linguistically innovative €#*@$?!

2012-01-27T03:28:00.000-08:00

2012-01-18T00:45:00.000-08:00

political verse

It is impossible to fully grasp Rimbaud’s work, and especially Une Saison en Enfer, if you have not studied through and understood the whole of Marx’s Capital. And this is why no English speaking poet has ever understood Rimbaud. Poetry is stupid, but then again, stupidity is not the absence of intellectual ability but rather the scar of its mutilation.

Copy////pasted from Sean Bonney's September 27 2011 blade pitch @ poet's abandoned buildings for his Commons and Happiness (poems after Rimbaud) publications

2012-01-02T02:07:00.000-08:00

Continuing ballad of The Someday Funnies

'The Someday Funnies' ballad veered into present writer's Beat generation Ballads blogged at this spot few times since printed bookwork publication a year ago. See here, here & here.

This ballad was written originally as poetic hommaġe to a 'lost' book of the 1970s. As legendary among sci-fi and comic fans as HP Lovecraft's 'lost' Necronomicon among fans of horror fantasy.

The Someday Funnies as book-myth became topic of study in an article by Bob Levin for an issue of American Comics Journal in 2009. (The Comics Journal considers comic-book and cartoon-strips as art and literary form through serious and scholarly analysis. There is nothing comparable UK where milieu writers have arguably veered to medium of radio and television. And comic-book artists still seem to be perceived as part of some creepy swivel-eyed male geekdom.)

My own understanding adapting beat generation ballads from blog to Veer bookwork at the time was that Levin's lavishly illustrated essay on The Someday Funnies in The Comics Journal was something of a revelation.

What I didn't know was Comics Journal had stimulated interest, not only in Michel Choquette and his lost comic book, but a will to finally publish the hidden horde of submissions which included a full page contribution from Mike Weller when he was living as alter-ego '70s underground cartoonist, Captain Stelling. Over the years Weller and his 20th century pulp experience has been fictionalized by present author as both historical object and personal subject in Mike's own visual bookwork Space Opera and entry opening decade 21st century worked as prose-fed Michael John home'baked Slow Fiction.

Like olden days when great beat generation US 45rpm singles couldn't make the British hit parade because Tin Pan Alley ruled the charts - The Someday Funnies has not yet hit radar UK - neither comics fandom nor liberal arts media.

And the tombstone of a book is causing a stir on the other side of the pond. Puffed and hyped-up in North America during fall 2011 - conflicting reviews of Choquette's book have since appeared at The Comics Journal website itself where one editor Tim Holder describes his own journal's response as a house divided. This is because original discoverer Bob Levin celebrates publication while Journal co-editor Dan Nadel's disses the book's arrival, backed up by several posts acquiescing with his critique in the comment thread.

Choquette responds to reviews of his book by taking it out of a generic house of comics to wider blogosphere online @ Huffington Post.

Present author composed 'The Someday Funnies' ballad when believed lost. He wouldn't change one visual or written aspect now it's been found.

Happy new year.

2011-12-21T04:18:00.002-08:00

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us on youtube

selling

time

taste

'The politics of time' from Songs Our Teachers Learn Us, or, Lessons To Be Taught sequence

2011-12-16T03:12:00.000-08:00

Notes on writing reading and face to facEBook performance part six

& parts one, two, three, four, five

Bob Cobbing was dismissive when the word 'fun' was used to cajole him into doing a gig. Pre-emptive rejoinders such as "It'll be fun", could guarantee his turning down an invitation to read.

In /new fairy tales/psychopoetic landscapes/old superlatives/ use of word 'beauty' in poetics is examined through Climb A Free Wheeler dictionary of hyperbole. This writers forum chapbook has strapline 'Interrogate the lexicon and sophisticated spin-patter of modern marketing'. Visual barcode one component of cover montage - a completely non-functional poetic that delighted Bob Cobbing when collaborating first Writers Forum colour cover with new kitchen-top printer. (Cobbing's first and last full colour artist's book with our tongue our drils and quadras followed in December, 2001).

At Climb A Free Wheeler performative readings audiences were invited to shout one letter after another from alphabet (at Klinker gigs 'X' and 'Z' were favourites). Superlatives beginning with said letter were shouted back to hearers.

In London performance after Hugh Metcalfe's poetics-avant pub cabaret Klinker - multiple, if heterogeneous, poetry arts bubbles and place venues have sprung up in university rooms; pub-function rooms; free, open public spaces; civic halls and centres; theatres, cinemas; bookshops, galleries, restaurants; commercial, industrial, institutional arts buildings; people's homes; poetry hegemonized places of worship - all proliferate in capital and cities elsewhere.

There are (post)modern examples of poetry and poets selling and being sold with superlatives 'amazing', 'beautiful', 'collectable', 'fun', 'gorgeous', 'genius', 'magical', 'talented', 'witchy'. ('quirky' was added in biro to writer's file copy, a ...Wheeler entered category 'Q', 21/5/03).

Present writer finds himself internalizing and newly re-encoding same words he once deconstructed as hyperbolic superlatives. 'Gorgeous' and 'sparkling' just two new ones. In modernist '50ies 'Mad Men' era of 'hidden persuaders' and through '60ies, '70ies, '80ies, - 20th century hyperbole was decoded for Climb A Free Wheeler in random combination. Intention being to deconstruct overused superlatives through sound. To decode words used and encoded for selling news items, popular fiction, advertising, arts' celebrities and their products.

...Wheeler was published and first performed before poets and artists began using MySpace, before Facebook, before use of vid-embedded blogspot bubbles like this one of present writer, egnep (EGNEP). Before the ltle bk of txt msgs (Michael O'Mara Books, 2000) found online currency @Twitter in Web 2.0's visual web association#.

Facebook Mick takes his social media 'friends' and 'followers' seriously. Michael (socialized 'Mike') Weller even encourages reconstruction of superlatives - subverting his own deconstructions as if they are passé shadow readings beyond decent retrofitting.

'Find funny', 'Funny furious'
(two 'F' category entries in Climb a Free Wheeler, Writers Forum, 2001)

(hand-written back cover statement 'I claim my free Weller!' collaged by Bob Cobbing, June 2001)

Finished notes planned for inclusion in Songs Our Teachers Learn Us, or, Lessons To Be Taught sequence.

2011-12-08T02:54:00.000-08:00

Notes on writing reading and face to facEBook performance part five

& parts one, two, three, four, six

When using google blogspot as 'workshop' to draft Beat generation Ballads (Veer Books, 2011) couple years ago the present writer was considering what happened to two ambitious twentieth century visual arts bookwork projects planned for '70ies publication - The William S. Burroughs Scrapbook and The Someday Funnies.

'The Someday Funnies' became penultimate beat generation ballad track in hard copy Veer book with Mr Weller unaware (2010) that Someday Funnies had at last found publisher. Until an email from its author Michel Choquette turned up in his hotmail junk folder. The writer deleted mail - then retrieved it - to discover Abrams were publishing Choquette's book with same $100-per- contributor rate 2011 as recessional early Seventies. An editorial cost austerity cycle. Talk about fucking politics of time. With actual 'ballad' remaining unrevised, updates to beat generation ballads 'acknowledgements' from Michel were forwarded to Stephen Mooney and Will Rowe at Veer as ...Ballads was being delivered to the printer.

Abrams' contributors complimentary copy of The Someday Funnies arrived this week with cushioned packaging and other pieces of mail performance art - including promo from publisher.

Abrams' online plug 'n' puff here. Artie Romero's review here. Michel Choquette interview 'n' North American launch hosted by Stephanie and Andrea here. After singing "1973 what does it want with me" here wishing Christmas book gifts would crash break spine does sound hypocritical, I admit. Yet cartoonist Bill Griffith is on first page of 'works' in curious naming poetic. Someday Funnies as 'beat generation ballad' performance goes on.

Think Mick go facEBook page 'n like it.

2011-12-07T02:01:00.001-08:00

Notes on writing reading and face to facEBook performance part four

& parts one, two, three, five, six

An ideology of privatization and marketisation has arguably replaced sense of common purpose public service in arts mainstream and 'alternative' slipstreams. Revival generation poets puff up new generation poets, sketching out emergent canon formations - encoded towards positive internalization of 'experimental', 'fun', 'brilliant', 'cool', 'free-to-use'.

Sidestep volunteering 'internships' and collective 'stakeholdings' with revolutionary collaborators fighting with poets for democracy and a workers' government. In recent conversation with young digital arts practitioner the present writer was told how volunteering had finally led him to paid work. In the twentieth century, I replied, being paid for work was deeply internalized by everyone. "What," the young practitioner exclaimed, "Was everyone a Marxist?"

Join. Decline. Like. Dislike. Yes. No. Maybe. Positive negative procrastination encoded on facEBook.

2011-11-30T04:15:00.000-08:00

'She did call upon her master for aid. And then one
of her curs'd familiars did come creeping to her.

Billy Bragg sang
call up the craftsman/bring in the draftsman/ build
me a path from cradle to grave'

Andrea Brady Poetry Lady, Michael J. Weller (Home'Baked Books, 2008)

'(...) instead I am on the periphery of a poetry gang (...)'
Fights, SJ Fowler (Veer Books, 2011)

Notes on writing reading and face to facEBook performance part three

& parts one, two, four, five, six

SJ Fowler's Fights cycles looks as though it may have inspired a rock 'n' roll branding for Billy Bragg's November tour.

Click-on poster above with free ticket competition offer expired in October (hyperlink remains live time of posting). Link accessed via anti-racist Hope not hate organization. Present writer likes HOPE not hate, like in Like on facEBook.

Rubbish brawler Mickey Mover has mischievous idea for rotten fantasy fight game.

In imaginary game Billy Bragg holds heavyweight rocky-poet title for made-up boxing promotions outfit A. A. Action. Now if an OuLiPo 'King of the Ring' poetics game was conceived with other competing made-up promoters like M. M. Marvel and an imaginary Billy had to defend his title against other imaginary poet-contenders including Steve the Silencer...

2011-11-28T23:42:00.000-08:00

Notes on writing reading and face to facEBook performance part two

& parts one, three, four, five, six

Collectable chapbooks weren't an aim of Michael John Weller's Home'Baked Books. Keeping titles in printable revision were.

Home'Baked Books, from April 2005's Madeline My Love In Death And Fancy (a reprinted 2001 Visual Associations title) to March 2011's edition of & Holly Pester Does It Better completes present writer's current self-publishing endeavour in print using domestic desk-top printer. Whether print kit is replaced or not needs consideration as contemporary artists and poets publish free-to-view pdfs and performance videos.

Attempted to argue in 'Notes on old new little presses' that reading from screen and negotiating print through writing, reading, performing, or as bookworked reader/hearer/viewer, are different. Not only as forms. Process alters content.

