Canary Woof

The Collars of Johan de Wit - no. 5

2010-08-16T05:24:00.000-07:00

replaced assart

2010-05-29T03:29:00.000-07:00

50

No one listens to Petrarch.
He's an a plus ultra
& stabbed me in the first leg.
As we struggled to keep the ship from sinking
he stabbed me in the return leg.
More boldly he has gone
& stabbed me in the assarts.
I have left the Enterprise for good.
Now I'm the Captain of your ship
now I'm Rear Admiral.
My legs in the ocean or else they would be dry.
No one listens to Petrarch.
People are rowing away from other people
every oar crying "I want to touch you but I can't!"

spring in this world of poor mutts

2010-04-12T02:34:00.000-07:00

2010-04-07T05:57:00.000-07:00

69

In veronica forrest-thomson
where is the british embassy
I love you
I did o level latin or another
is not dead
I hate outdoor game also in bed go away
everything is green it is
all over surrey of course & surrey
is dead she
that hath nothing else to do
in a rich ark
is following me everywhere to nearly balls.
This is a bonny wood he's a steady influence.
Not of wood only thus divers renew their falls.

Anyone know the best and cheapest way to get this on a t-shirt?

2010-03-29T08:35:00.000-07:00

Blade Pitch Control Unit - old review

2010-03-23T09:29:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd up this - a review of Bonney's Salt book from a while ago. Chicago Review turned it down (too mimetic in its approach apparently). It's not perfect (ignore the stuff about Zukofsky at the end) but has its moments...

Sean Bonney - Blade Pitch Control Unit (Salt, 2005)

In a paper delivered at a Negative Poetix seminar at Birkbeck College in 2004, Sean Bonney noted that the London A-Z begins with a golf course and ends with the Metropolitan Police Dog Training Establishment and that the whole thing should be read as a novel. My later edition of the A-Z has had an extra page added which alters Bonney’s rather gruesome trajectory although a quick glance at it still reveals other sinister training centres no less-organised around systems of control: Paddock Mobile Home Park, Woodlands Poultry Farm, Downe Court Riding Centre and a Scout Camp. More immediately disturbing because of their anonymity and obscured origins are “War Bank” and “Blackness Lane.” I would hazard a guess however that this late page was added because of Holwood House, former residence of the Prime Minister William Pitt. It’s a far more appealing finale to this novel and Bonney might be right to demand that we read it as such, at least as a realist novel. With its quiescent narrative voice and claims of omniscience, and its promise of order, comprehensibility and unity, its view of the world is relatively unproblematic with a one to one correspondence between language and thing. Words designate what they say they do.

Blade Pitch Control Unit, which collects 5 years worth of Bonney’s writing from 2000’s "The Domestic Poem" to the recent and ongoing sequence, "Document", is an intervention into the bourgeois fantasies of the A-Z. It opens:

(cross harbour. at the right. windy crossroad. past the george. keep to left. got a market on your body. 3 souls. left at school. 1 minute. Manchester road. 3 minutes.

These sound like instructions for finding your way. The writing is notational, shorthand, as if jotted down quickly. It’s the kind of thing you don’t need to have done if you own an A-Z, but it’s precisely what hasn’t gone into the A-Z that makes this little paragraph worth reading, like the recording of weather conditions and the time it takes to move about the locale. But these instructions are not as useful as they might appear. Defamiliarisation infiltrates the promise of recognition. Capitalisation is irregular and punctuation interruptive. The language slips about. ‘Cross harbour’ is actually Crossharbour, a station on the London Docklands Light Railway, but the word has been prised open turning a proper noun into separate verb and noun instead. The word ‘crossroad’ then singularises and closes up what might be read as instructional verb and noun. Ambiguities enter into the instruction which could lead to losing your way instead of finding it. Take “at the right.” Is that right at cross[ ]harbour or at the windy crossroad? It’ll probably make a difference. Ditto “got a market on your body.” Is that like having a price on your head or is it “gotta mark it on your body” which you hear if you read it out loud? And who or what are the ‘3 souls’? Another pub, the one after ‘the george‘? But that would be “The Three Souls” surely, an unlikely name for a pub, and certainly not one Bonney would drink in. What about “left at school”? Is ‘left’ a verb or a noun? It’ll make another difference if you read it as the one or the other. And lastly, “Manchester road.” Does the poem’s first capital letter make it more important than the other words? Is it the name of a road or is it a road in Manchester? What city are we in?

Bonney read this poem at a small private ‘launch’ of this collection. Listeners there were unlikely to have registered all of the particularities I’ve just noted which are often closed down in performance but they give the lie to criticisms that have been voiced in some quarters that performance-oriented poetry doesn’t ‘work’ on the page. Bonney is renowned for his dynamic and impassioned reading but this has never been achieved at the expense of the page. Bonney doesn’t just work on the page but he actively works the page itself. As Harry Gilonis notes in his blurb to the book, Bonney is a poet of considerable textual range though this collection doesn’t include his more explicitly graphic work - for instance the wonderful visual sonnets of Astrophil and Stella (Writers Forum, 2001) or some of the more heavily overlaid texts of Poisons, their Antidotes (West House, 2003). These omissions aside, however, there’s still an overriding emphasis on the visual organisation of the text. Bonney’s is very much an open field poetics and those who know him know of his onetime research interest in Charles Olson. The graphic mark is as important in Bonney’s writing as it was in Olson‘s. Dashes, hyphens, slashes, underscores, brackets, dots, colons, bolds, and italics are all used to further the textual register. Consider the opening of Poisons, their Antidotes:

1.

at Turnmill St, in
deed

(fernie brae)
of grass-green silk
(ilka tate
fifty siller bells

fear of strangers “that name does not belong to
(locked:) hail

in brass howls (ona)
red wind:
churning over( ) bodies / wind

Olson’s typewriter with its ‘space precisions’ and ‘symbols’ clearly lies behind this, turning the page into a score, but the underlining of words and phrases retains the urgency of the handwritten. Bonney’s ‘symbols’ are often primitive and record a simple urge to make marks though they’re often only the ones a standard keyboard will permit. Sometimes I think of Bonney’s poems as cave paintings which have to, but which would rather not, make use of an available technology. That technology is also called language and some of the most interesting moments are when one language technology irrupts into another one. Look again at “siller bells” which is what happens when the phonemic (tongue technology) is written down (hand technology) and the resultant word or phrase has a strange, otherworldly cast to it.

Bonney’s writing is full of these strange words. They’re not neologisms which imply some kind of progress, as if language is constantly being improved upon. They’re more like the residues of abortive alchemical experiments which have no proper place in the world. The most frequent of their number are compound words: “splashveins,” “moonspit,” “boilfink,” “skymoss,” “tideclamps,” “slashpalms,” “evehiss,” “hearthair,” “faustspools,” “vowelpit,” “gullblack.” These compound words also share text space with hyphenated words which might remind a reader of Old English kennings (also to be found in the work of Bill Griffiths) but there’s a violence to Bonney’s combinations. Joining two words which don’t belong together creates a bastard word which wanders the world trying to find its place, like King Lear’s Edgar-as-Tom who becomes a focus of the sequence Notes on Heresy alongside Ann Bait of Morpeth, accused in 1673 of being a witch because she claimed to have turned herself into a cat, a hare, a greyhound and a bee. Bonney is drawn to these figures (both words and things) who can’t be housed. It’s no coincidence that wildflowers (‘weeds’ by any other name) such as the ragwort, foxglove and monksbeard also end up in this sequence and that they too are compounds. The poem becomes a place of protection where all these outsiders can exist without persecution. It’s the accepted that need to be watched. At the beginning of a section of the sequence called “Lyric Poetry: Surveillance,” Bonney quotes Raoul Vaneigem: “Poetry is always somewhere. Everywhere repressed, this poetry springs up everywhere. Brutally put down, it is reborn in violence. It plays muse to rioters, informs revolt and animates all great revolutionary carnivals for a while, until the bureaucrats consign it to the prison of hagiography.” And thereby silencing it. The reference to ’lyric poetry’ in the title isn’t ironic as Bonney is a lyric poet. It’s just that the word ‘lyric’ needs rescuing from those who’ve stolen it. In a conference paper delivered at The School of Advanced Study a number of years back, Bonney yoked ‘lyric’ and ‘noise’ to liberate the former from everyone who says it has to be quiet. (In the same paper he traced the etymology of the word ‘noise’ to ‘nausea’ and the sound of sailors puking into the sea).

