The second Guest Editor of Beat the Dust is Joseph Ridgwell, author of 'Where are the rebels?' and well known on the underground scene as a bit of lit thug. His Rebel editions of BTD, The Recession Session - Parts I and II, are both now live. Part I is here and Part II is below. The March issue of Beat the Dust is, for the first and probably only time, a themed issue. The theme is 'Fuck the word the word is dead', a line taken from a Patti Smith manifesto on free speech from 1977. Beat the Dust - required reading. Bullet-proof vest - required wearing.
THE RECESSION SESSION - PART II
Author:
Steve Finbow explains himself
Steve Finbow is the halt noon, nodded, and a betrayal of mattering by index. The singeing. Crowside. He writes because of the alarming surge of pears. He once sifted the many objects sincerity cancels. He has lived in stratum, absent peelings, and a mouth the shape of hours. Empty soda burns. Parallelograms to slit his thought. His work. The connections. He is an amphibian repeatist.
Submission Date:
07 Feb 2009
Category:
Commentary
In Podcast and Chap-book
Title:
oi, you’ve spilt my beer! - Steve Finbow comes and has a go cos he’s hard enough
Excerpt:
I'm not pulling punches here. As editor of Red Peter & co-editor of 3:AM Magazine, I have to read hundreds of submissions. A larg...
Paul Ewen is interviewed by a barman in a South London pub
Barman: Why do you keep moving your glass about the bar? Paul Ewen: I'm making a pattern with the condensation rings. Barman: What sort of pattern? PE: Well, I started with the Olympic rings, but now I'm making a lovely loop-chain necklace. Barman: The Olympics were really something, weren't they? PE: I don't know. Barman: Didn't you watch them? PE: No. Sport's for kids. Barman: What's that? PE: Sport's for kids. Barman: "Sport's for kids." Is that right? So what... PE: Look, matching earrings! Barman: Hmm. Don't you have a home to go to?
It’s often said that a few bars of a song can instantly resurrect deep, well-hidden memories, and now whenever I hear ‘The Riddle’ by Nick Kershaw, a lump forms in my throat like a ball of wet bread and I’m back at the Forester pub.
In 1996 Joseph Ridgwell walked out of his dead-end job and decided to walk the earth. At some point he found himself at the Beach of the Dead in Southern Mexico. It was here that he and his companion RR built a couple of shacks high up on a jungle cliff top, and named them the Huts of the Lost Elation. During a very vivid and revelatory Peyote trip, Ridgwell took up a pen and began writing, and he has been writing ever since………………
Submission Date:
07 Feb 2009
Category:
Commentary
In Podcast and Chap-book
Title:
do creative writing courses kill creativity?
Excerpt:
I’m a totally self-taught and self-educated writer, an autodidact. I’m not the first and no doubt I won’t be the last. Recently, a renowned literary editor asked for my opinion on creative writing courses and what, in turn I thought of the burgeoning creative writing industry. ...
Clare Wigfall, award-winning author of The Loudest Sound and Nothing (Faber and Faber), was this week savaged by a rabid bat. She will be dearly missed by all who knew her. For more information about her life and work, please see her myspace page.
Submission Date:
07 Feb 2009
Category:
Flash fiction
In Chap-book
Title:
angus fade
Excerpt:
The other day I met a boy I used to know.
‘Do you remember Angus Fade?’ he asked me.
Angus Fade looked like his name. Pale orange hair crowned pale white flesh. Someone had left him out in the sun a little too long or put him through the wash a few too many times....
Geraint Hughes 1967-2061. An author of little note, he briefly flirted with free form poetry before retiring in 2008 shortly after the death of his father. He will be better remembered for his independent publishing exploits. Hughes launched blackheath books in 2005, in those halcyon days before the web bubble burst and arguments were rife over the death of paper-based publishing. At a time when the rampant capitalist consumerism of Borderstones dominated the ‘supermarketisation’ of British literature, many saw him as a foolhardy maverick, but now in retrospect he is credited as a saviour of the printed word.