Obtaining a Lexmark All-In-One X6100 series printer in 2005 was personal/artistic/technical liberation from handing completed hard copy over to professional printers. Although still agreeable in continuing purchase out-of-house print for home'baked perfect-bounds - completing bookworks in-house does encourage extended process and performance. Performance not finished until collation, stapling or enveloping and exhibitive display as exchange value commodity in pub-function room, market stall, exhibition stand, or bookshop. This lesson learned under Bob Cobbing's '90ies New River Project tutelage.

For the present writer full public performance requires feeds of objects, loose paper, zines, dry books, fresh books warm from oven. Selling titles as commodity source of exchange value.

In October 2011 Mike attempted to reprint Stem Harvest as A5 chapbook on domestic kit. Bastard refused to feed paper. Mike hears Cobbing's voice shout with glee, The machine doesn't like it! The machine is knackered, Bob.

I'd agreed to read at Herbarium-inspired Royal Horticultural Show's 'harvest hangout' organized by Helen Babbs in association with RHS. Professionally organized - opportunity to sell Stem Harvest.

Domestic printer had displayed ominous message HARDWARE ERROR 502 since beginning of year. Needed outside print to home'bake Stem Harvest in new edition. Difference between buying print and having direct access to printer is that instantaneous changes to copy decided through machine intervention/chance/error are abandoned when commercial printer receives folder definitively marked ready for print. It's an order. Cobbing's New River Project basement printshop is now 20th century history. Commercial printers and poets still call engineers in when machines withdraw means. But copy delivered to Bob for a job could hardly be designated ready for print. Not even after copies were printed!

Buying print leaves no space/time for random interventions. Feels like transaction of capital expenditure in social relation of production. Commercial printers view job as start-to-finish contract. When completed, printed edition returned to buyer with originals.

No process. No performance to speak of except as anecdote.

2011-11-23T00:46:00.000-08:00

Notes on writing reading and face to facEBook performance part one

& parts two, three, four, five, six

Updating 'S Club 7 vs the Anti-Capitalists' on myebook this week launch instruction displayed words - loading myebook iewer. Missing v isn't like missing "n" on Chainsaw punkzine editor's typewriter that could be penned in by hand during the '80ies. Missing "v" looks similar to letter light fuse blown on seedy amusement arcade or recessional shop front signage.

This time 2008 I was busy building EBook files excited with potential of screen as medium between film, tv, and bookwork. Unlike HarperCollins' authonomy; or Issuu, or Scribd, with their hint of literary expectation - myebook offered e-commerce opportunities to authors - myebucks earn real cash from your readers. Post-crash, it's still up there. Like senior social networking model of era myspace (still popular with musos) - myebook continues to offer audio and visual in its free-to-use platform package, appealing to muso & gaming promoters along with photographic, comics & zine producers.

In 2009 Amy De'Ath wrote 'Set-ups such as ‘myebook’, which refers to itself as a product which harnesses internet technologies to help authors create, publish, and distribute ebook content online (with little or no actual ‘human’ input other than themselves), is another example of how publishers could eventually be bypassed', (Online Publishing Reader Comment, Openned Archive 20/4/09).

I think Amy was right describing myebook as 'set-up'. Early viewing stats appear exaggerated and virtual egnep is probably not only user without any bucks (via paypal) for EBook downloads. This is not to say online promotion print-for-sale is a waste of bandwidth. If egnep bothers to keep EBooks on platform best make them free-to-view. Original platform innovator and developer Simon Whitehall was only a Skype call away to help with techs - which was endearing. Sy leaves a couple of his own titles on the virtual shelf but left others to run the set-up months ago.

Egnep's fading titles are on shelves facing the sun in myebook's virtual library. Data is regularly deleted from myEBook galleries (data stored on any remote free-to-use site is hardly secure. But it's boring and time-consuming to download the same files again and again each time a title like S Club... is updated).

Since I first made EBooks pocket e-reader seems to have established itself as screen of choice for viewing black and white bestseller or easy storage text book. Anything else seems glaringly bad.

The cinema screen remains place to find hidden poetry in narrative film as Emanuella Amichai articulates better than I'm able, in her interview with SJ Fowler for Maintenant.

I am still haunted by variations of a recurring dream. I am watching a movie (black and white in childhood) of urban, suburban and near-rural places I think I am familiar with. Dreams began when watching low-budget British B films starring Lee Patterson, Paul Carpenter, Belinda Lee or Lisa Gastoni, as a little kid.

Stimulated need to reveal hidden text between representation, location as depiction in film, and reality. Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb) revealed Croydon locations filmed in Reading, Berkshire, for Peter Medak's movie on Derek Bentley's life and execution, Let Him Have It.

Finding hidden poetry themes within film narrative inspired first myEBook 'Screen Reading'.

PS Notes on old new little presses part four updated with added image

2011-11-19T02:10:00.000-08:00

S Club 7's out again for November 30 2011 so bugger Steps and the so-called '90ies revival.

2011-10-26T04:24:00.000-07:00

"...who is 1989, and what do they want with us..."
- Sean Bonney & Jeff Hilson ('r.i.p. his gripping hands', Maintenant: the Camarade project (The Red Ceilings Press, 2011)

Notes on the old new little presses part eight
& parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven
Image left: limited edition LOLLIPOP flyer (Bill Griffiths, 2000)

One quiet evening a year or so ago there was a thunderous crash from the living room which had me expecting some domestic disaster of worrying proportion. What happened was the entire collection of Bill Griffiths works I'd separated from bookshelf of zines, comics, small presses etc, and piled far too high, crashed to the floor in what Bill himself once entitled 'Spook Call' in a poem.

Concertinaed on the rug and relatively undamaged were conventional Griffiths' perfect bounds, Writers Forums, Bill's own Amra imprints which came in different shapes, sizes, and bindings, including the few visual collaborations I'd done with him.

Bill Griffiths had been very active in the Association of Little Presses (ALP) as cataloguer and archivist, moving the project online as administrator - a role continued to date by Peter Manson. A glance at imprints currently featured @lollipop reveals meeting point between 20th century British 'revival' presses affiliated from days of ALP and newer UK poetry small publishers.

Bad Press, Grasp Press, if p then q, Oystercatcher Press, for example, have added their imprints. 'Innovative', 'experimental', 'contemporary', 'cutting edge' are some small press self-definitions to entice attention and sales.

So has 'alternative' poetry or 'unconforming' writing become a perfect-trim, print-on-demand modernist small press orthodoxy in advanced capitalist countries? If avant-garde has been observed as new 'official verse culture' of experimental Scandinavian poetry what about contemporary work published in other European and Baltic countries? What about new kids on poetry block UK? There are newer presses that have not engaged with Lollipop's 'Listing'. Likeliest reason is newer publishers on many local scenes are unaware of this particular collectivity of interest and purpose.

But in the light of emerging old new little presses; object installation and art writing - the question of a break with the recent past and need to investigate unexplored terrains of both the electronic and the concretised - may be reasons for the setting up of parallel UK initiatives like Openned UK Poetry list, Small Press Catalogue and United Small Press Co-op (USPCO). Most presses now have websites/blogs with paypal facility to sell wares online, at home and overseas.

Due to an appointment mix-up other week I drifted into Glades' Waterstone's. It is rare for me to handle brand new books commodified for the consumer in Bromley's shopping mall but I did spy a couple of Salt books. I fantasized 1960s I-SPY BOOKS in circulation. Spotting a bookstore Salt would 'Score 20'. A Reality Street 'Score 40'.

Ebury Press, a Random House imprint (Score 10), have recently produced The 20th Century in Poetry commissioned for publishers by Sunday Times rich-listed forest conservationist, Felix Dennis. Felix Dennis was my early '70ies Brit comix publisher who experienced something like a twenty-first century Paulian conversion to poetry (yeah, that is meant to read 'Paulian' not 'Paulin'). Felix Dennis is also something of a conservationist when it comes to traditional poetic forms.

Maybe there isn't a literary mainstream anymore, just a bunch of slipstreams-in-the-making with one or two aiming to look a bit mainstream or old guard. The 20th is a dust-jacketed hardback literary history book rather than a poetry anthology. It's a bookshelf tome. Joyce, Pound, Eliot, Bunting, Gascoyne, Edwins' Morgan & Muir, Adrienne Rich, John Kinsella, British Laureates, and a few Beats are generously represented. Yet presentation browse-read content within volume looks and feels commodified for nostalgic appeal to international English-language poetry before millennium.

Felix Dennis with customary intelligence and good taste has left editorial selection to literary experts Simon Rae and Michael Hulse. But edited sections denote modern cultural history rather than modern 20th century chronological poetry or poetics. Inevitable accusations of exclusion are met by Rae and Hulse with scholarly regret [...] for the excellent poets and poetry we were still unable to include. This editorial apologia is compromised when Noël Coward verse and an early Bob Dylan song lyric are reproduced on page as poetry. Both are excellent as twentieth century legends but their poetics may best lay in performance.

So try re-reading marketed seasonal object in bookstore as fetishistic compromise instead. Why not go whole hog and imagine even more pop poetry with printed song lyrics in The 20th. Half-a-dozen, say, Horovitz-inspired Albion council estate rap 'n' dubstepping great-grands. Imagine "difficult" with at least one Cambridge poet to prove modern English-language poetry can be excellent and complex. And one or two Brit 'revivalists' shaking up poetry-on-the-page. And an 'index of first lines' that includes Bob Cobbing's YARR YAUP YARK YOWL YAP. And a few interpretive English translations of Greek, Roman classicists, Anglo-Saxon poets' narratives plus a couple of Western European decadents yeah why not. And finish off with full-color image of a Maggie O'Sullivan mixed media assemblage gracing back cover.

In reality just one Bill Griffiths' inclusion may have stopped me wishing book gift would come crashing down from a Christmas tree, breaking its spine & falling into linguistically innovative non-recyclable board and uncommodifiable paper dustwrap disassemblage.

Finished notes planned for inclusion in Songs Our Teachers Learn Us, or, Lessons To Be Taught sequence.

2011-10-15T00:19:00.001-07:00

Notes on old new little presses part seven
& parts one, two, three, four, five, six eight

For a 21st century expanding European generation of poets new international networks are emerging fast.

Through, for example, 3:AM Magazine Maintenant and Poetry Kit hub - the internet provides updates on local, regional, and international scenes. Universities have their own creative writing bubbles and old London town has plural exhibition/music/poetry spaces.

Both Norwegian poet Paal Bjelke Andersen and Swedish poet Aase Berg, in recent Maintenant interviews with younger generation British poet Steven Johannes Fowler; seem to suggest, in their individual and distinctive ways that 'innovative', 'experimental' may now be the dominant published poetry in Scandinavia, with small press its mainstream vehicle.

Maintenant: the Camarade project has brought into the picture new collaborative possibilities between English-speaking and foreign language-speaking poets.

New small publishers like The Red Ceilings Press, who've published the Maintenant Camarade mini-anthology as perfect-trim A6 artzine, produce inexpensive limited edition print plus open access screen readings. Working from regional locality it is difficult to envisage this little press and others as new mainstream-in-the-making.

