It's early and i was up and out late. I came hold, home rather, to a matt
choked with e-mails about Bob. Many others will have a lot to say and that
saying will become a clamour of the celebratory. His life and work must be
celebrated above all. He was so prolific and had worked with such
convection for over 40 years that whenever he went the work would be alive
and unfinished  -  unfinishable in fact. There might be a rush towards the
archives. But I hope most that Bob Cobbing's generosity for poetry in
England proves to be of lasting contagiousness.

By poetry I mean everything to do with its readers, its practitioners, its
crossartform alliances, its modes of organisation, its communities, its
means of production, its loci of distribution, its histories, its
traditions, its potentials, its translingual affiliations. . .

I am strongly of the opinion that Bob Cobbing's work provides an exemplary
model  -  well not merely a theoretical but a working model  -  of
contemporary poetic practice. It isn't perfect or without the capability of
serious improvements  -  nothing is that. I say only AN exemplary, not THE
exemplary. It IS exemplary in its range of enthusiasms and its provision of
an infrastructure for poetic practice.

Bob published an extraordinarily wide range of poetries in over 1200 books,
magazines, anthologies and pamphlets. He exploited DIY means, took control
of design and production, effectively pioneering a form of print-on-demand
to keeping that number of titles in print.

He was sufficiently committed to the open workshop, as to have facilitated
what might be considered an open university of poetry and to have sustained
this across 40 years. It wans't of use to everyone. It might have proved to
be of lasting or fleeting value to only so many of umpteen poets, it might
have been in the nominal capital, London. It might been charicatured as an
opportunity for Bob to promote and nurture developments in his own work.
That does not detract from its importance as a working model. His
commitment to its continuance beyond his capability to convene it is
telling.

I am but one among many poets who owe a debt of gratitude to Bob for
encouraging them to do what they wanted to do. He stood always on the side
of the doing, the having a go, the anarchy of an enquiring will.

Now it's a couple of days gone by and i'm 'home' surrounded by his work, in
which I was immersing myself once again before i left to go on Saturday's
march.

At some point in 1976 i caught Bob on tape at the end of one of the Sound
Festivals at the NPC saying "saying to the poets and thanks for their
generosity". His own generosity has often struck me, even in the face of
sometimes open hostility from the poetry communities.

I shall remember him laughing and thank heck he died before he got old.

love and love
cris