Veer to Conservatoire and beyond

It's five years since MJ Weller's docu-track Beat generation Ballads was first published by Veer Books. Partly inspired by modernist composer Michael Finnissy, the publication rekindled a dialogue between poet and composer for the first time in 45 years. A sort of beat generation ballad bonus track in itself.

Page from M J Weller's Songs Our Teachers Learn Us (free-to-view beat generation ballads e-supplement, 2015) --

Publication of author’s Beat generation Ballads prompted new email correspondence with old secondary school friend, teacher, modern composer and beat ballads' muse, Michael Finnissy. 

                                                                                  

Weller: The email you sent appeared as symmetrical 'word' score. Couldn't resist making page design unit with content and posting back.

Finnissy: […] you appeared to send me my message back asking if it was a musical score (which it wasn't intended to be), or did I misread

In 2013 Finnissy composed a large-scale work for piano entitled Beat Generation Ballads.The work has been described by its premier pianist-performer Philip Thomas on his website as an extraordinary 50-minute work, taking in Bill Evans, Allen Ginsberg, Bach, Beethoven, Irish protest songs, Webern and music by a 16-year old Michael Finnissy.

(note: post update May 29 2015)
The Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2014 premiere recording of Finnissy's composition was aired on BBC R3's Hear and Now in April (after this post first appeared). Inspired by an interview with Finnissy featured in the broadcast Weller has made second e-supplement/complement to original Veer Book.

It takes the form of an animated docu-track. Sound recorded from a computer and squeezed onto a YouTube video -- Philip Thomas's beautiful playing ends up atrociously compressed. Until a recording company is able to release Beat Generation Ballads in high resolution Michael Finnissy's recorded five-part composition will fall short of full audio potential.


A parody of original Finnissy/Weller beat generation ballads coming to YouTube soon.

 

Stinkies go south

https://www.facebook.com/events/831673243570998/

dumblr and dumblr

Slashed "O" in Space Øpera  
http://space0pera.tumblr.com/

Beowulf (no colon) Cartoon

It's ten years since Beowulf Cartoon was published by Writers Forum & Visual Associations. Dedicated to the memory of Bob Cobbing 1920-2002 (who couldn't resist a good birthday) and Bill Griffiths 1948-2007 (friendly ghost stalking UK's contemporary poetry scene).

Improvised Architecture: A1 St Peter's Church - Karl M V Waugh

...still taking the Mickey...

Germaine Greer, in a Guardian article written 2007, on projected making of movie adapted from Richard Neville's memoir Hippie Hippie Shake, comments --

  "As one of the least talented people on the London scene in the 60s, it was probably inevitable that Neville would be constantly revisiting it in search of the fame and fortune that continue to elude him. Felix Dennis, being now worth something like £385m, doesn't find it necessary to remind people at every turn that he was one of the heroes of the Oz trial a third of a century ago. He is also far too smart to let Neville [...] exploit his hippie past, and they wouldn't try. The real geniuses being dead, deranged or sunk in obscurity, the attentions of the flesh-eating bacteria turn to me."

Howard Jacobson's recent television documentary Rebels of Oz celebrates with affection sheer Aussie brilliance of imports Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries, Clive James and the late Robert Hughes. Oz magazine enjoys only brief cameo appearance.

At a July 14th event in the British Library (BL supported on this occasion by Eccles Centre for American Studies); and as part of its ongoing Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK exhibition; public debate was organised on Monday night by the show's curators; ostensibly to spotlight 'Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton and Friends: From the Comics Underground to the Courtroom' --  discussing influence and use of American counterculture in British comics during the early Seventies.

Self-proclaimed cultural infidel Charles Shaar Murray -- a 'Schoolkids Issue' Oz veteran himself -- mc'd Comics Unmasked's 'Underground' evening (his website post as host is here with filmed documentation of the evening*).

