Hi cris,
Your message seems a good response to this 'non-existant London school' thing to me. Not
a school but a scene or an intersection of scenes. Certainly in the 70s. I remember that earlier
in the seventies (earlier than your dates below) Earls court square was worth going to for
events -- because Bob Cobbing and Eric Mottram were involved. Just at the point when they
were losing their grip on that setup, there was Bob running a printing machine in the
basement so that people could join in & learn how to use the machines. A presentation by Lee
of Jack Spicer's work, illustrated by tapes that he had, was tremendous. Readings by
Rakosi, MacDiarmid, Bunting were high spots for me. I think the publishing situation then
was very different with Fulcrum/Anvil/Trigram not centre but having some credibility and
publishing some great work. Better than Blood Pudding anyhow. Asa I think is undervalued
as a poet, editor and promoter. Having been fed, put up, looked after when in a dire state
(don't ask) by Eric Mottram, one ought to mention his total commitment to educating
everyone around him. & in modern music as well as poetry. That made a difference.
Delightful memory from Fiona (just read it) tweed though, was not the costume I remember,
or the state of the brain. Tony
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 1997 12:39:01 GMT
To: [log in to unmask]
From: cris cheek <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: All and sundries
Reply-to: cris cheek <[log in to unmask]>
Hi,
I'm wanting to masquerade a little with this London School thing.
It is as much and as little a false construction as the Cambridge School
admittedly.
BUT
There is some sense in which a loose alliance of writers and
publishers in London between 1977-8 (ish) - 1990-1 (ish) can be identified
along the sociological lines among which Karlien raises Cambridge classes.
This are the distant observations of the participation of one person. They
are intended to stir skeletons from cupboards. It's a quick shot.
I'd characterise the London 'scenes' as a broadly cheerful, informally
constituted, beer-sipping anarcho-syndicalist tendency with scattered
residual Marxist undertones. A disaffected avant-garde trace element,
neither leading with sense of direction nor sharing any articulated sense
of who and what it might be 'in the front' of. Something also of an
introverting clique at times, perhaps displaying throws of post-traumatic
shock. Pickets around a brazier in a dispute that everyone forgot. A small
alliance, the energy of which went into voluminous writing, often given 'in
process'. The latter aspect might account for the seeming 'friends tea
party' of gatherings. But then it might have been difficult for anyone not
'in the know' to find out when / where gatherings were happening and what
might occur. Publicity was produced and circulated on no-budget basis. A
'non-business' outlook (Ira's right on that one). Aside from a brief sense
of wider interest generated by Don Watson's sojourn as poetry editor at
City Limits magazine there was an over-riding sense that 'doors' were
closed - had been indefinitely shut - were not about to open - and
that energy was best put into 'the work' for the time being. Others might
not quite share this view. But attempts to widen audience, broaden
community were few and far between. Excepting that is broadening between
and across art-form boundaries and international borders. London remained
dark. Residues of liberal hippy idealisms blurring into punk and Goth.
Singular 'outsider' or 'indifferenter' projections. Verging on arch
romantic at times. The survivalist poses superceeding effective critique,
as Thatcher's bite sharpened.
There was a serious, commitment to 'poetry'. Readings were often long
(one reader for 80-90 minutes or more). Many writers were working on
extended sequences or series of interconnected works. I remember a
significant percentage of readings involving the use, either for
punctuation or ambience or accompaniment or interruption or juxtaposition,
of pre-recorded cassette tapes. In the mid-later 1970s there was
considerable discussion of and concentration on getting 'better' at doing
'readings'. This was provoked by exposure to US poets such as Allen
Ginsberg, Jerome Rothenberg, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Ed Dorn, Jackson
MacLow, Anne Waldman and John Giorno. Post '78 there was more informal
exploration of 'performance'.
There was considerable friendly exchange between early Lang-po writers
and this loose alliance. Several London poets had work in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.
They came here, we went there. Friendships were formed. I met Charles
Bernstein in London in 1978 for example. Work by Bernstein, Andrews,
Benson, Hejinian was appearing in London-based magazines then. Andrews
writes the introduction to 'Floating Capital'.
Many writers were working in or exploring the potentials of
cross-artform situations (in collaborations such as Robert Sheppard with Jo
Blowers, Adrian Clarke with Virginia Firnberg, Lawrence Upton in
International Mail Art, Carlyle Reedy with Paul Burwell, Bob Cobbing with
Clive Fencott and John Whiting as Oral Complex and with Hugh Metcalf / Lol
Coxhill and Jennifer Pike as Birdyak). There were collaborations and there
were books and pieces published deliberately under each others' names, and
there were the adoptions of personas and pseudonyms.
I'd characterise it as predominantly WASP/hetero/lower middle
class/male (even though many might have had a lapsed P). Male bonding
through the agency of the writing, rather than same-sexual desiring being
the subject of the writing. Conversations might be characterised as
entailing a catastrophic cusp between stern and pissed. The period of time
I'm talking about begins in 1978 and ends, arguably, sometime around 1990
(there are reasons for this and a similar shift took place in other
London-based arts communities around that time). One of those reasons is
simply that a book such as 'Future Exiles' had fulfilled the phophecy
inherent in its title. More curiously the fringes could no longer hold.
