Contents:
In this issue:
Note from the editor: p.2
Tribute and poem for Bob Cobbing by the poet Scott Thurston: p. 2-4
Adrian Clarke: Poem: p.5
Patricia Farrell: Poems and images: p.6-8
Andrew Taylor: Poem: p.9
Cliff Yates: Poem: p.10
James Murphy: Poem: p.11
Sam Smith: Poems: p.12-15
Dave Ward: Prose poem: p.15-17
Lester Smith: Poem: p. 18-19
Rupert M Loydell: Poem: p.20
Ian Robinson: drawings: front cover and p.11, 20, 21
Reviews: p.21-22
Publications and Journals: p.23-25
Biographies: p.26-27
Subscription Details: p.26
Welcome to the 3rd issue of Neon Highway. It is Thursday 6th February 2003. In this issue I would primarily like to pay tribute to Bob Cobbing the sound and concrete poet who died September 29, 2002.
I never met Bob but having read his ABC in sound and read through his book Word Score Utterance Choreography in Verbal & Visual poetry, edited by Bob Cobbing and Lawrence Upton, I was extremely impressed. I also can’t avoid mentioning bob jubile and bill jubobe texts by Bob Cobbing, works of art in their own right and beautifully put together. Bob also edited And with Adrian Clarke and I would like to point out that issue 11 edited by Bob and Adrian is now available from Writers Forum press, details of which I have put at the back of this magazine under the journals section.
Robert Sheppard and Scott Thurston performed a wonderful performance of Cobbing’s work on 15th October 2002 at Edge-Hill from his ABC. I listened with great enjoyment at this wonderful display of sound text, words coming to life and resonating as if they had been discovered for the first time.
In this issue, I am very pleased to be able to publish a personal tribute to Bob by an interesting and talented poet. I would therefore like to pass you over to Scott Thurston. Thank you.
Alice Lenkiewicz
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A TRIBUTE TO BOB COBBING (1920-2002) by Scott Thurston
I first encountered Bob Cobbing at a performance at the Festival Hall, London in early 1990. He was performing as one third of ‘Konkrete Canticle’ with the poets Paula Claire and Bill Griffiths. This was the second poetry event I had ever attended and I was astonished by the extraordinary sound produced by this group. At one point the poets began moving round the audience showing us a copy of the poem that they were performing – when Cobbing came over to me I looked down to see a totally abstract image in black and white and suddenly I was performing it too! This experience had a profound physical effect on me: afterwards I felt overwhelmed, but exhilarated. Afterwards I found out that the ‘concrete’ poetry I had heard and performed worked by creating abstract images and then ‘reading’ or ‘performing’ them with the sounds of the human voice and/or instruments – as if you began spontaneously to read aloud in a language you did not know how to pronounce, yet somehow made ‘sense’. It involved interpreting the marks, lines, textures and shapes of a visual text as if they were analogous to the marks, lines, textures and shapes that make up the characters of writing systems. Cobbing was not only a concrete poet but also produced sound poetry; creating poems which used recognisable characters of the English and other writing systems but patterning them to emphasise their qualities of sound rather than sense. He also produced works which can be described as found poems, collage poems and cut-up poems, indeed claiming to have created cut-up works before the technique’s more often credited creator – William Burroughs – did.
But Cobbing’s legacy extends beyond his creative contribution to his support for creativity in seemingly endless forms and guises. His Writers Forum press, still in operation after his death, published over 1000 titles of poetry over a period of almost forty years including work by Lee Harwood, Maggie O’Sullivan, John Cage and Allen Ginsberg. I consider myself immensely fortunate to have had my first two pamphlets of poetry published by Cobbing; an early and generous start which gave me momentum for years to come. In the second pamphlet’s case I had the pleasure of actually working together with Cobbing to create the book, page by page. His alert eye constantly picked up on anomalies and opportunities. He even sent me off (to his own photocopier in the basement) to progressively reduce a photocopy of the word ‘trills’ which appeared over and over in one of my poems. I had explained that in performance my intention was to say each successive ‘trills’ more quietly than the last. He persuaded me to show this in the ‘score’ of my poem, which I duly did (you can find it in Stateswalks). In addition we also saved going onto another page and thus solved a pagination problem! Such are the joys of small press publication – one is connected with the means of re/production and can therefore explore creative ways of presenting text whilst remaining fully in control: the book becomes part of the poem.