Reprinting of Shelton and Crumb drawings in Nasty Tales number one provoked a second high-profile obscenity trial, two years after Oz found itself in the dock at the Old Bailey for publishing Crumb's cartoons. For sensitive little hippy souls growing up with Rupert Bear stories, there was always ambivalence in 'Schoolkids Issue' montage of Alfred Bestall's representational détournment as collaged wirh US underground cartoonist R.Crumb's drawing (Robert Hughes celebrates Crumb's genius in 2005 Guardian article here). Comics Unmasked's most critical detractor, the celebrated arts writer, critic, and broadcaster Waldemar Januszczak, writing for the Sunday Times (mirror blog here), is perhaps the only contrarian among UK liberal arts media commentariat.

Cultural ambivalence has not gone away. It is possible to argue a passing of forty-five years has not reduced the juxtapositional impact of satirical North American adult comix form with traditional Rupert Bear iconography. Small girls and grown women (including former English hippy chicks of the 1960s and early '70's - now grandmothers themselves) have always enjoyed a particular asexual engagement with Rupert Bear and chums. These anthropomorphic children's icons from "Nutwood" are perennial. Represented in newer media formats and seemingly just as popular with new generations of young not-so-sensitive male geeks. 

With "Nutwood'"s visual culture globalized in moving image through 1990's Canadian animation company Nelvana's North American produced telecasts; its earlier vibrant paraliterary form as print, is reproduced here by graphics Eye journal through a 1959 Rupert Bear page unit analysis. Providing evidence of early modernist mass visual culture in the UK. Side-stepping "art and anarchy" in a dance of water colour illustration.

The imagery has raced into social media and 21st century podcast locations -- a cartoon secondary world speeds even further away from Sixties, Seventies & Eighties (Oz magazine & Nasty Tales' loan of R. Crumb's hippie hippie shake comix; Beatle Paul McCartney's and Python Terry Jones's nostalgic enthusiasms) - through the Nineties, Noughties and Twentyteens (Crumb holds-and-folds copy of 'Schoolkids Issue' Oz in a British museum 2014) -- flying into timeless working class picture-pastorals. When We Were Very Young at Disneyland. Winnie the Pooh in Latin. Black magic grimoire spells of John Dee and Aleister Crowley. White magic words and pictures of Milne and Shepard. Pretend poetry. Poetry betrayed every day.
* Extended British Library footage, including Shaar Murray's interviews with cartoonists Crumb and Shelton, is available here. 

Taking the Mickey

Poster by Jordan Bolton  Tom Jenks 

the king of English pretend poetry is dead

Felix Dennis died this month - June 22nd 2014 (Social Reality Earthtime).

For those who knew Mr. Dennis it is impossible to forget him.

This is Mike Weller's third Felix Dennis blogspot feature in three years. But this post is something of a wake. A celebration of pretend poetry. The first mention of Felix, eighth paragraph down, is here. The second, a 'Warped Sci Fi Pieces" minimovie appearance, is here. Felix makes cameo appearance 'Ballad for Jeff Nuttall' (Veer's beat generation ballads).

From Hong Kung-Fuey to his own faux-British silicon shire Kiplingesque poetry: Felix Dennis accumulated wealth by mining niche pop culture subject matter into printed magazines - from comix to computers. Well, maybe not comics. His plan to sell Mike Weller as Britain's answer to R.Crumb after The Firm was a non-starter: "Captain" Stelling was a one shot cartoon fiction and Weller had no plans to do more comic books with Union Jack banners across them. A projected "Illustrated Bob Dylan Songbook" drawn up by OZ /Cozmic Comics graphic artists and cartoonists didn't work either. Have you ever tried to be like Bob Dylan. No question mark.

It would take eighties generation English and Scottish working class cartoonists and writers to rejuvenate Alfred Harmsworth's old line of comic papers into successful modernity and USA export. Felix was a larger than life figure himself. A match for Fleetway's fictional Sexton Blake, Battler Britton, newer Megacity anti-hero, Judge Dredd, and Misty comic for girls of the Kate Bush generation.

Felix, the old bugger, managed to get a comic title for himself in the end, by acquiring Viz from Newcastle's Donald brothers after they'd already established their humorous brew.

Scheduled to appear at British Library's Comics Unmasked conference evening with Robert Crumb and others involved in 1970's Oz and Nasty Tales obscenity trials on July 14th - Felix's absence cannot be happily filled. Neither can Mick Farren's and Edward Barker's for that matter. Hail and farewell, Felix... 

