NOTES

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It was appropriate that The Seldom Seen Kid and Build a Rocket Boys in the Giant General Knowledge crossword this morning led me to Elbow, as an hour later Doug’s book arrived and flicking it open I hit immediately page 14 line 3 “Not so much Elbow (a relatively obscure band)”. An excellent collection to read and to re-read. More than 100 pages of a vademecum cornucopia of how it is, why, and who does it. I don’t know where you’ll get a copy except from Primary Writing Books, 2009 Belmont Road NW, Number 203, Washington, DC 20009. ISBN 978-0-9837679-1-6 $15.

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John Godfrey’s Tiny Gold Dress
Andrew Crozier’s Thrills and Frills: Selected Prose

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Two Italian poets I like are Francesco Giusti (also a visual artist) who lives in Venice, and Pier Franco Uliana who lives further north in the Veneto, towards the alps. Both write in their local dialects as well as in Italian. Both are published by what we would think of as small presses, with little distribution. Somehow I am reminded of the poems of Ralph Mills and G.F.Dutton, two English-language writers I also like. The two books here by Uliana have little “web presence”, though Guisti’s Accanto ai denti dell’eterno can be found here. Ingens Silva was published by Aucupis Editiones, Mogliano, Veneto, Italy in December 2007 (no ISBN number): Pizzoc Panopticon by Dario De Bastiani Editore in 2012, ISBN 978-88-8466-259-0. It can be found, with a few others of his books, on this Italian bookstore site.

NOTE (June 7th. 2013) There are poems and extracts from Pier Franco Uliana’s books here on this site.

Jim Nisbet’s “Snitch World” is available here.

William Fuller’s Quorum is available here.

Jim Nisbet‘s new novel, Snitch World

available here

Claude Royet-Journoud’s book is available here.

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… this week

from Powerhouse Books

from any amazon

Desperate Business: Jon and Mick illuminate the state of the nation.

Las Adventures Des Inspector Cabillot: written in Europanto, the language in which we Europeans actually speak to one another.

Drugs – Without The Hot Air: one of the very few intelligent books about drugs, written by the advisor sacked by the Government after this classic exchange with the then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith:

JS: You can’t compare harms from a legal activity with an illegal one.
DN: Why not?
JS: Because one’s illegal.
DN: Why is it illegal?
JS: Because it’s harmful
DN: Don’t we need to compare harms to determine if it should be illegal?
JS: You can’t compare harms from a legal activity with an illegal one.

Collected Poems 1935 – 1992: it’s about time Frank Prince’s poems were back in print and widely available.

Old & Cold Jim Nisbet’s new book is out today. Why wait?

No-one treats the edges, from walnut curl to Dutch peanuts, with the wry nostalgia of old light on damp, as does John Muckle. Readers of The Cresta Run, Cyclomotors and his previous novel London Brakes will find My Pale Tulip a welcome nudge.

Notes of Views and Views of Note. Edward Dorn’s Westward Haut is not yet listed on the Etruscan Books website but no doubt you can get information from Nicholas Johnston at atetruscan[at]aol[dot]com

Pip Benveniste’s son Mark Vaughan tells me he has a few copies of her memoir The Pink House (see previous entry) for sale. A cheque for £12 or equivalent made out to:

Mark Vaughan

at

29 Ravenswood Road,
Redland,
Bristol BS6 6BW,UK.

will bring one in the mail.

Mark is also continuing Pip’s project of rugs made from her paintings; ethically produced, hand woven in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal by highly skilled Nepalese and Tibetan weavers, using traditional Tibetan wools and dyeing practices.

Carcanet has just put a deal of Andrew Crozier’s poetry and prose back in print in An Andrew Crozier Reader, intelligently edited by Ian Brinton.

Peter Manson’s Stéphane Mallarmé: The Poems In Verse.

Amused by Les Coleman’s witty sentences and drawings in Afterthunks I drifted to its publisher, Boekie Woekie in Amsterdam and their interesting list. Which reminded me I’d never linked to the excellent Coracle Press (whose Journal I also enjoy).

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Martin Stannard’s Respondings
John James’ In Romsey Town

equipage
NEW PUBLICATION

John James, In Romsey Town (Equipage, 2011) 48pp, perfect bound, with a cover by Peter Cartwright ISBN 1-900968-81-9 price £6.00 inc. p & p
Equipage c/o Rod Mengham, Jesus College, Cambridge, CB5 8BL. Cheques should be made payable to Equipage.