Another important legacy of Cobbing’s manifold energies was the monthly Writers Forum workshop (on-going) which he presided over in various venues in north London. This was the most genuinely open reading space I have ever had the pleasure to come across: a place where many poets came to try things out and to learn: some only once, some returning for years. Although in the wider culture the ‘writing workshop’ has connotations of the masterclass and being corrected in one’s mistakes, Cobbing’s presence at these gatherings allowed poets to learn about themselves and their work through the very act of articulation, without judgement. The only advice I ever heard given was to read either ‘louder’ or ‘slower’ or both. The space allowed you to work it out for yourself. Cobbing also created opportunities for exploration. On one memorable occasion, after I’d just been given the louder and slower treatment for a hesitant performance of one of my poems (on the second run I was rather startled by what came out) Bob handed myself and the poet Johan De Wit a copy of Gerry Loose’s poem ‘Bob in the News’, one of the many birthday poems dedicated to Bob by workshop participants over the years. It was my first performance of a sound poem – no preparation, no practice – and, with the briefest of mutual direction: ‘OK, let’s turn pages at the same time and finish here’ – we were off! Again there was that incredible sense of exhilaration – of one’s voice literally being stretched to things one would never before have felt it capable of. Amazingly, Johan and I kept in time and finished the piece simultaneously! Although I’ve rarely written pure sound poems since – the understanding of sound and the possibilities of performance that I gained during sessions like these were an apprenticeship that has not only informed all of my live reading work since but also my relationship to poetry on the page as well.
It’s with difficulty that one recognises the passing of a truly generous and creative spirit – one who felt no need to hide his talents but who made more effort than most to create spaces in which his abilities also allowed others to be nurtured, to grow and to flourish. British poetry needs more poets like Bob Cobbing.
FOR BOB COBBING
Rough drafts delaying
You trusted I knew the s goes up
A person
What I was saying comes down
To a lower limit
Slower in delaying the centred poet
Upper limit is what if we tried
The s comes down
Simple testing it that way
Trusted that I knew what
I was saying
And if I didn’t
that I would find out
Scott Thurston
Adrian Clarke
For Robert Sheppard & Patricia Farrell
JEUNES FEMMES ROUGES
FLAG CHALKED IN
PYROTECHNIC SHOWERS GUN
SIGHTS CHRONICLE RAW
FISTS STRUCK FROM
CONCORDE CONJUGATE ARCHIVES
WITH MECHANICAL DAMAGE
UNDERGROUND CALLIGRAPHY ELECTRIC
BLUE NEW YORK
PRAGMATICS SMOKE SCREEN
RECEIPT COBBLESTONE CURTAINED
BLOSSOM SHED SQUADS
STEP A GESTURAL
TOUJOURS PLUS BELLES
Patricia Farrell
Patricia Farrell
it’s nice to watch you dancing
not even map yr. silver trail
the little man
on whom you burn yr.fingers
inherits nothing
except the doors already broken
believing it’s already dead
the death of passion
the death of fingers
the death of coffee
his feathers are a printout
face down digging in warm snow
within a paving
jumps around another stone
or the man with small ears
small ears to concentrate the sound
they all come through the floor
and celebrate
across the carpets
♦
practising the next war
we smashed a goldfish with a stone
in dead of night
the velvet paw descends
I stole the rain
vomiting fragments
of fool’s gold
back into the earth
who are those young men knocking
at your front door?
in the surface
thru small cracks seeping
these visitations
are called Shirley
his little face revolving
as he feeds
who are these young men knocking
at your front door?
the cunning tongue darts silent in the ear
sliding over edge
of knife and razor
♦
I have no time for that
I am just a heartbeat
within a fortnight I am gone
I live
but for this moment
twirling from the trees
in ecstasy
without ecstasy
pulling earth
from in my ears
but only when I hear this music
Andrew Taylor
So Modern Everything Seems Pointless.