'Lucky Trees', along with 'Lullaby of Smegland', 'Warped Sci-Fi Pieces' form part of (Site Under Construction). Dennis is inspiration for Weller's Cap Stelling characters Mr White/Lawrie Libb.








Felix is immortalized in April 2014's 'Zine Tales' by montaging old 1970's "Folders full of Mick" pencil sketches with up-to-date lettered ink comments.

Felix Dennis was a product of lower middle class south London suburbia with an absent father. In his younger days he was known to talk himself up as coming "from London's tough East End" - a conceit later inspiring 1930s Jewish author-publisher character Eddie Mogul in Mike Weller's Space Opera and Slow Fiction.


Not a fan of modernist poetry (although he did follow Sophie Robinson on Twitter): experimental and linguistically innovative writing were an anathema to him.

As a gambling man, Dennis never beat a path by walking Johnny Cash's traditional ballad line. He wasn't going to lose by playing the foolish game of love. Falling for someone, giving all of his love, taking the chance it may be unrequited, or worse, accepted as an act of faith and then twisted by bitter betrayal. 

He adored John Donne. Felix Dennis had impeccable taste in poetry.

And he could never be accused of composing pretend epithalamia. 

Ween Film

Thanks to William Rowe, Carol Watts, Sean Bonney - and particularly Frances Kruk, plus techie team at Birkbeck College London, for making Ween Film an exhibited moving image reality at London Poetry Festival's visual werx & audio cinematic loop 17-18 May 2014. Aplausos!
https://vimeo.com/95954822

London Poetry Festival 2014 this weekend

http://thelondonpoetryfestival.wordpress.com/

Illustrated Bromley News

3World in 4Time

Remembering Stuart Hall (1932-2014)

 

nine Xing screenshots

 

minimus post ode poem (five adjuncts)

Minimus Post Ode Poem The Movie zimZalla object 21

Minimus Post Ode Poem The Movie Deleted Scenes

Minimus Post Ode Poem as seen on TV & YouTube

minimus post ode poem adjunct 4

minimus post coda adjunct 5

 

zimzalla avant objects/object 21/zimzalla.co.uk

Senti'mental Journey

Ten years ago Foro de Escritores was formed in Santiago, Chile - inspired by Bob Cobbing's Writers (no apostrophe) Forum.

Celebrating tenth anniversary Foro on December 17 2013, a recording (produced by Adrian Fisher, Martin Gubbins and Luna Montenegro in London on June 4 2003) is submitted by Mike Weller - journeying through time and space on a virtual sound cloud.

seasons greetings.     

Non-historical 'zine tales

 'Antihistory Tabloid' found at House of Brag this year.

As a young man when the Dialectics of Liberation Congress led to formation Antiuniversity of London: Mike Weller was bemused and suspicious about an elderly grey-haired white man who would regularly turn up in the audience when revolution was in the air.

In 1967 it could be cool to be a London organizer like poet Bob Cobbing or an elderly grey-haired invited speaker like Herbert Marcuse. Not so cool to be an old bum on seat among an audience of young men and woman. James Savile was well into gigging by then - for not every male actor or entertainer in the '60s got to play BBC family friendly Dr Who in a broom closet time machine.

Mike Weller is a grey-haired elderly white man now.

Tiny Clangers, one hand gripped tightly to their pushchairs - sometimes wheeled along by Croydon's yummy mummies - don't pass an elderly man's knees at eye level, look up, point and then turn and cry "Man!" at their embarrassed mothers without good reason. It's early recognition of the adult human cismale.

At 2012's Queer Zine Fest, founder member Charlotte Richardson Andrews looked Weller straight in the eye after his table space request, asking with appropriate concern at this elderly grey-haired white male normative -

  "Is there hate in your content?"
  "I hope not," was Mr.Weller's reply.

Forgetting thirty-two years before, quite possibly before Charlotte was a twinkle, a still relatively young Mike Weller had drawn "Hate on the Dole" for Chainsaw punkzine.

As non-history, hate is shouty poetic and artistic energy.