Notes on Heresy also includes the figure of Abiezer Coppe who in 1649, Bonney informs us, “stood up at the pulpit of a church somewhere in central London, and swore without interruption for an hour” to the horror of the Quaker George Fox. This reminds me of Walter Wolfgang, the 82 year old ejected from the 2005 Labour Party conference for heckling Jack Straw, the then British Home Secretary. Both Wolfgang and Coppe are correctives to the likes of Straw and Tony Blair with their smooth and treacherous New Labour rhetoric. Coppe is clearly an important precursor for Bonney who himself ‘does a Coppe’ on a speech delivered by Tony Blair to the 2003 Labour Party’s Spring Conference in Glasgow in which he justified the invasion of Iraq after the largest demonstration against incipient war in British history. Bonney makes himself into a negative avatar of the Prime Minister, inflicting violence on the implicit violence of Blair‘s own language by cutting into his speech, not to remove what‘s diseased (ie all of it) but to wound it further and frankly it’s all it deserves. Blair’s “if we remove Saddam by force, people will die and some will be innocent. And we must live with the consequences of our actions, even the unintended ones,” is met with Bonney‘s “I am anemical : ath money gents wi’t tongue lict f vice ho : pril : pitch a ming spa.” This butchering of the language (Bonney has spoken of taking a razor to this speech because he couldn’t take a razor to the man himself) is one way of responding to the casual butchery of modern warfare and to the cowardice of Western leaders who use the first person plural as a linguistic human shield. Words are split open to remind us of the broken contract between People and State.

This ‘splitting’ pervades the final sequences of the collection, “Filth Screed,” “Burnt Nickle” and “Document” and the word ‘split’ is encountered again and again throughout the whole collection. In the opening poems of Filth Screed, all the lines end in dashes, again as if the rest has been cut away. These poems were written at the height of the Iraqi invasion and the images are violent: “stood-/once for 25 minutes watched an owl peel a mouse-”; “but if they hadn’t dropped bombs he’d still have his arms and legs-”; “same old thing-/tongue stuck in eye-” Something’s not right in the state of England. A “big dog” stalks the pages. London is a city where “all the trees/are bastards” and where “music has been privatised which means its everywhere, like sperm; split, sprayed and pointless like trying to fuck a window.” Like coalition troops, things are where they shouldn’t be. Moreover, the compound words of earlier sequences have started to come apart. Now we have “skin clock,” “spit boy,” “siren clench,” “eye rift,” “gull dust,” “silver burst,” “whip crust,” “tongue rasp,” “icon dust.”

It’s tempting to think of this move from ‘closed’ compound word, through hyphenated compound word to undone, non-compound word as three separate ’phases’ of this collection. I’m thinking of the three phases - solid, liquid and gas – that the American poet Louis Zukofsky borrows from the nineteenth century phycisist Willard Gibbs to characterise the materials of poetry - image, music and intellect - but I can’t satisfactorily map it onto the materials or the trajectory of Blade Pitch Control Unit which is resistant to the neatness of the analogy. To be honest, I’m not sure what these ’freed’ or ’undone’ compounds are. If, however, we try to read his collection as Bonney read the A-Z, starting with the first word, “cross harbour,” and ending with the last word in the book, “supermarket,” there’s a chiasmus at work which counters the ‘trend’ I’ve noted. ‘Supermarket’ is a closed word. However it would be typical of Bonney to thwart any attempt to systematise his work and like the golf course and the Metropolitan Police Dog Training Establishment, the supermarket is a closed world, a place of controlled violence and surveillance. The instruction with which the book ends, to loot it, is an invitation to open up both word and place for further inspection.

bird missing

2010-03-21T12:23:00.000-07:00

by pop'lar demand

2010-03-19T03:18:00.000-07:00

A dog walker smokes a fag whilst the pooch does its necessary business and then stubs said fag out in said business. There's something very tidy about the whole arrangement.

And while I'm here...

(false) spring assart

2010-03-16T08:01:00.000-07:00

68

I wish I folded
like everyone else in H & E
I wasted my time levant & couchant
like the sunshine in H & E.
Here's a song about the sunshine
it did not reach everywhere the movement.
My life as a beginner
in the full sun making a new way,
champion & me,
through the complex
true history of the assarts.
When I awoke I was unfolded like sylvia in may,
a simple surface only
shiny, shiny.

Fight!

2010-03-05T04:22:00.000-08:00

Clearly, there's only one winner...

alors assart

2010-03-03T02:36:00.000-08:00

67

And because I cannot dance
with my parachute
I dived all over her.
Billy g's not my lover
she's just a girl
like I used to.
In fact the cry is boy-up,
cleaning the o-hole,
when I was her fag.
Oi I waited for the language
she did not have it down
or any pudding.
When you arrived jump boy
where are your shining lovely end

more slates

2010-02-19T03:18:00.000-08:00

traditional assart

2010-02-15T04:02:00.000-08:00

66

o rodefer I only meant to say
o roe deer its so easy to
made a error I
made a record of it.
I hate squares.
Roe deer hate to groove.
Roe deer could not dig.
In the badlands we all pulled it on,
the velvets, over a you know,
over a hundred years ago.
o rodefer I only meant to say
in the assarts I pulled it off
whip it on me jim in thin array
just like thomas wyatt said.

assart in quotation marks

2010-02-09T08:41:00.000-08:00

65

"the yearning, strong like ropes,
she crept downstairs to say
thanks for coming, night.
Still ferociously kissing.
They heated up her hair
on/off
her obvious hair
started further up.
Fingered.
Fingered to see.
Still ferociously kissing.
Fingered to see you.
He longingly looked at its peak,
started his eyes."

