Songs Our Teachers Learn Us, or, Lessons To

Songs Our Teachers Learn
Us,
or,
Lessons To Be Taught
Michael J. Weller
SONGS OUR TEACHERS LEARN US, OR, LESSONS TO BE TAUGHT
© Michael J. Weller 2010-2016
First published PDF April 2012
October 2016 PDF
Home’Baked Books by Michael John Weller
www.homebakedbooks.co.uk
Songs Our Teachers Learn
Us,
or,
Lessons To Be Taught
index of possibilities
beat generation ballads/Songs Our Teachers Learn Us
6
Songs for scanning, skimming, searching and singing
17
Songs of the delta stream
18
Songs Our Teachers Learn Us on the Internet
20
Lessons in poetics
21
Notes to lessons in poetry
29
Sub Songs Our Teachers Learn Us
36
Mayakovsky shouts
39
political verse
41
Art School lesson
43
Book cover songs
46
Cover record songs
49
Holiday songs
51
Songs of the ex-offenders
52
A misremembered lyric
53
Each day I take…[a ticket to ride]
54
"research as song, singing as search"
‘Taylor Brady’s Unabridged Jacket-Copy’ from On Michael Cross’s Haecceities (LRC e-editions, 2011)
Michael Haslam on the internet
I try to make a continual song out of merely being here
Cover photograph is music lesson poet can’t recall.
Listen polyphony multiple paper combs, pots and pans, washboards, a single fiddler
on the grass and an entire orchestra conducted by the school cook.
Maybe one of the first songs our teachers learn us back-in-the-day.
Ears, eyes and clickable links follow
beat generation ballads/Songs Our
Teachers Learn us
Five years ago Beat generation Ballads (Veer, 2011) pushed my boat out in terms of bookwork
production. It was on Google blogspot the beat generation ballads sequence was originally
worked in preliminary format followed by “songs” and “lessons” included here. In June 2012,
Jeff Hilson found J H Prynne’s Sub Songs (Barque Press, 2010) among late James Harvey’s
collection of books bequeathed to poets; prompting a “sub songs” revision to Songs’ television
themes and lexemes.
Editor Stephen Mooney offered to produce a disk with first printing of Veer book - giving
access to audio and video viewable on original blog postings. YouTube videos are regularly
withdrawn by Google and its users. Since first April 2012 e-publication most “Songs” remain
clickable. A couple of ‘Holiday Songs’, including Judy Garland’s “Have Yourself A Merry
Little…”, were removed by Google in 2014. Although broken, URL’s remain as elegies on dead
links.
Songs Our Teachers Learn Us, or, Lessons To Be Taught was intended as both complement and
supplement to Veer printed Beat generation Ballads docu-track. One error brought to my
attention in book is that Burroughs illustrator Malcolm McNeil attended Hornsey College of
Art. Not St Martin’s as reported. A 2012 interview with McNeill appears in The White Review.
The author will keep “Songs” online as long as BgB stays in print.
“…A WITTY SCIENCE FICTION PARODY…” inspired by life of and death of FACTORY GIRL Peter
Butler (‘Caught in a trap? Beyond pop theory’s ‘butch’ construction of male Elvis fans’
available online from Cambridge Journals pay wall here) along with YouTube clips from ‘80s
British tv comedy series ‘Auf Weidersehen Pet’ at blogspots here and here. Other evergreens
are SAY IT WITH FLOWERS with a ‘Danger Man’ clip referred to in printed Veer ballad.
PDF enables access to home’baked video views by linking to original blogspot JUST ROOM FOR
ONE INSIDE, MEESTER BURROUGHS. This has two influential scenes from Ealing classic Dead of
Night.
Denise Riley was first ‘renaissance generation’ poet introduced to me by Rosemary Jackson.
Two young female poet-teacher/researchers shared cultural studies workplace space at North
East London Polytechnic in the early eighties. The present author was mature student singing
poetics as course disjunctor.
William Rowe writes on beat generation ballads, “[…] Poetry – cultural studies can’t touch it!”
beat generation ballads – get the book
Began as digital sandbox experiment at Google blogspot and turned into hard copy on great
University of London Veer label, stored among collection of fave 10" vinyl albums like Sonny
boy Williamson's LE GRAND CHANTEUR DE BLUES ET SPÉCIALISTE DE L'HARMONICA "JAZZ
CLASSICS" No 17.
