophagus, perhaps, attendant,
or in the folds and furrows of the brain. And though
conscious of God’s unreasonable demands
we admit, too, to our unreasonable response. Today
insistent mists are holding the countryside enthralled,
while tulips, in sundry vivid colours, bow low
in gentle reverence; the bugle-flower sprawls
out across the lawn and I think: sometimes God
holds us tenderly on her upturned palms. Perhaps
ours may be a sea-death or, more likely, a road,
when God will lay her iron-solid world-weight down
on the tenders of our days. Knowing that there are wars
and time-worked earth-disasters, still I watch – trusting
to the drive of compelling cosmic forces – the orchid,
the upward-uncoiling fern, while I remember the three
Palestinian children – who had been playing ball
by the sea-shore – blown into shreds and bone-bits
by the state-of-the-world Israeli fighter jet: they
had carried their death about with them for too short
a time and – though we know that barbarism
divides us, soul from soul – we, hurting, cry out
as one, in the woodshed, the cow-byre, in the high
-rise offices of the city: have you abandoned us!

 

 

 

John F. Deane

 

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FLOWERS OF SUBVERSION




where have all the radicals gone, long time passing?
gone to safe legal practices, every one,
when will they ever learn?
where have all the rebels gone, long time passing?
gone to Old Folks Care Homes, every one,
when will they ever learn?
where have all the revolutionists gone, long time passing?
gone into cosy counter-revolution, every one,
when will they ever learn?
where have all the insurrectionists gone, long time passing?
gone onto Social Welfare Benefits, every one,
when will they ever learn?
where have all the young folks gone, long time passing?
gone to Climate Change activism, every one,
they learned the lessons we lost along the way

 

Andrew Darlington
Website: www.andrewdarlington.blogspot.com

 

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Quadrilateral Utterances

David Russell’s extraordinary creative flow continues unabated. The ‘quadrilateral’ here refers ostensibly to the four-part structure of the book – Lyrics – Eros – Dystopia – Prose but there is nothing four-square about the writing and the cover image hints at fractals and something altogether more polyhedral. One of Russell’s several parallel careers – as singer-songwriter – comes through in much of his writing: choruses and the explicitly lyrical abound, as we encounter Crack-Down Tribunals and the Burglars of Britain amidst raging Eco-Thunderstorms. The protest songs and free-form prose experiments reached this reader more than the love-songs. We live in a triplicate world, as one of the Lyrics observes, but Russell remains intent upon breaking us out into other dimensions.  

 

Respitoration  

 

Can there still be irrigation  
now the stem’s closed, dry?  
Can there still be imagination –  
when the bottom’s gone awry –  
when everyone can see  
through every ancient icon?
In spite of everything, maybe –  
when light floods all opacity,  
as every block of granite, basalt, obsidian
melts into a stained-glass window;
when experience
submits to colour separation,  
sparks my feed –  
a phoenix out of limp exhaustion.  
When water fails,let therebe light.  

 

* Respitoration: the processby which plants and some other organisms use light energy to convert water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and high-energy carbohydrates  

 

 

UnderwaterBallet  

In the wistful – drowning;  
all dreamers hold their breath; floating balloon
rests full in blister world before the land.
Slippery between skin and scales,  
drawn throbbing from the gilled;
great tuna from crustaceans postulated;  
anemones, new-boned;  
in parallel concert writhe curl double joints.  
Flippers of androgyny erected supple.  
thighs hoisted angular, lungs ultra-blown;  
Last bursting thrust, febrile diffusion;  
velvet sense – soft through soaking,  
impervious skin in utter life.  
Its elements sliding; gills suckling lungs.  

 

 

David Russell

 

 

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Dipstick Apocalypse

The new ebook from Argotist Ebooks is “From Dipstick Apocalypse” by Rupert M. Loydell

Description:

Tomas Tranströmer notes that “sometimes an abyss opens between Tuesday and Wednesday but twenty-six years could pass in a moment. Time is not a straight line, it’s more of a labyrinth”, an idea which underpins Rupert Loydell’s poems from “Dipstick Apocalypse”. Here are doppelgängers, doubles, mimics, impersonators and decaying ghosts lost in a maze of poetry, allusion, puns and forgotten memories. Here is a world between others, out of sync with itself, its inhabitants desperate for oblivion and a way to escape the whirlpool of time, echoes of tomorrow, and the “smell of sulphur and soot”.

Available as a free ebook here:

https://www.argotistonline.co.uk/FROM%20DIPSTICK%20APOCALYPSE.pdf

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Rest in Poems, Niall McDevitt (1967-2022)

 
 
 
New River Press

 

Rest in poems, Niall McDevitt (1967-2022)

The poet Niall McDevitt — a founding member of New River Press — has died on 29th September, aged 55 at home in North Kensington after six years lived with cancer. He was a restless presence in London poetry. A serious poet and enthusiast of other poets. Iain Sinclair, Yoko Ono, Patti Smith, and John Cooper Clarke all admired his work. The literary walks McDevitt gave, ‘psychogeographic investigations’, saw greasy cafes and elite hotels alike as places of poetic pilgrimage. Jeremy Reed, an older contemporary who influenced McDevitt’s early style, described him as ‘a luminous custodian of the great poetic mysteries’, adding that ‘London will never be the same without him’. 

McDevitt dedicated his life to poetry, to a Blakean vision that celebrated freethinking and resisted the rule of the philistine establishment. His poetry is by turns solemn and sage, with a melancholic romance, or in the words of Heathcote Williams, ‘savagely witty’. A charismatic and sometimes provocative performer with a low, booming voice, McDevitt was more acutely perceptive than first appeared. His loyal, scrutinous attention championed the creativity of all he met. With uncomplaining dignity, he lived to the full while ill. Only four days before his death, McDevitt visited the grave of Victorian poet Algernon Charles Swinburne in Bonchurch, Isle of Wight. Though wheelchair-bound, beaming with delight, he mustered a lecture on Swinburne’s colourful private life and advocacy for Blake. 

McDevitt brought many to the path of poetry. A Londonist who led highly original literary walks to uncover traces left by great world writers on the city, in particular the four McDevitt called his ‘personal Kabbala’: Shakespeare, Blake, Rimbaud, and Yeats. His ‘wandering lectures’ revealed a whirlwind of history on unassuming streets. An industrial alley behind The Savoy is shown to have been set ablaze in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1377; to have witnessed the death of William Blake in 1827 and Bob Dylan giving birth to the music video in 1965 in Subterranean Homesick Blues

The product of six years’ work, London Nation returned from the printers on the day McDevitt died — just in time for the poet to hold a copy. The golden hardback shows Thomas De Quincey with ‘Ann of Oxford Street’, who reputedly once saved the young De Quincey’s life with smelling salts. The paintings are by artist Julie Goldsmith, McDevitt’s partner, collaborator, and now literary executor. Goldsmith and McDevitt made a glamorous pair in pinstripes and leopard print. To Goldsmith’s son, Heathcote Ruthven, McDevitt was a devoted stepfather, responding to, without fail, everything the younger writer wrote. Ruthven and McDevitt worked closely to programme McDevitt’s London Poetry Walks and, with artist Robert Montgomery, design and edit Niall’s work for New River Press. Their Portobello Road address became a loving home and space for McDevitt to develop his work to more critical acclaim. In early 2022, McDevitt was ecstatic to sign a deal with Cheerio books, an imprint of Hachette backed by the Estate of Francis Bacon, for a book about Geoffrey Chaucer.

McDevitt’s poetry wove diverse traditions to unique effect. In a hymn to the murdered playwright Christopher Marlowe, he beats a Celtic Modernism on a Bodhrán drum to the underbelly of Elizabethan England; London Babylon adapts Ancient Sumerian texts to critique contemporary neoliberalism; Firing Slits: Jerusalem Colportage, the result of a summer in Palestine, fuses two of McDevitt’s lifelong preoccupations — the culture of Judaism and the Jerusalem of Blake — to create a startlingly original world of haunted hopes. Though dense with history and religion, McDevitt’s work is decidedly unacademic. He learnt from Joyce and Chaucer how to remain alive to the visceral contemporary, sing to the music of diverse voices, and travesty piousness with scatological wordplay. McDevitt found in London a lodestar to make vast libraries of erudition concrete and immediate. 