2010-02-04T05:08:00.000-08:00

64

Dear sir you poems are amassing
everyone is talking about
you amassing poems.
Lets go back.
You grim square poems makes me red
when its my turn
dont fuck me on the poem on the golf course I hope.
In the modern countryside
they find you on the spot
which belonged to the same man his mobile
his mobile home you know
in a hold-all in a lay-by
when you should start ringing a bell
when you remember whats in a hotel.

pulchritudinous assart

2010-01-26T04:41:00.000-08:00

63

one more thing so cleanly I kiss
I'm glad your face is
it's massive again the target
I am the king
& cromwell's realistic hands
r.i.p. his gripping hands
hold a pistol quietly out
not like the navy during the armada
smack! smack!
that's the sound of cromwell kissing
not a genuine face
like you & me
in the navy who shoots who
who's the king who's the daddy?

anachronous assart

2010-01-15T02:34:00.000-08:00

62

I'm not home I'm a homeowner
nobody noticed the two of us
who loved thy american tree.
Don't kill me like modern borneo.
That beautiful language is worn
that beautiful language is.
I'm glad I'm talking in
in borneo I'm home
"talking in borneo in my room"
I don't understand my home sometimes
when you enter the room
I don't understand in borneo anything
my home is in thy american tree
(language realism poesie)

New Year's Assart

2010-01-02T05:49:00.000-08:00

61

I loved to you robin gibb
more than a woman
I wish you were here singing
my favourite carols good king wenceslas
for instance he looked out
more than robin hood
more even than the feast of steven
robin gibb CBE who fucked my housekeeper
deep & crisp & even
what a disappointment he's not the king either
following the disco backlash &
the hither green rail disaster
not in that order in the 1980s I'm not home
when I looked out the bee gees stole my phone

Assart into the 60s

2009-11-19T07:01:00.000-08:00

60

In the next letter I did it
in my own hand
afterwards wee maye not speke
lyke wee oughte
in the sixteenth century on her hard bed
who after sunset fadeth like american ted.
They both are killing me
with 14 inches
I drove him away with ron & rod.
Ladies dead & lovely knights so long
I didn't win either
not with the lines
then we got into her hard bed together
like a brick or a broomstick whatever

Assarts are getting better

2009-11-06T02:11:00.000-08:00

59

If you liked my photo
sorry if I'm wrong
now I write my first letter
the quiet young purposeful girl.
Once upon a time hello!
I have considered your structure.
It is awfully clean.
I like to read books &
go in for sports basically gymnastics.
It is awfully clean.
I come short and enormous not correctly.
Are glances our glances.
A man is that simple.
Dear. I look at a sundown. Good day.

58

I loved to you mike oldfield
one side of tubular bells
I moved away
to avoid the - unintelligible lyrical utterances –
of the other.
There goes my solo career.
I am nearly finished with
the sonnets of the 70s.
The ****** ***** reading group
fell apart it was the difficult
second album the whole thing it was
difficult to begin to you
again my lady it was the 1970s
do you have she's got everything by the kinks?

Assarts are getting worse

2009-10-22T07:22:00.000-07:00

57

Thus the knights are not in
during the day they run off commerce
well met in HMV
you circa 1973
me humming tubular bells
you are not as good as doug jones
or my GCE in swan control
during the night
the british resistance organisation
take over the country
officer this is not a guide to covent garden
thus the knights take over covent garden
there's one he plays the grand piano
on side one side two is rubbish

Autumn Assart

2009-09-21T04:03:00.000-07:00

56

king stephen or stephen king
in the assarts it doesn't
matter which no
he was the worst bond my lord
& the merchants laughed
ending in a banquet his
archiepiscopal hands
& the merchants laughed
at my new english library
I should a looked at the dates & at
the smoothy girls
I should a ran across a lady
I dorothy davis please rush to me
fighting men of the west

assart f-fifty five

2009-09-10T09:43:00.000-07:00

55

but I want a pool
I will invite king stephen he's the one
in the castle now
he's in the pool.
During the day king stephen dominates the pool.
He allows his archers in
they spoil the high middle ages
with their flu-flu arrows
& water bombs.
I could a been a archer
in the deep end I forgot to shout
the pools unfinished the labourers left
with the watershed king stephen with
his royal fucking hands.

Addendum to last post - John O Thompson

2009-09-09T02:07:00.000-07:00

Because of the primitive nature of my blog, John O Thompson was erased from the last post. Here he is on his own.

Xing the Line Open Mike Reading 03/09/09

2009-09-09T01:31:00.000-07:00

Hearers 1

Hearers 2

Johan de Wit

Peter Philpott

Harry Gilonis

Tim Atkins

Luke Roberts

Frances Presley

Sean Bonney

Trini Decombe

Sophie Robinson

Rachel Lehrman

Philip Terry

Gavin Selerie

mjb

Steve Willey

Posie Rider & accomplice

Assart written listening to Current 93's Earth Covers Earth but which luckily sounds nothing like it

2009-09-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

54

English ladies crying alas
nothing is so lovely in the countryside
as emily running through the moat.
It's not her castle
that failed some castles are just fat!
No way she is roaring ha ha ha to
major changes like the invention of
the new forest & the romance of the rose.
Alas I am inclosed
in a large nucleated midlands village
writing the tragedy of the commons
it's for sale to others
others also crying
you can put your wall there or your pool.

assart whatever

2009-08-31T15:06:00.000-07:00

53

Not you again jeremy irons
look at my lady swimming
through the awkwardly-contriv'd opening
the british actor jeremy irons
is trying on her false hair
I'm the french lieutenants woman
no I'm the french lieutenants woman
no I'm the french lieutenants woman
etc etc I don't know how
many times I curtsey'd
he's not even the fucking king.
Love died between me & the army.
In her long loose sleeves he drown'd
displaying all the elegants of sound.

Previous Assart for the Perseids

2009-08-13T01:08:00.000-07:00

18

He didn’t finish off my head
it's orbiting the earth.
Me & my friend singing in the gegenschein
it was so hot I forgot to shower up.
Try not to be a head on any clear night
faster than pitiful thrivers.
Objects come from the canopy & into men’s eyes.
It's probably something low as a mag
& just everyone’s milky way
when a shower is active.
Anyone watching instead you need to star who,
heads which are bright,
tails which are dark,
the best part is jets 3 & 5.

Xing the Line pics - readers + a somewhat bedraggled Laurie Duggan in great t-shirt

2009-08-11T05:45:00.000-07:00

Johan de Wit

Alan Hay

Nat Raha

Laurie Duggan

Dog Day Assart

2009-08-07T03:50:00.000-07:00

52

I thought I caught my ladylove not
far away not
now my ladylove
touch-me-not in shady places attenborough
in the dunes
with small alison I'm
in the dunes again
to escape the annual report
of the district field club and naturalists union
nothing for you here attenborough
away from the pavements
where late my lady sang
about the difference between
unh-hunh unh-hunh & unh-hunh unh-hunh unh-hunh

The Collars of Johan de Wit - no.4 (incorporating GBBF)

2009-08-06T03:33:00.000-07:00

a fifty-first assart

2009-08-03T04:23:00.000-07:00

51

Farmers on acid farmers on oldfashioned fours.
They can hardly be good king henry.
In the long grass his heart
shaped head is wide spread.
Half of england ride in anglias.
On the roadside your downy hips above you
so undaisylike your ladylove
my pale mauve lip follows a wet spring.
I'm a man orchid
in kent I turned
back again to make my lip look round.
5 new guys want to hang out
spreading white male cum locally.
The anglias in the compound.

50th Assart!

2009-07-24T07:07:00.000-07:00

50

Hey we're still 'in' In the Assarts!
Not 'The' Assarts or 'From' the Assarts -
In the Assarts!
I'm always 'reading it out loud' at readings.
It’s a romance.
I wish a maiden was reading it.
This is 'the fiftieth poem!'
They're fake medieval poems
but 'realer' than
The Reality Street Book of Sonnets.
I stole that line from
a student's poem it 'mentioned
cocks' too but modern
ones like the ones in this ________ room.

Assart XLIX

2009-07-22T02:27:00.000-07:00

49

Look at my library it's in latin
I made it of flowers
to hold up the structure
o. reclinata!
unlike goldilocks I never was the same again.
Who's been sleeping in my library
I made it of wattle-&-daub.
Look at my anthologies
there's frank kermode the pervert
there goes my library
o. reticulata!
I draw cocks in books
frank kermode's cock obviously
it was smaller than the pantry!