"Hey, wait a moment, there's no wax inside this bleedin' album. No disk. Nowt to download. You call
this poetry?" says Mick Weller. "Looks more like blown-up parody of insert booklet stuck inside retro
nineties cd to me."
"You gotta imagine wax, Mick ".
033⅓ MJ Weller – ‘Beat generation Ballads’ (Veer, 2011)
Mixed, engineered & produced by
Stephen Mooney and Will Rowe for
the Contemporary Poetics Research
Centre (CPRC)
Available from Veer Books
'Give me the music makers...'
& Tuli Kupferberg (1923-2010) does it
better
continuing ballad of The Someday Funnies
'The Someday Funnies' ballad veered into present writer's Beat generation Ballads blogged
few times since printed bookwork publication See here & here.
This ballad was written originally as poetic hommaġe to a 'lost' book of the 1970s. As
legendary among sci-fi and comic fans as HP Lovecraft's 'lost' Necronomicon among fans of
horror fantasy.
The Someday Funnies as book-myth became topic of study in an article by Bob Levin for an
issue of American Comics Journal in 2009. The Comics Journal considers comic-book and
cartoon-strips as art and literary form through serious and scholarly analysis. There are few
similar, non-academic publications in the UK. Writers have arguably veered to medium of
radio and television. Comics are still perceived as geek interest, despite a successful British
Library exhibition and graphic novel respectability.
My own understanding adapting beat generation ballads from blog to Veer bookwork at the
time was that Levin's lavishly illustrated essay on The Someday Funnies in The Comics Journal
was something of a revelation.
What I didn't know was Comics Journal had stimulated interest, not only in Michel Choquette
and his lost comic book, but a will to finally publish the hidden hoard of submissions which
included a full page contribution from Mike Weller when he was living as alter-ego '70s
underground cartoonist, Captain Stelling. Over the years Weller and his 20th century pulp
experience has been fictionalized by present author as both historical object and personal
subject in Mike's own visual bookwork Space Opera and entry opening decade 21st century
worked as prose-fed Michael John home'baked Slow Fiction.
In July 2013 Choquette personally returned Weller’s original artworks to him, see here
The tombstone of a book caused a stir on the other side of the pond. Puffed and hyped-up in
North America during fall 2011 - conflicting reviews of Choquette's book appeared at The
Comics Journal website itself. One editor described his own journal's response as a house
divided. Discoverer of Choquette’s ‘lost’ book Bob Levin celebrated publication while
another Journal co-editor dissed the book's arrival --backed up by several posts in a comment
thread. One 2015 comment is from Canadian comics artist Max “Salgood Sam” Douglas –
colorist of Stelling’s contribution.
A later post at the Journal provided a detailed, much wider critique of selection and content
- followed by a long thread with several knowledgeable comments.
An original 2009 Maclean’s link (http://www.macleans.ca/culture/pierre-trudeau-as-acomics-writer/) to discovery of The Someday Funnies – the first one alerting the present
writer to include this particular beat generation ballad remains live. As does Choquette’s
response to reviews of his book @ the Huffington Post.
Beat oriented Literary Kicks posted a review in June 2012.
student prints
I started performance writing early but began performance writing late.
A 30-year gap between first and second poetry gig (London Klinker, 1999).
First public performance as vocalist with Giles Thomas and Bob Thompson at Beckenham Arts
Lab 1969 singing ‘What is your handicap’ in ensemble imagined ever since as Cliff Penge and
the SE20s.
Next pic is song as originally quinked in lined exercise book. The “handicap” of the title was
performed by trio handclapping on night.
Digital reproduction reveals visual poetics. Why text has ‘THE END’ penned later in
darker ink caps bottom of page, artist has no inkling.
Eleven years later, two handmade author poetry ‘zines (1980)
The Shadows
play
Frightened
City
Donovan and Crystal Gayle
try and Catch the Wind
SUNFLOWER SUTRA
Beat generation became invisible generation merry old England 1966.
Bob Dylan played Manchester Free Trade Hall looking like poet John Cooper Clarke
1979. Donovan have-you-ever-tried-to-be-like-Bob Dylan-1965 closed '66 with Sunshine
Superman.
Beatles produced Revolver. Paul McCartney helped start English underground paper
International Times (it or IT). Their recently completed internet archive is
remarkable catalogue counterculture activity UK 1966-1986, documenting hippie &
punk eras up to 1980s absolute beginners beat surrender, plus one-off anarchist antiTory shout 1994.