Around same time drew a cartoon in feint pencil - not reproducible on photo-copiers in those days  "boy dolls kiss kiss (try a little tenderness)". This drawing eventually formed part of 'English Punk Ballad' faintly reproduced, hidden like a whisper, in Veer's Beat generation Ballads (2011). 

As non-history, tenderness is quiet revolutionary energy.

Zines found on info tables @anarchist social centres are largely ephemera drowning under other more or less useful 'Like'/'Unlike' information as social non-history. 

Clenched fist (with/without red rose) and Delacroix derived liberty leading the people remain key visual symbols for revolutionary militancy - the republic's "Marianne" holding blood-soaked S-shaped flag. Yet "Ava the Riso" as affectionately described by The Common House seems to enjoy a tenderness for poetry and revolution in a antihistorical machine age.

After 2012's Pussy Riot/poetry/zine fests - Weller invited design xmas 2013 flyer for SW London & Surrey Zines. Fliss Collier, on visit Poetry Library end of last year, borrowed one of Bill Griffiths' Amra books, likening it to 'zine production. Michael was delighted to be asked to design flyer for Christmas 2013 social, especially as Miss Fliss thought a billygriff vispo would make fitting tribute to Griffiths as well as being appropriate for SW Zines. Bill sent homemade yule greeting cards from Seaham, County Durham, before his sad passing in 2007. Hermaphroditic reindeers from early 2000s do job nicely.

Bill Griffiths had L-O-V-E  and H-A-T-E crudely tattooed on his Alessandro Scarlatti poetry-playing harpsichord fingers.

Chella Quint's 'Activism through Zines' (fold-in mini-zine featuring portraits Charlotte RA, Fliss & self-portrait Chella + other new gen zinesters).

football's just a branch of science

Back in 2010, organizing small 'Home'Baked: literary artzines in the age of the internet' exhibition at London's bookartbookshop, Belfast based comics artist Andrew Luke sent me copies of his hand-written, hand-drawn, self-published title Absence based on experiences of growing up with epilepsy.

Within a year Andrew obtained funding (not from my GSK suggestion I hasten to add) to mass produce his title with professional illustrations by Stephen Downey. It's free to view here. Applied cartoon art with pedagogical aim? Yes and no.

Andy, like British comics artist Darryl Cunningham, are not objective commentators using a populist form for purposes of prescriptive social instruction. They are writing and drawing from their own experience, using the cartoon art they grew up with and know well. An artform they enjoy and understand.

I attended readings and launch of Litmus Publishing's sequences and pathogens at Keats' House.

Poetry passed the litmus test. Good humour between poets and biomedical scientists did shine through mutual exchange. I couldn't help but imagine late poet and scientist James Harvey beaming upon this whole endeavour.

& Dorothy Lehane & Elinor Cleghorn does it better.
& James Wilkes knows about different ways of knowing. 

& Dr Peter Goodfellow announced "I will never be a poet: I can not make words dance..."

But he did. He voiced a footballer's skill - dribbling tectonic plates of literature and science within rules of game. There was no referee to blow whistle. No shouts of "foul" when Dr Goodfellow referenced  those-who-shall-not-be-named among some progressive arts modernists - LARKIN & BETJEMAN. Dr Goodfellow broke a taboo and scored an unexpected goal for team poetry.

And it was not an own goal for team science either. It moved the evening. A first waltz between potential lovers - live five star jossed giants standing on shoulders of dead ones.

Dance bands Angular Momentum Ltd & Lottery/Arts Council of England orchestrated support.

GlaxoSmithKline, alas, this dance did decline.  

Letter Against Neoliberalism

picture from the past // June 11 1988 /// sent passing futures

'letter against neoliberalism' appears in printed journal Veer Vier: For Will Rowe (Veer Books, 2013) launched at Birkbeck 28/9/13 and celebrated @blutkitt here

inconsequential information

In short ontological tale Mike's Yellow Fever, character Mike Weller wakes up to discover he's been Simpsonized in slow fiction as electronic animation Mick on virtual clouds with soundtracked birds chirping in their billions.

The birds are singing sweet. But they were singing tweet tweet over and over again in the same pitch. It was a repeated sound loop. On persistent repeat, it didn't sound so sweet to the ear.