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Clark Coolidge’s The Act of Providence is the first book since Ashbery’s Flowchart to remind me of the particular pleasure reading once was. It is as if Dylan Thomas and Jack Kerouac danced together in the cemetery of Spoon River in the light of a projected image of Joe Brainard flickering on fleeting clouds, while teaching the intricate steps to the ghost of Maximus. You’ll track it down, although the URL on the copyright page www.comboarts.org appropriately takes you to General Cosmetic Surgery Information. ISBN 0-9708763-5-1, or Mike Magee (mmagee@risd.edu is what I have, although he’s not listed under English on the RISD site now) 7 Old West Wrentham Road, Cumberland RI 02864 might help.

Congratulations and thanks to Alan Halsey and Ken Edwards for their excellent work in making Collected Early Poems (1966 – 80) by Bill Griffiths available.

While in Cambridge yesterday Val tested the three bookstores for EYM:

Waterstones: “We have some copies on order but it is showing up on our system as ‘not published’”

Heffers: “We don’t stock it but can get a copy from the publishers in three or four weeks.”

Borders: “We have two individual orders for it, waiting: and can add you to the list.”

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Simone Fattal has asked me to announce that Post Apollo Press has reprinted Meadow.

For those who wrote and enquired, Justin Katko is reprinting a second edition of Let Baby Fall

Amazon link
George Kimball’s Four Kings is published in the UK today. After the funeral yesterday I had a text from Ben: got home to find george’s boxing book on the mat. it is superb. the best sports writing, which is what got me reading.

by Miles Champion

a variety six-pack to quench that Spring thirst is published by, I think, the A Rest press (cryptic logo: no publisher’s address).

NOTE (Saturday May 17th.) Miles writes:

“The Rest” is Patrick’s continuation of “A Rest”, the press he ran in New York with Ryan Murphy a few years ago. He (Patrick) has been in Alabama (first Tuscaloosa, now Birmingham) for a few years, but I haven’t been able to squeeze a street address out of him. This is the only information I have:
Patrick Masterson: ptmasterson@gmail.com

I suggest anyone interested in a copy email Patrick about how to get one.
300 copies, well-produced, no danger of negative equity.

Still with borrowed computer occasionally. Medical progress steady. Here’s The Day The Fair Left Town. Click on any image with a plus sign for full-size version.
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The Nancy Book is a pleasure, and Ed Dorn Live should be required reading.
But these days pictures delight me more than most writing/poetry that comes through the door; although a few smaller publishers still interest — Barque Press, Flood Editions and Bootstrap Productions for instance. This week I’ve enjoyed Ryan Gallagher’s translation of

The Complete Poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus from Bootstrap (who also published Geoffrey Young’s fine The Riot Act, and John Wieners’ Book of Prophecies).

Mark Terrill’s

Something Red, which I read (ouch) last night, completely justifies the small-press ethos. I can’t think of any major publisher who would have issued this sharp collection of illuminations/epiphanies Twenty-eight pieces, each a single sentence: fourteen of them illustrated with the paper-fragments of a life (sonnet echoes). Tiny movies with thought-tracks. I was reminded of the days of Stephen Emerson’s Neighbors, Dale Herd’s Diamonds and, more recently, Merrill Gilfillan’s Magpie Rising. Only fifty copies: well-produced and reasonably priced.

The always interesting Flood Editions has just published Tom Pickard’s Ballad of Jamie Allan

Click for more information about the book, and the preceding opera.

Ned Kellyvision

A letter from Rob Rusk reminds me of bright years in San Francisco and Sonoma in the mid-1970s: a period brilliantly recorded in Alastair Johnston’s Zephyrus Image: a Bibliography. During those years almost everything of interest was photographed by Rob. Now, ill, he has lived for many years in Mississippi doing shit jobs to scrape by, without money even to print his work. He enclosed a few photocopies of old pictures… enough to make me think that some archive, some foundation might still have the wit to see the value in funding the preservation of such material. Here are a couple of shots of Ed Dorn, one of Michael Myers after the graveyard shift, and one of me in our room on Sutter Street.