On Gifts Returned by the River ed. Iain Sinclair (Swedenborg Press, 2025)
Iain edits and lo, more forts for thought are lain open.
The Downriverman is bequeathing fresh surfaces from the stream.
Thanks to Michael Moorcock and M(o)ore, such as the catalyst like
Catling, all of Sinclairs’s special saints reach alignments
As they document dare and dream. From Iain Christlike, with crow
Thanks to Anonymous Bosch’s first photo, to another sublime
Introduction linking a line through his books, Sinclair curates
What has come from the Albion Island Vortex Exhibition
In ghost-glazed Whitechapel, where surely, even Hawksmoor
Himself came to look. In his usual panorama of prose, we move
From his Ginsberg gape Ah! Sunflower, behind Radon’s daughters
And across the nape of John Clare, to shake mist with Tafler
And Bass – (would Wolf Mankowitz be their Beatrice?) And on,
To Catling’s would be Blake for Ray Winstone, though perhaps
Toby Jones has more flair. But just as Catling corrals, so too
Does this introduction. These Swedenborgian songs of freedom
And of experience too soundtrack all that we might imagine
And want in Alan Moore’s forthcoming Long London, or any city,
Where in Nighthampton or not, spent suns fall. Renchi Bicknell
And Sinclair both have form as rakers of the surburban soil
And land-lifters; and what they first unearthed in the 60s
Has remained with them still, staining their souls and their hands,
Which clip at climes; elemental, as if these grass-swept priests
In communing with how the river runs foot the bill
For what we have carved from the clay, as the Vortex in which
We live vouches for us. As it proves in this conclave of confessors,
And companions too as they write through both image and word
As this titanic tome totals for us, the sum of what we all owe
To magic, and the point at which the day’s convergence
With dream feels like flight. Whether made by Merlin or Moore,
It is there in Catling’s Vorhh, and in his Hollow, alongside Renchi
Bicknell’s haiku hauntings, firing Carol Williams’ Pole Hill
Painting, and then Allen Fisher’s B. Catling cuts, in which
The artist’s absences energise this epistle themed epic,
As he makes crossbows from lovers and disembowels Daemons,
By extricating the angel from deep within gargoyle guts.
Delight makes desert as Victor Rees espouses Kazuo Ishiguro’s
The Gourmet, a TV play I saw as a teen and have never fully
Forgotten; and while the Penda’s Fen blu-ray now blazes
This special stew is flambe’d in time’s sauce, or a glaze
In which the taste of ghosts taint the river, flowing as it always has
Rich within us, as the hunger for the other world is conveyed.
The river it seems touches all, as Swedenborg Canutes,
While canoeing on dry land, his magus like muse making magic
From ripple and ream as we ride from one experience to the next,
As each writer echoes another; Rees cites The Gourmet’s
St. George-in-the-East’s locale and Rodinsky, as the circles
Align as eye-tides, and a community of Sailors emerge
From such whirlpooling word-water; Gareth Evans acts as
Alchemic guide to Whitechapel, by quoting from both
A Delilo review and Jeff Wayne. Or Gary Osborne, of course,
In a fascinating word ramble. The phrase ‘Justin Hayward’
In a book like this helps sustain the scope and size of the gifts
That these artists offer, as instead of Martians its migrants
And the markings they make which enflame each reader’s
Full interest, as this collection dares dams and breaches
Banks to burst borders. As the city becomes ‘a crucible of constant
Change’ with creative tension arising from ‘adjacent temporal zones’
What’s to gain? More facts. More tracts. And far richer futures
If we can tame the tides sent to stain us and reclaim
These points as prize from the page. For which Jurgen Ghebrezgiabiher
Pilgrims with the ghost of Blake sifting Sussex, for just as the river
Reflects former ruins it also catches those to come at each stage.
Topographies take time’s test and serve only to set their own questions.