These rough 'Notes on the old new little presses' will conclude next post before addition to planned Songs Our Teachers Learn Us, or, Lessons To Be Taught publication.

2011-10-12T05:12:00.000-07:00

Notes on the old new little presses part six
& parts one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight

The British Countryside in Pictures the writer is re-reading. It has been re-read many times but not for donkey's years. A broken hardback, the end flypapers have added black and white photographs of Tissington village glued in by a former owner's hand with temporal glue stains of sixty-plus years. Fountain pen and faded ink inscription To Sheila and Rosemary -- From Wullil; Wullil; Wullil, January 1948 (underlined) With Supplements (underlined) by a friend. The Supplements are the added stuck-in photographs, also hand-inscribed with ink by the photographer who presumably took them.

The book can be read as found installation in postwar house. A sculpture, a physical presence - a living bookwork.

Book production is concrete and materialist process. Book unproduction is unbound poetry. Before book's broken pieces become phantasmagorical form again. Before its pieces become fetish object again. Book bits ready for waste collection ... *X No thanks Hardbacked books (we cannot recycle the cover - why not give them to charity?)... unbound beyond exchange/ consumer value. Beyond re-commodification.

Re-reading book content: lines from a poem by A. S. Wilson are selected by editor Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald to describe a section on THE GOOD EARTH (...) and the Publishers wish to express thanks to Miss Ruth Pitter, author of Romford Market and to Messrs. Macmillan for an extract from a poem by T. E. Brown.

The closest to sense of book as object - bookwork in process as sculpture and installation, received after the HomeBaked 2010 bookartbookshop show - were zimZalla's first four objects contained within a plastic stationery wallet.

zimZalla is an 'avant-object' project organized by Tom Jenks. Three of the objects (including an audio CD with its own avant-object; Matt Dalby's walksongs - which I listen to whilst re-reading The British Countryside in Pictures) - have individual ISBNs. An artzine object featuring three poets has a cover image instead of a title. A top-left-hand-corner-stapled A4 seventeen-sheeted paper report by Tina Darragh is another object, this one not bibliographically catalogued with ISBN. Stephen Emmerson's poems found at the scene of a murder is sealed in a 165mm x 115mm A6 envelope I haven't opened since receiving it.

I may open it one day.

* from a local authority refuse and recycling collection service update

2011-10-06T01:00:00.001-07:00

Notes on old new little presses part five
& parts one, two, three, four six , seven, eight

Just like catching a thorn on a beautiful prize rose I've made my right forefinger bleed on a sharp sticking-out Klatch 'zine staple. It's a piece. Klatch is an uncommodified living bookwork.

press free press produced a publication as performative background to Beckenham Bubble 2 (July 4, 2011). With the speed of experienced zine-making symposium workshop facilitators to be and to be a book was authored, printed as limited edition, distributed and performed within an hour and a half. to be and to be a book can be read and re-read for content, form and living bookwork properties.

I re-read publications as artwork bits and pieces. In wartime council requisitioned suburban house the present writer lived as small child there was only one book. How it got into the house and why is unknown - The British Countryside in Pictures (Odhams Press, undated).

This formative deprivation of literary ownership has been compensated for - no - overcompensated for, by filling every corner, every shelf and cupboard space in small domestic units over decades with books, zines with sharp rusty staples, comics, and more books. When I re-read publications I mean I read their presence as pieces. A colourfully illustrated but ripped paper dust jacket just about clinging to a plain blue, green, red, brown or black hardbacked cover. Paperbacks-a-plenty - many pristine or well preserved except for bent corners: perhaps creased, torn, stained: perhaps unbound with broken spines, in literal bits and pieces held together clumsily by sellotape, and after a decade, yellowing into unsticky back plastic, in bits and pieces again or hopelessly re-sellotaped. A book-love for the unstitched and unglued through constant referral - all in varying stages of disintegration through age and damp.

Becky Cremin and Ryan Ormonde have eaten their Press Free Press bookworks at a launch and spat out the bits, commodifying bagged results as having identical consumer value as unchewed chapbook version.

All little press art objects now - as preciously fetishistic and uncommodified to an appreciative reader in his or her subjectivity as objective exchange market commodity value is nil to book collectors (way beyond 'poor condition'). Publications reduced to paper and card, ready to throw into the rubbish skip or trashcan recycle. Although comics and zines can be preserved longer in clear mylar bags (polyester resin) archivists of comics and cheap paperbacks will tell you it is still an uphill struggle to preserve wood pulp product.

In recent email appealing for unsoiled copy of Herbarium poetry anthology that could be displayed during a Royal Horticultural Society poetry reading - contributor matt martin writes ... my own copy got rather muddy in the excitement of the launch reading. I was happy about this at the time (it means the book will forever bear traces of the Urban Physic Garden that inspired it).

Curious thing about vegetables submitted in competition for prizes is they don't look edible. Giant leeks on show at RHS when I read yesterday looked differentiated from smaller, mudded, rusty leafed, grit-embedded, weevil-bitten plant I yank from ground. Possible to clean, cook, eat tasty leeks AND grow them for show. I'd argue publications can also be differentiated for reading as books, and for reading as objects. Text read as 'wave' and text read as 'particle'.

London E1 Carnivale launch night stock of Openned Press's first perfect-bound shiny publication 'from The Mountain of California ...' (2010) by R.T.A. Parker (Richard Parker who runs aforementioned 'old new' Crater Press), had spill with overturned wine glass later evening - turning remaining paperbacks into 'objects' (at least in present writer's perception). Openned Press's representative for the night Amy De'Ath carefully and coolly explained details of wine spill incident offering generous discount on stained copies left. Guess Amy, Alex and Steve may have been thinking -

Fuck. Damaged stock. Now I've got to flog'em at fucking discocunts - shittttt!

Similar reaction runs through every small press producer's mind when money, care, hard work and effort goes into reproducing texts in multiple edition then an experience of upset when stock becomes damaged or spoiled in accident or by chance.

'from The Mountain of California ...' is a labour of love - a beautifully written, designed and edited paperback, fully copyrighted and ISBN catalogued. It's the first-ever copy of a printed Openned Press book with brilliant poetry and poetics. I read the content, read & re-read content. Wine-patterned outerbound roséd leaves make it an even greater joy to read
& read and re-read.

2011-10-04T02:55:00.000-07:00

Notes on old new little presses part four
& parts one, two, three, five, six , seven, eight

There was already an air of poetic recognition about The Arthur Shilling Press before Harry Godwin began his imprint in 2009. Almost forty years before, in an earlier incarnation, the present writer had drawn this characterized image for his first comic book. And just as serendipitous, the present writer's father's real forename was 'Arthur'and first primary class teacher at age five a very real 'Miss Shilling'.

In two years the press has swiftly moved from initial London homebaked chapbook, desk top printer, basic stationery paper stock feel; to that of Devon-based little press. Chapbooks commodified as collectables with designated first editions and other limited special editions. Further limited by numbering and author-signings in some instances. Unconventional folding, collation, cover-in-relation-to-content size, and proposed future use of techniques such as woodcut suggests The Arthur Shilling Press is very much part of an old new little press phenomenon.

Godwin, poet and bookwork artist himself, is also founder and publisher of Cleaves international poetry, a journal with bibliographic series ISSN catalogue archive - experimenting with both electronic screen and conventional perfect-bound print-on-demand artzine formats.

Retrofit 'arfur shilling logo (above) with English music hall "half a sixpence, what a picture what a photograph" association appears to have been superseded by typographic and/or print-kit stamped 'a' (space) (stop) (space) 's'.

In the age of the internet UK small presses don't wish to play to solely domestic audiences at local bookfairs or litfests. Post-Brit special Chicago Review generation of poets have achieved wider recognition within an international, expanded European, Anglo/American axis. Old new little presses fill the bill with letter-pressed modernist dissent.

Arguably, there is also suggestion of postmodernist play with pre-electronic mechanical reproduction. Thinking of 'gentleman-amateur' Critical Documents, or 'calendar man' Punch Press.

From its online shop Damn the Caesars/Punch's variegated editions employ what looks like Linotype/Monotype setting on selected paper types, some with added wraps. Using pre-electronic printing methods and complementary styles of advertising availability (or non-availability). Initial impression is one of post-modern commodified hawking. Ordered Punch Press's HAX-Crot to test delivery and own reader response.

At the moment Punch's concretised press seems as if it's zooming out of the Class Consciousness print-shop chapter in EP Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class and zooming into some uncertain poetic future presence.

2011-09-26T23:52:00.000-07:00

Notes on old new little presses part three
& parts one, two, four, five, six , seven, eight

Unless I'm mistaken Bob Cobbing purchased his supplies of sundries for Writers Forum (wf) publishing and New River Project printing from commercial stationery suppliers. Whilst limited in just about every sense of description, wf publications were rarely promoted as limited editions in explicit sales pitch as collectable commodities. Eventual collectability may have been implicit in exchange with coin, but everyone who knew Bob also knew he would generously give wf publications away in a public bar, or perhaps a quick deal for a couple of pints and a malt.

Numbering and cataloguing work seemed crucial to Cobbing, as were obtaining an ISBN for each title, along with inscribed wf print/reprint/anniversary month and year on every small print run.

Cobbing also guided the Association of Little Presses (ALP) away from association with the growing organization for 'small presses' although Bob was happy to table wf publications at small press bookfairs. Another contradiction it seems, but all-purpose 'small press' designation favoured in North America during the late 20c counterculture boom did not always include poetry - the mode Cobbing committed his life to.

Small press zines, comics, and books, many conventionally perfect-bound in imitation of corporate publishing house product were usually content-driven. As long as cheap paper supply, word processor with basic font menu, ink cartridge, printer, stapler and clean work-top for collation was readily available - did it really matter what source and measure of each and every item of production was?

Perhaps "no" but for the old new little press producer the answer is surely "yes".

2011-09-23T07:30:00.000-07:00

Notes on old new little presses part two
& parts one, three, four, five, six , seven, eight

As the few surviving and dedicated UK-based poetry publishers fight to retain arts subsidies (most commercial publishers have long since dropped their loss-making poetry imprints featuring new work: younger generations of literary agents have been taught not to touch poetry with a bargepole) - it's left to university and small presses to take up the slack.

Veer Books celebrates 'unconforming' writing and the present writer was glad to be invited to produce something more than a 'cheap chapbook' a few years back. MJ Weller's Beat generation Ballads pushed the boat right out in terms of production values. Working editor Stephen Mooney and I worked closely for the better part of 2010, learning new techie skills together.

Stephen offered to produce a disk with the book - giving access to audio and video available on 'beat generation ballad' google blog postings. It is on this blog the sequence was originally worked in preliminary format and EGNEP hasn't deleted them. I wasn't sure where this would have gone - YouTube videos are regularly removed by Google and its users - but it would have been great to have my own home'baked mini-movies published with the book. I do have a slight problem with the aesthetics. Disks come with books and 'zines - separate bird-frighteners of bland and ugly plastic. Total absence of integration and I don't know many people who read and re-read CDs /DVDs unless they're ripping burning and copying down the line.