The Collars of Johan de Wit - no. 3

2009-07-08T06:21:00.000-07:00

assart w/ clothes

2009-06-18T07:36:00.000-07:00

48

It happened I just
broke my axe I was
in your wardrobe in
summer pumps or mock croc peepers
(I go with anything
like I forgot I
Don't look closely at my
boy friend!
who ever loved thy property)
I was making one of those ready-to-wear dresses,
a little bit different,
one of those ready-to-wear dresses looks good
over an awesome cami,
& I broke my axe.

rainy day assart no 47

2009-06-09T02:22:00.000-07:00

47

The ladies-in-waiting overnight
in the best early modern hotels.
I'm checking out
your lovely fucking mistresses
they say no to it later
I don't know what to do the
ladies-in-waiting are feeding busily at the minibar
the ladies-in-waiting youtube if they want to.
O mistress thou art all behind
I want a partybag to perish in
& open emails from my polish wives.
"Write to me a letter
that have interested you"
I love my structure & go in for waiting too.

dedicatory assart

2009-05-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

46

(for Sharon & Paul)

To run out of rymans singing
its so sunny in my cunny
hazel the weather is not important
if your only home.
Knock knock me list no longer or
I may no more
thrash you like a doorbell.
Ring ring I lost my time.
If I put my finger in a second line
you know I did
put her hand up first.
Once there were three million bears
overnight
three million sums or cums or light

The Collars of Johan de Wit - no. 2

2009-05-23T02:24:00.000-07:00

a mid may assart

2009-05-22T01:52:00.000-07:00

45

Here on the air base
I rarely see young hazel
& her giant guns.
Bonjour constable
we hath only adjusted rymans
for love
of aerial bombardment
& the smell of burning
smaller branches.
How shall I then leave hazel I do intend
soon after the time of
constable I arrive?
How shall I then leave hazel, rymans,
half its branches are alive?

Xing the Line, May 7, 2009

2009-05-08T02:23:00.000-07:00

Xing the Line yesterday featured Richard Parker and Gareth Farmer, both writing (up) theses at Sussex University, Richard on Zukofsky and Pound, Gareth on Veronica Forrest-Thomson. Two very different readings - Gareth confident, measured, punctilious, using to my ears what seemed like a long line; Richard by contrast hesitant, nervy, elliptical, echoes of Zukofsky apparent but with humour. The highlight for me was his "Heaney to Waterstones" [sic?] which was a hilarious take (surely) on the opening of Zukofsky's "A"-15 which begins "An/hinny/by/stallion/out of/she-ass...He neigh ha lie low h'who y'he gall mood..." Richard is putting together a mag called Crater which features some of Gareth's work and Gareth's sequence "Mock into the Brazen Day" is coming out with yt communications over the summer. One of the longer poems Richard read last night ("The Egg"?) will appear, I understand, in the next onedit.

Some pics below...

Richard Parker

Gareth Farmer

Laurie Duggan

Antony John & Edmund Hardy

Tim Atkins

Richard Parker's trainer

2 Ts

etc

2009-05-06T03:02:00.000-07:00

44

(for Harry Godwin)

red like the red deer I mean
I know where is an hind
right here in an line
I am a bad red deer
& dropped its balls
chasing poetry beaver
through the fields of england
ken I love another too poor
deirdre the middle ages
exploded in her hands o
the brilliant poets in britain
black dots ate my readers wives
dear deirdre hello its 1360 AD
every day since the internet I died

Cobbing, Claire, Nuttall

2009-04-19T04:40:00.000-07:00

Three pics I took at the first Eric Mottram 'celebration' held at King's College, London in 1996. They are photos of slides so the quality leaves a little to be desired...

Bob Cobbing

Paula Claire

Jeff Nuttall

I had no idea...

2009-04-07T09:28:00.000-07:00

1.)

Sexual fetishism in a quail (Coturnix japonica) model system: Test of reproductive success.
Çetinkaya, Hakan; Domjan, Michael

Journal of Comparative Psychology. Vol 120(4), Nov 2006, 427-432.

In the present study, the authors explored the reproductive consequences of fetishistic behavior in a previously developed animal model of sexual fetishism (F. Köksal et al., 2004). Male domesticated quail (Coturnix japonica) received sexual conditioning trials in which a terrycloth object (the conditioned stimulus [CS]) was paired with the opportunity to copulate with a female quail (the unconditioned stimulus). Approximately half of the male quail came to copulate with the CS object and were considered to have developed fetishistic behavior. Each of the male quail was then tested with a female quail, whose eggs were incubated to determine rates of fertilization. The CS object was present for 30 s before and during the copulation test. Fetishistic male quail were slower to achieve cloacal contact with the female quail and showed less efficient copulatory behavior. However, they fertilized a greater proportion of eggs than nonfetishistic male quail. These results are unexpected from previous studies of the relationship between reproductive success and copulatory behavior and are discussed in terms of how fetishistic behavior directed toward an inanimate object may modify male-female interactions.

2.)

from Bird bird

Coturnix coturnix (quail)

A man and a quail descend to farmland. Forget cellophane this mister wants to see some quail on quail. For which he wears my nellie boots. His cock-petite & on my lips it was quick quick & I obey to ‘lift up your cups’ on the way in. His wild end was snow on snow & robins cutting in. I have no escape pattern. Some ornithologists moving away. Robins for most people. Ovens you need. At the hay nets the prose is clumsy. Sŏme órnĭthólŏgísts thĕy móve ăwáy. Bare ruined choirs etc. Kitten heels. Dolly pockets. Knee-high flats.

the poetics of shite

2009-04-07T04:29:00.000-07:00

In a gesture of friendly plagiarism - see the recent and magnificent http://peckhaminfurs.blogspot.com/2009/03/big-shit-in-peckham.html - I post 3 pictures of the shat-on pavements of Walworth, southeast London (an area named not, apparently, after the murderer of Wat Tyler before London Bridge in 1381 (the vile Lord Walworth he thrust a blade into the hero's heart) but it means 'welsh wood' or something hmmm). A little nexus of poo has emerged over the last week. At the Canting Academy reading last Thursday, Vahni Capildeo very accurately described the persons of this nation as walking "with dog-beshitten and street-wetted footwear into their private living spaces" - vide pic no 2 below and the probable teleology of that trainer. A conversation then ensued between myself and Harry Gilonis (as Harry Godwin rightly asserts at http://thedailyfilth.blogspot.com/2009/04/when-harry-met-harry-or-recrossing-line.html) on the late Ivor Cutler's habit of drawing chalk flowers around the offending mounds to highlight his annoyance. A few years ago in the preface to my book stretchers (oh yes) I talked about Iain Sinclair's complaint that the Isle of Dogs contained no graffiti and suggested he look at the smears of dogshit there as a kind of script, one that Bob Cobbing would certainly have been happy to perform. From the first stretcher: "for graffiti there's dogshit it's a kind/of writing can be scried an inventory/taken of say colour consistency..." Alas I failed to follow up my comments but I would suggest that the crap on our paths take its place as a part of the general economy of signification. The examples below are all shapely - moreso once a foot or pram wheel has slid through as in pic no 1 - as well as colourful and smelly though these latter are surely more indicators of the present state of the dogfood industry.

been listening to...

