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Search Results for: heathcote williams

A Difference Between the 16th Century and the 21st

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When I sent Heathcote Williams a photo of the Francis Bacon plaque in the Library Walk series … He replied with an ironic poem, like so … … which illustrates a difference between the 16th century and the 21st, doncha think?

Can a Royal Party Boy Really Change His Stripes?

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So how do you, in the words of Heathcote Williams, “turn a plutocratic oaf into a lovable national treasure instead of a casually racist and unthinking parasite”? With difficulty. Unless you can get the press behind you and send Prince Harry on an American tour. Trouble is, during Harry’s former deployment in Afghanistan, as Williams […]

‘Sacred Elephant’ Is Coming to New York’s La MaMa

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I haven’t seen much theater lately, for reasons I may already have mentioned — so much is dull dull dull — but the dramatization of Heathcote Williams’s epic poem, “Sacred Elephant,” has got my attention as nothing has in years. The show, not yet officially announced, is coming in September to La MaMa‘s First Floor […]

‘Taking the Piss’ That May Pass for Shakespeare

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I spent more than a decade reviewing theater for a major metro daily and I’d never heard the term “nubbing (or taking the piss).” Hmmph. Heathcote Williams shows how it’s done in a sweet folio about to be published by Gerard Bellaart‘s Cold Turkey Press. As my good friend N.O. Mustill says via email, “me […]

‘Peter Bayliss and the Breatharians’

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The obituary in The Telegraph, in 2002, said: “He wanted no memorial, but his near-lunatic appetite for life will be impossible to forget.” The poet Heathcote Williams certainly remembers Peter Bayliss. He remembers, too, “the Bayliss Mischief” that “might still be working / From beyond the grave.” Here given their due are the vaunted philanthropic […]

Getting Personal, Too: ‘Being Kept by a Jackdaw’

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My staff of thousands tells me that if I post any more poems by Heathcote Williams, I will be making a mockery of this blog’s stated purpose. I’m a small “d” democrat who rules Straight Up by popular consent, so I had to admit I’ve been banging on about his poems. But — with a […]

‘The Green Man Is a Green Terrorist’

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My blog staff of thousands didn’t have to do much to persuade me that Heathcote Williams’s newest dissident poem, a rhymed marvel of CAT-scan clarity, will be seen one day as a YouTube classic. Here are the opening lines transcribed from the video in four-line stanzas: Tangled vegetation sprouts from each orifice From his mouth, […]

Selling the Earth … ‘No Return, No Exchange’

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A poem by Heathcote Williams, narration and montage by Alan Cox. The print edition of Selling the Earth is coming soon from Cold Turkey Press. The poem begins: After someone had sold their virginity on the Internet And made a hundred thousand pounds, Another entrepreneur would decide that he’d try To put Planet Earth itself […]

‘Harry Patch: Anti War Hero’

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If journalism is the first draft of history, Heathcote Williams’s poetry is the CAT scan. Text by Heathcote Williams. Narration and montage by Alan Cox.

La Môme et de Rouge

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Date: April 26, 2012 11:43:35 AM GMT+02:00 Had a message from Marianne Faithfull . . .. . . ‘Isn’t it time you wrote me another song?’ I said ‘What do you want it to be about?’she said she’d been reading a book about Edith Piaf and was gripped by it.I said I’d have a look. […]

‘Shelley at Oxford,’ a Timely Polemic for Christmas

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Written by Heathcote Williams, montaged and narrated by Alan Cox, it has just arrived on YouTube and begins like this … In Oxford High Street, in 1810, Slatter & Munday’s Bookshop Had a large, bow-fronted window For displaying their latest wares. Aged 19, Shelley flooded it with a pamphlet On ‘The Necessity Of Atheism’. Which […]

More Dissident Literature from Cold Turkey Press

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The title of Heathcote Williams’s poem puts it country simple. You can’t get more direct than “The United States of Porn.” The poem, which runs to 208 lines, nearly all based on facts, is part of a portfolio called American Porn. It was published in 2011 in a beautifully produced first edition of 36 copies […]

A First-Class Letter From the Lost and Found

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When I read Heathcote Williams’s description of a bizzare project that for a time obsessed the South African poet Sinclair Beiles, who wanted to plant “the barren Sahara desert” with “industrial quantities of discarded tea-leaves,” I remembered a letter Carl Weissner once wrote. March 30th, 1971 Dear Sinclair: The Sahara is irrigated. Now what? While […]

The Idiot’s Voice: More Dissidence from Cold Turkey

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Leonard Cohen, who is not given to easy praise, has called Sinclair Beiles “one of the great poets of the century.” Meaning the 20th century — they met back in the early 1960s on the Greek island of Hydra. Was Cohen being uncharacteristically hyperbolic? Well, William S. Burroughs, also not given to easy praise, once […]

‘The Lord of the Drones and the White House Fly’

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My staff of thousands reminds me there’s an election coming up in the U.S. of A. For all the voters going to the polls, here’s a poem to cheer them on by the British poet Heathcote Williams. Part two … enter the realm of litrichur, narrated and montaged by Alan Cox. And here’s part three, […]

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