Beat generation Ballads needed online publication to work as an ebook. Existing electronic platforms have strengths, weaknesses, advantages and disadvantages. Not really good enough.

A basic Veer Book is the conventional perfect-bound paperback, and that's what Will Rowe, Stephen, and myself went for. Veer's printing partners make all decisions on paper stock and reproduction process after a pdf is formatted and delivered. "You never know what you're gonna get," as Stephen says.

My wish was for a square bookwork that could be compared to both a slick 'n' shiny printed CD booklet and a vinyl album sleeve. Heaviest card stock for the cover was requested (Out to Lunch's 2010 Smooch Tentet Resolve ?!#@$ has a cardboard cover but that stock had finished). So 2011's Beat generation Ballads looks and feels just like an oversized slickly printed CD booklet they use to tuck into those plastic cases. But Veer reference number 033⅓ provided vinyl association and WATCH OUT FOR THIS GUY! cartoon became random binary invading my text.

Here's email I sent Stephen on receiving copies printed bookwork.

Have you noticed rogue digit "1" makes sudden appearance in column of four

on 'Ballad of Lisa & Pete' page, then single binary 'Unwarned' appearance before final gatecrash at 'poetry professors' 1967 bash

2011-09-20T01:32:00.000-07:00

...the typeface sent me...
(- - - in progress, Frances Kruk)

Notes on old new little presses part one
& parts two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight

Receiving printed zine Herbarium poetry (Capsule Press, 2011) in which present writer contributes, made me think again about 'Notes on an exhibition' written for London's bookartbookshop April 2010 'Home'Baked: literary artzines in the age of the internet' show (see also Openned Zine #1 pdf).

Is Herbarium really a 'zine, or part of a new little press phenomenon? Remembering response to an Ugly Duckling Presse booklet I ordered last year after London's show, I realised I'd left an essential aspect of post-electronic publishing out the picture. The old new little presses.

Dorothea Lasky's Poetry Is Not a Project arrived from The Old American Can Factory in Brooklyn NY, jiffy-packed & mail art address-stamped with brown paper interior wrapping inscribed 'ORIGINAL'. Booklet contained readymade cardboard bookmark; the publication itself part of an imprint Dossier series, quote, The Dossier Series was created to expand the formal scope of the Presse. Guest edited by Ben Fama, booklet is stitch-laced collation with content set in arresting sans-serif titles juxtaposed with serif body type plus illustrations by Sarah Glidden. Something old-fashioned, pre-visual poetics about such image/text divisions. Publication First Edition 2010. No bibliographic information, ISSN/ISBN, or catalogue numbering.

The booklet didn't sit well stuffed on a shelf with hundreds of torn and dog-earred comics and fanzines; dozens of Writers Forum (wf) publications; assorted photocopy poetry/art single sheets & zines accumulated over decades.

I felt much the same about Sean Bonney's Crater Press For The Administration (After Rimbaud).Thought and consideration had gone into making a pamphlet that was 'little press' in an older, pre-zine tradition where size, shape, paper, typesetting, stitching, edition numbering, format designation, method of mechanical reproduction and requirement (or not) of paper knife all play equal part in look, feel, overall presentation and reader reciprocity. Can Crater Press Bonney sit comfortably with ziney Sean 1999-2002 wf's, cul-de-qui, quic_lude, and yt's from the 2000's - hang on, yes, that untitled color card cover to Bonney's the Domestic poem (Canary Woof Press London May 16 2001)is a class act alright.

2011-09-16T00:04:00.000-07:00

" There's a Vanessa for us,

Somewhere a Vanessa for us. "

Mick after Sondheim

image grab from 'Portlandia' YouTube
thanx 4 'Toni' & 'Candace' ht Crot!

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us, or, Lessons To Be Taught sequence

2011-09-10T07:39:00.000-07:00

good day start blog @New York-based platform. thanx 4 tumblrrrrring ht Crot!

2011-09-02T01:18:00.000-07:00

PANDEMONIUM IS SUBURBIA

Poetry Kit (PK) site flagged end watch out post here

Jumoke Verissimo featured PK poet September. Attended xing the line July 2010. Verissimo does it better.

Damn the Caesars a highlighted PK website this month. Richard Owens' analysis august London Riots thru Sean Bonney's poetic razor has concentrated radar PK. More recent 'Michael Cross His Haecceities' post @damnthecaesars includes Taylor Brady's "research as song, singing as search" comment on Cross. Good tune to go out on.

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us, or, Lessons To Be Taught sequence

2011-08-30T02:39:00.000-07:00

Proposed cover image to Songs Our Teachers Learn Us, or, Lessons To Be Taught - sequence envisaged as home'baked PDF supplement to Veer paperback Beat generation Ballads. If techs can be sorted and this 'docu-track' works - be second published book using present artist's google blog/comment box as workshop space.

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us,

or,

Lessons To Be Taught

2011-08-18T00:50:00.000-07:00

An August national psychogeographic

© Politiken, Onsdag 10 August 2011

2011-07-15T07:22:00.000-07:00

BigeTs

'Israel is not a fascist state, Hannah. It's a democracy with full human rights.'

'You would say that. The Earth Corporation have bought you off with an academic title, so you can defend the existing system. You won't destroy a system that has made you the great Professor. It's not in your interest...'

'It doesn't stop me being critical of the system,' Wilson interrupted again.

Frederick Burrell Possessed (Home'Baked Books by Michael John Weller, 2010).

With Beckenham Bubble over, present writer considering 'bubble-vents', local and international politics, education, fees, cuts, radical poetics, and ultra-localism of place.

And who exactly is teacher, and who is pupil/student, in Weller's current work-in-progress Songs Our Teachers Learn Us, or, Lessons To Be Taught. No question mark in poetics.

Here's some question marks. If the writer was to consider post-graduate course when reaching rapidly rising state retirement pension age - what British university? Which course? Would artist/writer be viewed as consumer? Can learning have cash value? How to measure new learning when memory storage and rapid recall ebbs with age. Writer-in-residence MJ scribbles artist into local U3A with one sweep blue biro.

From among writer's first self-publications Ain't Bin To No Art School (1979-80) to Space Opera (visual associations, 1999) up to "fics from the sticks" Slow Fiction (Home'Baked Books by Michael John Weller, 2010) experience of twentieth century English education at primary, secondary, further and higher is ripped to shreds by 'Michael J. Weller, English novelist', (Slow Fiction Character & Scene Guide, 2010). Fictionalized institution New Olympus University appears in twenty-three tales wellerverse set 3World in 4Time.

Realtime summer months packed with local litfests and uni graduate shows. Thursday, July 14, the writer attended Goldsmith's University of London Department of Art's postgraduate exhibition (Ben Pimlott Building and Laurie Grove Baths). View Master of Fine Art (MFA) degrees in Fine Art, Art Writing, Curating (Mick had been watching Mike curate two evenings @Becfest. 'Didn't realise you needed a degree in curating,' Mick grins. Class clown.) Rowena Easton's poetry as Art Writing appeared on artist's modernist female poet radar @Ken Edwards' blog entry here, subsequently doing it better from first July 2010 edition & Holly Pester...

Post-grad Exhibition different from southeast London reality nearly quarter century before when Hirst and other Goldsmiths undergraduates BA'd from Young British Artists to Britart establishment 2010s. Beginning to understand why younger generation artists, writers, poets, critics take career prospects and academic qualifications seriously. Can new generation poet/artist make it without university post-grad, sustained academic publication, or peer review? Can Bob Cobbing's stuff be academicized? Question mark question marks - pejorative 'anti-intellectual' rubber ball easy throw. Difficult catch.

At back of Laurie Grove Baths SE14 exhibition space, writer somewhat bemused by request to "open up" canvas bag for concealed "weapons". Looks like wired-up Jewish Community Security Trust (CST) presence for Noam Edry's MFA degree work in Fine Art. And Mick thought Noam was a bloke (Chomsky, geddit? Mick could have checked website) or Noam's YouTube ID. Fine artist Edry was dressed for her opening in an immaculate white suit. Strikingly beautiful, rather like John and Yoko (Social Reality Earthtime 1969). Peace Now brothers and sisters.

Next to entranced in-on-the-joke security fellow chill-out space with Arab-Israeli coffee stand.

But surprise, Noam Edry's bubble-space looks hit by Hamas rockets fired from Gaza. Something of a happening-vent here. Holistic therapist massaging (mostly) female attendees' 'left sides'; working tv set playing video loops from rubble skip; canvas paintings daubed in hand-paint, same calligraphics as venue wall graffiti, recognizable from Edry's handwritten artzine "Conversation Pieces: Scenes of Unfashionable Life".

Post cards, agit-prop t-shirts given away to persons brave enough (with UK uni boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement countered by new Israeli government 'Boycott Law' targeting Israeli jews, palestinians, arabs, working class, Settlement-protesting bourgeois democrat-citizen-dissenters too) to public catwalking wearing slogan
I COME FROM THE MOST HATED PLACE ON EARTH (SECOND TO IRAN).

Bubble-within-bubble screens twenty-minute looped interview - in effect a filmed self-portrait of Jewish/Israeli/Zionist artist Edry's experience girl's English school education- to- Israel Defense Forces warzone soldier- to-post-grad "Goldsmiths Made Me a Fundamentalist".

And maybe all these young Israeli soldier-girls want is "cool" meaning simply okay as in normal; dressing sharp 'n' smart, looking nice, and catching town bus for a date without getting head blown off.

& Noam Edry does it better.

~~no question mark~~

2011-07-06T07:09:00.000-07:00

Hello Mike
Thought I'd let you know I turned up at Beckenham Library at 18.30 tonight to find it closed. Tried front doors and back doors which were locked, and peered inside to see no sign of movement. What happened?
- email from Leonard Emmerson, former Beckenham Scribbler, participant in Beckenham Bubble 1, and expected attendee at Beckenham Bubble 2, July 4th 2011.

reply mail -

hi Len, as far as I understand Beckenham Library "closed" doors to public at 6:00pm, tho front door was left ajar for pushing open until 6:30pm when vent started. Did you try pushing door?

Meant to 'look' closed but secretly be open!

Notes on a local literary festival, part nine
(parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight)

Two Becfest vents (I like descriptory "vents" - which may originate with Joseph Walton, ie, vent: slit at the back of a poetry jacket) have been cancelled this week. An audience of two turned up for one visiting author, and a second author cancelled as pre-bookings didn't reach minimum of twenty-five necessary to make visit viable. 'Literary festivals - who needs 'em,' laughs Mick.

Both Beckenham place-bubbles were planned for spaces within the public library lending section at end of evening for continuation after closing. Participants and attendees thought Bubble 1 an excellent night.

