'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...

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.

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

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