Forty years on from their hit Eurovision 'links von mir' ditty, former German
Democratic Republic's own Cliff and Livvy, Chris Doerk and Frank Schöbel, celebrate
20 years since bourgeois revolutions of Russia and Eastern Europe at 'Poetics of the
Fall of European Stalinism' colloquium event
Publication of author’s Beat generation Ballads prompted new email correspondence
with old secondary school friend, teacher, modern composer and beat ballads’ muse,
Michael Finnissy.
Weller: The email you sent appeared as symmetrical 'word' score. Couldn't resist
making page design unit with content and posting back.
Finnissy: […] you appeared to send me my message back asking if it was a musical score
(which it wasn't intended to be), or did I misread
In 2013 Finnissy composed large-scale work for piano entitled Beat Generation Ballads.
Finnissy’s composition has been animated as artists film Michael Finnissy’s Beat
Generation Ballads 2 on YouTube. And Finnissy’s work, played by its original premier
pianist Philip Thomas is published in high resolution audio by Huddersfield
Contemporary Records, using images from film as CD explanatory and presentation.
Michael Finnissy on the internet
Two versions of a song of romance for the
modern age
Tonight You Belong To Me - The Lennon Sisters
Tonight You Belong To Me - Fiona Apple
The Night We Called It a Day. Old Sinatra number sung as newer metaphysical… have you ever tried to
be like Bob Dylan? No question mark (?) -- until, that is, the IBM ad.
The sun machine is lady grinning soul. Have you ever tried to be like David Bowie…
The Man Who Sold The World …or Walt Whitman?
Songs for scanning, skimming,
searching and singing
#Songs Our Teachers Learn Us @Twitter
christianbok Christian Bok
Finished reading: "Star Maker" by Olaf Stapledon—(a real drug-trip…).
17 May 2011
Songs Our Teachers Learn Us without
sound
"here individual performed"
Songs of the delta stream
Nature Boy
Stem Harvest (writers forum, September 2002) was among last batch of chapbooks
published by Bob Cobbing just before he died. Stem Harvest was subtitled "Nature
Poems". I'm not sure Bob liked the book that much.
In fact I don't think Stem Harvest has been archived among Writers Forum
publications. Book contains sequence 'De Eye On The Science That', 'Nature Boy',
'Flowers', 'Three Cells' and 'Leek Legion'. Though seeming end-of-era London-based
avant-printing, Stem Harvest wears forward-looking simian smile.
Within final year of Cobbing-led WF publications - song 'It's a Small World After All'
was translated into DNA fragments and imported into the genome of a living
bacterium.
Possibilities of science and technology in the wake of genome cloning has been
explored by the Fishbone Initiative (collective nod perhaps to community
collaborative/anonymous science workers) - Deciphering Human Chromosone 16: We
Report Here (information as material, 2007).
First referenced on Peter Philpott's Great Works, an introduction to performative
possibilities of tuned-in poets Richard Makin and Sarah Jacobs was one highlight
London's 'Sundays at the Oto' few years ago.
Christian Bök's The Xenotext Experiment has animated dead-clay into new encoded
life. Real, virtual and poetic.
Curious - programming seems counter-intuitive to designing poetry.
Amount of exacting characters, symbols and spaces required to make codes work
seems disproportionate as literary practice.
But if long rule-based pattern encryption is required to make poem feed off its own
organism - poetics of scripton & cybertexton may finally have come of age.
jolt
Songs Our Teachers Learn Us on the
Internet
Thank you, Sarah.
Lessons in poetics
/new fairy tales/psychopoetic landscapes/old superlatives/
I have... catalogued in alphabetical order, an A-Z dictionary of the most common superlatives, phrases
of expression, and emotive words used in texts to transfer feelings associated with the selling of
products and ideas. Often the same superlatives turn up from time to time to promote and sell the
arts, including books and exhibitions.
from 'Three chapbooks' (Visual Associations, visual associations, 2001)
Claim a Free Wheeler was penultimate Writers Forum Weller publication by Bob
Cobbing, June 2001. Title formed one part of 3-chapbook display triptych along with
Hitcloh Ilk and Visual Associations (visual associations, 2001).
End of era when 'mainstream' still oppositional to 'avant-garde', 'underground',
'alternative', 'experimental' or 'innovative' poetries - unified organizationally through
London's Writers Forum and UK university reading scenes.