(for Scott Thurston)
Hum of air conditioning: a kind of comfort as the hour
grinds on with lights low and the click of computers
Feel the need for Melatonin, to paper over the cracks,
lead into the cauldron of sleep where animals roam
safely through streets, cars give way and people
show respect! images high of failing aeroplanes and
evacuation procedures from the 72nd floor of
buildings.
Close visage and open invis window, a DIFFERENT
view on the world! tread carefully on the streets of the
Village, especially in the month of January. Go to Zinc,
to see the cats through the smoke.
Please be careful this Ritazza beverage is extremely hot.
how that would bring cheer down the icy blast of Bleecker Street!
Sleep deprivation and the queue for fast food at The Peacocks
Centre do not hang well together. Cavernous space with lifts,
escalators and stairs. Shops seem secondary, somehow.
Once Public Space, now
‘The public are invited into the shopping
Centre by courtesy of the management’
security guards follow people badly, while a minimum wage
cleaner polishes a glass balcony, all day.
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Cliff Yates
BACK THEN
Back then it was live, crowded, blue (the sky)
different, easier, much more fun, a good laugh
longer (the days in winter), February, an hour
before midnight, after
Yes it was crowded the atmosphere was
words can’t describe the atmosphere.
It sounded like a joke but wasn’t. You were
there weren’t you? How old were you
in those days?
cellotape the sky the doorhandle door
open a table in it on end skirting the tower
on the horizon sky above it clouds
the window sill distance cup
on a shelf lino scuffed carpet nervous
beauty smell of your hand in the sunshine
a deckchair like sand the ocean small
creatures not together separating
(like the of like like in the)
man called Walker walking a queue
outside a cinema harmonica out the window
the couple eating breakfast on a stranger’s verandah
Hannibal setting out over the alps the Band’s farewell
view of the Pacific over that bit of flat all
downhill Polish houses like in Poland
the field of gear boxes at the breakers in Flint
the gear box that clicked in first Michaelangelo
on his scaffolding with a bad back the pope
coming to a decision the pope coming
my brother before his bike is stolen
the third reich entering Paris leaving
the roads asleep the melting tarmac melting
Ian Robinson
James Murphy
Day Of Tears
It was pure madness as gunshots echoed
looking out over the morning sunshine
within a lost wish and prayer it had started
one and one, two alone, they were just kids
living out of their world of disbelief
birth, life and death, it happened very quickly
with each breath taken away
moonless become the night sky, darkness
consuming change in stillness
bruised and torn
lasting, burning tears of grief
Sam Smith
Room 20
The rule here is
no cross-contamination.
So all undress,
shower, wear smocks
that fasten at the back.
In the centre
one lies on
the steel table.
The others render
him, or her,
unconscious.
The leader then
takes a blade
and cuts
the body open.
None in the room
question
their right
to be doing this.
(notes for reading:- To a background tape of steam engines receding. Use large
arm gesticulations.)
Room 21
Stolen key in hand
he slips through the door,
feels for the switch.
There is no light.
Crawling over the windowsill
he sits panting on the floor,
pleased to have arrived.
He frowns,
sees no furniture.
He says a last
charming word at the door,
closes it softly behind him.
The walls are bare.
With a sledgehammer
he pounds through the wall.
Coated in dust
he stands grinning
in the centre of the room.
It collapses about him.
(notes for reading:-Wear cricketing whites. Between stanzas bowl yellow
and red marigold heads at audience.)
Room 29
In the room of sorrowful flowers
catkins have become allergic
to pollen, and sobs are coming from
the freckled throats of mimulus.
In dark corners are glowing
lace discs of elder, pleading
to be moons. A magnolia
is a flock of white doves
trapped in the instant of flight.
The golden laburnum weeps
for them. And still the daisies
are unblinking credulous.
(Next door
sealed off from the aura
of beckoning perfumes,
all old smells, carried there
in the wake of shoulders,
have long since
sunk to the floor.)
(notes for reading:- Go onto tip-toe, as if calling over the heads of a crowd.
Come down onto heels when finished. Look around puzzled.)