For just as parts of Whitechapel stay ancient, it appears that even
High-rising earth understands. As much of it keeps its skin
Under which angels itch, misbegotten by both Blake and Catherine,
To be soothed at source by the river as these special sailors swim,
Linking hands, as Ghebrezgiabiher cites Bicknell, and their sage,
Sinclair, who John Rogers films along with Stephen McNeilly,
Beside the forgotten Fleet river’s ghost gurgle and Wilton’s
Music Hall, Death’s plotlands contain Swedenborg’s home
And then grave. The river is ink, and inferno; as their lunch
And lurch, the church glowers, a pylon which pierces
Both sky and belief; each step’s brave. McNeilly Estate Agents
The home of the founding source for these waters,
In the House of Swedenborg we find both safety and secrets
Powered and dealt by Lud Heat. The Albion Island Vortex
From which this book has sprung, totemises, as if all rivers
Wrought rapture at this ruptured time of defeat. So as you read
Realise that you are in pursuit of time’s soldiers, as these
Artists and writers, and these photographer’s too, coalesce,
Falling in line and in special step with each other. They write
For and about themselves and each other, and so the sparks
They strike effervesce. As Louis Petit’s paintings do,
By alchemising his struggles. The vibrancy versed within them
As they move from Schiele to Kitaj soon astounds. To have
Such surety set at the start of his 20s is to reveal how the future
No matter how strained can rebound from the rejection of fact
And onto a new form for lovers, as hallucinations through seizure
Can redefine private pain and inspire us all; his fresh work here
Equals elders, who entertain now each other as A. Moore both shadows
And lights Iain’s claim. Filmed by John Rogers they roam all along
The line of Long London, both at an age in which dotage is updated
And dared by art’s scheme. The Great When has arrived and if this is
The smoke, what’s on fire? Quite simply, these two, the titans
Who walk as Merlin might across time, or down Steve Moore’s
Ghost-grown Shooters Hill; acts that Javier Calvo itemises.
As a Sinclairian satellite, his admiration and desire to combine
With IS echoes mine. As I was with IS. I too walked. Just not
As far as I’d liked to. Here Calvo expresses and details
How IS has so often bibled road signs in an extensive report;
An erudite piece of fan-faction, as the Histories and Hauntings
Here gathered take in the Sinclairian section, in which
‘the unquiet object, an ominous sword of primitive design’
Arthurs all. Held in Brian Catling’s dream kiln, Anya Reeve
Sets a story of priestly quest for this object which could
Cut and carve sign and squall. As a village son smiths the blade,
Brian’s Jack stomps the surviving ground it now covers,
Summoning in these Whitechapel preachings, not only
His father’s skill as a writer, but as communant with traditions
Of what once was and will be; disappearing acts soon reclaimed,
Through monochrome, pen or pixel: this book and its spine
Exhibition are fulcrums for blindness from which we can all
Learn to see. The ‘repetitive tenements’ hum with the sound
Of all those old hours and of the new ones bound now
Before them, awaiting these sparks to unveil, secret cinemas,
Dreams and the stomachs of lost, ransacked theatres. What was past
Can still happen. And as the young man prowls he sees snatches
Of what could be Satan’s tail. Victor Rees; triptych for Ghosts
Is a tale of stone spirits, before the magus like Michael Moorcock
Returns by charting his life by dead swans. From the Gresham
Street pub of two to the many New Worlds he helped fashion,
His time-trip is soon tracking from Ladbroke Grove to Alsacia,
To the Edge of Time; surely all writers should tug not just their
Forelocks, but for all he given, any and all hanging fronds.
His wounded Albion extract delights. Swedenborg’s spells
Spruce all artists, and for those that don’t follow, this curation
Collects modern Gods moving in time with the myths,
Which have enchanted them all across aeons; they are all
Jerry and Catherine Cornelius tripping as they traipse the London
Lyme. No-one plods. Renchi Bicknell stories stone in his epic poem.
