Gossip Snippets
GOSSIP SNIPPETS
Douglas Forward wrote to ask how we could have a special Surreal Issue of Purple Patch — Purple Patch is always surreal!
Well here it is,and every cover of this issue is a different design. Also there are individual inserts of little’gifts’, a small poetry booklet or perhaps a reproduction of a painting purchased from Hull Art Gallery, or something even more weird.
I recently visited the premises of The Poetry Business in Huddersfield only to find that the well advertised premises are not open to the public for business, or pleasure even. Whilst in Huddersfield I was invited to a poetry writer’s workshop in the furnace-hot local library where I criticised a lady’s poem as being predictable, thinking that the religous references were similies, only to be told that the poem was about the Virgin Mary. After that, I became very silent - a surrealistic event in itself!
Nice lady writer, Ann Perry, a best-seller abroad, turned out to be child-murderer of her friend’s mother. Caught by the media, she had the guts to be interviewed on television about it.
Eric Ratcliffe is of a rich mettle,but at aged 76 he feels that his magazine Ore must cease at no.50 before he starts to make errors. We shall, hopefully, go on making errors at Purple Patch for some time yet, but wish Eric all the best in retirement.
Another error is about to be perpetrated, it is possible that the South Bank’s Royal Festival Hall, The Queen Elizabeth Hall, and The Purcell Room will be renamed RFHI, RFH2, and RFH3. Perhaps the poetry library will be renamed MEl (Mary Enright I).
Professor of Sculpture, Glynn Williams, could only think of six British sculptures from 1945-65, that stand in public places, that should be listed. Five are in London, and the other is George & Dragon which stands outside (not the George & Dragon public house) but outside St. George’s Church in Wednesfield in the West Midlands. The town’s claim to fame was the manufacture of animal traps - they’d hardly need St. George to help them with a small dragon!
Amateur poet Deborah Banks claims to have written the lyrics to “Don’t Break My Heart” which reached the charts in 1985 for the pop group UB4O. She went to court to claim ownership,but the defending Q.C. said the “very naive” lyrics differed in style from Miss Banks’ other compositions”. Judgement was reserved (quote).
Mr. Roger McGough introduced a few minutes of entertainment into a recent rather dull science poetry experiment on television’s Channel 4. Many viewers made the discovery that science can be boring.
There follows an après garde look at surreal poetry today.
G.S.
Charlemont Farm, West Bromwich B71 3PL, England. 3 issue
subscription - £3 in U.K. USA & Canada - 5 dollar bill (cash - no checks!) per issue. Europe £5 for 3 issues.
Contributions of poetry and/or very short prose is welcome
with S.A.E. or return postage.
NEW The Complacency of the English - chapbook from Purple
Patch Editor Geoff Stevens (published by Wonderhorn) available
from above address at £1.5O (or five dollar bill).
Geoff Stevens is U.K.Editor of the American magazine SLUGFEST which considers poetry; and prose fiction, essays, interviews etc. up to 12 M4 pages in length.
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magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The