Room 30
If this was a zoo of human relationships
and behaviours, then observe Room 30,
which has one table, six chairs,
three beds and three couples.
All come to the table to eat, go in pairs to the beds. Returning to the
table they arrange themselves differently, go in pairs to the beds. Back at the
table, seating is again re-arranged, the talk is animated, laughter quick. Bed to
table, table to bed, all permutations finally exhausted, they are as they began,
have made themselves a history, think themselves wise. They start again.
(notes for reading:- Hold two fingers straight together like a gun. Point the gun
at your temple. Do not attempt to shoot. Lower gun slowly when finished.)
Room 34
Inside only their own moisture
the silver & blue fish
slither and slide between
and over each other. Their mouths
stay open, two rows of
pointed white teeth before
palates and gills of fresh pink.
The floating heads of stuffed animals
(their mouths are blackened, also open)
move about on top of the fish.
Zebra, elk and bison nod
and bow as if conversing.
Hung from the ceiling
are dried humming birds.
When touched, occasionally,
by horn, antler or muzzle,
their jewelled husks rotate.
(notes for reading:- Wrap a pillow around your lower face. Feel the words
hot on your cheeks.)
Room 35
Stacked here are
the trunks of trees that will become
the room’s furniture. Beech & pine
will combine to make a table.
A broad oak will be hollowed out
into a wardrobe. Shavings and woodchip
will be burnt in the quickly blackened
fireplace – its mantle a spare plank
of pine. The twisted hawthorn
will be turned into a hatstand.
In the corner a tub of wax waits
to be applied. Maple & rosewood
will marry into chairs. The many gaps
and spaces left will be filled
with the smell of dessicated and
crystalline sap.
(notes for reading:- Place 6 shimmering angels in a line facing the audience.
At beginning of poem start along the line. Take the harp from each angel,
Drop it to the floor and casually push each angel over.)
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Dave Ward
BLACK NIGHT
As she gets off the bus she lights another
cigarette. She tries to light another cigarette.
Her fingers fumble its shape to her mouth. Jabbing
it between the red of her lips. The matches slip as
she tries to strike one. The flame goes out, blown
out by the slipstream fumes of the bus as it
retreats down the street.
She doesn’t know where she is. The street is dark.
The lamps are broken, unlit. Watching. She knows
when someone is watching. Someone is watching her
now. But nobody is here. An empty street.
She strikes a match. She lights her cigarette.
Clings to it like a stick. For protection. To
guide her. Its glowing tip the only light as its
ash spills down her dress.
“The sky’s full of rain…I can feel it in my
head…in a cloud shaped like pain…”
The pain has led her here. She is not in the room
where the pain lives with her. Beside the empty bed
where she never sleeps.
“It’s cold…and it’s dark…so I don’t want to go
out…so I get on the bus…okay?…OKAY.”
But the bus has gone. Its lights have gone. Its
warmth has gone. The other passengers who looked at
her but did not look at her. Were there. But are
not here now. Nobody here now. But someone is
watching her.
She can feel the eyes.
She knows. Most people do not want to see her.
Look away. Or they stare. And she knows.
Now no-one is here, but she knows.
The road slopes away. Uneven paving stones.
Slipping between the terraced houses, down towards
the river. Waiting like a darkness, like a
stillness at the bottom of the hill. She cannot see
it, but she knows it’s there. Can feel its tug.
Feel that chill.
Maybe it’s only the river that watches. She shrugs,
shivering, going that way. But no, she knows.
There is someone else. Not eyes behind the
curtains. They don’t count, they are always there.
No, there’s someone else there, out here, with her.
Someone in this street.
She stops. Her feet miss a beat. Are those the
echoes of other footsteps? Is someone keeping time
with her? She turns to look. A swirl of smoke from
her cigarette’s stub.
There’s no-one here.
Distant sirens. A riverboat’s moan.
She hugs herself. She would like someone to.
Someone to hold her. Anyone would do. Just to be
held. She looks again. Her eyes pulse pain, like
the pain in her head. She smudges red lips with the
back of her sleeve.
