A Tribute to Bob Cobbing (1920-2002)
I first encountered Bob Cobbing at a performance at the Festival Hall, London in early 1990. He was performing as one third of ‘Konkrete Canticle’ with the poets Paula Claire and Bill Griffiths. This was the second poetry event I had ever attended and I was astonished by the extraordinary sound produced by this group. At one point the poets began moving round the audience showing us a copy of the poem that they were performing – when Cobbing came over to me I looked down to see a totally abstract image in black and white and suddenly I was performing it too! This experience had a profound physical effect on me: afterwards I felt overwhelmed, but exhilarated. Afterwards I found out that the ‘concrete’ poetry I had heard and performed worked by creating abstract images and then ‘reading’ or ‘performing’ them with the sounds of the human voice and/or instruments – as if you began spontaneously to read aloud in a language you did not know how to pronounce, yet somehow made ‘sense’. It involved interpreting the marks, lines, textures and shapes of a visual text as if they were analogous to the marks, lines, textures and shapes that make up the characters of writing systems. Cobbing was not only a concrete poet but also produced sound poetry; creating poems which used recognisable characters of the English and other writing systems but patterning them to emphasise their qualities of sound rather than sense. He also produced works which can be described as found poems, collage poems and cut-up poems, indeed claiming to have created cut-up works before the technique’s more often credited creator – William Burroughs – did.
But Cobbing’s legacy extends beyond his creative contribution to his support for creativity in seemingly endless forms and guises. His Writers Forum press, still in operation after his death, published over 1000 titles of poetry over a period of almost forty years including work by Lee Harwood, Maggie O’Sullivan, John Cage and Allen Ginsberg. I consider myself immensely fortunate to have had my first two pamphlets of poetry published by Cobbing; an early and generous start which gave me momentum for years to come. In the second pamphlet’s case I had the pleasure of actually working together with Cobbing to create the book, page by page. His alert eye constantly picked up on anomalies and opportunities. He even sent me off (to his own photocopier in the basement) to progressively reduce a photocopy of the word ‘trills’ which appeared over and over in one of my poems. I had explained that in performance my intention was to say each successive ‘trills’ more quietly than the last. He persuaded me to show this in the ‘score’ of my poem, which I duly did (you can find it in Stateswalks). In addition we also saved going onto another page and thus solved a pagination problem! Such are the joys of small press publication – one is connected with the means of re/production and can therefore explore creative ways of presenting text whilst remaining fully in control: the book becomes part of the poem.
Another important legacy of Cobbing’s manifold energies was the monthly Writers Forum workshop (on-going) which he presided over in various venues in north London. This was the most genuinely open reading space I have ever had the pleasure to come across: a place where many poets came to try things out and to learn: some only once, some returning for years. Although in the wider culture the ‘writing workshop’ has connotations of the masterclass and being corrected in one’s mistakes, Cobbing’s presence at these gatherings allowed poets to learn about themselves and their work through the very act of articulation, without judgement. The only advice I ever heard given was to read either ‘louder’ or ‘slower’ or both. The space allowed you to work it out for yourself. Cobbing also created opportunities for exploration. On one memorable occasion, after I’d just been given the louder and slower treatment for a hesitant performance of one of my poems (on the second run I was rather startled by what came out) Bob handed myself and the poet Johan De Wit a copy of Gerry Loose’s poem ‘Bob in the News’, one of the many birthday poems dedicated to Bob by workshop participants over the years. It was my first performance of a sound poem – no preparation, no practice – and, with the briefest of mutual direction: ‘OK, let’s turn pages at the same time and finish here’ – we were off! Again there was that incredible sense of exhilaration – of one’s voice literally being stretched to things one would never before have felt it capable of. Amazingly, Johan and I kept in time and finished the piece simultaneously! Although I’ve rarely written pure sound poems since – the understanding of sound and the possibilities of performance that I gained during sessions like these were an apprenticeship that has not only informed all of my live reading work since but also my relationship to poetry on the page as well.
It’s with difficulty that one recognises the passing of a truly generous and creative spirit – one who felt no need to hide his talents but who made more effort than most to create spaces in which his abilities also allowed others to be nurtured, to grow and to flourish. British poetry needs more poets like Bob Cobbing.
But Cobbing’s legacy extends beyond his creative contribution to his support for creativity in seemingly endless forms and guises. His Writers Forum press, still in operation after his death, published over 1000 titles of poetry over a period of almost forty years including work by Lee Harwood, Maggie O’Sullivan, John Cage and Allen Ginsberg. I consider myself immensely fortunate to have had my first two pamphlets of poetry published by Cobbing; an early and generous start which gave me momentum for years to come. In the second pamphlet’s case I had the pleasure of actually working together with Cobbing to create the book, page by page. His alert eye constantly picked up on anomalies and opportunities. He even sent me off (to his own photocopier in the basement) to progressively reduce a photocopy of the word ‘trills’ which appeared over and over in one of my poems. I had explained that in performance my intention was to say each successive ‘trills’ more quietly than the last. He persuaded me to show this in the ‘score’ of my poem, which I duly did (you can find it in Stateswalks). In addition we also saved going onto another page and thus solved a pagination problem! Such are the joys of small press publication – one is connected with the means of re/production and can therefore explore creative ways of presenting text whilst remaining fully in control: the book becomes part of the poem.
Another important legacy of Cobbing’s manifold energies was the monthly Writers Forum workshop (on-going) which he presided over in various venues in north London. This was the most genuinely open reading space I have ever had the pleasure to come across: a place where many poets came to try things out and to learn: some only once, some returning for years. Although in the wider culture the ‘writing workshop’ has connotations of the masterclass and being corrected in one’s mistakes, Cobbing’s presence at these gatherings allowed poets to learn about themselves and their work through the very act of articulation, without judgement. The only advice I ever heard given was to read either ‘louder’ or ‘slower’ or both. The space allowed you to work it out for yourself. Cobbing also created opportunities for exploration. On one memorable occasion, after I’d just been given the louder and slower treatment for a hesitant performance of one of my poems (on the second run I was rather startled by what came out) Bob handed myself and the poet Johan De Wit a copy of Gerry Loose’s poem ‘Bob in the News’, one of the many birthday poems dedicated to Bob by workshop participants over the years. It was my first performance of a sound poem – no preparation, no practice – and, with the briefest of mutual direction: ‘OK, let’s turn pages at the same time and finish here’ – we were off! Again there was that incredible sense of exhilaration – of one’s voice literally being stretched to things one would never before have felt it capable of. Amazingly, Johan and I kept in time and finished the piece simultaneously! Although I’ve rarely written pure sound poems since – the understanding of sound and the possibilities of performance that I gained during sessions like these were an apprenticeship that has not only informed all of my live reading work since but also my relationship to poetry on the page as well.
It’s with difficulty that one recognises the passing of a truly generous and creative spirit – one who felt no need to hide his talents but who made more effort than most to create spaces in which his abilities also allowed others to be nurtured, to grow and to flourish. British poetry needs more poets like Bob Cobbing.
Page(s) 2-3
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