On Andrew Kötting’s BLABBERMIND and Iain Sinclair’s Annie Oake’s Orchids
(Badbloodandsibyl/Swedenborg House Press 2025)
i
Abbott and Costello returned at the Small Publishers Fair
At the weekend as Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair ripped the real.
Not that the American duo did that, but they in their own way
Tore the fabric, as do these modern masters, giving a word art
Celebration in a room of portraiture, wood and teal.
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From Betrand Russell’s lectern, Stand-up: as Kötting blabbered
And blazed, his book bubbling, for from this polymath’s cauldron
Everyone becomes sorcerer. Blabbermind’s the new book,
Perfect and pink, madness margined, as AK fires vitriol through
Blank verses and documents his own Eden, through description
And love, sourcing her. Eden Kötting is his main collaborator
These days as her artworks inspire his writings and over each film
And journey and each titanic tome, their lives sprawl. But here
Andrew opens up with journal entries and jabs at and from
The world which surrounds them, redacting rage as it spears him,
Crossing out but still leaving what the woke have warped. Chaos
Crawls, but is still fired and formed by this one man tornado,
Who, suited wades into rivers as if to unearth from its bed
Planet spleen. He writes as he paints, daubing words across
Canvas, wrenching up, while exploding with each one line verse
Man’s soiled sheen: ‘PARKED UP NEXT TO THE FAILURE
OF LANGUAGE IN THE FACE OF CATASTROPHE THAT MIGHT
EASILY OVERWHELM ME TALKING ABOUT MYSELF IN ALL THIS
BLABBERMIND’ we can see how this big hearted Strongman
Still struggles. His and Leila’s devotion to their daughter, for whom
‘The stars aren’t even colours for her’ is the theme as what
Eden feels, sings and sees sparks Andrew’s own fire; from his
Great and grand declarations to these journal entries, in which
Eden’s predictable sleep and disruptions allows her father
‘to have found meaning in the hopelessness of her being,’ and in
the hopelessness of his being.’ The redacting line lends more
Meaning and leads to and from love: a soul dream. So, from
The spillage of art and the marginalia hand-written, this book
As canvas allows Andrew’s air to fly free. There is no artist more
Singular and no practitioner quite as fearless. And no bear
In the forest as creative, graceful and growling as this mighty he.
Blabbermind burns. Blabbermind bristles. The thoughts kept
Within it are open wounds the pink heals. It contains many scars;
From ‘blood on the hips’ to cultural disappearance, as a potential
Community of electrophobes are deleted as the digital interface
Binds and seals. On page 48 we can see life as lived by the Köttings,
As Leila knits Andrew questions, railing against the ‘stupiditysphere,’
And sky bastard for whom hopes of heaven keep the ‘asset bank’
Dry yet enflamed. Fire roams through these rooms, as each page
Homes hope and hatred for what and where we are, or becoming,
To what we’re doing with pronouns and ‘post-colonial discourse:’
Endgamed. His heart is not on his sleeve. It is tattooed and still
Bleeding. His call for peace is a penance inbetween sanitary towel
Application and the straining for stars none can see. Kötting rips
Across night just as he scales earth and ocean. He continues to
Fight for a future and takes shelter safely amidst the Pyrenees.
His cinema reconstructs art-film and home movie. He is folklore
On fire and street corner spit. His bad blood is what you would
Want to transfuse if you needed energy to wreck the rut you’re
Ensnared by. Kötting spills the beans that are blazing and would
Be a torture for toast once they’re poured. He needs no publisher
But himself. He is industry. He is action. Standing beneath
Betrand Russell reading his real his soul soared. Knocking ceiling
And walls. He shook for the shame shaping humans, who dare
Despite duty to unleash the hidden heart as it spurts to spill
Into your drink; he uses wife and daughter as cypher to find
What he thinks about living at this particular time, primed
By hurts. Andrew is a gladiator of old and Bouncer for
The brand spanking new club we should queue for; one in
Which celebration and a new soul(ed) music soundtracks,
Throwing secret thoughts at the wall, as ‘snow and fading hope’
Fall beside us; from ‘the paradox of closeness and the harmfulness
Of proximity’; from subjugation, subtraction, replacement
And rhyme, these attacks – on each oystered arse sticking up from
The sand as they fuck us. For such cries from forced entry,
Kötting carves aperture, sticking his fingers in, so as to stretch,
Wrench and open an orifice not for pleasure but for the passage
Of all that’s been spoiled; scatterer not of shit but the shite
Which has smeared the Shinola. We are not free. Not like Kötting,
Who obeys no rules in his art. You could mount this book on the wall,
Or hold it to your heart like a shout-shell. You could make a map
Or battery from it, ripping your real: a hope chart. For it is architecture
As well, as it is diagrammatic in layout. Indeed, one gets the feeling
That like Alan Moore’s Promethea series you could piece together
The pages and in that way gain a guide across new landscapes, rooms,
Roads in which trees, chairs and mountains advise you, while birds
Above crap and critic and roses snag and spear like Christ’s side.