Born in Limerick in February 1967, McDevitt moved to South Dublin as a child. Unusually for Seventies Ireland, Niall and his siblings Roddy and Yvonne were raised by a single father, Michael, a famously good-looking man who worked for Irish Rail. After separating from the family, Niall’s mother, Frances, from a distinguished Irish musical family, emigrated to London, where her three children separately followed suit. 

McDevitt was educated at the Jesuit-run Belvedere College and University College Dublin. Like fellow alumni to both schools, James Joyce, McDevitt excelled in a Classical Latin education the richness of which is enshrined in his writing. ‘Bloomsday’ walks, following the path of Leopold Bloom in Ulysses, was founded in 1954 by a friend’s father, the artist John Ryan. Discovering the tradition was ‘extra-curricular manna’, said McDevitt. ‘It showed how a literary walk could become a national holiday.’ Unknown to him then, Bloomsday became a model for the mode of research McDevitt would develop for the rest of his life. 

In 1996, McDevitt’s poem ‘Off-Duty’, describing a drunk clinging to a lamppost, was selected by Roger McGough to be shown on the 38 and 73 bus routes for a year, part of the ‘Poems on the Buses’ project by Transport For London. The selected poets were invited to read at St. James, Piccadilly. This proved fateful for the 29-year-old McDevitt. At the Grinling Gibbons font where Blake had been baptised in the 1750s, McDevitt sang ‘London’ and felt the human Blake come alive. This ignited a hunger to seek out other Blake sites, found at first through Paddy Kitchen’s Poets’ London (1980). Soon, McDevitt was discovering new sites. By 2006, his weekly William Blake Walk was a well-known fixture, featured in journalist Nigel Richardson’s Great British Walks; on Radio 4’s The Poet of Albion, Robert Elms Show, and The Verb; and a BBC London documentary. 

McDevitt came to London as an ‘aesthetic migrant’ in search of bohemia. He found his feet joining his brother, Roddy, in the troupe of countercultural impresario Ken Campbell, performing in Neil Oram’s 24-hour play The Warp. One role McDevitt played was based on poet Harry Fainlight, one of many under-acknowledged poets McDevitt organised nights for. McDevitt campaigned to secure poetic landmarks from redevelopment, once chaining himself with fellow poet Aiden Andrew Dun to the railings of Rimbaud and Verlaine’s home at 8 Royal College Street in Camden. McDevitt worked closely with Campbell on Pidgin Macbeth, a transposition of Shakespeare into the language of the Pacific island of Vanuatu, Bislama. Soon fluent, McDevitt became resident ‘Pidgin poet/translator’ on John Peel’s programme Home Truths, translating Yeats and Rimbaud into Bislama, and . McDevitt put the language to anti-imperial use: a 2003 Guardian report on right-wing historian Niall Ferguson reads: ‘Security men removed a self-styled “shamanistic poet”, Niall McDevitt, from the lecture, when he accused Prof Ferguson of trying to “alleviate guilt”, while reciting a poem in pidgin on the imperial legacy in the New Hebrides islands in the Pacific.’ 

During national lockdowns, director Sé Merry Doyle made films of McDevitt’s ‘poetopographical’ walks. An infamous daemon-summoning duel between Yeats and Alistair Crowley is recounted in The Battle of Blythe Road, an incident McDevitt described in a poem in 2010’s b/w. Reluctant Groom explores the church where James and Nora Joyce married in Notting Hill. McDevitt met Doyle through Rosalind Scanlon, Cultural Director at the Irish Culture Centre, where McDevitt became poet-in-residence in the late Nineties. 

In August 2021, McDevitt devised five new Blake walks, pairing Blake with Thomas Paine and Emmanuel Swedenborg, with the River Tyburn and Bedlam Hospital, and finally with the modern painter, Francis Bacon. Each walk is recorded in Doyle and Scanlon’s series Blakeland — films that will forever be essential viewing for serious students of Blake or London. In an emotional evening only two weeks before his death, McDevitt attended the full-house premier at the Portobello Road Film Festival for the first film, on McDevitt’s fellow republican, Thomas Paine. Given the recent death of Elizabeth II, the timing was apt. A frail McDevitt, still with his wits about him, declared in an introduction — ‘I’m glad to be living in a democracy again’. 

Niall McDevitt is survived by Julie Goldsmith and her son Heathcote Ruthven, his mother Frances McDevitt, siblings Roddy and Yvonne McDevitt, and niece Dixie McDevitt. 

McDevitt is the author of four poetry collections, b/w (Waterloo Press, 2010), Portaloo (International Times, 2013), Firing Slits (New River Press, 2016), and London Nation (New River Press, 2022).

 

http://www.thenewriverpress.com/news/2022/10/8/rest-in-poems-niall-mcdevitt-1967-2022

 

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In Her Kingdom by the Sea – Part 7

                                       

Sandylands to Regent Road: The promenade façade, the streets
behind and the insanity of i gabbiani
[i]

Promenade from Sandylands jetty, 14th March 2022

 

Now that the more open essence of the holiday camp[ii] has been left far behind, beyond Twemlow parade and into Sandylands begins the area of big Victorian terraces, once boarding houses and holiday tenements. Although the prom’s façade maintains a good impression, immediately behind, lie streets of often crumbling houses – flats, dives and refuges. Edmund Glasby’s parallel[iii] with Lovecraft’s Innsmouth[iv] was well made.

 Angular mementos of summer on the borderland of shadow, 19th February 2022

 

Morecambe’s fortunes are predicted to change if or when[v] the Eden project arrives – a forecast of prosperity. But is such optimism blind considering the tendency of investors to take their profits and run? And considering the more severe forecasts of sea-level rise, if the complex is eventually built, how long before it is swamped?

Theme in pink, Sandylands promenade, 22nd July 2022


Many people we know or meet who are only visitors to Morecambe and Heysham, find the place beautiful and inspiring. As chimes with my experiences of 2018 and 2019, they are unaware of the huge chasm in atmospheric difference between the open coastal space of the prom with its frequently sublime views, and the confining, litter-strewn dirge of the backstreets. Between the Sandylands area of Heysham, through the West End and on northwards to the centre particularly, you have only to cross the Heysham Road to be repeatedly dismayed by the contrast.

A sunny back garden in Heysham, 1st September 2022  

 

From an email of Sept 1st, 2022:

 ‘K saw a boy yesterday – about 8 years old, she guessed – happily sitting barefoot in the gutter amongst the litter and dog crap. A girl of about 6, presumably his younger sister, came out of a nearby house saying, “here’s yer dinner”, passing him a plate and putting a fork on the kerbstone. Swinging around, he took the meal and started eating spaghetti with his hands. K smiled as she passed, and the boy grinned back.

If you had photographed this and turned it black & white, it could look like the 1930s[vi] – except that rather than skinny, most of the malnourished kids here are overweight from junk food and fizzy drinks. Dogs also would’ve been limited back then[vii] – or rounded up and dispatched. To be fair, you don’t get many loose dogs here except on the beach – only dogs being towed or towing along their owners.’

 

Dinner facing the wall, alfresco, (no connection to the email above) Sept 1st, 2022

 

Such sights can’t but create an internal conflict, partly because I suspect – as was not so much the case when I was a kid growing up on a council estate in the 60s and 70s – that residents can’t afford to care. If you are the one that noticeably objects, it’s you who’ll get the brick through the window late at night or your kids that will be bullied. Supposedly, arson attacks[viii] are increasing – though the frequency and malicious intent of such events may be exaggerated.

 

Arson damage in a Heysham Road flat – image courtesy of the Lancaster Guardian.