He is due in a parallel world any moment to share his prehistoric
Avebury. After BC’s Sunken Nightfall, more stone, scooped by
Matthew Shaw, Brian’s pilgrim, as we move from Dorset to Oxford
Via more arcane tenancy. From The Court of Miracles’ craft, to a film
Of Shirley Collins as seen at Soho’s The Curzon, what we shape
From stone, be it novel, poem or mask is kiln-film; magic made
By bare hands, covered in ancient dust or black pudding; as ever
Immaculately suited and booted, this word wizard fries breakfasts
While reality too, has been grilled. So what the river returns
To those featured within is achievement, to the extent that all
Of these legends are lucky to have lived and found all they’ve gained
And which has served to set them apart; they have made
Their own histories from these hauntings, and beyond Blake
And Machen, or the Wayland Smithery, each attains a summit
To scale in this and all cities. Sinclair has truly listened to London
And passed its vast shell now to Moore. Who blows his blaze back,
Illuminating fresh fragments, splitting stone, twinning Merlin
With Moorcock too. So adore what you will read and see in this book.
It is Swedenborg stream and stone singing at us. It is star, spark
And fire, firmament and soul-scratch. Alice Albinia moves
From circling water spirits and stone, to the Kings Cross lain
Calthorpe Gardens; Brian Catling tree-poems, as Ben Wickey
And IS walk for Poe. The river runs all the while, offering ‘mesmeric
revelation’, flowing beside and within, its wild water, the stuff of steps
And sweat as they go. Everyone peers through the prose to catch
A glimpse of Valdemar’s Mirror; ‘Poe is upturned.’ Chat is congress.
Silence swims. Dream-skeins flow. Catling picks up the tale
Of M. Valdemar’s scholarship and publications. And so these
Eye-essays, so successfully scribed gather up, the ones before those
Who stir each step in the stream of invention, to make deeper ripples
And a headier brew for dream’s cup. For this a truly magical book,
Alongside Alan and Steve Moore’s long-sought bright bumper,
As it both archives inspiration to be found on any path we’d seek
And each view that we do not even know how to scale. You will find
Sufficient calipers here; in these haunted hands ghost-transcribing
And translating too in our language the murmurings of the few
Who changed time and tide through their special understanding
Of water. And what it is: earth emotion, or the stain of stars
While they weep across climate and cloud. Even a white sky shines
On these walkers. On these Smiths and sifters who through
A poem’s pan see truth seep. Adolfo Barbera Del Rosal cares
With crow as he appreciates Iain’s early films and B. Catling.
He is the next Greek like Chorus, even if he does perhaps come
From Spain, to single out and define these gifts of art; each a sigil,
Of what art should be. And so in which direction may the prize of gold
And ghost now be gained? The former Maggot Street Exhibition extends
To the Albion Island Vortex in Whitechapel. Where muse and magic
And each secular star renames Faith, as Exploration, or Art,
Or Summoning, poem, sculpture. Or Film. For a camera afterall makes
A cyclops looking in light for a Wraith. Sinclair concludes with a stunning
30 page essay, summing up prophet poets, and as Richard Harris once posed,
Tramps who shine, as he catalogues the full gifts bestowed and returned
By the river, be it sunken or streaming or linking all of us to all times.
This book is wet as you read. It is soaked with sun, soul and spirit.
It acts as near biblical introduction to a Babel like tower in which
Everyone shares the same tongue with which to describe miracles
And to say the sort of things which makes Masters of both
Art and of magic. As the waters rise, fate’s undone. Instead, the book Arks.
And sets sail for borders; new lands which are equal and as mighty in myth
As Moorcock’s; places where Alan Moore walks and Catling reconfigures.
Sinclair, their Aguirre, their Columbus too forged the Dock, for dream
And word-scheme and the machines that men, women and they make
Within them. These manufacture bright borders and countries
And far better doors to unlock. So, set sail until the end of this world,
Or to the end of time for that matter. Traipse and trail. Walk by water.
And cleanse by stream the struck stone, that may have passed
From the mount, or sent from space to bookmark us.
These are the gift’s Sinclairs sharing. He leaves as Pinter once said
Of Beckett: ‘no maggot lonely.’ In Gifts Returned by the River,
Each word is flesh on old bone.
David Erdos 14/5/25
https://mailchi.mp/c1e04fa475d3/hereaftersimonmoretti-16554994?e=4910b7c200
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