Hub of differing models of performative writing all 'linguistically innovative' yet using
different methods, techniques, like pop and rock 'genres', 'sub-genres' and 'styles' used
by myspace x-factor generation singers and musicians.
All collapsed into multiple competing slipstreams now. Poetry wars of old (battles of
cultural manouevre) replaced by conflicts of geographical time-place/juxtaposition.
Poetry scenes within poetry scenes. Bubbles within bubbles. Web 2.0's prosumers &
consumers jockeying for juxtaposition in blogs and self-publishing.
Argument introduced in 2010's Openned Zine #1 short monograph 'Home'Baked:
literary artzines in the age of the internet'.
Pictured few years earlier as visual poetic in hardcore/copy Sean Bonney's & Frances
Kruk's yt communication bulletin.
'myindividualisedspace.globalized@' (war pigs:::, yt communication, 2006)
'Climb a Free Wheeler is intended as an exercise in poetics, not a dictionary of usage',
Weller wrote in 'Three chapbooks' essay.
Word usage issue @Blue Bus #47 (2011) when Sean B questioned word 'beauty' during
performance of lines from Tuli Kupferberg's Give me the music-makers - scored on
sheet as '...When beauty barks I heel... (repeat x4).
"I'm not saying that, am I?"* posed Sean in middle of unrehearsed public reading.
Although printed on yellow and pink cards text wasn't scored as 'When beauty barks I
heal' (text-score version Kupferberg had not discouraged in his lifetime).
'Beauty' as beat generation hippy ideology something Sean rejected. Paul Sutton
confronted me "You bullied Sean into reading that, didn't you?" laughing his bleedin'
head off. Parts of this gig were filmed. * In years of performance, believe only one or
two short readings of present writer filmed, video'd, or saved. Documents tend to end
up wiped or re-cycled with other performers.
Category 'B' (detail performance score in revision, Climb A Free Wheeler, Writers Forum, 2001)
* Vimeo'd Bonney/Weller sounding 'Give me the music-makers' begins at 21:00 minutes here
Speaking of light bulbs and dark times - what about 'B' category superlative, 'brilliant'?
Many things described as 'brill' aren't brilliant. Some 'brilliant' slam poetry, for
example, is not brilliant. I've heard JH Prynne's poetry described as 'brilliant'. Is that
'brilliant' as in brilliant or 'brilliant' as in brill!?
Did I read or dream I read Ryan Ormonde's and Becky Cremin's description materiality
of language within psychic ritualistic states being oblique, forward slash like? Can't
find pressfreepress source for this. Ne'er mind.
Sophisticated Boom Boom
Sophisticated Boom Boom - Poison Apple Pie (The Shangri- Las)
http://youtu.be/xXJq6oD4CY4
The writer hadn't attended voiceworks (showcase of new music for voice) before. For
several years this initiative, coordinated by Birkbeck Contemporary Poetics Research
Centre with Guildhall School of Music & Drama, has been performed in association
with Wigmore Hall - London's major international venue for song.
"The girls were wearing formals, the boys were wearing ties" in the words of Shadow
Morton's song written for The Shangri-Las.
2011's performance in May featured seven songs including texts by poets SJ Fowler
and James Wilkes. The writer had only just posted "Nature Boy" to this blog when Mr
Wilkes explained all about an Urban Physic Garden plant project he was curating
poetry contributions towards.
Delighted with possibility of designing new "nature poem" present writer plumbed for
caraway plant - perhaps because this was first spice consumed by writer as small boy
tasting his grandmother's caraway-seeded cake.
Four reasons to watch out for this Weller guise
...blogging, twittering, eBooking digital character EGNEP (egnep); the lively character
named Mike Weller; or Mick Weller the Earth Corporation's own facebooked yellow
Weller; the home'baking self-publisher, Michael John Weller; and the authorial
Bromley writer-in-residence character named MJ - have been existing in lower four
realities of the wellerverse. A vacuum where shit fills space left by divine inspiration.
If notion of 'wellerverse' sounds mad (one or two of Paul Weller's fans may live in a
muso's 'Wellerverse' but that is a somewhat different fairy tale) to blog visitors h ere,
most likely means unfamiliarity with Michael J. Weller's Space Opera and Slow Fiction
bookworks.