 

Despite the merriment of impromptu pubs and barbeques, proliferating under heatwave conditions in front gardens, yards and alleys, in 2022, there seems little community spirit of a more widespread or mainstream variety. Friends, gangs and cliques yes, the remnants of lockdown survival groups perhaps, but no overall spirit. The closest thing to it in my experience, is the “village atmosphere” generated by artistic and alternative political and ecological groups. I put the phrase in quotation marks because though such a friendly, cooperative atmosphere is true enough, I suspect the several people who’ve used the phrase favourably, have never lived in such settings and are idealizing villages.

Unlike when I was a kid, few in Morecambe and Heysham in 2022, would dare to tell other people’s kids where to get off – nor risk being kind to them if they were hurt. The street life of kids and teenagers (moderate I’m sure, compared to many inner cities) is rarely interfered with or restricted.

Happy View, Heysham Road  (7)  20th May 2022 

 

To invoke that old chestnut regarding the change from face-to-face to window-to-window[ix] relationships, taught in Sociology in the 1970s – there’s no doubt that working-class communities were sundered all across the country from the 30s onwards by well-intentioned, frequently necessary, slum clearances and post-war rebuilding schemes. In the case of my own housing estate – exiles and London ‘overspill’ shifted to new or expanding towns – this change from face-to-face to window-to-window relationships, was probably inevitable. On top of this, since just before the millennium[x], we’ve had the further distancing of mobile screens: selfie relationships perhaps? An extra-terrestrial observer would certainly wonder whether the chief relationship (for some potential benefit but predominantly for ill) these strange bipeds have, is with the screen in their hand.

At least here the contact is direct. Back-alley kids nr Brunswick Road, 9th April 2022

 

So, when it comes to the barefoot boy on the hot street, no-one here is likely to bother – unless they want to get back at a neighbour. That’s just life as it is . . .  In any case the boy may have requested the gutter. After our own experience with the community police[xi], it’s impossible to know where to stand on the shut-your-eyes/do-gooding spectrum. Even if we were able to return to living in rural isolation and therefore limit our contact with the human race, we could never escape the news stories of stupidity and injustice writ large:

“I spend as much time taking food away from children as I do serving it” ran the headline of a recent petition[xii]. This was the voice of a dinner lady from Lancashire dreading the approach of a new school term. In a video, she tells how she’s “forced to tell more and more children they can’t afford to eat a school lunch as they reach the front of the queue and find there’s no money in their account.”   

Another twist on this, is that if their parents are a little better off, all too often the children chose badly or carelessly waste the food, knowing they can fill up on rubbish elsewhere or back at home. No one is looking out for them. Do we have to leave it to dire poverty to challenge materialism and waste?

Stanley Road Baptist Church, poster/votive text & image/god-slot for September, 1st Sept 2022 (bloody big pencils!)

 

“Going back to school? We’re praying for you”: An innocent enough poster perhaps? I liked to imagine there was someone of genuine conscience behind its wording. Someone treading carefully in case of managerial or ecclesiastical ire. Someone all too well aware of deprivation, overcrowding and bullying, even of the limitations of the national curriculum and the expensive time-wasting, soul-destroying pointlessness of Ofsted[xiii] and SATs. K is resigned to its simple-minded literalness. Another friend jokes that I am being cynical.

Climate change leisure in Morecambe/Heysham,  20th July 2022


Back to the theme of mass insanity: not the human race this time, but less damagingly, the chaotic cult of Morecambe and Heysham seagulls – a dysfunctional family second only to us allegedly intelligent primates perhaps? Not that they stand the remotest chance of knocking us off our ascending podium. Last year these raucous scavengers appeared notable by their absence – maybe because we couldn’t start refurbishing the owl house, with its flaking walls, flooded cellar and tottering chimneys, until after the breeding season was done? Probably the few listless birds occasionally encountered in early streets were the fagged-out parents and all the teenagers had already gulled-off?

Cats may go for rats & mice, but I’ve never seen one tackle a gull, 13th August, 2022, 6.22am

 

In those innocent days of a year ago, I was amused when a friend in Dorset told me he was using a drone to buzz the gulls off a neighbour’s chimney stack to prevent them nesting. Expressing surprise that gulls would be deterred by a drone, we agreed it must be fear of the unknown. “They can be frightened off easily until they lay eggs” he wrote, “after which they can become aggressive.” “Aren’t they supposed to be dying out quite rapidly?” I asked, having just looked it up[xiv] and feeling some slight gull sympathy.

Long burnt-out house, Cavendish, 9th April 2022


Beautiful to look at and spectacular in flight, this year my attitude has been cruelly altered. Penetrating the backstreets and inhabiting numerous skewed chimney pots, round here it’s one long gull party, a loud carousal of obnoxious oiks with no natural predators, indulging in incessant early hours disputes and dustbin sorties . . .

While not entirely scorning the sentiment – as regards tax returns and other bureaucracy – this long and winding road is much more appealing than some straight and narrow path . . . as I’m sure in the deepest windings of their minds, the gulls would agree. Stanley Road Baptist Church, August 2022

 

Often – reasonably enough in moderation – the gulls sound like gulls, but at other times they can project a noise like a baby in distress, a cat in agony, a nervous rat stuck inside decaying wainscotting, a pack of coyotes[xv] chaotically ad-libbing, or a troop of deranged monkeys.

Tactical nuclear attack on Morecambe town centre?   . . . Horror or wish-fantasy?  May 2022

 

Squabbling geese, knife-skewered children, car alarms and even the robotic beep of reversing warnings . . . all seem to be in the back catalogue or varied repertoire of Inner Kingdom gulls, and I’m beginning to wonder whether they make more unwarranted and pointless noise than any other living creature – barring human beings, naturally.  

The onset of night from the owl house,  4th June 2022

 

Recently, I was unsurprised to be woken at about 3.30am by some mass disruption. At first I thought it must be some impossibly delayed revellers. Next, more encouragingly, I began to hope it was an unusually early-morning demonstration demanding the downfall of our diseased and pitiful government – a very necessary noise. But before I could get dressed and join in, I realised that it was an entire squadron of seagulls flying up and down scything over the rooftops, declaiming loudly outside, just for the hell of declaiming.


Domain of the psychotic seagulls,  18th July 2022

 

Sometimes in the middle of the night a loud cackling of laughter turns out to be a seagull. Normal specimen or cracked? Are they all trying to out-do each other? Is this or that gull a one-off or only the precursor – another unhinged, volatile trigger to the small hours outbursts of Nazi-inflected triumphalism which all too often wake me up. Midnight rallies gathering for Nuremberg . . .

 . . . the crooked bins and cobbled alleys appear gaslit, seriously suggesting attack by razor.[xvi]    Alexandra & Clarendon West, 14th March, 2022 

  

Just a few nights ago, another seagull flew round and round in circles as if on a string, squawking and screeching for hours. Every second or third revolution it sounded like it was about to drop out of the sky from sheer exhaustion, and yet – as if being attacked by some rogue, night-hunting, golden eagle[xvii] – abruptly it geared itself up to psycho pitch all over again. Did I but possess a rifle with infra-red sights, I would have been saddened (slightly) to put the poor mad thing out of its misery[xviii].

Brunswick alley in the small hours – another night of the long beaks . . .[xix]    August 2022


Perhaps all seagulls are born insane straight from the egg and take months to acquire a modicum of sanity. Perhaps last year we were too busy to notice them before their lifestyle returned to a more maritime and diurnal pattern? Come August or September things may go quieter again?[xx] Maybe all the insanity is down to early parenting? Quite understandable that. How tragic that human lunacy is so relatively permanent.

Gull vs God: “Remember who’s in charge around here”.  St John The Divine, Sandylands, August 2022
 

There remains one other possible explanation: Perhaps the gulls are stoned? For I could certainly recommend Morecambe if you like to get mildly stoned[xxi] without paying for the leafly buzz[xxii] . . . simply leave your windows open and the smoke comes in as obviously as the nuclear miasma[xxiii] remains imperceptible – the down side being that moronic conversation, crap ‘music’, yapping, woofing & howling dogs, car alarms and the circling squadrons of looney gulls are naturally exaggerated by open windows.