Fringes were on the official agenda. There was less possibility of
'outside'. Disenfranchised, poor, homeless yes - 'outside' ?
The London 'scenes' (imho) had several axes of influence:
- people (Bob Cobbing, Allen Fisher and Eric Mottram). This distinguishes
the London pot from the Cambridge one in some respects. Much, though of
course by no means all, of any London School can be said to stem from the
routing at the Poetry Society and the end of Eric Mottram's tenure as
editor of Poetry Review. This is 1978. Mottram's broad High Modernist
interests continued to exert influence through a combination of his
teaching (particularly the Thursday afternoon sessions) at Kings College,
the Kings readings which he curated for much of the following decade and a
regular flow of visitors to his house in Herne Hill (i especially remember
his chowder). Bob Cobbing, centrally involved at the Poetry Society,
continued to provide a generous and generative presence through press,
organisations and performances. Allen Fisher's influence as publisher,
practitioner, link to Fluxus and scientific research, with emphasis on
'process' thickened the broth. Boundaries between writing and other art
form practices are so prominent through these influences it becomes a key
characteristic to unpack. Not the time to devote to that here, although i
will try if ther's interst. Cobbing for example had been a painter, was a
performer working closely with improvising musicians (David Toop, Paul
Burwell, Eddie Prevost, Lol Coxhill and many others) had a considerable
body of work on tape in the areana of text-sound composition. Fisher was
'facturing' installational objects, making and distributing 'multiples',
painting and making films.
I would emphatically place an emphasis on border blur and border
crossing in the 'London' scenes.
- / places and events (Kings College readings, Rasp workshops,
Goldsmith's meetings, Orpington day lecture events, SubVoicive readings,
Association of Little Presses Book Fairs, Robert Sheppard and Patricia
Farrell's Peckham evenings, Virginia Firnberg's weekend at the
International Students House and such like). It's also worth pointing out
that although dozens traipsed in and out of Kings for readings and
semi-open sessions there was no institutional / educational basis in London
other than E.M. Academic contexts simply didn't figure heavily, at least
not in comparison to each other's short-life houses, the Rainbow Cafe, pubs
such as The Moon The Archers The White Swan, shops (Camerawork and Four
Corners and The Laundry in Lambeth Walk), converted derelict industrial
premises (LMC, LFMC, X6, Chisenhale), galleries (ACME, House) and workshops
(such as JGJGJGJGJGJG......'s in Covent Garden). Certainly a difference
from the Cambridge set up i reckon.
- publications. Some of those magazines which sustained this loose
alliance were Angel Exhaust, Alembic, Curtains, First Offence, the Lobby
Press Newsletter, Pages, Reality Studios, Rawz, Saturday Morning, Spanner,
Talus. The only anthology to date which attempts to chart this territory is
'Floating Capital' and i'd recommend a reading of Robert Shappard and
Adrian Clarke's afterword to that selection.
Presses predominantly operated without public funding, or sponsorship.
They worked on shoestrings, produced low tec books and magazines in
sometimes extremely limited editions (like 50 almost to give away). Much of
the paste-up, printing, collating, binding was done by hand by these auteur
publishers. There was some deliberate withholding of publications from the
statutary collections - libraries, some deliberate samizdat without ISBN
attributions.
Rather than consituting a definite aesthetic (although some did that
- i remember getting into an argument with Johanna Drucker in 1979, in
Baltimore, about Bang Crash Whallop books which Johanna thought should be
better produced in order to 'survive' and 'seduce', the ephemerality and
trashiness of which i felt was at least half their point. She couldn't
understand why anybody would want to make such books. It's where i part
company from her, with the Granary Books editions of 30 only at #1000
pounds per copy going into private collections and museums and so on - -
when's the trade paperback edition says i, however downgraded the hand
craft might be ?) there was playfulness, disdain (rightly or wrongly folks)
for publishing conventions (this was surely partly a vacant pose) and the
best that can really be said is that sheer expediency was holding sway.
names - Gilbert Adair, Jeremy Adler, Tony Baker, Hannah Bramness, Paul
Brown, Paul Buck, Herbert Burke, Clive Bush, Brian Catling, cris cheek,
Adrian Clarke, Steve Clews, Bob Cobbing, Andrew Duncan, Ken Edwards,
Patricia Farrell, Clive (PC) Fencott, Virginia Firnberg, Allen Fisher, Ulli
Freer, Glenda George, Bill Griffiths, Robert Hampson, Pierre Joris, Peter
Middleton, David Miller, Paige Mitchell, Eric Mottram, Maggie O'Sullivan,
Frances Presley, Carlyle Reedy, Will Rowe, John Seed, Gavin Selerie, Iain
Sinclair, Robert Sheppard, Bill Sherman, Hazel Smith, Alaric Sumner,
Lawrence Upton, Richard Tabor, Stan Trevor, ee vonna-michel, Johan de Wit
ps. these are not recommendations, but indications of those frequently
enough in or around these communities. Some of those included here might
also wish to deny or dispute their inclusion - fair enough. Others may
have been inadvertently left out. Apologies, it's not meant to be
definitive.
love and love
cris
___________________________
Dr Tony Lopez
Reader in Poetry
University of Plymouth
Faculty of Arts & Education
Douglas Avenue
Exmouth
EX8 2AT
UK
tel: 1395 255418
fax: 1395 264196
______________________
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