Hi Mike, I didn't get photos for Bubble 2 - I was too absorbed but I have a picture of the break during Bubble 1!

Vanessa Williamson

Assistant Group Manager (west)

Beckenham Library

0208 650 7292

vanessa.williamson@bromley.gov.uk

Vanessa, facilitator of Bubble 1 & 2, and the writer as organiser, agreed on draft for evenings (viewed as advanced docs by participants) without going into finer details of bubble-space.

Bubble Two took place in closed reference section - there were several pre-bookings - and Vanessa needed comply with housekeeping, health & safety requirements, use of local state venue after public closing. In the hour and a half Openned, Natalie d'Arbeloff, Leila Dewji, and press free press occupied space and made of it a vent.

On receiving copy of press free press's limited edition 'independence day self published and be blessed' text, the writer - being performative - improvised for about thirty seconds with to be and to be a book: then press free press read and voiced their text - made and printed during the Beckenham Bubble - to finally burst it.

As bubble-within-bubble, Two worked as praxis. Leila, organiser of borough-wide Bromley Literary Festival and Acorn Independent Press participant mailed later -

One of the reasons we put the festival on was to find out what interesting literary activities and groups would come to the surface and I've really enjoyed meeting you and your fellow Beckenham bubble pals.

That's total nine notes. Beck Fest end.

2011-07-02T03:17:00.000-07:00

(Natalie) d'Arbeloff's uneven practice - working within, through, and against strata, suggests activity of an itinerant 'rhizomath'.
The Making of Slow Fiction (Home'Baked Books by Michael John Weller, 2010)

Notes on a local literary festival, part eight

(parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, nine)

On June 23 2011, in London, three face-to-face consecutive 'bubbles' of linguistically innovative poetics and poetry "clashed". Keyed here as events A, B, and C.

A) Contemporary Romanian poets
B) Special poetry event at Parasol Unit in association with exhibition of paintings by Jakub Julian Ziółkowski
C) Crossing the Line special at The Horse Hospital

Mike W, in attempt to experience poetics of 'bubble chasing' - left 'bubble' B, reaching 'bubble' C during break, to find fellow attendee Chris G also reaching C during break - after attending 'bubble' A.

As printed publications and E-readings, or blog entry poetries, find own multiple niche-pockets of followers, viewers, readers, and collectors - so gig or poetry sociates, hearers and attendees, seem likely be drawn to face-to-face bubble-space of choice in simultaneous retinue "bubbling bubbling bubbling, bubbling, bubbling" in words of late Gil-Scott Heron, recently sampled by Kanye West on 'Lost in the World' track from My Dark Twisted Fantasy album.

Second Beckenham Bubble with invited guests planned for Monday July 4th with other expected UK poetry bubbles also coinciding in London, Bury, Cambridge, Brighton, Luton, Manchester, Withington, etc. But apart from Lisa Appiganesi @London Literature Festival are there other 'bubbles' in London? Is there no free poetry in New York City on Independence Day?

Bubble-space may be moved from small screened lending area to Library reference section as July 4 evening time-space bubble poetic concentrates at London's capital litfest, smaller suburban Bromley litfest plus smaller Beckenham Bubble within that.

So next London 'bubble-chasing' evening of poetics looks as if it may be Wednesday July 6th here and here.

2011-06-30T01:06:00.000-07:00

Kid Doctor Clinics (KDC) encouraged book clubs for readers - not writers groups for authors. For people to have unrealistic aspirations and expectations meant a lot of hard work for the Earth Corporation's social engineers and volunteer armies. KDC encouraged amateur dramatic societies for real-life social networks.
War in Heaven (Home'Baked Books by Michael John Weller, 2010)

Notes on a local literary festival, part seven

(parts one, two, three, four, five, six, eight, nine)

Although not formally invited to read or perform at Beckenham Bubble one - the writer, as part-organiser/curator of evening responded to request "do something" by improvising themes Fics from the Sticks bookwork.

1990's Beckenham writers group The Scribblers killed off through fictionalization as 'Addingcombe Nibs'. Not sure what audience, some former Scribblers, made of this.

Curious reading Yeats' 1893 'The Rose of Peace' opening 'Now Here's A Tale...' (Slow Fiction) to congregated Shortlands Poetry Circle (est 1911). Sometimes voice go beyond estuarine twang. Could be library bubble-space effect.

@bromleylitfest Bromley Lit Fest
had a fab evening with the Beckenham Bubble at Becfest!

tweet 'n' all

2011-06-28T14:22:00.000-07:00

Notes on a local literary festival, part six

(parts one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, nine)

Most events in Becfest brochure have pretty image of authors accompanying text. Not this one.

At Bromley Fest Tomfoolery launch two weeks ago organisers concerned not one single booking for Beckenham Bubble one.

2011-06-24T03:26:00.001-07:00

Notes on a local literary festival, part five

(parts one, two, three, four, six, seven, eight, nine)

'Richmal Crompton, Enid Blyton, and Edith Nesbit are three giants of children's literature,' said Michelle Jolly.
'And like you, they all live and work near South London, Kent and Surrey perimeters of the M25,' said Lucy.
'No, they don't live there now, silly - they are all dead!' Michelle laughed to her comedienne friend, Lucy Greenwood.
Graphic Novel, (Home'Baked Books by Michael John Weller, 2010)

The Scribblers had become a marketable writers' group set up in the local 1997 UK reality of The Studio building - an experimental arts, media and comedy workshop centre in Beckenham; still under Bromley local authority control in honeymoon months of Blair's government.

In bigger national picture of arts council lottery funding for literature - Apples and Snakes' The Popular Front Of Contemporary Poetry (which included Bob Cobbing) and Iain Sinclair-edited Conductors of Chaos (which didn't) - were the two must-read anthologies for aspiring creative writers of that era.

These volumes were bookended to beginning of Smash Hits reader JK Rowling's Harry Potter books, Time-Warner America Online, Kyoto Climate Change Summit, weird religiosity surrounding the death of the Princess of Wales, and building of a celebratory Millennium Dome in England.

As reward for their success The Scribblers were given performance training by Apples and Snakes with an eye on their touring circuit. When doing character don't be afraid of putting on a different voice. Complete contradiction to what writer was to understand couple years later at Bob Cobbing's Writers Forum workshops.

Use voice to sound text.

A Bromley grouping - not wishing to participate as trained Scribblers in London's The Word Festival 1999, played a local borough library for free instead.

Writing as word. Writing as world. Writing as read. Writing as unlimited.

2011-06-23T01:26:00.000-07:00

Notes on a local literary festival, part four

(parts one, two, three, five, six, seven, eight, nine)

But who is this Mike Weller? Where is he exactly? And what is the nature of the realit(ies) he lives in? Why does he feel as if he is a character in somebody else's fiction?

Space Opera developed from this ...

A creative writers' group The Scribblers at Studio Beckenham was attracting interest and funding - and from the beginning of 1997 I was able to test reactions through public reading of Space Opera as work in progress and display its graphics content. The Studio Scribblers experience was rewarding through adopting a performance persona of live storyteller to receptive audience. Arts Council of England Lottery-funding of The Scribblers anthology On the Shelf and Off the Wall vol II meant I was able to extract a section of Space Opera for inclusion.
The Making of Slow Fiction (Home'Baked Books by Michael John Weller, 2010)

Receiving an invitation to participate in a local literary festival - the writer spent days humming and ha'ing whether to agree to take part, or not. Identical response before cautiously looking in on creative writers' group, short bus ride away, fifteen years before - the Beckenham Scribblers.

In 1996 something was in the air in southeast London. The writer was often able to identify 'things in the air' on his doorstep. A peculiar charge of localized preternatural energy perhaps; a combination of several extraordinary coincidences, maybe. Vitalized synchronicity associated within scribbling process of sudden collective realization, definitely. Like Beckenham Arts Lab formation quarter century before.

1969 different time-space; 1997 different time-space again; 2011 different time-space yet again.

Then afterwards, the shaping movement of scribblers into tangible entity, losing bits deemed unnecessary to working model. A group of writers serious about their business emerges. Poetry is composed and read without comment or criticism. Brand names appear in fragments of text. A suggestion even of Scribbler commodification. Essential if product be sold arts market society.

'Beckenham' as place dropped from name. Too local. 'The Scribblers' formed: band of UK writers and poets gigging at Studio Beckenham, introduced like support band before going into individualized solo reader's performance - warm-up acts on southeast London Studio literary nights featuring Adrian Mitchell, John Cooper Clarke, Labi Siffre, Alex King, and the "irrepressible" Mike Weller.

'Island of Dreams' from Space Opera, MJ Weller 1997

2011-06-22T00:54:00.000-07:00

Notes on a local literary festival, part three

(part one, two, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine)

While Acorn's Bromley litfest's brochure is a professionally designed and printed production, Becfest's brochure is a 'home'baked' publication. Desk-top and library table one-staple collation job.

Although Bromley's festival has no big literary names to draw crowds from outside town, it is big on celebrating popular generic forms (crime, thriller, romance, history, travel) and broad attractions necessary for appeal to people of all ages (authors' book talks, literary pub quizzes, improvised comedy, under-18's open mic, Shakespeare in the Park). There is very little Leila and Ali Dewji's Acorn Independent Press don't know about the history of old-fashioned books (they've done their homework), modern electronic publishing, possibilities of self-publishing - especially for the aspiring novelist with an eye on getting that first airport paperback downloaded to thousands of tablet screens.

When Acorn proudly announced 2011 was Bromley's first literary festival it was kinda true. Bromley had participated in London's Festival of Literature The Word, Spread the Word, The Blurb in years gone by - and Bromley 'The Library' have held local summer festival of books and reading as an annual event since. Becfest was planned to have been a 2011 continuation of this modest celebration. Then Acorn's plans for the first Bromley Literature Festival came out of soapy water like a big inspirational bubble.

What is curious about Bromley is that its northern pockets - West Beckenham, Penge, Anerley - have produced writers as much as readers and book consumers. Writers have lived in the area as residents. Children's writers particularly attracted to Beckenham's leafy suburbs and calming River Beck. Enid Blyton began the whole global kidlit squad from a detached house in the borough.

In Bromley's southern semi-rural expanses Richmal Crompton dreamed up the munificent Just William and Edith Nesbitt named south-east London locations in her novels.

The writer's "Openned Letter to Allen Fisher on the question of poetry, place & poetics" (veer off, Veer Books, 2008) continues discourse on naming.

2011-06-21T04:24:00.000-07:00

Notes on a local literary festival, part two

(& parts one, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine)

Brochure cover left is 2011 Bromley litest's and cover right is 2011 BecFest's.

During next week or so, EGNEP's blog will go inside the BecFest brochure. This doesn't mean Bromley Literary Festival (BLF) and its brochure isn't worthy of interior investigation, far from it. In fact in this post, a brief deconstruction of Bromley's brochure is attempted by Bromley's writer-in-residence, MJ.