2009-04-06T10:06:00.001-07:00

Bright Phoebus (1972) by Lal & Mike Waterson. It begins with the Sergeant Pepper-like "Rubber Band" (not everyone makes it past this track) and visits some very dark places on the way. Highlights are the sudden unaccompanied voice - that of Bob Davenport - on "Child Among the Weeds" - astonishing - it 'wheels and turns' on 'riven/ribbon wing' like the bird he's singing about - and the whole of "Red Wine and Promises" which is sung not by Lal but by her sister Norma apparently. Four tracks from youtube posted below (no videos as such though some nice postcards of Hull) but these are no substitute for listening to the album from start to finish.

Red Wine and Promises: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IGDXDOXRNs&feature=related

Child Among the Weeds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZfgnKIeGRg&feature=related

Fine Horseman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Eh1acHyhe0

Bright Phoebus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP_F4YbK1sY&feature=related

An Occasional Series: The Collars of Johan de Wit - no. 1

2009-04-05T12:43:00.000-07:00

The Canting Academy @ Xing the Line, April 2, 2009

2009-04-05T12:03:00.000-07:00

David Annwn

Ken Edwards

Alan Halsey

Geraldine Monk

Vahni Capildeo

Frances Kruk entering, Paul Sutton (crucial comma)

Giles Goodland

Christine Kennedy

Sean Bonney

Gavin Selerie (right)

Karlien van den Beukel, Pete McNamara, Harry Gilonis

Sean Bonney & Antony John

Frances Kruk & Harry Goodwin

drei und vierzig

2009-04-05T06:04:00.000-07:00

43

only into rymans o my bride
rymans or smyrna
one or the other
the great fire of rymans
in the assarts it doesn't matter
if I chopped a rymans down
the british infantry will find thee
buying staples probably
from a smyrna merchant
hey its my turn to touch my penis
in a sonnet
in case of fire
use all available entrances watch
out the bisley cabinets are red too

quarante deux

2009-03-31T08:30:00.000-07:00

42

only into rymans o my soldier
& the month of may
I dreamed I wore a bloody crown
of staples o my bride
its just a red rexel bambi
I came over all
the bisley cabinets
for instance
your sweet lavender highlighter
its just a felt tip
pen correction pen
o my soldier
are we meant to hide away
in rymans or come out & play

Spring and All

2009-03-29T15:58:00.000-07:00

the week in pictures...

2009-03-23T04:41:00.000-07:00

Robert Sheppard reading from Twentieth Century Blues at
the Runnymede Festival, Royal Holloway, University of London,
Saturday March 21

Ulli Freer who read from three new pieces, jander, dva, tri

Jeff Hilson, for the birds

Ken Edwards reading from Bardo

Nancy light show, Burgess Park, Friday March 20

Post Landfill launch of Bird bird, March 18, Queen Mary, University of London, 1.45 a.m. just before curry in Brick Lane

Sean Bonney & gas on Mile End Road

Paul Sutton & Frances Kruk in The New Globe,

Whitman St (crook & kruk...

Sharon Borthwick & camera (look at her pics of the same night at http://peckhaminfurs.blogspot.com/2009/03/ghost-trees-and-statues-waiting-for.html

Sean Bonney & Malcolm Phillips

M.J. Weller at Cafe Oto, Sunday March 15 (Johan de Wit looking on).

Birds flying

2009-03-12T08:32:00.000-07:00

Anyone interested in what's underneath please drop by...

Launch of Bird bird at 7.30 pm on Wednesday 18th March
with launches of pamphlets by Chris McCabe and Simon Smith
Harold Pinter Drama Studio
Queen Mary, University of London
Arts Building, Mile End Road, E1 4NS
All pamphlets are now available to buy @ £3 each (+ 50p postage) or 3 for £8 (+ £1 postage)
Paypal to sales@landfillpress.co.uk
Cheque to 'Landfill Press', 67 Chamberlin Road, Norwich, NR3 3LN
Other titles at http://www.landfillpress.co.uk/

Jeff Hilson, Bird bird
41 prose poems on the birds of Britain.

Coccothraustes coccothraustes (hawfinch)
That tapping. It's the rain or the rainiest day that nobody looked at the hawfinch and it's like a Dixons in the springtime. It's massive its head in a conifer belt. We have streets and we have a Dixons. We have streams and houses and fields on the borders of woods and we have like a Dixons. That's where your iPod is. Like there was this shy gardener found with sixty iPods. Much more like that because he so rarely mixed with them. I mean the finches. Got to get to take them from the city for the white phase that they utter in. I mean again the finches. It's so dark it passes. The lores as they slide over each other. That's where your mouth is. Finches and iPods interchangeably. And that tapping. It's so thin it must be a display.

Chris McCabe, The Borrowed Notebook
An elegy in 15 sections.

6
The White Album: you said you listened to it before I was born.A black joke: I said I would be listening to it when you were dead.
Live Forever the shaving soundtrack from the bedroom door -he's always singing about needing more time. I said "don't we all".
I could have played on full volume, upstairs, an audio CDof Plath's poems, while downstairs you turned up yourscratched LP of Ted Hughes' Crow. Could have.
Montage of where we meet on the staircasein mortgaged space, fucked over by the rent of time.

Simon Smith, Browning Variations
8 found sonnets from the Brownings' love letters.

So shall my flower's eye be ruined forever
Tennyson was still in Town
He unaffectedly hates London
I will go out and walk where I can be alone

I will look in the direction of London
And send my heart there
The early "day of small things"
Talk and "stare" at the same time

Not one feeling is lost, and the new/
Ones>feelings/are infinite
Take care of this cold wind

She has been in the habit of going to London
"'Pippa Passes' pretty and odd" she does not
Love me after all, nor guess at my heart

what larks

2009-03-08T09:56:00.000-07:00

On the way to the Small Press & Little Magazine Symposium at Nottingham Trent University on Saturday my driver, Tim Atkins, and I decided to stop at Leicester for breakfast. As a result we managed to take in Ultima Thule record shop, a shangri la for krautrock afficionados run for years by brothers Alan & Steve Freeman (http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/ultimathule/shop.html). I've known about Ultima Thule since scouting for Cluster and Amon Duul vinyl in the early '90s and many years ago picked up a copy of A Crack in the Cosmic Egg, the Freeman's mindbogglingly comprehensive guide to the genre (it's now available as an interactive DVD). The shop seemed barer than I'd anticipated and according to Alan Freeman this was because the exchange rate has made a lot of music imports prohibitively expensive - twenty quid or so for a CD - and punters just won't pay. Unaccountably Tim found a Helen Reddy LP in the racks - hard times indeed for such a place to have to include such fare! Anyway I walked away with two Agitation Free CDs and one by Floh de Cologne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agitation_Free & http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floh_de_Cologne) - none of them twenty quid items I hasten to add - and we made our way to Nottingham. On the way we passed Ratcliff-on-Soar power station (see below). The symposium had its moments, and at the end of the day Tim and Steve Willey posed for a photoshoot outside the University gym. I pressed the wrong button and took a 4 second video instead (see below). What larks indeed!

