Elizabeth
Am intrigued, not merely curious at this posting! Could you say a bit more
about mail art? A working definition?, sense of what it is?
The British Library has a considerable number of British zines (ie not
poetry magazines, "comics for grownups"). One particularly large acquisition
of 70s and 80s zines was acquired about ten years ago, and I was involved in
its cataloguing.
Larger runs of zines, eg Birmingham Art Lab's Streetcomix, Ego Comics' Tim
True Stories, were catalogued in their own right, or used to fill gaps in
the Library's existing collections. Where there were only one or two issues
of a zine, the magazines were not catalogued separately but instead held at
a single shelfmark, Cup.821.dd.150, where in fact over five hundred
individual issues are held. A handlist is shelved with them. These zines can
be consulted in the Rare Books Reading Room at the Library's St Pancras
site. My recollection is that there were among these, a small number of
magazines that were specificially feminist, but I am not sure now of the
level of poetic engagement, and I don't recall X-poet appearing as a kind of
Captain Scarlet or Y-poet as Batwoman (but if a comic is art, it may also
be poetry - each frame a kind of stanza/room; and of course, our collection
is likely to be the tip of the iceberg even if it is also likely to be one
of the largest collections in the country: I'll try to think about other
collections).
I think, erh-hem, "working class" needs a bit of unpacking here, especially
in the context of the the shifts (or were they shifts?) from the 70s to 90s;
also is US "working class" (a rather static, one-size-fits all concept?) the
same as UK "working class"? More materially, how do the US zines identify
themselves as coming from a working class context, and how might British
zines do that? (this may be a shibboleth question, the answer to which is,
"Well, if you don't know, you certainly aren't working class!" Thinks:
Hmmmmm.)
Richard
-----Original Message-----
From: Elizabeth James [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 14 November 2002 23:39
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: talk
Nicky Marsh from University of Southampton presented last night at the
Talks series convened by Robert Hampson, at Birkbeck College, London.
She gave a great paper, with some very nice examples, on American
'zines -- not 'poetry magazines' -- in the 1980s, focusing on poetry
published in them by women. This is part of a wider project about the
relationship of different types of poetry to 'the public'. The context
is countercultural movements both social and, um, cultural, especially
feminist ones, like the Riot Grrls, but also e.g. mail art and then
types of visual poetics and collage that link back to more established
modernist art traditions. There were zines in which Language poets
appeared alongside these very working- (or out-of-working-) -class,
non-'literary' poets. What Marsh finds among other things is a
fluctuating range of degrees of freedom from and incorporation by the
types of patriarchal or commercial forces against which this work and
those writers seemingly ranged themselves. But there was some very
striking and enjoyable work. This work depends on the existence of the
poetry archive at the University of Buffalo, which preserves a quantity
of these very ephemeral publications. Is such a corpus extant in the UK?
Was poetry a significant part of working class counter-culture here in
the late 20th century?
EAT EAT EAT
LOVE LOVE LOVE
FAT = HAPPY no no no nono
Origin of the not-is
(Maria Gitin, from 'CoLingua', no. 1)
Talks are at 7 p.m. on some Wednesay evenings in the Council Room,
Birkbeck College, Malet St., open to all interested.
e
**************************************************************************
Free exhibitions at the British Library Galleries :
50 Years of Number Ones : Listen to any one of over 930 pop music chart
toppers 1952-2002 (from 11 October)
Magic Pencil : Children's Book Illustration Today (from 1 November) original
graphic work of 13 contemporary artists
*************************************************************************
The information contained in this e-mail is confidential and may be legally
privileged. It is intended for the addressee(s) only. If you are not the
intended recipient, please delete this e-mail and notify the
[log in to unmask] : The contents of this e-mail must not be disclosed or
copied without the sender's consent.
The statements and opinions expressed in this message are those of the
author and do not necessarily reflect those of the British Library. The
British Library does not take any responsibility for the views of the
author.
*************************************************************************
|