 


THE MEDIA IS THE VIRUS   /   BORIS IS A LIAR    Heysham Road,  7th June 2022

 

From a petition entitled Greed is Good . . . of August 2022:

 ‘I don’t believe that economic equality is possible; indeed, some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy and keeping up with the Joneses that is, like greed, a valuable spur to economic activity.’ –  Boris Johnson.

 

Sounds like the classic creed of wasteland materialism to me: envy, greed and the illusory god of economics. Anyone with sense must have always known that Boris was a liar, but before I had a chance to finish this paragraph[xxiv] the floppy-haired, partying dissembler had gone, leaving his successors[xxv] and even dimmer and more reckless colleagues[xxvi], inadequately staked . . .  As Tom Peters succinctly writes in his piece, The Great Tax Robbery[xxvii] in The Tribune:

“Tax is about political choices. At the worst possible time, our government just made all the wrong ones.”


This inequality “budget for bankers”[xxviii] is an incitement to revolutionary system change.

 

A sharp snowfall on the Heysham Road, 4th Sept 2020

 

Contrasting the light September snowfall above, I’m astonished at how many suntan ‘parlours’ or ‘salons’ there are in Morecambe. The Sunseekers Tanning Studio of Yorkshire Street, illustrated in part one[xxix], may have long gone west, and only four may be shown on the online map, but plenty of others exist. A solution to rainy days? The most baffling factor is: why does anyone want to be orange, let alone pay for the privilege?

“Sandwich toaster” (to quote K) or vast car boot devours young woman . . . Another Yorkshire Street Tanning Parlour window[xxx]. Go orange before you die!   10th July 2022


I can understand the desire to be out in the sun and a light tan is the natural result, but why the irradiated tinge? Although now less topical, this email from Tuesday 19th July also centres on the strange appeal of the over-tan.:

K tells me she’s seen reports that large areas of France and Spain are now on fire thanks to the heat. I just hope the FACT of climate change really SINKS IN and more citizens start forcing governments to act. Here, most people just seem to think it’s wonderful[xxxi] and take off their shirts, looking forward to being lobsterised. The  Morecambe attitude generally appears to be exactly like that on the council estate where I grew up 50 years ago. There, no one thought they’d had a good summer unless their skin peeled off at least once – preferably two or three times.

 

Heatwave morning West Street, Morecambe, 13th August 2022

 

Compared to climate change, covid was a piffling nothing[xxxii]. Those ‘strange times’ (god, I got sick of hearing that phrase), were an overreaction as relatively hysterical as the general attitude towards climate change is insanely inadequate. The ‘times’, our times, are not likely to be ‘normal’ again. We’ve been sliding into climate disaster without noticing for the last fifty years. The truth is, that in overall terms covid was trivial enough for us to be able to admit to, whereas the accelerating fact of climate change is too serious for most to admit. Our tiny, randomly sentimental[xxxiii] (and currently queen-obsessed[xxxiv]) brains can’t face it. It’s the insanity of the ostrich rather than the seagull.

Back to the façade:

Forget the resignation no-one ever wanted to foresee – of gratitude to a tiredness come with age, to the fleece of indifference. Hearts do not understand, they only see now and forever: they will always need help to smash through the pasteboard, to ram Time off its pedestal![xxxv]

STOP JACKDAW[xxxvi] stickers on lampposts and BT boxes are invisible in the dawn. August 2022

 

In the almost 5 miles of promenade from beyond Happy Mount Park in the north, to the Mad Hatter’s tea garden above the sea in Heysham old village to the south, there is perhaps only one point where the darker interior of Morecambe and Heysham briefly threatens to disrupt the façade: here (above), near The Battery Pay & Display  car park, where Sandylands (Heysham) meets the West End of Morecambe.

The Beach Café seen from the top deck of RCK 920[xxxvii] (1962), Vintage by the Sea, 4th Sept 2022

 

Not far inland from The Battery and The Beach Café, down Bold Street, an old piece of wasteland is reputedly set to become the sight of a posh new development[xxxviii] – a 4.5 million “luxury apartment block”. The idealised artist’s impression of the building is fascinating given that such a development will project into what is currently a relatively povertous looking area. Both the burnt-out house in Cavendish and the ‘sharp/light snowfall’ bus shelter illustrated above, are but a stone’s throw from the plot.

The Beach Café, 9th April 2022

 

Vaguely reminiscent of American Airstream[xxxix] caravans – or perhaps even more of the 1980s revival of such 30s styles? – the “Silver Promenade” Beach Café was designed by Cheadle Hulme (Manchester) based architects Arca[xl] and completed in 2009[xli]. Endlessly photogenic, it’s hard to choose two out of many close-ups. Until the day of these words, I’d never been inside. With friendly staff and an interior offering large views it was a pleasant experience – yet internally the building is far less distinctive than it’s outer appearance suggests . . . recalling so much art which lacking content, hides behind style. With a building, however, such an arrangement is surely ideal – striking to look at, yet comfortable to use.

9th April 2022

 

Beyond the children’s playgrounds and the beach café, The Battery[xlii] dominates the centre of the views above and below. Until 1928, The Battery marked where Morecambe ended and Heysham began. An unusual friend of mine who feels “connected to the spirit world” claims the building is haunted[xliii] but I can find no references to this. As he appears to feel and see ghosts all over the place (including the ex-B & M variety chain store in the Arndale Centre in town, which “has a chillingly cold spot just inside the stockroom door”), perhaps his sixth sense is preternaturally sensitive?

Shadows of the sunrise, August 2022


The mocking scythe of another gull cut itself away from the blind white of sunrise, as the siren sounded. Into the end I commend myself, no time for regrets or money. It has to be away from the sea, now every scrap of blue is going. Stubbed streets beyond the main road are disappearing into the pouring fog pushed ahead of whatever’s coming. The blaring siren muted and was made dumb. The very sky was thickening; it was like breathing foam . . .

West End gulls, 9th April 2022 – An en masse hive mind. That scavenger individualism is a blind.


 . . . Where had everyone gone? I can’t have been paying attention. Cars piled up, scattered clothes, and now, glancing back, a growing roar. A helpless ship, forging high, burst between the five floor terraces on the promenade, the vast hull momentarily jammed. Then the wall of water surged it onwards, breaking over the peeling roofs and flying bricks. Gulls spiralling frantically upwards were the last sight anyone saw . . .[xliv]

 


 “Morecambe is packed with all kinds of other (appealing) clutter . . . including the ‘picture frame’”[xlv]. West End promenade, 9th April 2022

 

Are disaster scenarios harmful – a jolt of adrenalin or dread that subsides to wash us further back into our usual complacency?[xlvi] The vast extent of Morecambe Bay means that high tide never seems to last long, and the sea soon becomes lost in the distance and easy to forget. Similarly, the steady predictions of sea-level rise – “A global rise by more than one metre by the year 2100”[xlvii] – sound too dangerously reasonable on the surface to arouse fear. Let’s just go back to sleep . . . 

The Weird Shadow over Innsmouth[xlviii], Morecambe’s West End, 4th June 2022

 

Morecambe no longer has any piers, only the Stone Jetty, once part of a harbour near the Midland Hotel. A Time and Tide bell[xlix] rung by the sea itself, is fixed onto the northern wall of the jetty to indicate high tides. It is also “designed to signal the danger of climate change.”[l]

The old Alhambra and the so-called Fishhook on the prom above the beach, 9th April 2022


As end-noted in Part 3 of this digression, it’s difficult to photograph the façade of even so vast and magnificent a relic as the Alhambra[li], without bins, lamp posts, signs, memorials and other clutter obscuring the view – not to mention the constant stream of foul modern cars. Double decker buses and L driver HGVs from the training centre in Heysham, I can tolerate, they at least have some atmosphere, but modern cars – lumpy, sleek, or appearing like enlarged trainers on wheels – invariably induce nausea.