To explain. Firstly, Michael Weller is an elderly, dull, boring London suburbanite with
estaurine sarf landhan glottal stop sans caressive mic-skills or any velvety whisper-lilt
for that matter. Heard south London voice shouting up parochial southeast London
spiritualist church on local commercial radio station once, sandwiched between DJ
promoting carpet bargains & traffic news. Ugly utterances not poetry at all. A less
contextualized poetical discourse would be hard to imagine. Yet wasn't hard to
imagine remembered voice could have been that of ventriloquized Weller.
Secondly, Michael is invited to help organize two evenings for 'Beck Fest', a
Beckenham Library festival tacked onto first ever 2011 Bromley Literary Festival in
June and July. This, the writer hastens to add, is not an invitation for any of the
Weller guys to read or perform.
Thirdly, to ensure local artist and writer couldn't become more localized if he tried Mike Weller has been featured as Penge 'artist and poet' resident for Bromley Cuts
Concern's (Bromley Against the Cuts) media campaign in local newspaper.
And fourthly, to cap it all, an 87-year old woman named Freda (is that spelled
correctly?) sitting outside local café called Mike over to the table she was sharing with
younger friends.
"I saw your picture in the paper. Are you really a poet? Is that true? Yes? Oh, how
wonderful! Do you know Walter de la Mare lived in Penge? Wonderful man. Nobody
has heard of him these days. He's forgotten. Such a shame."
"Don't worry," Michael said. "He'll be back."
What?
Why on earth did Michael say that?
Because it connected with something lost, faded, obscure, oddly local but English in
modern POETRY kit way, as one poetic slipstream among many - networked globally
via internet.
Come Hither - Walter de la M are's house in Penge
Joyfully and mischievously playing on once-bright realities without appealing to
nostalgia, anti-modernity, or post-modernism.
brief history of paper doll cut-ups, cut-outs & cut-offs in changing times
"...but even the president of the United States and his wife sometimes must have to
stand in their underwear without any visible sign of genitalia..."
Notes to lessons in poetry
...the typeface sent me...
(- - - in progress, Frances Kruk)
Notes on old new little presses
& parts two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine
Receiving printed zine Herbarium poetry (Capsule Press, 2011) in which present writer
contributes, made me think again about 'Notes on an exhibition' written for London's
bookartbookshop April 2010 'Home'Baked: literary artzines in the age of the internet' show
(see also Openned Zine #1).
Is Herbarium really a 'zine, or part of a new little press phenomenon? Remembering response
to an Ugly Duckling Presse booklet I ordered last year after London's show, I realised I'd left
an essential aspect of post-electronic publishing out the picture. The old new little presses.
Dorothea Lasky's Poetry Is Not a Project arrived from The Old American Can Factory in
Brooklyn NY, jiffy-packed & mail art address-stamped with brown paper interior wrapping
inscribed 'ORIGINAL'. Booklet contained readymade cardboard bookmark; the publication
itself part of an imprint Dossier series, quote, The Dossier Series was created to expand the
formal scope of the Presse. Guest edited by Ben Fama, booklet is stitch-laced collation with
content set in arresting sans-serif titles juxtaposed with serif body type plus illustrations by
Sarah Glidden. Something old-fashioned, pre-visual poetics about such image/text divisions.
Publication First Edition 2010. No bibliographic information, ISSN/ISBN, or catalogue
numbering.
The booklet didn't sit well stuffed on a shelf with hundreds of torn and dog -earred comics and
fanzines; dozens of Writers Forum (wf) publications; assorted photocopy poetry/art single
sheets & zines accumulated over decades.
I felt much the same about Sean Bonney's Crater Press For The Administration (After
Rimbaud).Thought and consideration had gone into making a pamphlet that was 'little press'
in an older, pre-zine tradition where size, shape, paper, typesetting, stitching, edition
numbering, format designation, method of mechanical reproduction and requirement (or not)
of paper knife all play equal part in look, feel, overall presentation and reader reciprocity.
Can Crater Press Bonney sit comfortably with ziney Sean 1999-2002 wf's, cul-de-qui,
quic_lude, and yt's from the 2000's - hang on, yes, that untitled color card cover to Bonney's
the Domestic poem (Canary Woof Press London May 16 2001)is a class act alright.
Notes on writing reading and face to facEBook performance
& parts two, three, four, five, six
Deletion of personal artistic content at myspace and myebook, without notice, is deterring
me from using social media formats.
