Prozac Wiccans
other books reviewed
Loose Watch ed. John M. Bennett, Paul Holman & Bridget Penny (Invisible Books, BM Invisible, London, WC1N 3XX, 17x25 cm/perfect bound, 206pp/£10).
Loose Watch is an anthology drawn from issues 1 - 39 of Lost and Found Times, a magazine which emerged from a conceptual stunt in 1975. Surviving LAFT editor John M. Bennett and his former colleague Doug Landies produced "a sheet of fake lost and found notices to be slipped under the windshield wipers of cars in the parkinglot of Graceland Shopping Centre…"
Found: Photo album with family
snapshots, left eye cut out of
each person photographed.
Vicinity Southern Hotel.
984-7321 before 10.
These flysheets quickly became mailart and people all over starting sending lost and found notices to each other and LAFT emerged. The anthology is problematic in a way. Mailart is supposedly 'ephemeral', 'non-art', the collective burp that followed Fluxus. Producing an anthology is a dual act of historification and commodification; so, is this an 'ironic' anthology or what? Well, it seems obstinately unironic. The aim of the project is given in the introduction: "This anthology aims at presenting a representative sampling of what LAFT has meant over the years." Hmmm. Whilst simultaneously presenting and representing, "it gives an excellent sense of the flavor of the magazine, where it has been, as well as many of its most brilliant pages."
The - The Thes were a primitive tribe living on the southeastern shore of what is now Great Britain. Named after a characteristic sound made whenever they pointed to objects.
from Davi Det Hompson Defines John M. Bennett's Words
Mailart has spawned many exciting entities in its time, from Pauline Smith's Adolf Hitler Fan Club to Genesis P-Orridge's sexual/'illegal' collages. Mostly though mailart is art in the process of finding a form in which it ceases to be art. To experience it you must be a part of the process. To take the matter of mailart (i.e. that which is left behind after mailart has occurred) is possible, but - as this anthology shows - it is tricky. "Sense of having looked through / the imaginative writing himself, / the reader to take in on his own, / yet produced, such a life need not / the wrong end of a telescope. / man shambles that follow it (The Wrong, Crag Hill). The point made by the Hill is telling, but Invisible Books have hit a niche in the market. They've done a good job in editing and laying out pages. There's lots of graphics and the poems, doodles, prose, cartoons, comic strips and stuff are thoughtfully scattered about to give a poised and dynamic look. Just that 'poised' and 'scattered' don't quite work together? Making this book must have been a nightmare for those who worked the Mac. The text isn't varied enough in tone and style to carry 206 pages though. It's like the Luther Blissett scenario played on and on (etc.); it would have broken John N. Bennett's heart but I think an object with more weirdness and far fewer pages would have been more effective way of 'representing' the mailart process. As an act of historification the book lacks a self-critical aspect. Caught between two stools? Probably, but there are enough interesting items to reward the reader. "She's lovely on Prozac, how I wish she had been born with it. Her hairdo softened and small socks pastel her tanned legs so I'm pretty, simply looking there. (from She's lovely on Prozac, Sheila E. Murphy). The main thing for me is that Invisible Books are ambitious in their projects; they remain aloof from the glutinous world of literary factions and they publish odd things and work hard to make the book-as-object satisfying and well enough designed to cope with the gaping contradictions cultural workings leave us with. That means; recommended.
The Anti-Wicca War Marina Findlay (A Potent Production, PO Box 1021, Edinburgh, EH8 9PW, A5/perfect bound, 86pp/£5).
This is the most interesting piece of self-consciously 'pagan' writing that I have encountered. It could be an expression of madness, a spoof or a representation of an integrated world-view. Most 'pagans' are sad people who compensate by pretending 'powers' which others are supposedly too daft or closed-minded to know how to use. It's a form of narcissistic withdrawal, a retreat from 'out there'. The Anti-Wicca War does contain some of the usual stereotypes, but the writing is better and madder than you'd find in - say - Pagan Dawn. Here, the smug erection is absent. Magic is just what people use to forward their agendas and that includes the use of mind control. The manipulative methodologies of those with social or economic power - the advertisers, the governments, the political press secretaries and message editors - stalk this book like psychopixies. They are convincing, unlike the cardboard cut-out 'Elementals' and 'Powers' that usually frequent 'pagan' tomes The issue of government sponsored mind control has become a conspiracy theory genre in itself in recent years. Link these unanchored aspects of the totality to a gruesome ecological campaign and you get conflict, ontological crisis, turbulent emotions and power discharged, one way or another. You also get a top little book (just wish the poems weren't in capitals that's all).
In the Background section Findlay describes the usage and abusage of psychic skills by the state. Secret state assets abuse opponents with telepathy, deploying "astral and Egyptian magic, spying, remote physiological control and behavioural engineering using classified technology." "Free individuals… are brainwashed, poisoned, murdered and oppressed… Those who channel their energy creatively are set up with the so called symptoms of schizophrenia to discredit and oppress them. A mental hospital being a prison for conscientious revolutionaries. Schizophrenia was also redefined to entrap those involved in self initiation - 'magical thinking', 'projection', 'seclusiveness' and 'resistance to treatment' now included to aid wilful misdiagnosis… Paranoia is sited to replace achieved awareness of the secret society with a poisonous lie. If you're not in and you think that spying bastards can read your mind and subliminally speak to you, that's right."