 The old Alhambra (Burlesqued), Regent Road/Marine Road West Junction, April 2022 

 

The semi kitchen sink[lii] drama (in character if not milieu) of The Entertainer (1960)[liii], still feels relevant to the Morecambe of 60 years later, for despite the polished façade now provided by technology, there’s no doubt that our situation – locally, nationally and globally – has become far worse. Like so many movements that offer brief promise – social, political or artistic – our fundemental human shortage of sense and our blind selfish drives, quickly sabotage, falsify or betray their hope and energy. The anger of the Angry Young Men[liv] may in some cases have proved reactionary[lv], but many of the background implications of their work remain sound – clearly revealing another junction where (as usual), ‘we’ chose the wrong path . . .

Joan Plowright & Roger Livesy on the now lost West End Pier which, judging by the façade of the Alhambra, appears in line with Regent Road – as if the latter continued into the sea . . .

from The Entertainer (1960)

 Breakwater – and approximate site of the old West End pier, April 2022

Years later, the director of The Entertainer, Tony Richardson said in The Long-Distance Runner: An Autobiography:

“I couldn’t have articulated it, having never been introspective (but) “The Entertainer was a key moment in my development, because all the ideas and convictions I was to work with afterward were crystallized in its making.” Of the character of Archie Rice, Richardson said he was “… the embodiment of a national mood… Archie was the future, the decline, the sourness, the ashes of old glory, where Britain was heading.”[lvi]

Morecambe’s West End pier after the 1977 storm[lvii]

 

Quite by chance I came upon this 1 minute silent film showing Morecambe’s West End Pier in 1901 – close to the period in which, to recall earlier parts of this digression, The Ghost and Mrs Muir was set[lviii]: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-west-end-pier-morecambe-1901-online . I’ll have to take the BFI’s word that it’s filmed in Morecambe as it could be almost any pier from that period.

West End Pier in better days – circa late 1960s early 1970s

 

Meanwhile, half way between 1901 and now, apparently The Entertainer (1960) was costed at £193,000 but went over budget due to a “variety of problems in production and post-production, including noise from seagulls in Morecambe.”[lix] Obviously the gulls, i gabbiani, were just as insane back in 1959 and 1960 !

Regent Road, a rainy Vintage Bus Day, May 2022

Judging from The Entertainer (1960), the pier was virtually a continuation of Regent Road beyond the promenade. The so-called Fishhook – in line with the centre of the road in the photo above – provides a good link with the photo below looking in the opposite direction. Apparently the proper name for the 14-metre-tall “Fishhook” is simply The Hook an artwork from 2007 designed by Stephen Broadbent in collaboration with local schools[lx]. As art gimmicks[lxi] go, I’ve come to like The Hook. The weathering steel[lxii] construction is striking and the shapes evocative of both strength and flow. From certain angles it looks poised, and despite both name and nickname, brings to mind sailing ships, anchors and above all perhaps, the bow. I might even scrap the word gimmick . . .

The Alhambra, with the gap of Regent Road heading inland from the The Hook, 10th July 2022


From higher vantage points around Morecambe Bay, only a few buildings protrude above the Morecambe-Heysham skyline. Inevitably, at the southern end, the two nuclear atrocities are most prominent. At the northern end comes the striking-if-you-like-that-sort-of-thing[lxiii], ten storey, Lakeland House in Bare, Morecambe, built in “approximately” 1976 (see the opening photo of part 2 of this digression[lxiv]). Inbetween, only two other buildings tend to stand out. The gently stepped, 8 storeys (plus car park underneath) of the Broadway[lxv] completed in August 2019, and, surprisingly, the Alhambra, which although always an impressive stomp of a building, seems weathered into almost a natural feature:

Apocalyptic sunrise over the Alhambra, August 2022

 

 

            In shadow and stone, I am the bass rumble and blanked eyes

            the ruined memorial palace of Morecambe’s West End –

            its seaside lives and aspirations of 120 years

            In wind, rain, salt and sun, my metamorphosis is slow,

            subsiding towards an amnesia I resist . . .

            but if all else fails

            to turn back or challenge the tides

            my thoughts will turn to solid rock[lxvi]

 

 

 

 

© Lawrence Freiesleben

 

Morecambe, Lancashire, May – October 2022

[email protected]

 

NOTES    All notes accessed between May and October 2022

[i]       The Seagulls in Italian. I’m not good at European languages – but heard the word when we were travelling in Italy a few years back. The very look and sound of it is perfect. 

[ii]      My sister and I longed to go to Butlins, Pontins or other such places in the 60s and early 70s – like all our friends from the housing estate. But although working class in origin, being bohemian and/or aspirational, my parents would never have been seen dead in such places. 

[iii]      fantasticfiction.com/g/edmund-glasby/weird-shadow-over-morecambe.htm – see earlier parts of this digression for more details: internationaltimes.it/?s=lawrence+freiesleben

[iv]      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_over_Innsmouth

[v]      beyondradio.co.uk/news/local-news/morecambe-mp-expects-eden-project-funding-announcement-within-three-to-four-months/

[vi]      Though the conditions in Housing Problems (1935) are clearly worse, the attitude of complacency in 2022 combined with the knowledge of where so much slum clearance led, is almost levelling. imdb.com/title/tt0290660/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1

[vii]      I couldn’t find any statistics for the increase in dog ownership since the 1930s only a graph showing the catastrophic rise during lockdown – coming at a time when all but the lonely and blind should be thinking carefully about their dependence on any large pets. statista.com/statistics/515379/dogs-population-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/

[viii]      lancasterguardian.co.uk/news/uk-news/arson-investigation-underway-in-heysham-after-police-and-fire-service-find-evidence-in-third-floor-flat-2955963

[ix]     Failing to find the appropriate reference for this and having long since lost all my old sociology textbooks, I nevertheless came across this very interesting section from Introduction to Sociology – 2nd Canadian edition opentextbc.ca/introductiontosociology2ndedition/chapter/chapter-22-social-interaction/

[x]       uswitch.com/mobiles/guides/history-of-mobile-phones/

[xi]       Not long after we moved in, someone anonymously reported that our elder daughter (12) was sitting in the car outside the house after school “for hours”. Actually, it was 10 or 15 minutes at her own choosing and usually one of us sat with her to talk about the school day or was unloading shopping. Naturally the Community Police (nice but dim) had to investigate this, and it was very hard not to laugh with incredulity, considering the wealth of other ‘activities’ in the local area – such as, for example, virtually naked 5 and 6-year-olds, riding bikes down the middle of the road at strange hours shouting and gesturing abusively with not an adult in sight. It was still more galling, that despite a simple explanation (which the officers clearly failed to comprehend), they spent far too long writing up this non-incident, asking us in laboured wording not to do it again. Naturally we ignored this ‘request’ and should they return, I’m afraid I’m likely to be more forthright in my approach and tell them in local argot to “Eff off and mind your own business!” 

[xii]      change.org/p/uk-government-don-t-ignore-800-000-children-in-need-of-free-school-meals/u/30881150?cs_tk= 

[xiii]      neu.org.uk/blog/ofsted-still-causes-more-harm-good

[xiv]     An old article but newer ones reaffirm the same underlying facts – that the rising number of gulls in towns and cities is masking a severe overall decline: .theguardian.com/uk/2010/jun/06/urban-seagull-numbers-falling#

[xv]      youtube.com/watch?v=YtsZoIe3Czk&ab_channel=KBBear

[xvi]     Ibid., Bombed Out 

[xvii]    Following up on the (eternal) theme of human stupidity, another example which arose the same day as the email about seismic blasting (see Part 6) concerned the poisoning of Golden Eagles in Scotland. RSPB research: rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/wildlife-and-the-law/wild-bird-crime/golden-eagle/ strongly implies that “illegal persecution” is “the most severe constraint” on stable or expanding eagle populations, “and incidents were more common where grouse moor management predominated”. In other words, eagles are being poisoned so that rich twits can have an extra grouse or two to shoot at. How stupid is that? It would make far more sense to poison the rich twits and feed them to the eagles!