In 2008, Mancunian platform innovator and developer Simon Whitehall of myebooks was only
a Skype call away to help with techs. Amazon Direct Publishing doesn’t deliver selfpublishing results with free, friendly, personalized technical assistance. MyEBook , re-launched
in August 2014 with a new platform is unable to retrieve my ten eBooks made between 20082013. I will need to rebuild them; and in the new commercial internet environment this
amounts to vanity publishing. In part of Darren Fowler’s reply to my query about older
platform archive and access he explains
The old system as operated by the previous company was a social publishing experiment
designed to allow free publishing. The company providing this service did not allow the fact
to host these publications came with a raw cost.
2011’s original part one blogspot notes here.
Since I first made EBooks the pocket e-reader seems to have established itself as screen of
choice for viewing black and white bestseller or easy storage text book.
The cinema screen remains place to find hidden poetry in narrative film as Emanuella Amichai
articulates better than I'm able, in her interview with SJ Fowler for Maintenant.
I am still haunted by variations of a recurring dream. I am watching a movie (black and white
in childhood) of urban, suburban and near-rural places I think I am familiar with. Dreams
began when watching low-budget British B films starring Lee Patterson, Paul Carpenter,
Belinda Lee or Lisa Gastoni, as a little kid.
Stimulated need to reveal hidden text between representation, location as depiction in film,
and reality. Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb) revealed Croydon locations filmed in Reading,
Berkshire, for Peter Medak's movie on Derek Bentley's life and execution, Let Him Have It.
Finding hidden poetry themes within film narrative inspired first myebook, Screen Reading#1.
Notes on a local 2011 literary festival
& parts two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine
New media politics of networked space and new communities of interest, from global and
local perspectives, seem likely to lead to more scenes within scenes, bubbles within bubbles organized in the UK around county and district, town and city suburbs, and within region and
locality.
- Mike Weller, 'Home'Baked: literary artzines in the age of the internet' (Openned Zine #1,
2010)
In 2011 the writer of this published monograph was invited to curate two evenings for
Beckenham Literary Festival - the 2011 BecFest to be held within a bubble-space, in the open
public lending section of Beckenham library (for original PDF - Notes were written present
tense –a tense preserved on blogspot links) to past tense here - history now.
BecFest 2011 was organized both simultaneously, and within, a big borough-wide Bromley
Literary Festival (Beckenham is one suburb of London's largest borough and dormitory town).
Both festivals took place as major shake-ups of Bromley's Library services were first
announced by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government , as they were in other parts of
the UK. This continues to mean closures, borough mergers, and library staff redundancies.
Bromley Literary Festival seemed, to the writer, to be taking place in one locality and reality.
BecFest in another locality and reality. Neither locality or reality having any notion of what
the present writer's practice is. But a formal invitation to take part in some way arrived by
old-fashioned letter post. The writer thinks the library service may think the writer a local
historian because they did buy copies of his Harriet Staunton: A Victorian Murder Ballad
(visual associations, 1999) for the reference section of its borough branches.
The invitation was not a specific invitation to read or perform. So the writer did not read or
perform.
So did the writer agree to take part or not?
Yes, for the purposes of testing bubble-within-bubble-within-bubble theory in practice. This
was carried out by creating a third reality. Beckenham Bubble number one and two.
Linguistically innovative place-bubbles.
Beckenham librarian organizing BecFest, Vanessa Williamson, was encouraging about placebubbles. There is perhaps a sense of last opportunity for poetry and poetics to be discussed
and performed in a public space without pressure of providing profitable returns.
'Until Breton and Trotsky's Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art is distributed free to
everyone and the workers' democratic government is formed,' whispers ever-optimistic Mick.
On evenings Wednesday, June 29 and Monday, July 4th 2011- there is likely to be numerous
poetry events elsewhere - in cafés, pub-function rooms, university faculties, poetryhegemonized venues - perhaps other libraries and litfests. In these realities nothing clashes
when bubbles burst
€#*@$!
Tuli
Kupferberg –
When the Mode
of the Music
Changes
Sub Songs Our Teachers Learn Us
TELEVISION THEMES & LEXEMES: ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS THE X FACTORED MUSICAL
Could ‘nowhere man’ Jeremy Hillary Boob Ph.D be caricature of scholar, poet and teacher
J.H. Prynne, as featured in Beatles’ animation movie Yellow Submarine (1968) first
speculated by Chis Goode?