Distinguished arty, theatrical and bookish sponsors - local, national and dotcommy have their logos reproduced and Ladyzone, Orpington's "Ladies Only Gym with a difference" advertise.

Bromley litfest is sooooo girly! Girlier than an emilyfest!! Girlier than Redell Olsen's Sharp Exhalations, Andrea Brady Poetry Lady and & Holly Pester Does It Better rolled into one!!!

Professional industry Bromley litfest organisers Acorn Independent Press, a local brother and sister team, Ali & Leila Dewji, are sooooo young! And they have sooooo many top literary contacts! Global literary agents any aspiring novelist would die for, nay, kill for. How? Why?

Leila and Ali are younger than many creative writing graduates performing at emilyfest bubbles anywhere, everywhere, anytime. Bromley's Tomfoolery pub at Bromley litfest's launch night had as many under thirties as Shoreditch's Foundry in the late 2000's.

What are they all doing in Bromley?

2011-06-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

Notes on a local literary festival, part one
(& parts two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine)

New media politics of networked space and new communities of interest, from global and local perspectives, seem likely to lead to more scenes within scenes, bubbles within bubbles - organized in the UK around county and district, town and city suburbs, and within region and locality.
- Mike Weller, 'Home'Baked: literary artzines in the age of the internet' (Openned Zine #1, 2010)

And just over one year later, the writer of this published monograph is invited to curate two evenings for Beckenham Literary Festival - the 2011 BecFest to be held within a bubble-space, in the open public lending section of Beckenham library.

BecFest has been organized both simultaneously, and within, a big borough-wide Bromley Literary Festival (Beckenham is one suburb of London's largest borough and dormitory town).

Both festivals are taking place as major shake-ups of Bromley's Library services occur, as they are in other parts of the UK. This means threatened closures, borough mergers, and library staff redundancies.

Bromley Literary Festival seems, to the writer, to be taking place in one locality and reality. BecFest in another locality and reality. Neither locality or reality has any notion of what the present writer's practise is. But a formal invitation to take part in some way arrived by old-fashioned letter post. The writer thinks the library service may think the writer a local historian because they did buy copies of his Harriet Staunton: A Victorian Murder Ballad (visual associations, 1999) for the reference section of its borough branches.

The invitation was not a specific invitation to read or perform. So the writer will not read or perform.

So does the writer agree to take part or not?

Yes, for the purposes of testing bubble-within-bubble-within-bubble theory in practice. This will be carried out by creating a third reality. Beckenham Bubble number one and two. Linguistically innovative place-bubbles.

Beckenham librarian organizing BecFest, Vanessa Williamson, is encouraging about place-bubbles. There is perhaps a sense of last opportunity for poetry and poetics to be discussed and performed in a public space without pressure of providing profitable returns.

'Until Breton and Trotsky's Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art is distributed free to everyone and the workers' democratic government is formed,' whispers ever-optimistic Mick.

On evenings Wednesday, June 29 and Monday, July 4th - there is likely to be numerous poetry events elsewhere - in cafés, pub-function rooms, university faculties, poetry-hegemonized venues - perhaps other libraries and litfests. In these realities nothing clashes when bubbles burst

€#*@$!

2011-06-09T01:31:00.000-07:00

Sophisticated Boom Boom

The writer hadn't attended voiceworks (showcase of new music for voice) before. For several years this initiative, coordinated by Birkbeck Contemporary Poetics Research Centre with Guildhall School of Music & Drama, has been performed in association with Wigmore Hall - London's major international venue for song.

"The girls were wearing formals, the boys were wearing ties" in the words of Shadow Morton's song written for The Shangri-Las.

2011's performance in May featured seven songs including texts by poets SJ Fowler and James Wilkes. The writer had only just posted "Nature Boy" to this blog when Mr Wilkes explained all about an Urban Physic Garden plant project he was curating poetry contributions towards.

Delighted with possibility of designing new "nature poem" present writer plumbed for caraway plant - perhaps because this was first spice consumed by writer as small boy tasting his grandmother's caraway-seeded cake.

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us sequence

2011-05-24T23:03:00.000-07:00

Nature Boy

Stem Harvest (writers forum, September 2002) was among last batch of chapbooks published by Bob Cobbing just before he died. Stem Harvest was subtitled "Nature Poems". I'm not sure Bob liked the book that much.

In fact I don't think Stem Harvest has been archived among Writers Forum publications. Book contains sequence 'De Eye On The Science That', 'Nature Boy', 'Flowers', 'Three Cells' and 'Leek Legion'. Though seeming end-of-era London-based avant-printing, Stem Harvest wears forward-looking simian smile.

Within final year of Cobbing-led WF publications - song 'It's a Small World After All' was translated into DNA fragments and imported into the genome of a living bacterium.

Possibilities of science and technology in the wake of genome cloning has been explored by the Fishbone Initiative (collective nod perhaps to community collaborative/anonymous science workers) - Deciphering Human Chromosone 16: We Report Here (information as material, 2007).

First referenced on Peter Philpott's Great Works, an introduction to performative possibilities of tuned-in poets Richard Makin and Sarah Jacobs was one highlight London's 'Sundays at the Oto' couple years ago.

Christian Bök's The Xenotext Experiment (with genetic vocabulary 'thread' and 'strand' already blogosphere-speak) has animated dead-clay into new encoded life. Real, virtual and poetic.

Curious thing is, programming seems counter-intuitive to designing poetry.

Amount of exacting characters, symbols and spaces required to make codes work seems disproportionate as literary practise.

But if long rule-based pattern encryption is required to make poem feed off its own organism - poetics of scripton & cybertexton may finally have come of age.

jolt

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us sequence

2011-05-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

brief history of paper doll cut-ups, cut-outs & cut-offs in changing times

"...but even the president of the United States and his wife sometimes must have to stand in their underwear without any visible sign of genitalia..."

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us sequence

2011-05-18T02:03:00.000-07:00

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us on twitter

christianbok Christian Bok

Finished reading: "Star Maker" by Olaf Stapledon—(a real drug-trip…).
17 May

2011-05-17T01:36:00.000-07:00

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us without sound

"here individual performed"

2011-05-11T04:44:00.000-07:00

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us on the Internet

Thank you, Sarah.

2011-05-07T15:32:00.000-07:00

Four reasons to watch out for this Weller guise

...blogging, twittering, eBooking digital character EGNEP (egnep); the lively character named Mike Weller; or Mick Weller the Earth Corporation's own facebooked yellow Weller; the home'baking self-publisher, Michael John Weller; and the authorial Bromley writer-in-residence character named MJ - have been existing in lower four realities of the wellerverse. A vacuum where shit fills space left by divine inspiration.

If notion of 'wellerverse' sounds mad (one or two of Paul Weller's fans may live in a muso's 'Wellerverse' but that is a somewhat different fairy tale) to blog visitors here, most likely means unfamiliarity with Michael J. Weller's Space Opera and Slow Fiction bookworks.

To explain. Firstly, Michael Weller is an elderly, dull, boring London suburbanite with estaurine sarf landhan glottal stop sans caressive mic-skills or any velvety whisper-lilt for that matter. Heard south London voice shouting up parochial southeast London spiritualist church on local commercial radio station once, sandwiched between DJ promoting carpet bargains & traffic news. Ugly utterances not poetry at all. A less contextualized poetical discourse would be hard to imagine. Yet wasn't hard to imagine remembered voice could have been that of ventriloquized Weller.

Secondly, Michael is invited to help organize two evenings for 'Beck Fest', a Beckenham Library festival tacked onto first ever 2011 Bromley Literary Festival in June and July. This, the writer hastens to add, is not an invitation for any of the Weller guys to read or perform.

Thirdly, to ensure local artist and writer couldn't become more localized if he tried - Mike Weller has been featured as Penge 'artist and poet' resident for Bromley Cuts Concern's (Bromley Against the Cuts) media campaign in local newspaper.

And fourthly, to cap it all, an 87-year old woman named Freda (is that spelled correctly?) sitting outside local café called Mike over to the table she was sharing with younger friends.

"I saw your picture in the paper. Are you really a poet? Is that true? Yes? Oh, how wonderful! Do you know Walter de la Mare lived in Penge? Wonderful man. Nobody has heard of him these days. He's forgotten. Such a shame."

"Don't worry," Michael said. "He'll be back."

What?

Why on earth did Michael say that?

Because it connected with something lost, faded, obscure, oddly local but English in modern POETRY kit way, as one poetic slipstream among many - networked globally via internet.

Joyfully and mischievously playing on once-bright realities. And without appealing to nostalgia, anti-modernity, or post-modernism.

2011-04-14T02:54:00.000-07:00

(capital)ism on the island of Ireland

Linguistically innovative DOH! publicising exhibition in Belfast

Downright Bockedy minimovie from Dublin

2011-04-12T04:54:00.000-07:00

& growing samanthas do it better

Realising I'd left out my old Apples & Snakes performance trainer Samantha Coerbell (always spelled instructor's surname wrong - probably because the writer was never taught how to use a mic by 'England's Leading Organisation for Performance Poetry') from earlier editions &hpdib Michael J added her name to'samantaha' page and entire page design unit of chapbook collapsed. So not only need mick-sans-mic contend with 'Hardware Error 502' the old fellow has to re-design new edition.

Nah, not really - extra page or two that's all, keeping pics of polyester sheets & OD'd gurlesque bunny which deserves its own post doncha think...where is that drunk 'n' stoned bunny?
Here's the beauty, as big as I can make baby for blogspot

2011-04-02T02:13:00.000-07:00

S Club 7 Uncut UK

2011-03-28T07:59:00.000-07:00

/new fairy tales/psychopoetic landscapes/old superlatives/

I have... catalogued in alphabetical order, an A-Z dictionary of the most common superlatives, phrases of expression, and emotive words used in texts to transfer feelings associated with the selling of products and ideas. Often the same superlatives turn up from time to time to promote and sell the arts, including books and exhibitions.
from 'Three chapbooks' (Visual Associations, visual associations, 2001)

Claim a Free Wheeler was penultimate Writers Forum Weller publication by Bob Cobbing, June 2001. Title formed one part of 3-chapbook display triptych along with Hitcloh Ilk and Visual Associations (visual associations, 2001).

End of era when 'mainstream' still oppostional to 'avant-garde', 'underground', 'alternative', 'experimental' or 'innovative' poetries - unified organizationally through London's Writers Forum and UK university reading scenes.

Hub of differing models of performative writing all 'linguistically innovative' yet using different methods, techniques, like pop and rock 'genres', 'sub-genres' and 'styles' used by myspace x-factor generation singers and musicians.

All collapsed into multiple competing slipstreams now. Poetry wars of old (battles of cultural manouevre) replaced by conflicts of geographical time-place/juxtaposition. Poetry scenes within poetry scenes. Bubbles within bubbles. Web 2.0's prosumers & consumers jockeying for juxtaposition in blogs and self-publishing.