[xviii]    A friend has since informed me that this is almost certainly a parent gull alarmed by a chick having fallen from a nest or off a roof. Had I known this, I might have had more sympathy and stuffing some tissue in my ears tried to go back to sleep. Unable to fly, once on the ground, the gull chick’s chances are limited – it will probably be attacked by rubbish, rats or rioting wheelie bins. 

[xix]     britannica.com/event/Night-of-the-Long-Knives – amazingly, there is no mention of gulls at all. 

[xx]      By September, it did go quieter. 

[xxi]      Sadly, I don’t, it makes me feel sick and out of control. 

[xxii]       From Morecambe to California!:  leafly.com/news/strains-products/12-top-weed-strains-may-2022

[xxiii]       From an unfinished story, Shuffling the Priorities:  “. . . there were so many serious and far-reaching laws required, as well as false trails which cried out for cancellation. All things nuclear and atomic were obvious. Both the weapons of abrupt mass destruction and the power production’s (generally) slower ruination. Going back to the start: how can anyone have thought that nuclear testing was acceptable? To lay waste entire natural environments, like spoilt kids playing with their latest unpredictable toy . . .  Every high-up politico or government, military bigwig or scientific stall-wit from the 40s onwards who had anything serious to do with this project, should be tried in the manner of war criminals . . . though no doubt many are already dead – frequently due to the contamination they helped create and release. These days all cigarettes must carry health warnings and usually (albeit less so in Morecambe and other built-up areas), we can choose whether to poison ourselves or not. With nuclear rubbish we never got the choice, we are all passive victims!”

[xxiv]       Partially employed in the Report internationaltimes.it/enough-is-enough-trade-unionists-and-climate-activists-unite-against-the-bin-juice-of-conservative-rule/ which knocked this part of the digression on a week. 

[xxv]       At the time of writing brain-dead Truss had not yet been selected – but thousands feared that things would only get worse and have rapidly been proved correct – see link above. 

[xxvi]          One speaker at the recent and very well-attended, Enough is Enough action day in Lancaster (1st October 2022) described the unelected Truss regime as “the bin juice” of conservative governments – a flawlessly apt phrase. 

[xxvii]         tribunemag.co.uk/2022/09/budget-tax-justice-kwasi-kwarteng-liz-truss?

[xxviii]         taxjustice.uk/blog/a-cost-of-living-budget-for-bankers

[xxix]          internationaltimes.it/in-her-kingdom-by-the-sea-visionary-seaside-suburbia-part-1/

[xxx]

[xxxi]        Though this enthusiasm notably declined during the second heat wave

[xxxii]        I stress that this is a relative comparison. However covid came about (and it was pretty convenient for some governments) it obviously devastated many people’s lives, leading to the death – among millions of others – of my daughter-in-law. Yet climate change will destabilize the entire world and continue to spiral in a way that will make the covid scare seem insignificant in retrospect. 

[xxxiii]       As with the word reactionary later in this Digression, the description sentimental, is more a can of worms than a designation. For example, why should people cry about the death of a very old lady (the queen) who few of them personally knew and who would probably have died a decade or so back without her extreme wealth to sustain her? Is it the sense of the end of an era? Is it the reminder of time and of one’s own demise? No doubt much grief is self-pity – as I painfully realised when my own mother died. And yet on a recent cycle, I ended up in the heartbreaking Neptune memorial garden for babies and children in Westgate cemetery, Torrisholme, Morecambe:  lancaster.gov.uk/environmental-health/cemeteries/torrisholme-cemetery   Despite toys and photographs on the graves and the recurring line of valediction “Born sleeping” or “Born into Heaven” and “We asked for a Baby, God sent us an Angel”, somehow, all the trappings of sentimentality are left far behind. Anyone encountering these memorials can feel the pain of loss, and even if the world appears to be such a rapidly declining place, full of stupidity, deprivation, greed and unwanted children, the ideals behind it, and even behind family, remain.

Neptune memorial garden for babies and children Westgate cemetery, Morecambe, 8th October 2022 

[xxxiv]        September 2022: the reason for this eye-off-the-ball derangement – which the queen herself would no doubt condemn as an unnecessary fuss, will be forgotten in a few weeks’ time. 

[xxxv]        From Maze End, chapter 17. 

[xxxvi]       energyvoice.com/oilandgas/north-sea/402881/group-behind-stop-cambo-launch-stop-jackdaw-campaign/

[xxxvii]       old-bus-photos.co.uk/?p=37698

[xxxviii]       lancs.live/news/lancashire-news/morecambes-45m-luxury-apartment-block-19647256

[xxxix]       en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airstream

[xl]       arca.co.uk/selected-work

[xli]          dezeen.com/2009/01/31/silver-promenade-cafe-by-arca/

[xlii]           thebatterymorecambe.co.uk/#

[xliii]           lancasterguardian.co.uk/news/people/the-most-haunted-places-in-lancaster-and-morecambe-revealed-3708213

[xliv]         Adapted from the flash fiction, Ivory Tower, of July 2022 

[xlv]         From an endnote to Part 3: internationaltimes.it/in-her-kingdom-by-the-sea-part-3/

[xlvi]         Perhaps many of them are – like the coziness of the ghost story at Christmas? Although the water goes out rather than rising up in the reissued 1958 classic I’m currently reading to K: The Tide Went Out (by Charles Eric Maine) britishfantasysociety.org/reviews/the-tide-went-out-by-charles-eric-maine-book-review/  the book, despite inevitable implausibilities, seems two pronged in its applications to the world today. Yes, the awfulness of its scenario makes our situation more bearable – the complacency prong – but although the chief character, hypnotized like the Ladybird title Great Inventions was by the benign wonder of “Atomic Energy” (See part 6 of this Digression) is rather too respectful of science and scientists, the reasons and consequences of the disastrous situation featured, strongly advance an anger prong . . . a call to action more than 60 years after the book was first published.

[xlvii]        iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/7/2/021001

[xlviii]          Ibid: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_over_Innsmouth     Also, see earlier parts of this digression for more details: internationaltimes.it/?s=lawrence+freiesleben

[xlix]          morecambeartistcolony.org/projects/time-tide-bell/

[l]          chris-t-price.medium.com/when-the-bell-tolls-4125d1e02e62

[li]             en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra_Theatre,_Morecambe

[lii]            en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_sink_realism

[liii]             en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entertainer_(film)

[liv]            en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angry_young_men

[lv]          Reactionary is a very inexact term, almost a curse. There’s nothing wrong in hating change for the sake of it or being deeply suspicious of countless aspects of so-called ‘progress’. Brainwashed into numerous levels of consumerism, we constantly throw away valuable things without thought. Rather, it’s the drift to the right, the acceptance of the Establishment and, having become part of a cultural elite, of closing ranks . . . 

[lvi]          Ibid: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entertainer_(film)

[lvii]          See: morecambeology.wordpress.com/2017/09/23/morecambeology-part-6-stormy-weather-with-peter-wade/

[lviii]           See parts 1 & 2 of this digression: internationaltimes.it/in-her-kingdom-by-the-sea-visionary-seaside-suburbia-part-1/

&     internationaltimes.it/in-her-kingdom-by-the-sea-part-2/

[lix]         Ibid: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entertainer_(film)

[lx]        artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-hook-304698

[lxi]       From internationaltimes.it/the-angst-of-extinction-a-leeds-influenced-digression/  (published 23rd February 2019) :  “From the putrefaction encouraged since the Greed is Good faith of the 1980’s, the mould spores giving rise to much Gimmick Art as well as the Turner Prize, arguably puffs up from the cynical manipulations of rich, private collectors: experts at the ‘art’ of the self-fulfilling investment. Others less arrogant are quickly infected. Anxious to be in the swim, public art-buying bodies too, have aped the dismal perceptions of these shallow trend-setters – unfortunately, there are several obvious examples at Leeds . . . but in active counterbalance to such mistakes, in a corridor of the library upstairs, hang the Leeds Tapestries.[lxi]

                Taking the meaninglessness of ‘market value’ as an indicator of quality, has no doubt helped us down the road of self-satisfied relativism – on which blind eyes only flick open in response to noisy controversy. Capable of being as destructively consumptive as the sick capitalist society which gave it birth, Gimmick Art blares like a bent trombone – an ultimate exemplar of consumerism (and one which can make its perpetrators rich beyond the right of anyone to be). Not always though. Occasionally, it effectively serves some socially observant, ecological or political purpose. In which case I’m prepared to remove the Gimmick epithet.”