In the doorway, in the darkness, where there is no-
one, where there is nothing. There is someone
there.
He does not surprise her. She is not startled. She
always knows when someone is watching. But she did
not expect the eyes. The eyes that see her without
seeing her. Which look at her and through her and
do not see.
But see everything.
And she wasn’t expecting the touch of his body. So
moist, so warm. Like a day-old baby, but fully
grown. Wrapped in long darkness. Like a cloak,
like a coat. To protect them. As they dance, in
the silence, in the darkness.
And what did he expect? As she brushes his skin
with two rouged lips. That skin which feels so
thin, so frail. A web of colours which shift and
break.
He takes her to another place. She does not know
where she is now, though she did not know where she
was before. They dance through darkness, through
hidden walls. Through gardens of light.
A dervish waltz, to and fro, to and fro, feeling the
salt, the oil, the flow, till her skin seems to glow
in contact with his own.
They dance through cities beneath this city, where
sunken rivers run.
They go there.
He takes her.
She is not alone.
Lester Smith
Cubism
Comfortable chairs are like comfortable faces.
Circles look comforting... Deceptiveness is like a microwave. A fluttering fan falls when He wakes us.
Flowers wilt. Large ear. Nose-dull.
Brows prove guilt. Flowers are beautiful
Ear. Wig. “Olga!” Small eye glowers
if only for a matter But... of hours.
Synthetic material tempts us. We float. We hover.
We hoover up panoramic vistas. Seas of shadows support illusions. Is it all seen through His eyes?
I pray I pray I pray. No I don’t.
Back to Braque, analytical, synthetic.
An eye for a leg. Sensory deprivation?
A jest, a chest. Bulls. Chesty, jesty bulls
in synthetic vestibules?
One egg or two. Give us a clue.
Blue moons disguise gashes.
Blown in rose-tinted glasses.
A painter strokes a painter.
Creating primitive patterns.
The plainest hat, the dullest belt.
Lips where butter would not melt.
If only the butter knew.
CUBISM
Please do not force
the square pegs into
round holes.
Lester Smith
Two years old
Only a learner
Toying with ideas could win him a Turner.
Strong Russian stocks. Big hat, slight face.
Quick from the blocks.
Big eyes, fine shape.
Time flies by when you’re the father of a child. In and out of fruity pastel memories, impossible to hide.
Under stated, over stated. Breathing, breathing, breaths.
Such a big hat.
Fuel sweeps material being
Pale innocence cocooned by a mother who knows what is out there
The hatred is an extension of herself. She knows
“I paint as I see fit not as I see:
Yes, there are large eyes and huge arms in my head.
What a carrion, this is not a bench.
I like the ruff it accentuates her charms.
Poetry is in motion. Art tempts devotion.
True. Cezanne was an influence.
Shapes you insist! Is it a couch?”
Ian Robinson
Rupert M Loydell
NO FORMAL INNER LANGUAGE
Awake since 3am,
I note death much in evidence:
meandering down the slope
like a rain-flushed stream.
I prefer not to get wet
in the middle of the day.
Give the viewer
a feeling of space:
connect with sorrow,
sympathise with age.
Electrical discharges
sputter along the margin,
colour wouldn't dare
to hang on to my easel.
Thought is ephemeral,
a site-specific installation.
The rest of the space is dark.
Reviews
Ian Robinson
The Blickensderfer Punch
Robert Sheppard: text
Patricia Farrell: images
Ship of Fools 2002
Interaction between text and image allows the eye to translate the work fluidly. At the same time the juxtaposition between image and text create a 'mechanical' rhythm that dictates and re-interprets the 'voice' and 'image' of the typewriter.
Patricia Farrell's stark but mellow black and white images float beautifully across the white page melting effortlessly into Sheppard's experimental sound based text. An interesting read , exploring a visionary world of the language of the typewriter,
'The Blickensderfer Punch'. Beautifully presented.
Alice Lenkiewicz
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A World Elsewhere by Ian Robinson: ten dream stories & two fragments.