Written in 2005 and self-published in 2006, before Twitter caught on, a Twitter account was opened  by M J Weller as EGNEP with the first two sentences of extract above used as present tense tweet on June 3 2009. Just over three months later, on September 24, the third sentence of the extract was tweeted.

Using Twitter as pattern-poem developed during four years; with the first two sentences tweeted four times every 20 days give or take a day (US time zone fluctuation), followed by the third sentence: ie, sentence one & two x 4 + sentence three x 1 - continued as 20 day loop until August 31st this year. A tweet by proxy mistakenly repeated sentence one and two a fifth time.

With correction to third sentence on September 15 - EGNEP figured, after four years, with fourteen followers, to deactivate the account. Openned's online zine documented pattern for a couple of issues. Stephen Willey's and Alex Davies's Openned poem was the only Twitter account followed by EGNEP as user. Alex did ask EGNEP in 2010, "How much longer are you going to continue tweeting this sequence?" EGNEP replying "Until I stop."

The account and sequence is ended today, September 20 2013, 20 days after the erroneous tweet. EGNEP's account is now technically deactivated and will be deleted in 30 days. Pity it's not 20 days but that's the social relationship between soft consumer user and social media prosuming hard driver.

The sequence was published as Sorry, that page doesn't exist (HomeBaked eBook, 2014)  

Notes on old new little presses part nine

& parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight

For a one-off talk on my stuff at the University of Bedfordshire four years ago titled The Making of Slow Fiction, published later in Kindle format (below substratum level in Amazon's sales rhizosphere), wrote -

For my self-published printed chapbooks, I prefer using font writer with personal word processor. Typescripts pasted up and master pages photo-copied at high street printers. Copied again as pages on desk top printer.

This desk top printer used to print boxed editions of Slow Fiction: twenty-three tales 2001-2010 was punished to destruction.The kit has not been replaced.

Still promoted as print-on-demand object available from Home'Baked website - printing the set of intended 'cheap chapbooks' would now be a logistical problem. Anybody who obtained titles for complimentary review, or found individual titles for sale when tabled at gigs has rarities. I was only able to complete six editions of box when the printer gave up. 

Home'Baked Books began in spirit of Cobbing's Writers Forum. That is, keep everything in print if possible: keep editions unlimited, keep books affordable, don't sign stuff (devalues poetry & poetics). 

In previous Notes on old new presses I attempt to document working the little press ethos alongside changing economics, print technology, aesthetics, and growth of modern university-based creative writing pedagogics.

For committed users of computer processed documents filed for print-on-demand, with an eye on the book as perfect bound - pleasures of imperfect, unbound, uncommitted artifacts containing elements of paper or card may seem irrelevant to literary practice.

A favoured form for preparing my verbal texts before personal computers was the electronic typewriter with basic font processor app plus irritating floppy disks. On a minus, disks got spoiled losing data. On the plus, ribbon cassettes lasted far longer than those of laser printers. Characters fade into appealing light grey with multi-strike battering - unlike inkjet cartridges which sometimes dry & die after couple weeks non-activity.

Multi-strike ribbon cassettes have become annoyingly unavailable, unless hours are spent trawling eBay for dealers opening dual packs to sell one cassette at inflated prices. An era of Home'Baked Books has ended.


Still, cartoon art and poetry can find entry as 'zines. Artzines emerging from punk are desired  collectables.Three years ago I organized an exhibition of' artzines. Displayed during the week of Malcolm McLaren's funeral; London's bookartbookshop window took on the appearance of an anarchist social centre info free table.

Little presses may find themselves drowning with 'zines on free tables of anarchist social centres but that isn't necessarily the end of their poetical journey.

The Making of Slow Fiction closes -
Slow Fiction as printed boxset is intended to be a bookwork installation. Web-format online variations in existing fic-blogosphere addenda and possible e-book versions of work with multiple comment threads could allow Slow Fiction to grow as work of collaborative textmaking.

Multiple comment threads have appeared @WordPress's wellerverse fic-blogosphere since 2008. It's been ninety-nine percent spam bombed. Tedious to delete every day. A few junk-slimes retained because of flarfable entertainment value.

But is there entertainment value in collaborative textmaking. And if there is - who is entertaining who?