We all need Blabbermind. We all need blabberminds! Let’s start
Spouting. Andrew is activist for the image that is either roused
By his writing, or by that he and Eden make on the page. We all
Have special needs, so, adjust. Place and She dictate story.
Blabbermind is dare and devotion. As well as Bible for which
Secular stars set the stage.
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After such explosions the smoke gathers itself, Sinclair shaping.
Abbot assumes the position. He likes a lectern, he says, and so proves.
For there is a true sense of the teacher to him. He is erudition
Effortless in exelcis. The genteel explainer of how the storm forms
And then moves. Sinclair reads a new work, written in an afternoon:
12 new poems. And this Landsman’s dozen is baked from a walk
Besides Bosch; Anonymous as he’s known, a pin-hole Prince,
Ever ruling, and providing his own diamond dozen, glistened through
Stone and whitewash of page and of print as his monochrome
Mesmerises, as does Sinclair’s writing, graveyard supplied in this case.
The book is about collaborations and cause. A reissue of Lud Heat
As Swedenborg sent commission led to a new walk within Hawksmoor’s
Winged shadow of angel or that without face. And the marking of one
Particular grave, from which Sinclair has scored a fresh fiction,
As Annie Oakes walks ‘Casting a net of oblique suggestion..closer to
a residue of extinction’‘From membrance case rooted in corpse alley’
To a ‘gallery of kings’ near Greenwich, everything falls into shape,
From Stone, Walk and Flower, the three headings granting greater
Reflections on ground: a soul stitch. From the ‘treacle dust..misapplied
from the shadow of a shadow’, Iain and Anthony amble from old world
To next, via now. Another pilgrimage marked under ‘the racing air’
From which reason and rune weed and flower across each private path,
Each shoed vow. This elegant pamphlet performs as do all of Sinclair’s
Early presses. Those totemic tomes soon made mythic, such as
Jack Elam’s Other Eye are made myth. As Oakie becomes in this
Particular pilgrim’s progress. Sinclair and Bosch rouse through
Image and writing her newly risen ghost: poemed pith. Sinclair
Is a special industry too as seen with his own Costello/Kötting.
He will have written his height a la Moorcock, and Moore as well,
Across years, but his collaborations abound, be they beside Bosch,
Moore or Petit, Lichtenstein, S. McNeilly, or those within
The returned River gifts, or with the other great art bear now lost,
The magnificent Brian Catling, whose madness map is reprinted
In this refired Lud Heat. The heart lifts. As this is the most beautiful
Version yet. Stephen McNeilly designed and delivered, in which
Once more Sinclair’s ur-text, redefines alphabets for discovery
And for dreams that will always influence London. From the souls
And stamps of old shadow the still scribed shades can’t forget
What happened here and what will we hope always happen.
The insect earth ghosts beneath us and sees the secrets sworn
And stone kept. Sinclair smoothed those stones and upturned
Earth to find forces of energy and element actioned by the heart
Gargoyles in each church. The book greets your hand and you fall
In love. Its that easeful. The print is perfect as are the Anonymous
Photographs. But it consolidates the first steps in what has been
A sixty year journey, from Gower to Dublin, Hackey to Peru, through
Word baths in which one can cleanse a clogged mind and soothe
The sweat of misinformation. This hero’s labour has its origin story
Right here. So, from one of the first books life primed to a brand new
Edition, and something written in hours the Swedenborg search
For fresh meaning and unearthing word art is held dear, by all
On first base, be that in Holborn or Hastings, and by the rest of us
Who are fielding, standing now amidst orchids, or with strange
Shadows shielding what we still hope to catch: magic’s sphere.
David Erdos 27/10/2025
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