Hello list: old fart, Pete Smith, chiming in from the left coast of
Canada. Recently wired into this cosmos at the homestead & can cease
eavesdropping on employer's equipment, sign up & regain sweet, innocent
sleep! Am a British ex-pat (or ex-non-pat); "child" of 60's who obeyed
Tim Leary's command but it was garbled between Harvard & Coventry, "Turn
over, drop off." Formative years spent discovering for oneself,
belonging to School of Nemo (yes, that fantasy), Mottram's Poetry
Review, Briggflatts, Mutual Scarlet Boulevard, Tarasque, Grosseteste
Review, 2nd Aeon (aided much by peter finch's surveys of EVERYTHING
PRINTED BY ANYONE in the islands) & Jonathan Williams' Jargon Society
for all his enthusiasms (& much besides).
Prompted to join by various things: commendation by Nate Dorward (the
list to me, not me to the list); a hope to get decoded versions of Peter
Larkin & Frances Presley essays; a wish to dialogue on how it can be
done, not just who's doing it; the recent note on the death of Jon
Silkin. Re: JS - his "Killhope Wheel" is surely more than just a
geographical antecedent to B. MacSweeney's "Pearl" - glances at 2
(untitled) poems: "Small hills, among the fells, come apart from the
large/ where streams drop..." & "Concerning strength/ it is unequal."
Without Silkin's "Stand" Britain's poetic isolation would have lasted
even longer & the Betjeman-Larkin (Philip, of course) might still be
Principal Boy instead of Ass (quiz: which one...).
Hope to offer: curiosity & the occasional word about readings at the
Kootenay School of Wiring & such-like places (sadly, don't get there
often - about 270 miles away) & introduce lesser known worthies. Is
Peter Culley known there? "The Climax Forest" is a fine book. Can whet
some appetities next time in.
Meanwhile, in case anyone runs into me dahn Brixton Road or in corridors
of cyberland, here's:
SELF-PORTRAIT (in a kaleidoscope).
Glad in joy,
as in clad in a clown's costume:
downturned, exaggerated white
made-up lips glabbered
with the antiphrastic glow of sadness.
It wasn't the spotlight, the ring or the whoopie cushion;
it wasn't the kinder section letting rip
tides of guffaws and rippled applause;
it was the geometry of the trapeze artists,
the arcs and loops and dissected sectors,
the fallen angles,
filled with sequinned memory,
light-years from their own galaxy.
Cheerio,
Pete.
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