Eidolon press MM ll
Ian Robinson explores the idea of place and relationships through the language of dreams. Visionary and surreal, the stories are written in a matter of ‘fact’ way that accentuates the unusual and sometimes ‘absurd’ subject matter. An interesting worthwhile read. More of this kind of writing needed, I think.
Alice Lenkiewicz
Reviews Continued…
Road Of Sighs, Poems 1985-2001 by James Murphy.
Red Wolf Press: 2002
In Road of Sighs, James Murphy explores the psychological journeys of the misfits of society. The world of substance abuse and street life is vividly and sensitively portrayed in this collection of realistic poems. This collection allows the reader to contemplate not only the difficulties encountered but also the genuine love and affection between people who are at odds with society. I recommend this as a worthwhile book to experience and read.
Alice Lenkiewicz
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Sheetlight by Tim Fletcher: text of Poems with CD.
Illustrations by Claire Fletcher
First Offense Publication: 2001
A collection of experimental sound-based/visual text. Fletcher experiments with poetry on and off the page. Tim Fletcher explores his work using a combination of voice, and a variety of instruments. The visual text and CD demand attention and thought from the listener and reader. Although not for the ‘feint hearted’, an experimental piece of work, pushing the reader beyond any conventional and comforting boundaries.
Alice Lenkiewicz
Publications
Robert Sheppard, The Lores (£7.50)
Lawrence Upton, Wire Sculptures (£5)
Ken Edwards, eight + six (£7.50)
The first two are available now and the third in late summer. Postage & packing is added at the rate of one pound for one book, one pound fifty for two books, two pounds for three books, four or more books ordered together post free.
Ken Edwards, Reality Street Editions
4 Howard Court, Peckham Rye, London SE15 3PH, UK
Tel: 020 7639 7297
Web: www.realitystreet.co.uk
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Ian Robinson: The Glacier In the Cupboard: copy/copies of this book are £5.00 each, post free. Cheques and P.os should be made out to:- ‘Permanent Press’ and sent to 5B Compton Avenue, Canonbury, London N1 2XD.
(Ninety-six black and white drawings, with an introduction by Rupert Vas Dias.)
Ian Robinson: A World Elsewhere. ten dream stories & two fragments
Eidolon press MM ll, 34 Nightingale Square, London SW12 8QN
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The Blickensderfer Punch
Robert Sheppard: text
Patricia Farrell: images
Ship of Fools 2002
Email:sheppard3@supanet.com
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the necessity of poetics
Robert Sheppard:
ship of fools liverpool, 2002
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New Tonal Language
Patricia Farrell
Shelby Matthews
Simon Perril
Keston Sutherland
Reality Street Editions: 1999
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James Murphy: Road of Sighs: Paperback, July 2002 $17.95
• Paperback: 162 pages
• Publisher: Red Wolf Press; ; (March 20, 2002)
• ISBN: 0971724458
Available to order on Amazon.com
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'Turn For Home'
Andrew Taylor
published by The Brodie Press (www.thebrodiepress.co.uk). Due out end of March, beginning of April.
www.andrewtaylorpoetry.com
Andrew also has work published in 'The Liver Bards' poetry and prose anthology published May 2002. Copies can be ordered by emailing the publisher James Bainbridge at theliverbards@hotmail.com
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Memories of air: Cory Harding.
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Alice Lenkiewicz
Men Hate Blondes: Poems and CD to accompany with music and vocal.2003
Available from Neon Highway. £2.50.
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Rupert Loydell: Recent books of poems:
The Museum of Light [Arc], The Museum of Improvisation [Wild Honey] and two collaborative works: The Temperature of Recall, with
Sheila E. Murphy; and A Hawk Into Everywhere, with Roselle Angwin.
read Stride magazine at
www.stridemagazine.co.uk
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A.C Evans
Poetry Magazine contributions (Dec 2002 - Feb 2003)
Pulsar #32 (Dec 2002)
To An Aesthete Dying Young
Inclement #8 (Dec 2002)
Reflections In A Mirrors
Only Shadows
Angels Bring Us
Lost Words
Awen #20 (Feb 2003)
The Night Alone
Moonstone #89 (Feb 2003)
Most Adored
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Journals
AND No. 11 is now available.
