Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

BOB COBBING & WRITERS FORUM/Ceolfrith Press No 26. 75p.

This volume was published for a retrospective exhibition of Bob Cobbing’s involvements/works at the Ceolfrlth/Sunderland Arts Centre in November 1974. It is much more than an exhibition catalogue. Articles and statements share the space with many works by Cobbing and those associated with Writers Forum. It charts the progress of an artist who was at first unsure which medium would realize his ideas and energies, up to and beyond the stage when he began to weave music, visual and literary concerns into his own artform which is a new territory. His progress: signs, scores, obstacles and games thrown up on the way. Also included here, a checklist of W.F.publications and a Lobbing bibliography.

     The scope and weight of the work is such that we are given a lead in to the vital enthusiasm which permeates all of Cobbing’s activities. No one has done more to stretch our understanding of sound in language. Right now he embodies the source of renewal, mixing the basic elements and handing them back revitalised.

WAR W. WINDSOR/Bill Griffiths - Writers Forum & Pirate Press.

The Windsor Chapter and Uxbridge Nomads go to war. Much of this is written in a very hard, immediate prose style which digs right into the minds and hearts of the ‘angels’ Syntax goes out the window, along with most other ‘straight’ values. Prison life at last reported as it is for the victim (i.e. the one who is shut inside) and this is seen directly - not through the eyes of some patronising social worker or even ‘campaigning journalist’.

     Texts 3 & 4 are cut finer to essential verse. Again, the language is the tongue of the seventies outlaw:

“. . . . . . . . . . picking up snout bits in Brixton
5. Johnny begot, beading of black jack-dud
Dance kick at drums, can banging
Death-douce.”

And :

‘8. in the morning, Hate rose, very red,
Like the head of the fucking sky, bright
And public, warning . . . . . .”

     These two, right out of context, plucked from No.3, show the dense, angular tongue, sharp and new. Strongly recommended.

STONE TONES/Paula Claire - Writers Forum

An envelope containing eight cards with mimeo’d stone pictures on them. A sheet of explanation enclosed “The cards in this folder....are sound texts in their own right but cannot compete with the tangible stone with its own vibration of aeons passing through our palms.”

     The pictures themselves are fine, good reproductions, but this is not enough. Instead of reporting what she has done with the stones in the past, I would have been happier if Paula Claire had offered a new set of instructions for these cards. There is no reason why the cards, as shared objects, could not have been made as potent as what they depict. More work is needed on this project.

S,M,L,O.E,/P.C.Fencott - EL UEL UEL U Publications. 45p.

Coming closest to a graphic arts project, the minimal text is presented in a series of different ‘ways, and the production in this case is an integral part of the content. S,M,L,O,E, is a beautiful example of what can be done with relatively simple equipment. Found poems, sound poems, visual and tactile works. Silk-screen, mimeo, assemblage. A great first book.

GISLI’S SAGA / translated and printed by John Porter in collaboration with Bill Griffiths - Pirate Press. 20p.

A workmanlike translation of an Icelandic saga, verse by verse. The layout is very clear and no doubt helpful to the student as well as the more general reader. It goes like this on the page -

original              verse (word for word)
______________________________

more      complete prose     translation

     I’ve seen nothing so well conceived and executed among the mimeo presses. ‘Gisli’s Saga’ is a major work both for the publisher and translator. Cover by Bob Cobbing.

CAPTAIN HARWOOD’S LOG OF STERN STATEMENTS & STOUT SAYINGS / Lee Harwood -Writers Forum. 10p

A notebook/diary written in ‘72 and ‘73. The subjects of Lee Harwood’s interest and concern during this period are presented in a series of quotations which are fixed by personal reference to place, time and the theory (if you like) which moves along like a counterpoint to the ‘poetic’ works. Each page here is like a tangent to the poems which Harwood has previously published with Fulcrum and in many magazines. The ‘process’ continues until the work is surrounded by workpoints and references. It is a book which intends to nudge the reader into action, taking the ideas further as he reads. The material includes Pound, Gide, Olson & Tzara.

     This work should logically have appeared together with the poem ‘The Long Black Yell’, which was expected around 1973/74 by many of Harwood’s readers. The sequence is included in the book H.M.S.LITTLE FOX, which is now to be published by OASIS BOOKS later this year.

     Though the books mentioned above are not all WRITERS FORUM, they have all been either printed or distributed with the help of WRITERS FORUM.