'Die A Millionaire' pronounced DIAMONDS-IN-THE-AIR (Kitchen Poems, 1968) may have
appealed to late Erich Segal scripting movie after Lennon’s 'Lucy in the sky with ...' (1967).
If voice of English beat generation John Ono Lennon hadn't died a millionaire, and still be
living today, he may be judge on American Idol or guest on X Factor, even before Paul
McCartney bantered with Simon Cowell...this is all a rather silly supposition really...dunno
why I'm even going there...still...still...
"Now here's the thing" as they like to say on those tv shows - if the Fifties were chosen
nostalgic decade for the Eighties (that first retro-conscious, postmodern, "ironic", back-to-thefuture decade for baby boomers), and Sixties chosen decade for Blair's Britpopping Nineties,
followed by Seventies nostalgia decade in reality-televised recessionary 2010s - a
suppositionary logic follows - Eighties will be recycled as nostalgic decade for Twentyteens
with ironic "1950s mini-decade" portal embedded.
Absolute Beginners staged as musical. Auditions on reality tv shows to find a Colin and Crepe
Suzette? Winners congratulated by Etonian political leaders?
Change the record, will you…
Don't turn tv on ...
Television coded as television for Google blogcast.
Erasure (html strike through) does not always appear in
connected blogs
Frankie, Marilyn, Wilfred and Yves explain television.
eg recent television: bit of attitude + poetics of hilson surnamesake from
(place is the space Malvern, Worcestershire, UK)
absolutely born to be a pop star…give it up for…
Mayakovsky shouts
(for three voices)
the dirty work, the clean work, the sampled work
(extract) the dirty work
[…the potter…]; the barber, the washerman…the silversmith, here and there the poet, who in some communities
replaces the silversmith, in others the schoolmaster.
Karl Marx, Capital, Book 1, Chapter. XIV (English edition edited by Frederick Engels, 1887)
“I make no claim that any of the 54 pieces of verse collected here is “poetry”: that belongs to an altogether higher
order of things”
Sean Matgamna introducing his Political verse: The Treason of the Intellectuals and other pieces
ACTION
ACTION
ACTION
(extract) the clean work
entertain
entertain
entertain
(extract) the sampled work
Songs for One Occasion by Justin Katko (Critical Documents) - contains nine songs, variously beautiful and deformed…
Song from A Mothshire Lad by Fabian Macpherson (with thanks to “Intercapillary Space”)
Wildfire by Andrea Brady (thank you, Jeff)
Lady, yes, you Vladimir
Lady, yes, you Vladimir
Lady, yes, you Vladimir
political verse
malware infested screenshot 2014
It is impossible to fully grasp Rimbaud’s work, and especially Une Saison en Enfer, if you have
not studied through and understood the whole of Marx’s Capital*. And this is why no English
speaking poet has ever understood Rimbaud. Poetry is stupid, but then again, stupidity is not
the absence of intellectual ability but rather the scar of its mutilation.
Copy////pasted from Sean Bonney's September 27 2011 abandonedbuildings blogspot.
Steve Willey on performing Sean Bonney’s poetry
Marxist Entertainment; *Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey; work terrible work ; Militant Poetics
(stuck 2013); po/rev (stuck 2013); Song of the Mothers and Janine Booth’s agit-prop
Margaret Roberts and a film star
Photograph taken at Dartford Conservative fête 1951.
(from Bromley Times 26/1/12 reviewing The Iron Lady movie)
Meryl Streep
Art School lesson
'Israel is not a fascist state, Hannah. It's a democracy with full human rights.'
'You would say that. The Earth Corporation have bought you off with an academic title, so you can defend
the existing system. You won't destroy a system that has made you the great Professor. It's not in your
interest...'
'It doesn't stop me being critical of the system,' Wilson interrupted again.
Frederick Burrell Possessed (Home'Baked Books by Michael John Weller, 2010).
With Beckenham Bubble over, present writer considering 'bubble-vents', local and
international politics, education, fees, cuts, radical poetics, and ultra-localism of
place.
And who exactly is teacher, and who is pupil/student, in Weller's current work-inprogress Songs Our Teachers Learn Us, or, Lessons To Be Taught. No question mark in
poetics.
Here's some question marks. If the writer was to consider post-graduate course when
reaching rapidly rising state retirement pension age - what British university? Which
course? Would artist/writer be viewed as consumer? Can learning have cash value?
How to measure new learning when memory storage and rapid recall ebbs with age.