Edited by Bob Cobbing
And Adrian Clarke
Writers Forum. 89a, Petherton Road, London. N5 2QT
Oasis: Editor Ian Robinson and Yann Lovelock.
12 Stavenage Road, London, SW6 6ES
Oasis can be found on First Subscriber website at www.firstsubscriber.com
The Radiator: Edited by Scott Thurston. Rad #2 out now
Ira Lightman 'On the Composition of I-CHING PIECE and O TO SUBJECT'. In a specially commissioned piece Lightman reflects on the composition of two poems which are also published here for the first time. The complexity of Lightman's procedures is an engine for an extraordinary poetics of generative form that acknowledges influences ranging from John Cage to Woody Allen.
ALSO STILL AVAILABLE Issue 1: William Rowe “‘Language . . . poisoned to a wreckage’: on contemporary poetics in Britain and Latin America”. Rowe’s reflections on Ana Maria Pacheco, Barry MacSweeney, Raul Zurita, Mario Montalbetti and Maggie O’Sullivan.
Subscriptions are welcomed at:
The Radiator, Flat 5, 48, Upper Parliament Street, Liverpool, L8 7LF, UK
and cost £5.00 sterling for 3 issues (£10.00 institutions), £2.00 for single issues (£4.00 institutions), surface mail post paid to anywhere and payable to 'Scott Thurston'. The Radiator publishes essays on poetics by contemporary poets.
scottthurston@btinternet.com
Future issues will feature poetics and new poetry by Allen Fisher and Jeff Hilson.
Smoke: Edited by Dave Ward and Dave Calder
Published by Windows, Liver House, 96 Bold Street, Liverpool L1 4HY
Fire: Editor Jeremy Hilton. Field Cottage, Old White Hill, Tackley, Kidlington, Oxfordshire OX5 3AB. www.poetical.org
First Offence: Edited by Tim Fletcher. Syringa, Stodmarsh, Canterbury, Kent.
CT3 4BA.
The Paper: Edited by David Kennedy: 29 Vickers Road, Firth Park, Sheffield, S5 6UY, UK. Email: dgk@kennedyd.fsworld.co.uk
The Journal: Editor: Sam Smith
Jacobyte Books. Editor: Sam Smith.
http://www.jacobytebooks.com/poetry/:
Poetry Salzburg Review
Wolfgang Gortschacher
psr@poetrysalzburg.com
Stride online journal: Edited by Rupert Loydell
read Stride magazine at
www.stridemagazine.co.uk
Tremblestone: Edited by Kenny Knight: Tremblestone, Corporation Buildings, 10. F How Street, The Barbican, Plymouth, Devon. PL4 ODB.
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Biographies
Adrian Clarke's collections include "Ghost Measures" (Actual Size, 1987),
and "Obscure Disasters", "Millennial Shades & Three Papers" and "Skeleton
Sonnets" (all Writers Forum). Work anthologised in "Verbi Visi Voco"
(Writers Forum, 1992) and "Foil" (Etruscan Books, 2000). He co-edited
"Floating Capital: new poets from London" (Potes & Poets Press, 1991) with
Robert Sheppard, and five issues of "And" magazine with the late Bob
Cobbing. Since Cobbing's death he has been continuing Writers Forum's
activities with Lawrence Upton.
IAN ROBINSON edits Oasis Magazine and Oasis books. His most recent publications are ‘How Do You Spell Bl…gh?” (Short Stories, Redbeck Press, 2002). And ‘A World Elsewhere’ (10 dream stories, eidolon press, 2002). Redbeck also published his ‘The Invention of Morning’ (poems) in 1997. Ninety six of his drawings were published in 1995 under the title ;The Glacier in the Cupboard’ by Permanent Press and S-Editions; And in 2001 two small pamphlets of visual work, ‘landscapes’ (10 drawings) and ‘Theorems’ (16 collages) were published by , respectively, Oasis Books and Offerta Speciale Visual Editions (Turin).
