“All drawing from the imagination I’d consider a form of automatic drawing; if it exists, it will exist only for the first time. … I think [my images] arise from the instinctive tendency to not look for semblances or analogies. Meaning, to find all that happens in spite of me—imagination versus verisimilitude. One forever seems to be looking for a dimension not directly visible and through the technique at one’s disposal express the sensation that evokes.” — Gerard Bellaart
Heathcote Williams’s Credo
‘If Poetry Isn’t Revolutionary, It’s Nothing’
This is a collectors alert. Open Head Press is about to release “Juggling Ghosts”, a series of pamphlets of previously published poems and essays by Heathcote Williams in a slipcased, numbered edition of 500 copies about his encounters — live and otherwise — with William Burroughs, Harold Pinter, Dylan Thomas, Sinclair Beiles, Christopher Marlowe, Lord Buckley, Christopher Smart, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Michael Lesser, Alan Turing, Diogenes of Synope, William Blake and the Tigers of Wrath.
Making a Chapbook of Poems and Drawings
A high-speed look at the dummy shows the pages in sequence. See the spreads on Barcham Green paper ready for sewn binding.
Mustill’s ‘Critic’ in Motion
Norman O. Mustill made “Critic” on paper, in 1971. He didn’t put much trust in critics. The musical symbols cascade down the page, the letter decays beneath them, and they all disappear into nothingness. I take it as satirical comment.
Essays in the Works About That ‘Bastard Angel’
The late poet Harold Norse, né Rosen, was a born maverick. His splendid Memoirs of a Bastard Angel is a delicious account of his life and involvement with too many literary legends to name. But what the hell, here goes: William Carlos Williams and W.H. Auden, Tennessee Williams and James Baldwin, Robert Graves and Paul Bowles, Anaïs Nin and Dylan Thomas, William S. Burroughs and Charles Bukowski. I’ll stop there. Now Clemson University Press is planning to bring out a collection of personal and scholarly essays about his poetry and his life, edited by A. Robert Lee and Douglas Field.
Bloggers, Poets, Writers . . .
“Words cascade like an avalanche in spring. Try chewing your pencil and staring out the window in despair every so often.” — Wislawa Szymborska
Out of the Past
Journalism as the Poetry of Fact
Kay Boyle regarded journalism, when it was written well about something important, as “the poetry of fact.”
‘Runaway’: New Folio from Cold Turkey Press
Great beauty from great despair unbends the mind. In a pointless hostile universe that is every poet’s goal.
Here and Now
The morning light takes its time
coming through the bedroom window.
It wakes me properly in the here and now.
‘Writer Directory’ Offers More Than Information
Few books have come my way as generous and wise about writers and writing as this one. The title takes as its model the phonebooks of long ago. But forget that. Remember this: The author, A. Robert Lee, is a British-born, globe-trotting, retired professor now living in Spain, whose heavyweight academic credentials disguise a common touch so light that reading him feels as charmed as floating on air.
Alexa Poems Must Be a Genre By Now
Why am I getting that ad on my device? / Alexa, I want a divorce. Did you hear me? / I can’t spell it out for you. No, don’t thank me. / Don’t wipe my nose. I can brush my own teeth. … If I were paranoid, I would spin bold tales / of grand conspiracies. I love those fantasies. / But they’re not my thing, though in fact / they’re not unreal. Please Alexa, do shut up. / Please disappear. You are unwanted here.
‘Water Stone Words’
This short movie evokes the rich heritage of humankind’s creative responses to the natural environment over millennia. The creators of “water stone words” — filmmaker Ed O’Donnelly, sculptor Kenny Munro, and writer/poet Malcolm Ritchie — made the movie over a period of six days.
Bellaart on Kandinsky: ‘Cornered by his white’
From one painter to another:
‘Short nights
short of long days
For distant hours
Open to foul tide
And so he wanders
Between dawn & shifty sky …’
Paris Conference: Total Assault on the Culture
Scholars, poets, writers, translators, and artists to celebrate the works of Claude Pélieu and Mary Beach. Featuring Benoît Delaune, Jacques Donguy, Franca Belarsi, Matthieu Perrot, Bruno Sourdin, James Horton, Pierre Joris, Gérard-Georges Lemaire, Peggy Pacini, Pamela Beach-Plymell, Antonio Bonome, and Raphael Haudidier.
A Great One Died Four Years Ago Today
![Heathcote Williams [Photo: JH, 2013]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/heathcote-williams-photo-copy-200x200.png)
“He was the Shelley of his age and more.” —Gerard Bellaart
“As you sat In your dotage, fountain pen / Pouring futures onto the calligraphied page / With such ease, That every political pose / And every social Shift achieved scansion, / rhyming under you, the verse surgeon whose / equal vision and zeal cured disease.” — David Erdos
‘He had no special powers, nor was he brave …’
“‘Acadian Elegies’ is a series of 24 texts that appropriate sentences from hundreds of obituaries. The source texts have not been altered except to remove proper names Their particular facts are employed to tell stories about no one in particular …” — Emile LeBrun
New Lines to Sail Upon
When captains of the rising seas
claim mastery, and the world
in all its finery is theirs,
we who know its agonies
are left to cope. Even our
miseries are a taunting hope.