Writer-in-residence MJ scribbles artist into local U3A with one sweep blue biro.
From among writer's first self-publications Ain't Bin To No Art School (1979-80) to
Space Opera (visual associations, 1999) up to "fics from the sticks" Slow Fiction
(Home'Baked Books by Michael John Weller, 2010) experience of twentieth century
English education at primary, secondary, further and higher is ripped to shreds by
'Michael J. Weller, English novelist', (Slow Fiction Character & Scene Guide, 2010).
Fictionalized institution New Olympus University appears in twenty-three tales
wellerverse set 3World in 4Time.
Realtime summer months packed with local litfests and uni graduate shows. Thursday,
July 14, the writer attended Goldsmith's University of London Department of Art's
postgraduate exhibition (Ben Pimlott Building and Laurie Grove Baths). View Master of
Fine Art (MFA) degrees in Fine Art, Art Writing, Curating (Mick had been watching
Mike curate two evenings @Becfest. 'Didn't realise you needed a degree in curating,'
Mick grins. Class clown.) Rowena Easton's poetry as Art Writing appeared on artist's
modernist female poet radar @Ken Edwards' blog entry here, subsequently doing it
better from first July 2010 edition & Holly Pester...
Post-grad Exhibition different from southeast London reality nearly quarter century
before when Hirst and other Goldsmiths undergraduates BA'd from Young British
Artists to Britart establishment 2010s. Beginning to understand why younger
generation artists, writers, poets, critics take career prospects and academic
qualifications seriously. Can new generation poet/artist make it without university
post-grad, sustained academic publication, or peer review? Can Bob Cobbing's stuff be
academicized? Question mark question marks - pejorative 'anti-intellectual' rubber
ball easy throw. Difficult catch.
At back of Laurie Grove Baths SE14 exhibition space, writer somewhat bemused by
request to "open up" canvas bag for concealed "weapons". Looks like wired-up Jewish
Community Security Trust (CST) presence for Noam Edry's MFA degree work in Fine
Art. And Mick thought Noam was a bloke (Chomsky, geddit? Mick could have checked
website) or Noam's YouTube ID. Fine artist Edry was dressed for her opening in an
immaculate white suit. Strikingly beautiful, rather like John and Yoko (Social Reality
Earthtime 1969). Peace Now brothers and sisters.
Next to entranced in-on-the-joke security fellow chill-out space with Arab-Israeli
coffee stand.
But surprise, Noam Edry's bubble-space looks hit by Hamas rockets fired from Gaza.
Something of a happening-vent here. Holistic therapist massaging (mostly) female
attendees' 'left sides'; working tv set playing video loops from rubble skip; canvas
paintings daubed in hand-paint, same calligraphics as venue wall graffiti, recognizable
from Edry's handwritten artzine "Conversation Pieces: Scenes of Unfashionable Life".
Post cards, agit-prop t-shirts given away to persons brave enough (with UK uni
boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement countered by new Israeli government
'Boycott Law' targeting Israeli jews, palestinians, arabs, working class, Settlementprotesting bourgeois democrat-citizen-dissenters too) to public catwalking wearing
slogan
I COME FROM THE MOST HATED PLACE ON EARTH (SECOND TO IRAN).
Bubble-within-bubble screens twenty-minute looped interview - in effect a filmed
self-portrait of Jewish/Israeli/Zionist artist Edry's experience girl's English school
education- to- Israel Defense Forces warzone soldier- to-post-grad "Goldsmiths Made
Me a Fundamentalist".
And maybe all these young Israeli soldier-girls want is "cool" meaning simply okay as in
normal; dressing sharp 'n' smart, looking nice, and catching town bus for a date
without getting head blown off.
& Noam Edry does it better.
no question mark
Book cover songs
Cover record songs
Forces' sweetheart
Romanticized 20th century modernism, in gothic mode,
masquerading as surreal 1979 britpop single
ABBA’s Frida does it
better
Holiday songs
must be santa
claus
selling
time
&
taste
and more time
Songs of the ex-offenders
" There's a Vanessa for us,
Somewhere a Vanessa for us. "
Mick after Sondheim
Blondie’s ‘X Offender’
A misremembered lyric
Part Song
& denise levertov (1923-1998) & denise riley
does it better
& Holly Pester Does It Better, Michael J. Weller (Home'Baked Books, 2010)
Each day I take…
www.homebakedbooks.co.uk