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

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(above) with English music hall "half a sixpence, what a picture what a photograph" association appears to have been superseded by typographic and/or print-kit stamped 'a' (space) (stop) (space) 's'.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

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


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".

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

1

1

1

1

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

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

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

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.

" 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

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

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

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

An August national psychogeographic










© Politiken, Onsdag 10 August 2011

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

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.

(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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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

€#*@$!

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

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

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

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us on twitter

christianbok Christian Bok

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

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us without sound

"here individual performed"

Songs Our Teachers Learn Us on the Internet

Thank you, Sarah.

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.

(capital)ism on the island of Ireland

Linguistically innovative DOH! publicising exhibition in Belfast

Downright Bockedy minimovie from Dublin

& 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

S Club 7 Uncut UK