The book details the campaign to save Pressmennan Oakwood North (East Lothian). On the one hand its ecofascist crap, in which we should all live in the greenwood (indigenous, if you don't mind), in which 'women' are 'connected' and 'men' are just sad. All the tedious shite you get to hear from 'enlightened' middle class types is in here, but… On the other hand it ties reality in knots that are so weird that - as artifice - they negate artifice. The poetry is magical-functional rather than innovative or 'good'. Read this book on strong drugs and you get some very odd effects. The psychic combat that goes on within eco-action groups - nasty and hurtful as it is - is very well drawn. Also, Findlay uncovers the discrete Tantric practices of the Druids. "These men can't control themselves, so they seek it over other people, obsessed with forcing approval of their unfounded ideals… They do this by wiring a woman who won't sleep with them to a machine and then stimulating the happy part of the brain and engineering a gesture to make her smile." This will be familiar to anyone who has taken part in eco-action. It reminds me of the Twyford Down campaign.
The Daubers Ian Hunt / Still Life Paintings Andreas Rüthi (Alfred David Editions, 42 Elm Park, London, SW2 2UB, 16x22cm/hardback, 96pp/£10).
This book generates a vegetative energy from the contrast between the text and the images; by providing the book with a title for each part, but no overall title, the artists emphasise this as the buried engine of meaning. "The paintings… depict postcards of artworks alongside souvenirs and objects of daily life on a stage-like shelf. The ideality of the work of art finds a new identity in its doubly reproduced form." (blurb) Uncanny; these things have been presented and represented. The pictures are still points of turbulence. The postcard image of High Art is placed near one end of the shelf, which might be above a fire place. The shelf is shiny-painted, pearly, as if white but reflecting. The relationship between High Art and everyday life is subtlety drawn; a much ruder dialogue ensues between the particular work of genius and the item that sits next to it on the shelf. So, within each painting there are dialogues you can arse about with. They are dead neat. There are 24 of them. The Infant Philip Prosper (Velazquez) is depicted to the right of a small plastic jar of Vaseline; such alliteration is charming, discrete and yet dirty. It’s a very simple arrangement, one that sneakily releases these objects from the mundane. They become emblematic, symbolic, archetypal and yet are diminished in scale. Painted in pastel shades, they remain worry-free in how their tonal qualities are absorbed and muted by the wall behind them, the barred bridge between this world and this world. All of that is implied in these paintings. They are well printed too, this book is quality (spect the artist moaned about that stuff though, like they do). In the text the vortex-whirl of ideas/images/forms shovels its way through hyperdiction and the grammar of freetext, stream of consciousness or an 'automatic writing' style. That is, it is finely honed, carefully reworked into a perfectly ordered chaos. The text, regardless of the 'otherness' of forms (we curse otherness), works perfectly in relation to the images. Combined, they become Tarot cards; you can easily make your fortune with them. "All resolves into the fixtures, the shelf in its reliable whiteness, spanned with toys, stones, the part-eaten meal, the box of nail parings, slipper limpets, acorn cups, swept clean at a stroke, always new, re-made, winking, a little longer yet. The hardness attracts, there's a promise of measurement if the eyes could but face it, drop a vertical, a promise of order and ranking, though the effect of concentration half obliterates the ensnared souvenirs which we must now go through carefully…" On the cover is a photograph of two electric lamps and lots of cable, the colours in the picture are highly saturated (and the lamps are on). The cover background is blue. In his covering letter Ian Hunt said, "The petrol blue colour of the jacket is calculated to equalise and shimmer with the orange of the photograph in the hour or so of bluish light after sunset." (my italics). I think even Marina Findlay would approve of such a gentle spellcasting; this is no ordinary book. It is one of those books that looks like it might make a good present; unusually, it would.
Veins of Gold: ORE 1954-1995 ed. Eric Ratcliffe & Wolfgang Görtschacher (University of Salzburg, ISBN 3-7052-0089-5, A5/perfect bound, 259pp/priceless).
This is the living monument of poetry to commemorate Ore. It is not purified, but selected from the spring beside which the temple was built. This - one of many markers left by Eric Ratcliffe - casts a long shadow in midwinter. As well as 'a century of poems' the book also contains five guest articles and an interview. Eric is interviewed by Wolfgang. One question involves the nature of a typical Ore poem. The reply describes the magazine and the anthology: "It includes holism, harmony, optimism, with mystic, legendary, or magical elements. Poems, even if good, are more liable to be rejected if they are materialistic, pessimistic or with vulgarities or 'spiky' properties. Up to a point technique is sometimes sacrificed for content." If you agree with the outlook and agenda then you are within the Temenos, if not you are likely to be beyond the pale? Well, yes, but the pale was pushed back though, as things developed and the openness that characterised the magazine became established. The anthology seems to focus on the core ideal though, Eric's essential thing. In terms of behaviour, this is detailed too. The function of a little magazine in the nineties? "Not to simply reflect the seamier and material sides of our society, but to counteract them with an opposing stance (i.e. spiritual activism)." This is a very romantic, and very modern outlook, uniting disparate objects in pre-history to legend, historical poetry and a contemporary ideology or belief system (in this case, recuperated or neo paganism). There are lots of familiar names amongst the poets; Penelope Shuttle, Jon Silkin, Geoffrey Holloway, Lotte Kramer, William Oxley, Peter Redgrove. Even Fiona Pitt-Kethley. The book also contains a complete Bibliography, with the poets listed in alphabetical order. There are loads. There are pictures of some of them in the back, and there's a wonderfully short introduction by the man himself. The last words go to Penelope Shuttle: "I stretch my arm down the sedate shaft, / under earth, into cool air, / a donor wanting to give, // but I cannot reach the round slippery slab of water, / the unrebuking rain needs nothing from me, / neither tears, nor love, nor education." (from The Well)
Page(s) 61-65
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