[lxii]          en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weathering_steel

[lxiii]            I do.

[lxiv]          internationaltimes.it/in-her-kingdom-by-the-sea-part-2/

[lxv]         mhstaintonhomes.co.uk/developments/the-broadway/

[lxvi]         The beginnings or end of something I can’t yet say – a tribute or poem along the lines of an Old English riddle perhaps: What am I? Answer: The Alhambra. NOTE: despite the implication of these lines, the Alhambra is NOT a ruin and has been on the recovery since 2016: Ibid., en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra_Theatre,_Morecambe

 

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Cultural Decline as Conceptual Art

Washed-out photographs flap in the breeze. It’s some kind of installation or intervention; some kind of provocation concerning the loss of fields and what used to be called communities. This one shows a pasture with animals of some kind – cows or dinosaurs or dogs – and here is a house for four-to-six people, with folding beds and ashtrays in every room. On this very spot stood a shop which sold canned goods and flags, with kindling for Guy Fawkes’ birthday and a range of seasonal and gender-appropriate gifts for family members and acquaintances of varying degrees of intimacy. They all bordered this quintessentially English space, before the crash barriers and cracked tarmac. Can you believe it? There was even a university, where they taught prison officers to lock up their tongues and they taught cocky boys to leave their guns at home. I ask you: what was the artist thinking here? What happens when the photos fade and even the pegs and fine wires are forgotten? Should we plant a sapling with a bright brass plaque? Should we erect billboards with provocatively blank signs?

 

 

 

Oz Hardwick
Photo Nick Victor

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LUCID HANGOVER

 
 
 
Black Sabbath in my brain
Rafferty’s Baker St.
Madonna says
Put your love to the test
It’s all the same beat
It is the beat of my heart
I am alive
My Father is dead
Now my brother is dead
Will they read Shakespeare

After I too am gone?
Let alone my brother (or even me?)

 

‘Introibo ad altare dei …’

My London-crushed Mother
Still laments Vatican II

 

Shakespeare stole all his plots
Off the Italians
He stole his form off Marlowe
They killed Marlowe
For his love of tobacco boys and Atheism
The Ruff Bond boys of the time
Shakespeare was far too clever
Far too up the establishment’s cold vagina
To get a knife in Deptford
On a cold winter night
From a Brexit orc
Delighted by some shrapnel
A few beers and a trollop…
Shakespeare, like Chaucer
Will be dropped or bowdlerised
Eventually as he becomes ever more work
For monetised consumers to buy
For brainwashed slaves to buy
Why pay for some education

Where the old white guy
Makes no sense?

 

Roddy McDevitt’s waiting
Talking Italian…
(Talking Italian)

Roddy McDevitt’s waiting
Talk ing Italian…

 

‘Introibo ad altare dei …’

My London-crushed Mother
Still laments Vatican II

 

I’m waiting like Godot
Like Beckett
(Who lived up the road from me)
We walked the same Dublin hills

And thought the same waiting thoughts…

Me, Beckett, my dedicated brother

And Shakespeare will be dropped
From the syllabus

 

Just forgettable old white men
Without a clue about anything

 

As Truss, Karmakwasi, Braverman
and all the colourful stooges
Destroy Shakespeare’s Kingdom
At the behest
Of the death-grey moneymen
Offshore
Not over here
Safe from the knives

Of a bald limp-wristed
Ugly girly Bond

 

Who takes it up the arse
From Nigerian trade
In cottages in Brixton
On cold winter nights
Rather than shiver
And maybe die
Of cold or boredom
At home in his coffin-chic
Sub-elite garret
As his dead-eyed overlords laugh
Over double laphroaigs
In White’s of St. James’s
As a new rentboy outside
Fresh in from Ireland
Shivers
And waits for the fancy…

‘When I first came to London…’

Roddy McDevitt’s waiting
Talking Italian…
(Talking Italian)

Roddy McDevitt’s waiting
Talk ing I tal yah yah hah hah haian…

 

Black Sabbath in my brain
Rafferty’s Baker St.
Madonna says
Put your love to the test
It’s all the same beat
It is the beat of my heart
I am alive
My Father is dead
Now my brother is dead
Will they read Shakespeare
After I too am gone?
 
 
 
Roddy McDevitt
Picture  Nick Victor
 
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Make the Reason


Since 2017, the Coleridge Memorial Trust has been raising funds to bring a life-sized statue of Romantic poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge to the town of his birth, Ottery St Mary.

On 21st October, 2022, the Coleridge Memorial Statue ~ sculptured by Nicholas Dimbleby ~
will be unveiled at St Mary’s Church, Ottery, on the 250th anniversary of his birth.

The following is a personal celebration of the adventurous spirit of STC in his early years as a poet when he’d explore, as he put it, the sense of beauty in forms and sound.

My exploration is found in a line from Coleridge and set to the music of a modern aeolian loop.

 

 

Mike Ferguson

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Niall McDevitt – London Nation

 
 
 

 

 

£15.00

PLEASE NOTE: ORDERS WILL NOT BE FULFILLED UNTIL NOVEMBER

*****

Niall McDevitt’s commanding new and final collection sees him return from Jerusalem to London via Babylon. These Londonist, dissenting, occultist poems take on as many forms as themes to reveal a linguistic shapeshifter in the Joycean vein. London Nation is a fourfold work in a beautiful hardback edition with artwork by Julie Goldsmith.

The eponymous first book depicts the city as site of homelessness and pandemic, far-right politics, and power-buildings, but also contains some of his most overtly Irish poetry, as well as eulogies to such diverse cultural figures as Thomas De Quincey, Shane MacGowan, Julian Assange, and Ken Campbell.

The second book, Babylon, is inspired by his 2016 travels to Iraq to participate in a poetry festival staged amid the ruins of Babylon. It features modern adaptions of two ancient Babylonian poems, ‘Theodicy’ and ‘Poem of the Righteous Sufferer’, turning tables on the City of London and global neoliberalism.

Psychohistory, book three, assists the reader in time-travelling to Elizabethan London where McDevitt revives the forgotten poetic form of the masque. Decapitated heads on poles lament; the corpse of Christopher Marlowe throws a hissy-fit; a chorus of puritans hallows the plague.

A final book of free-form philosophical sonnets, In the Realm of the Isms, plays out the lyrical communiqué.

This bumper book offers a grand critique of Tory-Brexit-Covid England, but is blessedly unacademic.

*****

Niall McDevitt (1967-2022) is an Irish poet who spent much of his life in West London. He is the author of three previous collections of poetry, b/w (Waterloo Press, 2010), Porterloo (International Times, 2013), and Firing Slits, Jerusalem Colportage (New River Press, 2016). He was poetry editor of International Times. His work is published widely, including in The London Magazine, Agenda, Boiler House Press, Love Love magazine, Ragged Lion Journal, History Today, The Oxford School of Poetry, Blackwell’s Poetry, The Idler, and The Palestine Chronicle. He is well known for his ‘poetopographical’ walks on Blake, Rimbaud, Chaucer, Emilia Lanyer, and many others. In 2013, he read at Yoko Ono’s Meltdown. In 2016, he performed his poetry in Iraq at the Babylon Festival. In 2020, he was commissioned to write new work for The Bard, a multi-media tribute to Blake at Flat Time House, Peckham. He collaborated with acclaimed Irish documentary filmmaker Sé Merry Doyle on works including The Battle of Blythe Road, James Joyce – Reluctant Groom, and a series of five films on William Blake and London. His blogs are available at poetopography.wordpress.com

 

 
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Meditation Triptych

 

(Homage to Andrei Tarkovsky & Eduard Artemyev)

“It is so quiet out here, it is the quietest place in the world.”