Me & Floh de Cologne

Power

Power moves

some language

2009-02-26T08:41:00.000-08:00

Bird bird

2009-02-22T04:58:00.000-08:00

Landfill Press has published and dispatched Bird bird! It's unusual for a Landfill chapbook in that it's been printed landscape - to accommodate the shape of the poems (see below). Otherwise it retains the elegant simplicity of the press's signature design. So three cheers for Jeremy Noel-Tod! My copies arrived late last week along with two other new titles, Simon Smith's Browning Variations and Chris McCabe's The Borrowed Notebook. I'm not sure whether they're available yet from the Landfill site but I'm onto it.

forty-first assart

2009-02-08T11:36:00.000-08:00

41

& so on what a waste its typical
o open field & me
not turning no way I was
MADE IN ENGLAND
on the floor
I just go up & down
because my neighbour said
& with this hedgeboat I'll thee wed.
Once I was a land girl now I didn’t open
on my medieval holiday
I'm just a hundred percent town.
Fine fine for the hoar thorn but
your neighbour is a violet copper & a spar.
She have or she haven't gone too far.

recent trees

2009-02-07T10:19:00.000-08:00

Brrrr...

2009-02-02T12:36:00.000-08:00

Grrrr...

40th assart

2009-01-31T15:37:00.000-08:00

40

I live next door as well as
the mongol gunners.
I am open field I am
right there & king, kings
college.
Like a king of experimental college,
1492,
yet not too serious
hey I am only searching for a genuine line
maybe more
——————————————————————————————————————————
& tall & slim
& loves to swim
the mongol gunners eat out or in.

UK Premiere of Louis Zukofsky's "A"-24

2009-01-26T07:58:00.000-08:00

On Friday January 23, the 105th anniversary of the birth of Louis Zukofsky, the Centre for Modernist Studies at the University of Sussex held a seminar on, and staged a performance of, "A"-24, the final section of Zukofsky's long poem "A." Composed by Zukofsky's wife Celia as a gift for her husband, this last 'movement' consists of 5 'voices' performing simultaneously. Four of these voices are made up of quotations from Zukofsky's writing and the fifth consists of selections from Handel's "Pieces pour Clavecin" (Harpsichord pieces). At roughly an hour and 10 minutes the performance requires great concentration and stamina from all five performers who need to listen to each other to ensure the correct timing of each of the movement's 'scenes.' The piece was performed magnificently (to my ears) by Ken Edwards, Sean Bonney, Francesca Beasley, Daniel Kane and harpsichordist Kerry Yong. Earlier in the afternoon a number of Zukofsky 'scholars' gave a series of papers on "A"-24 and this was followed by a performance of two solo violin pieces by Sarah Jane Barnes, Janequin's "Chant des oiseaux" and Bach's "Chaconne" from the D-minor Partita.

Flyer

Kerry Yong

The harpsichord

Francesca Beasley, Ken Edwards, Sean Bonney, Daniel Kane, Richard

Parker

Ken Edwards & Francesca Beasley

Sean Bonney & Daniel Kane

More TV timewasting...

2009-01-06T11:40:00.000-08:00

Manuel Gottsching, formerly of krautrock supergroup Ash Ra Tempel, famously accused overated electronica outfit LCD Soundsystem of 'inappropriately imitating' the artwork of his 1981 LP "E2-E4" on the cover of their Nike sponsored 2006 CD "45:33." If interested you can look at http://www.tribute-to-ashra.de/Press-statement032007.htm for the full story.

I couldn't help notice Clive Anderson, however, also wearing an 'inappropriately imitative' tie on a rerun of "Whose Line is it Anyway?" recently aired by freeview channel 'Dave.'

This is the kind of post you put up when you should be marking student work.

Gottsching cover

Anderson tie

Best hair ever on University Challenge?

2009-01-06T11:10:00.000-08:00

New Year's Assart

2009-01-06T10:31:00.000-08:00

39

The other half of england
I shall return to hazel
the van travel hath wearied me so sore
riding between pine I went
with the girl next door.
She is popular into the face
on which I shine.
Move along it's somebody's place
like faces
there's plenty of room in a van.
But I am a clubber I
want to dance
upstairs
& into the face of a man.

New Year's Eve Assart

2008-12-31T06:55:00.000-08:00

38

Sorry about that this poem
is my apology for poetry
which like a doctor who
goes wild in the country
of love o doctor doctor
I am sick of the banks of england
& the novel
which like a doctor who
I fucked.
Then I changes in time for poetry.
To put it right by money counts
who bring with them supertrees
so I will count too
count to myself to two.

Assarts 37

2008-11-10T02:25:00.000-08:00

37

They flee from me that love me
longtime
& even if they do,
the wongs,
after ploughing roll in,
bong, bong,
their allotments, they could also
with their curved faces
& invisible spades,
thats buckets & spades,
& some of the wongs on horseback
now the sea is far away,
look at my dead end
& stop line or almost double chin

& because the wongs were made for loving
& then withdraw,
it was no dream the wongs of may
usually die in this stanza
as the sea tilts & bends
like a badly made hurdle
or horse,
look at my dead misspelt horse
in the sea,
they have so many words for allotment
& will not withdraw
they are so beautiful
in & out of the water
digging the worst deer.

tweet tweet

2008-10-27T05:41:00.000-07:00

Some of my birds have just appeared on Adam Fieled's blog P.F.S. Post. Go to

http://www.artrecess.blogspot.com/

if interested. The rest of them should be out soon from Landfill Press in Norwich. Of course there's still time to have a look onedit way (http://www.onedit.net/issue4/issue4.html) at a load of the others.

2008-10-23T14:02:00.000-07:00

and another...

2008-10-22T12:32:00.000-07:00

36

So I considered the environment
not being on fire or anything
either way I absorbed a photon
its not the fucking 1360s
I'm just mad about
the field of the cloth of gold
& my other yellow hands
in which they lie.
O grammar rules
like the terrible terrible rings
on my photon belt.
O gamma rays
that light itself like
the terrible terrible assarts.

Assart the 35th

2008-10-04T06:11:00.000-07:00

35

Who I love is donovan
all I said is
& when I am fighting
& when english guitarists were exhausted
& when I am penetrated by the sound of music
my first double album
& now I am a parent I love
double albums more than
double penetration
because I am always fighting
donovan I said
donovan phillips leitch
I love you either way instead of
o anne Boleyn its not the fucking 1360s

Isle of Sheppey

2008-09-27T16:00:00.000-07:00

slates / war lyrics

2008-09-24T10:40:00.000-07:00

Some of these had an airing in quic_lude, a (very) fugitive anti-war publication put out by me & Sean Bonney back in 2003. They are as relevant now as they were then & I want to post them here before the weasel in question is 'gone'. Originally called "war lyrics" I preferred the title "slates" for obvious reasons but either will do really. I might do some more...

3 beach huts

2008-09-21T16:10:00.000-07:00

Assart 34

2008-09-14T11:55:00.000-07:00

34

When I was sir thomas wyatt
& I dreamt I shot arrows in my
anne Boleyn bra. She was just
being herself by my slow-grown
yew self-bow I am sir thomas
wyatt I said (we were both
idiots) & I live in a tent
on the field of the cloth of gold.
I shot arrows in a minute.
She died on a shiny turret.
O anne Boleyn I made your head
into an italian sonnet.
Tremendous on the face is you
(she loves to wear a lame bra too)

Must be one of mine...

2008-09-11T08:18:00.000-07:00

In the Assarts no. 33

2008-09-05T05:09:00.000-07:00

33

I loved you o anne Boleyn
instead of thomas wyatt I
wrote your falling name on my
mistake. You in very small
trunks. You in dark green.
You in tough smooth tops.
Since I went to pieces
alas my american tats were this bad
when I got off with your head
then I was sir thomas wyatt
yes no don't know why
I spent my life in wood.
These hands made the best french boots.
These hands make the best english bats.

