New (or newish) News

and like Announcements

June 11th 2008. I was surprised this week to find that I've been freshly anthologised. Though this was not without some foreknowledge, I'm not surprised by my surprise. The thing is this:
    Orphans of Albion (Poetry of the British Underground)  Ed. Barry Tebb (Survivors' Press/ Sixties Press). 

This is the third Tebb-edited anthology in the last two years in which I've been included. And there's a substantial overlap between the contents of each. This is nothing to the overlaps involved in the various, mostly Sixties Press, selected and collected Tebbs that have seen the light in the past decade. Some poems appear in identical versions in up to half-a-dozen Sixties Press publications. Tebb's self-publishing policy can seem bewildering, and eccentric. How do I feel about appearing on his roster?
    On consideration, proud, despite a passing sense of awkwardness. His roster (not tribe or clique) would not be my roster, and I'm not devoid of a certain Cantabrian snobbery in matters of style, nor, despite a certain 'wild' reputation, conformities and timidities. Though he has associates and supporters, he's a Unique Phenomenon, a Glorious Misfit, with something important to say. Furthermore, he has written one of the great long poems of our age, Bridge over the Aire (see Collected Poems, 2003), every bit as good (and bad) as Tennyson's In Memoriam. My own recommendation for getting a handle on his work would be to take this long poem as figure, and let the rest of his voluminous work in poetry, novella, rant and animadversion, form context, notes, illustration, background information. Then his incessant self-publication seems not self-promotion, egotism, but something more generous: a complete confession of limitation, that enhances the grandeur of the central figure, which is not so much 'Barry Tebb' as the glory of human sexual emotion. He may not have attained the recognition that he has clearly aspired to: he has exposed himself, without interference from the Tabloid Press of our corrupted civilisation----and it does the human spirit good.
    Barry Tebb's "Sixties" are not quite my Sixties: more 1955-65 to my 65-75; not drugs and communes coupled with the hegemony of Rock and TV, but a time when poetry had cultural importance. I recognise his sense of hopes betrayed. His very energy gives a sense of Optimism to what could have been merely nostalgic elegy. There is little hope now for his ideals, but, if you take his measure, you might dissent, but only a fool could condescend to his extolled decade, or to the man himself, Barry Tebb.
    I meant this to be a simple news item. Perhaps I should shift it to somewhere else on this site.

May 25th: 2008: I've neglected this site while I've been completing a new book, about which I shan't speak until I know something of its fate. But today (intra-site news) I started making Notes on Music.

14/2/08: Last week (8/2/08) there was a review of Mid Life, in the TLS, by Jeremy Noel-Tod, which I found a cheering read.

There is now a quantity of 1970s work up in The Juveniliad.

Other news is old news, (I might start a separate page for outdated news) dating back to October 8th 2007:

http://intercapillaryspace.blogspot.com:80/2007/10/michael-haslam.html

An opening for Edmund Hardy's Blog Symposium on Peter Riley, a bit of prose titled
The Art of Ethical Meditation. That's a sort of News.

Other news (4th May): 

    http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/newpubl/2007b.html        Shearsman. Mid Life. June 2007.  See the Books page, and, possibly, Notes to Mid Life.

A copy of Anthony Mellors' new fragmente has now come to hand, fragmente 9. A gift at £5 inc. p&p, from Anthony Mellors, 31 Dale Close, Oxford OX1 1TU, this is a handsome volume on pleasant paper. There's a page of me, and this attractive list: Iain Sinclair, Geraldine Monk, Chris McCabe, Peter Larkin, Alan Halsey, Gavin Selerie, Simon Smith, Peter Riley, Frances Presley, Peter Philpott, Ian Davidson, Kelvin Corcoran, Richard Price, John Welch, and a theoretico-critical introduction by Anthony Mellors of interest even to those of us who're sceptical of the critico-theoretical.

http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/sscp/1844710793.htm

I don't know what to say about this. Andrew Duncan & Tim Allen's book of interviews conducted mostly 2004, "Don't Start Me Talking". My own contribution seems to stick in stuff about 'hippy-era' Hebden Bridge. Other interviews are quite different.

Here's something else:
http://www.skald.org/
Though it isn't up there yet (28/2/07), there's a new issue of Skald, Ed. Skoulding & Davidson, from 6 Hill Street, Menai Bridge, Anglesey (or for Welsh readers, 6 Lôn Pen Nebo, Porthaethwy, Ynys Môn) LL59 5AG, that features a poem of mine, Running to Meter, as well as interesting-looking stuff from the likes of Wendy Mulford, Liz Kirby, Stephen Rodefer, Peter Hughes and many more. Issue 24.