Argument introduced in 2010's Openned Zine #1 short monograph 'Home'Baked: literary artzines in the age of the internet'.

Pictured few years earlier as visual poetic in hardcore/copy Sean Bonney's & Frances Kruk's yt communication bulletin.

'myindividualisedspace.globalized@'
(war pigs:::, yt communication, 2006)

'Climb a Free Wheeler is intended as an exercise in poetics, not a dictionary of usage', Weller wrote in 'Three chapbooks' essay.

Word usage issue @recent Blue Bus #47 when Sean B questioned word 'beauty' during performance of lines from Tuli Kupferberg's Give me the music-makers - scored on sheet as '...When beauty barks I heel... (repeat x4).

"I'm not saying that, am I?"* posed Sean in middle of unrehearsed public reading. Although printed on yellow and pink cards text wasn't scored as 'When beauty barks I heil' (text-score version Kupferberg had not discouraged in his lifetime).

'Beauty' as beat generation hippy ideology something Sean rejected. Paul Sutton confronted me "You bullied Sean into reading that, didn't you?" laughing his bleedin' head off. Parts of this gig were filmed.* In twelve years of performance, believe only one or two short readings of present writer filmed, video'd, or saved. Documents tend to end up wiped or re-cycled with other performers.

Category 'B' (detail performance score in revision, Climb A Free Wheeler, Writers Forum, 2001)

Speaking of light bulbs and dark times - what about 'B' category superlative, 'brilliant'? Many things described as 'brill' aren't brilliant. Some 'brilliant' slam poetry, for example, is not brilliant. I've heard JH Prynne's poetry described as 'brilliant'. Is that 'brilliant' as in brilliant or 'brilliant' as in brill!?

Did I read or dream I read Ryan Ormonde's and Becky Cremin's description materiality of language within psychic ritualistic states being oblique,forward slash like? Can't find pressfreepress source for this. Ne'er mind.

* Vimeo'd Bonney/Weller voicing 'Give me the music-makers' here

2011-03-25T03:32:00.000-07:00

Disabled By Embedding Request: 503 (Check for pap[er ja/

2011-03-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

Hardware Error: 502 (Check for paper jams)

After showing home'baked desk top printer posh MJ Weller Beat generation Ballads book from Veer, printer now in hissy fit and won't print properly. Started playing up March edition & Holly Pester Does It Better with scary 'Hardware Error 502'. With machine-envy on high jealousy scale, could be end of Michael John Weller's Home'Baked Books (old series).

With j/j hastain & "trapped under printing jam" goat far dt doing it better, planned April &hpdib edition machine had better work.

2011-03-10T00:08:00.000-08:00

beat generation ballads re-remembered

Began as digital sandpit experiment at this very blogspot, now turned into commodity on great University of London Veer label, stored among collection of fave 10" vinyl albums like Sonny boy Williamson's LE GRAND CHANTEUR DE BLUES ET SPÉCIALISTE DE L'HARMONICA "JAZZ CLASSICS" No 17 .
"Hey, wait a moment, there's no wax inside this bleedin' album. No disk. Nowt to download. You call this poetry?", says Mick Weller. "Looks more like blown-up parody of insert booklet stuck inside retro nineties cd to me."
"You gotta imagine wax, Mick. "
033⅓ MJ Weller – ‘Beat generation Ballads’ (Veer, 2011)

Mixed, engineered & produced by Stephen Mooney and Will Rowe.
15GBP direct from Veer and all good record shops

'Give me the music makers...'

Tuli Kupferberg (1923-2010) does it better

2011-03-06T01:38:00.000-08:00

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us on youtube

2011-03-04T02:09:00.000-08:00

& better & better & better & better

HomeBaking printing of title March, the author realises since first edition July 2010 at least half-dozen modernist female poets entering book's radar monthly. Not counting pseudonyms, Joseph Walton's heteronyms, and other rogue males. And dear departures from earth require birth/death years added.

Alliteration-based content and page format units only just holding as published poem. By July 2011 text may turn into unpublishable sound score directory.

2011-02-23T09:00:00.000-08:00

a beat generation ballad time forgot

I'm so moved by human geniuses. These two are invincible!
(YouTube comment)
...but not perhaps their finest moment (egnep's comment)

2011-02-13T23:42:00.000-08:00

good lettering

John Robbins' Dublin-based Downright Bockedy was one of several small press imprints featured in 'Home'baked: literary artzines in the age of the internet' exhibition last year. Narrative artist, writer and sagacious graphics critic - Robbins is also professional lettering artist for comic strips and graphic novels (cf).
John Robbins' Birmingham Post interview

2011-02-06T10:00:00.000-08:00

Mayakovsky shouts
(for three voices)

the dirty work, the clean work, the sampled work

(extract) the dirty work

ACTION
ACTION
ACTION

(extract) the clean work

entertain
entertain
entertain

(extract) the sampled work

Lady, yes, you Vladimir
Lady, yes, you Vladimir
Lady, yes, you Vladimir

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us sequence

2011-02-01T04:43:00.000-08:00

Questions and answers

20th century electronic revolution in communications taken for granted by anyone using keyboard today to make media - newspapers or blogs like EGNEP's linguistically innovative €#*@$?! Does this mean revolution of productive forces affected historical change in Marxist sense? Was change from hotmetal to electronic progressive for working class?

Was Wapping fight 25 years ago (eg here) just about ownership of means? Laclau argued not and GA Cohen changed his mind from 'yes' to 'no' in development of 'analytical' marxism. In Laclau's case he'd had already begun questioning whether working class were historical actors of change. What are social relations of production in comunications present age. What mean for practising poets? The problem of working class as historical subject in Wappling battle is complicated by Murdoch/News Corporation's ownership of social entertainment media (ie Myspace used by millions including poets like EGNEP).And what about nature of social relations and ownership of Google, Facebook or Twitter? Platform used (eg here) as (almost) second nature? My_____ profile as site of contradiction

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us sequence

2011-01-28T04:32:00.000-08:00

bad lettering

Whoever lettered this thing put a stupidly gigantic word balloon on top of a character's face, despite the fact that there's a huge open spot just slightly to the left of where it sits now. And considering that the background looks on close examination like it might be a photograph of a hallway that's been run through a few filters, I think it's safe to say that it could've used a little covering up. Instead, the problem was solved with a transparency, which at best makes Mike here look like some kind of cyborg, and at worst makes it look like we're reading his dialogue through a glass of water.

Either way, it's jarring, which is what bad lettering does: It pulls you out of the story and puts an obstacle between the reader and the content, and considering that "Twilight" has a very good chance of being the first comic a lot of people read, that constitutes a pretty huge problem.

2011-01-27T01:02:00.000-08:00

Its in cosmic freeganism stopping tracks

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us sequence

2011-01-16T23:44:00.000-08:00

On poems, thoughts, and things

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us sequence

2011-01-10T00:28:00.000-08:00

Forces' sweetheart

Romanticized 20th century modernism, in gothic mode,
masquerading as surreal 1979 britpop single

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us sequence

2011-01-05T00:42:00.000-08:00

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us on youtube

2011-01-02T08:36:00.000-08:00

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us on youtube

Tagged "NEW SONG!!!" Shem Booth's All that I know posted to Artists of the Resistance Facebook group, flagged to simpsonized Mick Weller faceache account. Embedded here for simple reason it's among Mick's earliest 2011 hotmails.

Mick writes, twenty-five youtube hits time of posting so still quite new. And artist who composed it only born in nineteen eighty-two.

2010-12-27T01:02:00.000-08:00

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us on youtube

Judy Garland holiday double (song #2)

2010-12-24T01:32:00.000-08:00

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us on youtube
Judy Garland holiday double (song #1)

2010-12-21T14:20:00.000-08:00

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us on youtube

2010-12-15T05:40:00.000-08:00

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us on youtube

when modes of music change

2010-12-09T00:19:00.000-08:00

2010-12-08T01:22:00.000-08:00

~~this video contains content from vevo it is restricted from playback on certain sites~~

e-ing fics from the sticks for wellerverse wordpress blog.

visual association from TRADeMARK©'s take on Kanye West

thank you, Mark

2010-11-29T05:06:00.001-08:00

Come hither

YouTube video without moving image (without any image at all if near subliminal flash discounted. How many youtube video blanks are there?). Against hithered black, digital photograph of Walter de la Mare's old house Beckenham/Penge juxtaposed.

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us sequence.

2010-11-26T04:09:00.000-08:00

Barricade!

reprinted as chapbook - updated as 'free-to-view' ebook

2010-11-21T02:02:00.000-08:00

virtual destroydon (a newer localism)

Friday, November 19, 2010, 08:00

Coulsdon 'in mourning' as Cane Hill hospital is destroyed by fire

By joanna till and ross lidbetter joanna.till@essnmedia.co.uk

... derelict Cane Hill hospital has been virtually destroyed by a blaze that ripped through the site...mystery surrounds the cause of the fire at the former mental asylum, but police are not treating it as suspicious at this stage... extent of the damage was being assessed this week, but the Fire Brigade estimates around 80 per cent of the administration building was damaged...iconic clocktower has been completely destroyed after it crashed through into the roof...

psychogeography of rubble (an older localism)

2010-11-13T05:21:00.000-08:00

the new localism

2010-10-30T03:26:00.000-07:00

the mouths of poets

Among fans contributing drawings and articles to "The Arbiter" was Sam Stelling. Another fan was novelist MJ Weller who'd written 'The Doomed Boy' - first in a quartet of books featuring quadrophrenic cockney character, Mike Weller.

- Michael John Weller, "(His) Story Of English Superheroes", Slow Fiction: twenty-three tales 2001-2010 (Home'Baked Books, 2010)

return of character (2) to ~~television~~

'Island of Dreams' from Space Opera, Michael J. Weller, (Visual Associations, 1997)

2010-10-22T01:51:00.000-07:00

2010-10-09T01:46:00.000-07:00

Cleaves on ~~television~~

Beowulf Cartoon, MJ Weller (Writers Forum, 2004)

Cleaves international poetry journal is introducing new poetic psychogeographies - a new map of the Beowulf world. This is not only innovation from Cleaves. Platform developer Harry J. Godwin is using machine coding as instrument for innovatory customized textual projection.

Very different from old-fashioned scrolling or 'free-to-use' automated software templates used on blogs like this. In some ways 'scroll down' and 'off-the-shelf' software for screen reading of poetry counters print-based 'towards design in poetry' innovations of British Poetry Revival generation when transferred to online practice.

Excitement at cleaves three viewing veteran Romanian modernist Nora Iuga (Eleonorei Almosnino) click away from new generation Greek modernist Krystalli Glyniadakis click away from London's Miraculous Continuum. Indeed.

2010-10-02T04:13:00.000-07:00

& ragnhildur jóhanns does it better

'& Holly Pester Does It Better' reprinted again October. It's a home'baked book in progress - revising text whilst still learning about work of both new and older modernist female poets, some with gorgeously difficult-to-pronounce names that make utterance like "...& Hjalmar Gullborg (1898-1961) does it better..."