2008-08-29T02:04:00.000-07:00

Three snaps of Blickling Hall in Norfolk, a Jacobean pile built in the 1620s on the site of a house possibly lived in by Anne Boleyn. Possibly, because it depends apparently whether you think Anne Boleyn was born in 1501 or 1507. If the former she probably did live here, if the latter then not as she was living somewhere else (Hever Castle in Kent). Anyway it's a splendid place later owned by Sir John Fastolfe that some folks believe might have been the model for Shakespeare's Falstaff (except Fastolfe was completely unlike Shakespeare's Falstaff in every respect). Highlights were the library, the orangery, the brickwork (a wonderful example of English bond - see below where each layer of brick alternates between a side-on brick (a 'stretcher' - yes indeed) and a head-on brick (a 'header')) and the secondhand bookshop.

Here among other things I found a copy of a critical study of the American poet and psychiatrist Merrill Moore. Moore wrote nothing but sonnets, thousands of them (see One Thousand Autobiographical Sonnets, 1938) mostly pretty terrible, but he was admired by William Carlos Williams who famously dismissed the sonnet as a contemporary irrelevance. "Merrill Moore's sonnets are magnificent. Never in this world did I expect to praise a living writer because of his sonnets, but these have been a revelation to me" writes Williams in an afterword to the above. Here is an example:

CLOTHILDA IN THE PARK

Clothilda in the park was weeping, weeping,
Where the sunlight on the grass was sleeping.
I was thinking then of Troy's woe,
How Trojan women wept when forced to go
Back to the plains beyond the city wall
After the triumph and the city's fall;
So I approached and was prepared to hear
A tragic tale misapprehend my ear.

She was eight, Clothilda was; I feared
A deeper wounding than the one she shared
With time that day - "See the squirrel, see!
He always keeps on the other side of the tree"
She pointed, "from me. I cannot come near.
It hurts me that the squirrel bears me fear."

Hmm. Williams' regard for Moore puzzled me for some time until I discovered that Moore treated Williams on the occasions that the good Doctor suffered near mental breakdown (see Paul Mariani's exhaustive biography of Williams for more on this). This professional help is the only reason I can think of for Williams' wrongheadedness.

Anyway, Blickling Hall was great. Typically however there's no mention of social relations in any of the literature and it was annoying to see a scullery maid in costume in the Hall's kitchens showing a group of children a bunch of obscure kitchen implements and how they were used 'in the past' without any mention of how this might all need further analysis. Education. Hmm.

Hall, front view.

The moat

English bond

In the Assarts no. 32

2008-08-28T02:57:00.000-07:00

32

When I grow up I want to be
I thomas wyatt & hang around
the stately homes of england.
Alas I am not in this dance
the little necks of england
slipped & crowned
so long anne Boleyn you spoiled
my holiday theory of value.
How to explain the flowers to
I thomas wyatt when I was rescued by
her falling
head on my moustache.
O anne Boleyn was there room in
the room that you roomed in?

F & V

2008-08-18T03:53:00.000-07:00

There are two highlights in the otherwise dull Bond film The World Is Not Enough which was shown on ITV a few nights ago. First is the appearance of British poet Jeff Nuttall as Dr Arkov, a nuclear scientist who is bumped off in his one and only scene for not going along with the dastardly plans of evil terrorist Robert Carlyle. Second is Robbie Coltrane who plays a Russian capitalist (and Casino owner) called Zukovsky (first name irrelevant). I'd like to think that Jeff Nuttall had something to do with suggesting the name to the producers. Who knows?

It was wildly and weirdly incongruous to hear the name Zukovsky in this context though of course it's spelt with a 'v' rather than an 'f'. I say of course because the 'real' Zukofsky's name was spelt with an 'f' though over the years countless critics have opted for the more angular letter which if you don't know Zukofsky might seem the more likely given all the other letters in his name. There is however clearly a form of racism at work here - the 'v' ensures that Zukofsky is kept more Russian than American, a move which is in the interest of the more conservative critics who refused (and continue to refuse) to acknowledge his poetry which is seen as alien and unassimilable.

In one of his notebooks Zukofsky himself relates a telling anecdote in this vein. A German immigrant arriving at Ellis Island at the end of the C19th was asked his name by a US official. He replied sardonically in German, "Schon Vergessen" ("already forgotten") only to be given the name Sean Ferguson. At a stroke he became Irish. Note the 'f' for 'v' substitution again.

Of course the use of British actors to ham up foreign villains in Bond films is no less despicable.

another assart

2008-08-16T16:32:00.000-07:00

31

Repeat I am not a crossbowman
not with these arms
I blunder on
o poesy I couldn't put it together
better as well as I
thomas wyatt
now the spy who loved me
is masturbating with the ruler
A-B-B-A
A-B-B-A
o anne boleyn
I'm straight &
half as good as you &
quite the way you do

The art of the translator...

2008-08-15T15:24:00.000-07:00

Two new assarts

2008-08-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

29

Noli me tangere for nancys I am
this is not a book of nancy
but if nancy was a forest
I woke up half way through
her & began on my obscure self.
If I was a forest I'd have
all the kings men in me,
all the queens.
If I was a crossbowman.
If nancy was a crossbowman.
If nancy was a sonnet firing n-rays
at the battle of nancy.
If I was a repeating crossbowman.
Si j'étais un cranequinier.

30

I lost my way in a new
york school way
& did simply anything
by phone. Hi
jimmy do something you
great charming girl on great
neck I said sorry I
chopped
up all your horse jimmy
died to say
& john kiss'd jimmy &
jim kiss'd johnny &
if I was a crossbowman
I'd say to everyone just bye.

Significant lead...

2008-08-09T08:16:00.000-07:00

It turns out that the birdie who told me about the identity of the a**e in my recent post might himself have been the perpetrator after all. Imagine. Can you see the similarity? He's not such a little birdie either!

And...

2008-08-01T05:42:00.001-07:00

Following my previous post, click on the link below for some pics of the last Xing the Line reading (though it seems to have included the previous one too. When I've worked out how to use flickr properly I'll let you know. Until then please put up with my incompetence...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29155241@N07/

cul de qui?

2008-07-31T15:13:00.000-07:00

Some of you might rememebr a magazine published earlier in the decade of the same name. Inspired by Yoko Ono's bottom film the editors thought seriously about asking contributors to photograph their hind quarters which would then be posted (appropriately) on its back cover. Alas time and a less than enthusiastic response from a number of the poets put paid to our little scheme. Imagine my delight therefore on discovering in my camera this picture taken anonymously at some point during Sophie Robinson and Peter Philpott's reading earlier this month at Crossing the Line. Cul de qui indeed! A little birdie informed me last night whose arse it might be. Can you guess?

careful what you leave lying around...

2008-07-26T02:55:00.000-07:00

Ox @ Lamb

2008-07-24T12:10:00.000-07:00

Holly Pester, Abi Oborne, James Wilkes

In his account of last night's Blue Bus reading at The Lamb (see his blog, Graveney Marsh), Laurie Duggan mentioned that he had to leave before the finale where poet and chef Abi Oborne was to prepare a whole ox tongue for audience consumption. In the photo above Abi has just finished skinning and slicing the muscle - the tongue is not, as we were reminded, an organ - and mounted it on pieces of melba toast topped with horseradish and beetroot. Delicious it was too!