Scott Thurston's publications include Poems Nov 89 - Jun 91 (1991), Stateswalks (1994) (both Writers Forum) and Two Sequences (RWC, 1998). He also appeared in Sleight of Foot (Reality Street, 1996). He edits the poetics journal The Radiator and is publishing a series of interviews with contemporary poets in Poetry Salzburg Review.
Sam Smith recently employed as an amusement arcade cashier, Sam Smith has been a psychiatric nurse, residential social worker, milkman, plumber, laboratory analyst, groundsman, sailor, computer operator, scaffolder, gardener, painter & decorator........ working at anything, in fact, which has paid the rent, enabled him to raise his three daughters and which didn't get too much in the way of his writing. With poetry and articles widely published, especially in Britain, he already has 5 poetry collections, 10 novels and a history/biography to his name (see his own website for more details - http://members.aol.com/smithsssj/index.html). Editor of The Journal (once 'of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry'), publisher of Original Plus books, he is also proud to be Poetry Editor of Jacobyte Books (Australia) and Associate Editor of The River King Poetry Supplement (Illinois, USA). He was born in 1946.
James Murphy has been writing poetry for many years drawing off his personal experiences with the drug culture and the damage it can wreck. His poetry has appeared in newspapers, magazines and several national anthologies in the United States and his work has appeared in poetry corners in the United Kingdom. Murphy's first collect of poetry entitled "In Search of A soul" was published in 1996 with a Canadian copyright. Murphy has the rare ability to offer vivid imagery, life experiences and with his gift of storytelling to create entertaining, informing and spellbinding poetry.
DAVE WARD’s Publications include JAMBO (Impact), TRACTS (Headland), THE TREE OF DREAMS (Harper Collins), CANDY AND JAZZZ
(Oxford University Press).Poems in Poetry Review, Ambit, Poetry Wales, Oasis, etc.
Co-ordinator The Windows Project. Toured to Singapore.
"Patricia Farrell has had books published by Reality Street and Writers Forum. Her work has appeared in a number of anthologies and magazines. She has also taken part in exhibitions in London, Birmingham, Portsmouth and Cologne."
Andrew Taylor is Poet-In-Residence at Liverpool Architecture and Design
Trust; a PhD Student in Poetry; has had work published nationally and
locally in print and on the airwaves and his first collection is due out in
Summer 2003, published by Sheppard Bainbridge. Andrew Taylor has a book
coming out Summer 2003, as yet untitled, to be published by Sheppard
Bainbridge publishers. Andrew has a collection due out in April titled 'Turn For Home' published by The Brodie Press (www.thebrodiepress.co.uk).
Alice Lenkiewicz: Artist/poet. Lives in Skelmersdale with her two children. Presently studying her MA in Writing Studies at Edge hill College and editing Neon Highway. Member of the poetics research group at Edge hill, she has completed her music and poetry project Men Hate Blondes and is currently working on the Adventures of Maxine, a collection of short stories and poems. She exhibits her art and has written poems and two plays, St Catherine and Wrappers.
Lester Smith writes prose fiction for the most part but has written the occasional poem over the years. His only recorded poem won a prize in the Lancaster Literature Festival. At that time he was a fifteen year-old and full of angst. He felt inspired to take up a pen full of concentrated poet’s ink after exploring and being impressed by the poetry of other writers on the Edge Hill MA programme. Cubism is an interpretation of five paintings by Picasso and is intended to be formed into a cube shape prior to reading, using as a box for keeping strong mints in or replacing misplaced dice.
Cliff Yates' collection of poems 'Henry's Clock' (Smith/Doorstop) won the Aldeburgh prize in 1999. He wrote 'Jumpstart Poetry in the Secondary School' as Poetry Society poet-in-residence, and teaches at Maharishi School in Skelmersdale where his students have won many awards for their writing.
Rupert Loydell is the Managing Editor of Stride, Royal Literary Fund Fellow
at Bath University and Visiting Fellow at Warwick University. Recent books
of poems include The Museum of Light [Arc], The Museum of Improvisation
[Wild Honey] and two collaborative works: The Temperature of Recall, with
Sheila E. Murphy; and A Hawk Into Everywhere, with Roselle Angwin.
NEON HIGHWAY. POETRY / ART MAGAZINE
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