Hjalmar Gullborg was a male Swedish poet who gained entry into text through trojan horse of unfamiliar guttural slur. Who knows what uttered name may appear in further amendments of title simply by sounded intonation, timbre, pitch, key or duration.

Steven Fowler introduces newer European and Scandinavian poets to London performative scene. Jeff Hilson spurred educative quest direction older and splendid Bernadette Mayer. Bernadette Mayer in August text but not original July printing. Smacked hand, Mr Weller.

Veer Books doing hard copy version of 'beat generation ballads' soon - substance of which originally appeared as sandpit play postings here at Mike Weller's egnepping google blogspot.

Veer request one or two back cover puffs. Puffs on recent Veer titles appear to détourne mainstream promotional paperback puffs. They are meant to be subvoicive puffs aren't they?

Don't turn tv on ...

Television coded as ~~television~~ for Google blogcast. Erasure (html strike through) does not always appear in connected blogs, nor red font. There may be difference watching X Factor on Saturday night British ITV1/or ITV Player during following week compared with watching clips from X Factor on youtube inserted as blogcast. One is TV. t'other be ~~television~~.

Frankie, Marilyn, Wilfred and Yves explain ~~television~~ so much better at old posting here.

eg recent ~~television~~: -

bit of attitude + poetics of hilson surnamesake from (place is the space Malvern, Worcestershire, UK)

absolutely born to be a pop star...give it up for...

2010-09-22T01:19:00.000-07:00

~~television~~: is vimeo posher youtube?

Dorothea Lasky from joshuamarie on Vimeo.

2010-09-20T03:57:00.000-07:00

~~television~~

~~television~~ makes poems in teenglish come up 2
cheers, Steven!

2010-08-27T03:09:00.000-07:00

~~television vs the future of socialism~~

Plan reprinting Home'Baked edition S Club 7 versus the Anticapitalists. Very limited 'artists book' cover (left) is not new tho costly to reproduce when first published. Technology ten years on enabled availability cheap chapbook with colour-cover. Can also be rekindled ebook. Title free-to-view.

Exciting new twenty-something poets I've seen and heard last five years were teenagers when S Club first appeared on television. May have considered them Monkee-like UK manufactured group from years of millennial adolescence. There are perhaps newer poet-n-tials (just about to start creative writing uni courses) who may actually have been ardent 7-year-old S Club 7 fans.

In performance S Club 7 vs the Anticapitalists intended two-voicer. Sean Bonney and Jeff Hilson did blinding reading with text Writers Forum workshop back in the day.

If S Club 7 present day appears dated (or worse, heads up for late '90ies nostalgia) - read "s" in S Club as abstract factor "x". As X-factored pop idols of near future led nowheres by unreality television light entertainment during crises of broadcasting late capitalism.

2010-08-21T11:00:00.000-07:00

& holly woodlawn does it better

2010-08-10T14:14:00.000-07:00

A Misremembered Lyric

Song

& denise levertov (1923-1998) & denise riley
does it better

& Holly Pester Does It Better, Michael J. Weller (Home'Baked Books, 2010)

Each day I take ...

2010-07-23T01:56:00.000-07:00

DEEPER GEOGRAPHY OF RUBBLE RECONSTRUCTED

2010-07-05T01:23:00.000-07:00

RE-READING BODE 'N' BACK 'CAMBRIDGE GROVE' SIGN

... while the foreground looked pleasantly industrial ...

2010-06-30T15:52:00.000-07:00

~~& gertrude stein (1874-1946) does it better~~

now available from Home'Baked Books by Michael John Weller ...

Playful name-calling score sounded in process and amendment

Third and final chapbook in performative "feminized" trilogy also comprising visual score Redell Olsen's Sharp Exhalations & companion textual Andrea Brady Poetry Lady

2010-06-17T07:36:00.000-07:00

place movement sign

2010-06-16T00:57:00.000-07:00

BRIGHTON

2010-06-09T04:22:00.000-07:00

Concern of older practitioners that 'pure' poetry and art may be infected by the virus of rogue advertisement or embedded product placement was simply treated by younger practitioners as disregard. Ignore junk-slime pop-ups on MySpace. (The Making of Slow Fiction, Home'Baked Books by Michael John Weller, 2010).

"closure is a fiction"

Great quote on Beckwina's blog Revelation Nation. Met three pressfreepressers - Karen Sandhu, Ryan Ormonde & Becky Cremin at first Café 1001 Openned Table last Saturday, June 5th.

A poster sign for event was required and Press Free Press performance text-scroll was loaned by Karen & Ryan with offer of stretching extended taped paper assemblage whilst I hand-lettered sign with colour felt tips.

Sejal Chad is another member of the ensemble. First poets to remind me of a comic book poet team - just my fiction.

Why did old postering skills return so fast & furious? All I could remember that afternoon was Bob Cobbing telling me phonemes were part of consciousness as his father was a commercial signwriter.

Press Free Press also reveal booked poetry doesn't have to be read on every occasion. Why not hang text over a settee & mould paper into utterance fragmenté.

Fics from the sticks began as Space Opera, became Slow Science Fictions, developed into twenty-three titled Slow Fiction. May end up something else in electronic formats.

Like pre-twittered micro-jackanories cut n' pasted from early myspace fic-blogosphere entry.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

3World in 4Time
Current mood: bouncy
Category: Writing and Poetry

Gates's 'Cartoon Kid' tag came from drawing graffiti in high-risk locations. The upper blocks of Sinkmoor were covered in colourful and obscene squiggles. Like his father, Gates was the artistic type.

from "Addingcombe Calling Inspector Pannifer" - Slow Science Fictions no.3
9:53 AM
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0 Kudos

2010-06-04T04:24:00.000-07:00

sneering at 1980s nostalgia

... affiliating myself to generation of Jamming & Youth Kick poets as well as cartooning like crazy for Chainsaw punkzine.
(The Making of Slow Fiction, Home'Baked Books by Michael John Weller, 2010).

A black and white edition of Michael's Collected Chainsaw Cartoons was published April 1996 to celebrate 30 years of the ALP (Association of Little Presses) 1966-1996 - printed on cream card and good quality paper by Bob Cobbing's New River Project.

When Charlie Chainsaw, editor of original UK Chainsaw fanzine saw edition he suggested further mix with repros of original zine's colour covers. A colour climax edition was produced.

Close viewing of May 1996 edition reveals colour covers glued to inside b & w pages (reproduction quality lower than original New River Project printing).

Charlie spray-glued finished colour zine together - ruining his lovely bathroom. The definitive 'home' baked' book I believe.

Copies available during Openned Table's summer of Saturday poetry fun at Café One Thousand and One. See Openned Zine#2 here or Openned page here.

2010-05-25T02:03:00.000-07:00

jUNE IS bUSTIN' oUT aLL OVER

Po pollen grain bio-diversit
gametes fertilised

fine flower ovules
bee flour
flower me insennible uggluminate sac

flower
me

the mass-mud
microasporangium pollen basket

the manure being well put down
dibber holes for the legion

O

O
O

opening grapheme LEEK LEGION (Stem Harvest NATURE POEMS, MJ Weller, Writers Forum, 2002).

time to build legions again. main crop messed up 2009. young 'uns look good this year.

2010-05-16T01:17:00.000-07:00

detrition found

2010-05-11T23:45:00.000-07:00

MORE LYRIC POETRY AFTER SHOREDITCH - FICS FROM THE STICKS

Leo Tolstoy's short stories were collected as twenty-three tales. Beatrix Potter's illustrated world of anthropomorphic characters ran to twenty-three titles. Michelle Yvonne Jolly's tales of schoolboy magician Billy Crombie reached a total of twenty-three adventures.

As MY Jolly is product of MJ Weller's imagination the author's own twenty-three tales have been boxed as a book installation of preposterous lies & miraculous marvels.

2010-05-06T23:52:00.000-07:00

MORE LYRIC POETRY AFTER SHOREDITCH - WALTER DE LA MARE MANIA IN PENGE

2010-05-06T00:52:00.000-07:00

LYRIC POETRY AFTER SHOREDITCH DELETED SCENES

2010-05-04T00:35:00.000-07:00

SHUTTERED

... lyric poetry after Shoreditch ... - Takamisakari Seiken, Pro'un (Geishit, 2010)

2010-04-29T02:32:00.000-07:00

English C***ry Tune

Fifty-five seconds PART TWO "Midsummer Morn" from Michael Finnissy's English Country-Tunes (1977) for solo piano.

2010-04-26T01:36:00.000-07:00

pâte à physique

2010-04-23T00:49:00.000-07:00

improving the image of construction

2010-04-22T09:47:00.000-07:00

PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY OF LONDON UNDER CONSTRUCTION

End 2008 experimented making up two e-books, Screen Reading no's 1 and 2, using free-to-use myEBook platform.

Screen Reading 2 (Screening Along In South London) featured two minimovies 'psychogeography of rubble' and 'Cambridge Grove' published 'Factory Girl' post here.

Demolished window-less bicycle factory that so pissed off Pete Butler, and milk depot it was converted into for final days, has been replaced by another window-less structure in postmodern blue and yellow hardboard. Referenced here also, made minimovie and videographs to compare deep topographies then and now. You can hear moving-image maker fall arse over tit as camera is desperately saved from breaking whilst documenting bowed road sign 'Cambridge Grove'.

2010-04-21T01:34:00.000-07:00

MADONNA in Verdana = MODANNA

2010-04-16T00:32:00.000-07:00

now here's a tale for tonight

London bookartbookshop's second night of good reads from an exhibition 19:30.

Real Mike Weller stand up sit down, stand up sit down, stand up sit down ... launch 'The Making of Slow Fiction' with '... Character & Scene Guide' and twenty-three tales in a box.

2010-04-15T00:33:00.000-07:00

freering tonight

London launch of Cleaves international poetry journal 19:30 - 21:00 at bookartbookshop with readings by Alex Davies (for Knives, Forks & Spoons Press), Ulli Freer, Tessa Whitehouse and Stephen Willey.

For next couple weeks London's very own bookart boutique window will appear similar to ...

2010-04-12T07:31:00.000-07:00

caution - slow fiction in progress

Planning e-book versions of Slow Fiction blogging EGNEP has made guide to characters and scenes. Scenes are both real and imagined places. All characters taking part are imagined. Some, the writer likes to think, have that contemporary English novelist's sense of feeling, depth and paperback believability. Others are slightly whimsical, some downright cardboardy and comic book.

One conceit in Slow Fiction is the Earth Corporation (EarthCo) , new metaphysical fabulation with entertainment division. So what happens when character Mike Weller walks onto set of live action reality tv? In the fiction EarthCo are making movie at EGNEP location Penge. Will Mick be simpsonized Earth Corporation Entertainment III? Well ... er ... no.