Sonnets 'r' Us

2008-07-24T11:34:00.000-07:00

As mentioned on some other blogs, The Reality Street Book of Sonnets is now out! And a handsome tome it is too if I may say so. The image on the front is taken from an old monotype keyboard and the material inside from the work of many fine poets. You can purchase it at http://freespace.virgin.net/reality.street/ or from Amazon where it was, the last time I looked, no. 23,390 in popularity, making it 10 times more popular than the 'new' Norton sonnet anthology. Ha!

2 Lawrence Upton Visuals

2008-07-03T03:35:00.000-07:00

From "delta point", June 2008.

3 poems by Johan de Wit

2008-07-03T03:10:00.000-07:00

These read at the last Writers Forum, Saturday June 29, 2008...

either is home to streetwise or
more is to come like one
pair one and two contracted
out to cut three leaves
no trace but to run with
the sun makes minus tea
the best steak when it was
cooked it was healthier
than assistants who part why
from how like stockbrokers
mortgage lenders ideas
include entries from overleaf
as ugly as awful as slug as
tug begins a stint of theory
to meet is to be you at times
as to why bank failures
are immediately present
to when I say why
I may also say why is Belfast now
more lateral than literal
even if no-one should really be
ashamed to ask for tailor
trash unless served as introduction
to drill sink or give way to
ground a cigarette together
eighty per cent used for
greyhound racing global chants

*

pop corn one — home front nil
make shift two — eye patch one
rock hard one — more so two
blu tack three — cue ball four
home town one — door stop two
cut back nil — long day nil
top spin one — tram line two
up front three — help desk three
grass court two — foot fault one
price tag one — hard back one
odd ball nil — all so four
Putney two — Balham two
high street five — back yard one
bus stop two — pass port nil
sex change nil — head start two
touch stone one — mob rule three
see through two — half pint five
rock drill one — no more four
ex ray nil — brain scan one
foot note three — print out two
ab sence one — pres ence nil
blind ness one — in sight two
Stockport two — Portsmouth two
Andrews four — Bernstein four
guest ale one — pump clip one
call me one — good bye two
half time nil — full time ill

*

Arguments when settled out of court are
usually placed under guarantee.
Treating a headache with impunity is similar
to opening a brown envelope at source.
To line up fading memories with a call for
overheads sets tongues wagging.
It’s good to talk, said the heron; just be
yourself, replied the stork.
Never has always found it easier to stake its
claim for time than for money that belongs
to the state.
When the telephone lines up with sound it
no longer wants to listen.
Grammar says that whoever is caught on
camera becomes a chameleon forthwith.
If the sense of a poem can be summed up in
the formula sxp+t then the reader may as
well sign on in reverse.
Tuned in to sound a discussion about poetry
takes time out.
Scoring an own goal is a sheer delight for
any chief of staff joined at the hips, like
masterminds and other delicate features of
the pack.
Commercially it would be a disaster if
language had a breakdown and no-one sued f
or compensation.

unpublished stretcher

2008-06-28T06:55:00.000-07:00

I left this one out of the Reality Street book by mistake.

…this is a 27 sparrow
pick up (grow up you)
camp torremolinos was
mostly birds in a small
fire singing o to o to be
o to be old mans organs
in a bowl o to be legally
whitebait in aluminum lakes
of d & c (gling gling their
new job as a rabies dish
delayed by six centuries
of shopping at fuck london
(take that final cindy (the
bird cries I wear a bird
(take that fat kidney &
put it in the peepers the
waiter which I reach put
me in the peepers sir
yr bedford jacket make
you a queerboy he say I
say sir I am janice kenneths
wife we who are so hairy
are lips are & are arms are
& I dump her fresh she
& her new airs & let her
go the keep-out girl (she
a going-down non-stop
battery who so go round
the mulberry bush you
will (later) see her gling
gling she who will not
no sir fall in with any other
bird…

old stretcher

2008-06-28T05:45:00.000-07:00

Before Bob Cobbing put out the first vol of stretchers in 2000 I showed him this version I'd done using notepad or paintshop (whatever, it still took hours to do). I wanted to publish the whole sequence like this but Bob disagreed insisting it had to be legible.

filler to keep the hellhounds off my trail...

2008-06-27T08:57:00.000-07:00

poodle play

nigeria's finest

england's dreaming

nancy's dreaming

Xing the Line May Day Reading May 1 2008

2008-05-25T05:27:00.000-07:00

This blog is not to be confused with other references on the web to Canary Woof. The 'real' Canary Woof began as a short-lived small press in the early years of the decade publishing a broadsheet by David Miller, Sean Bonney's The Rose, my own The 'A's and Johan de Wit's folded A3 sheet, Extragalacticfitsofterrestrialpits (some copies still remaining). I will endeavour to upload The 'A's in the near future.

Initial post - pics of Xing the Line's first (only?) May Day special. Appearing were Sean Bonney, Tim Atkins, Laurie Duggan, John Gibbens, Johan de Wit, Pete McNamara, Gavin Selerie, Peter Philpott, Karlien Van Den Beukel & Paul (sorry insert name here), Frances Presley, Rob Holloway, Harry Gilonis and Malcolm Phillips. Someone took a picture of my ear which I may include at a later date. Readers read from their own and others' work the remit being to explore a May Day theme such as the seaside, dark neo-paganism or stern Leninism. Peter McNamara finished off the evening very suitably with a folk tune from The Wicker Man.

I read four recent sonnets (see also below) from an ongoing sequence called In the Assarts. They all have the word "may" in them and are necessarily reproduced in courier. I might have more to say about sonnets soon...

from In the Assarts

8

About the line about the origins of plant –
no don’t be careful
when in the thirteenth century
when they ran out of continuous duchesses.
Baby through traction I am 4 feet wide.
Photos may be difficult.
I’ll show you my mushrooming award.
Baby the countrysides changed too
all the walls
in the countryside are to stand on.
Its full of rain & thwait.
Their new.
Its harrowing.
Their in the 1970s too.

9

Hazel is twenty-one to thirty years.
I may reveal she stood,
her poor balls descended,
when in threaden fillet
she met ordinary clubbing M.
They would attempt to keep a horse.
Lonely M,
he doesn’t like the horses upstairs.
There like the clappers
goes her poor lovely balls &
curvy voicebox.
You sound nice
& we sometimes
or else put on her surviving slender pole.

19

Meanwhile gardens call out for big trees
of their own nobody notices
not anyway in the mens.
Does not, does so.
"Conifers" I therefore leave off & boys.
My lord here & there she mings
but I am not like this I am all
apart
my lord from kisses & broke down
his helmet
now he sings with a luxury dove
in May.
Myself. Myself with the ruler.
Let me dream of your felicity.

25

I fucking love you months
january & february happily
together march & april
on their own & the smaller ones
may, june & obvious july.
August is very rare
we have to ask what happened
to august in september &
delicately. October there is
nothing to be said for
which like all fashions changes.
Months can be used to remember
like november november I
fucking love you sonnets

Not The Leather Exchange...

Malcolm Phillips reading John Wieners'
"Children of the Working Class"

Harry Gilonis reading from Louis Zukofsky's
'First Half of "A"-9'

Steve Willey, partially obscured

Rob Holloway reading from Pierre Reverdy's

Haunted House

Frances Presley, very upright

Karlien Van den Beukel and Paul (sorry insert

name here) reading from Lucebert's "The

Defence of the Provos"

Peter Philpott, movement of jah people

Gavin Selerie and small torch

Peter McNamara, magnificent

Johan de Wit, three little birds

John Gibbens and half of Paul Sutton

Laurie Duggan and a confused Sharon

Borthwick

Tim Atkins in new strides reading

Rod Smith

Sean Bonney, lindworm