– ‘Stalker’ (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)

 

1.

 

And I will bring you to
          the Zone at the propitious
                   hour; draw you to the lintel
of a tryst by sublimating
          its magnetic nodes. Indeed,
                   I will ensure your passage
through the radioactive fane,
          in order to bless you in
                   its post-nuclear arcanum;
to ratify your quest with
          the requisite ‘natural object’
                   as your wafer. See:

a wasp levitating
          astride the bitten apple
                   in baptismal rain – 

whereas now: parched
          Earth’s rippling her
                             elephantine skin

GEA TERRA’s
                             raiment-texture
materialises into

                             dancing-threshold:

tran – sub – stan –
                                      ti – a – tion:

          an all-consuming
                                      integument . . .

Your far-too-timely
                   mosaic-of-time:

sculpted, fluid, not
                   pieced together:

contemplation’s
                             bas-relief

                   cir – cum – scribes

the auteur’s
                                      inner-eye

whose chisel

                             lumen-projects:

 

And I will mesmerise you

          with rhythm of ballast-tracks,

                   captivate your respiratory

choreograph. So you will know

          the anaphora of locomotion.

                   Breathe. Your breath measures

itself to the divinely-ratified

          sequence. Allegorical quests

                   overlay your kinesis; where

we’ll only cease voyaging

          when, around us, eddying

                   fast, infiltrating us, only

                             the Zone catalyses . . .

 

2.

Levitate with me
                             in the library
hovering
                             above Solaris.

Be my pneumatic
                             paramour
upon these
                   amorous thermals.

Deep in that
                   plutonium-fallout,
let’s consecrate
                   our mystic marriage
attended by only
                             a tiny child
or a dwarf
                   wearing a surplice.

We’ve sublimated
                             time through the
duration of one
                   Bach Prelude-Chorale
played adroitly
                             on a stoic organ.

This library is
                             the planetarium
which emanates
                             Atlantean
rather than
                   Alexandrian rays.

And wisdom’s
                   always in motion,
hardly a fixed     
              temple to enshrine
systematic theology in;

                   where you move:
a brighter woman
                             in this glade,
joint-cradled in our
                                      orbiting.

Our cult was
                   founded at Emmaus-
cum-Eleusis,
                   where consciousness
creates these
                   hypostases,
eidolons fleshed-out,
                   & aerating the room.

Rublev depicted
                             this type-scene
which blood-stirred,
                   galvanised community.

Levitate with me
                   holding Don Quixote,
conscious of this
                             candelabrum
                   as it floats by
&, if it should
                             collide, let this
chandelier
                             tin – tin – nab – u – late

just as you reclaim
                   your regal contrapposto

at rarefied,
                   atmospheric altitude:

light which serrates clean

                   through this corpus-

                                                of-light

 

 

3.

 

So: you cast the Bell

          with blind intuition,

adrenalin, chutzpah. So it

          emerges, it juts bulbous:

exquisite in its voluminous

          presence; & you must en-

vision the inner, the outer,

                   synchronic – like God . . .

 

Yet painting The Last Judgement

 

          requires divine assistance;

& your innate-presiding genius

          may have to be a monstrance;

as you wear your thorn-

          strangulated snood, as you

rub excrement’s pigment

                   into whitewashed fresco.

 

Champion now the fallen-mute

          woman, make her your

own messianic spouse. Silence:

          your atonal gesture in

this carnal, post-digital

          dynast. See: our sacred tome’s

immolated, flakes its wafers

                   into phosphorescent manna.

 

Snow falls in the temple,

          on the homestead where

you were conceived; where

          silence is not the absence

of noise, but the hypostasis

          of Contemplation: this lit 

 

candle in the cradle-cupped 

          palms; a pilgrim who flickers 

                   across a dehydrated spa – 

 

Winter light be your icon:

                             eucharistic,

                                                grace-fallen

 

 

 

Mark Wilson

 

 

Mark Wilson has published four poetry collections: Quartet For the End of Time (Editions du Zaporogue, 2011), Passio (Editions du Zaporogue, 2013), The Angel of History (Leaky Boot Press, 2013) and Illuminations (Leaky Boot Press, 2016). He is the author of a verse-drama, One Eucalyptus Seed, about the arrest and incarceration of Ezra Pound after World War Two, as well as a tragi-comedy, Arden. His poems and articles have appeared in: The Black Herald, The Shop, 3:AM Magazine, International Times, The Fiend, Epignosis Quarterly, Dodging the Rain, The Ekphrastic Review, Rasputin and Le Zaporogue.

 

 

 

 

 

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Hazy Janes, Japanese Television and Between the Vines

 

More live moments in Alan Dearling’s life and camera lenses

Hazy Janes and Japanese Television

Hazy Janes

A two-bands-for-the-price-of-one at the upstairs room in the Golden Lion, Todmorden.

You’ll easily see why I think of Jack White and White Stripes when I see the Hazy Janes, a power-duo from Halifax. Shades of Led Zep too.

‘Yellow Belly Blues’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApUAjlVqdKY

Visceral and exciting. Very visual and pretty loud. Lots of showmanship and what used to be called ‘grand-standing’.  Perhaps not quite as ‘out there’ as Prodigy or Rammstein (both of which I think have been totally awesome live!), but it may be the direction that the Hazy Janes go in the future.

A fairly recent live performance which nicely demonstrates the light and shade that they insert into their music – this is the Hazy Janes at the Imperial Music Venue – Mexborough – 02/05/22.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaLVvUgtYqo

I had previously seen Ellis Best, the singer/guitarist, in a solo show. Now I’ve been able to enjoy the dynamic duo including manic drummer, Bron Bury. As they enjoy telling us: “Stay Hazy!”

Japanese Television

London-based Japanese Television purveyed psych-oriental noodlings aplenty, musical interplay and connections. Lots going on – a complex melange. On display was a mixed-up mash-up of sounds at their recent live gig on the Yorkshire/Lancashire border. The sound: Instrumental punk-surf rock (apparently).  Hard to categorise, but certainly something of a throw-back to late 1960s’ psychedelic-folk. The band experienced some techie-gremlins early in their set, including having to replace their snare drum, but were well received by the packed audience.

‘Snake Shake’ from their recently released first album:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pa0BRMcIxY

Here, Japanese Television provide mellower, highly melodic sounds, faintly reminiscent perhaps of French art-musos,‘Air’. This is ‘Moon Glider’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI_GeHSIS0A

 

Between the Vines

Down at the Weavers Arms’ Monday Club it was time for Country-Rock, more twang and ‘hee-haw’, than the Americana variety. BTV (Between the Vines) have recently released their second album, ‘Ain’t Country Enough’. Powerful singing from Rebecca (Bex) Whitehead on lead vocals. Good songs too, well augmented by classy playing from all the members of this four-piece. Additionally, in fact, they have three vocalists! Drummer, Kev Whitehead is involved with a number of bands including Jon Lees’ Barclay James Harvest.

Title track video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlQS8ZpExJ0

‘Get a Little Drunk (Go a Little Wild)’ live from Oldham Festival: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1906760072822946

After their gig ended I asked Bex about the name of the band.

Alan: “I’m exactly the same age as the American singer, Janis Ian. She was 14 when she released her first album, ‘Society’s Child’. And quite a few years later, she was successful with her 1975 album which was titled: ‘Between the Lines’, and featured her major hit, ‘At Seventeen’. Was that your inspiration?”

Bex: “No. We like our wine and so that’s where the band name ‘Between the Vines’ came from.”

So, there, now we know!

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