From humble chapbook beginnings, supported by nothing more than an ever-increasing and discerning readership, blackheath books snowballed. They moved to perfect bound editions in 2009 and went on to publish some of the greatest writers of the 21st century. Highlights of a distinguished publishing career include Joseph Ridgwell’s first three pre-abstinence novels, one of those the Booker winning Barcelona Bar (2010), the collected works of Poet Laureate Adelle Stripe (2026) and all twelve volumes of Zack Wilson’s Lescar stories. blackheath books launched the careers of many of today’s best loved authors, who will be forever indebted to him.
For many years Hughes continued to hand-print and bind his books on recycled paper and card using last century technology and equipment. However, at the age of 87, failing eyesight and arthritis saw him sell the business and back catalogue to Harper Pan Macmillan for an undisclosed seven-figure sum. blackheath books are now printed in China by crippled children on paper made from virgin rainforest. Donations in his memory can be made via PayPal at blackheath books.
Submission Date:
07 Feb 2009
Category:
Poetry
In Podcast and Chap-book
Title:
art of poetry #1
Excerpt:
everyone has an opinion ‘you gotta work on those poems more man’ it’s...
The Diggers were a radical community-action group operating from 1966–68, based in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Their politics were such that they have sometimes been categorized as "left-wing." More accurately, they were "community anarchists" who blended a desire for freedom with a consciousness of the community in which they lived.
Submission Date:
07 Feb 2009
Category:
Commentary
In Chap-book
Title:
trip without a ticket
Excerpt:
[Originally published by The Diggers, ca. Winter, 1966-67. Reprinted by the Communication Company SF 2nd Edition 6/28/67. Included in The Digger Papers, August 1968.]
Our authorized sanities are so many Nembutals. "Normal" citizens with store-dummy smiles stand apart from each other ...
Protocol of last Tuesday's Séance in which deceased poet Ann Cotten speaks through the trumpet. Three dots stand for a longer pause in which nothing but static is heard on the tape.
- Welcome to our circle! - Cwrrn ya move ze twampat pleez. - Is this better? - Yup. - Would you be so kind as to tell us your name? ... - Maybe. - Mable! And your last name, Mable? ... - Whyontcha teckoffya glasses soyacan heyamah betta. - Is that what you are known as over there? - Whaddaya mean over there. Ima right here butchorna lissening tomeareya. - Aren't you Ann Cotten? … - I will repeat our question: Are you Ann Cotten? - Ima bored. Goodthing I gotouta there. - Oh, please do stay a minute longer. We know it is very strenuous for you. ... - Is there something you would like to say to us? A message perhaps? Something left undone? ... - Yorshoesuntied. - Ah, Ms Cotten, you haven't changed a bit. The world is deeply indebted to your humour. - Walifyacould seeme ya mightasay ima look kinda funny. - What is your form at present? Can you describe it in words we can understand? ... - Agotta new tattoo. ... - Boxa unburnt CDs, onma leff kneecap. - You still have kneecaps up there? ... - You're pulling our leg again, Ms Cotten. - Jus helpingya hitchupya tights. - Are you a Seraph? - Yeah. I think so
Trumpet dies.
Submission Date:
07 Feb 2009
Category:
Poetry
In Podcast and Chap-book
Title:
nächtliche inania
Excerpt:
Wüstenartige Rückenstriche, wie als wäre er in seiner Jugend mit Hoffahr...
MS: Where are you conducting this interview? MS: In the desert, outside Tucson, Arizona. MS: Do you ever talk about the creative process? MS: Never. It’s bad luck. Anybody worth his salt knows that. MS: What’s the best book you’ve read recently? MS: Lunes De Fiel by Pascal Bruckner. MS: Isn’t that a bit politically incorrect? MS: I like politically incorrect French novelists. I can’t help it. MS: The best movie you’ve seen in the past few weeks? MS: Well now, let me think. There were two: Hitchcock’s Frenzy, again. Most critics don’t realize it, but that’s his masterpiece. The other was From The Lives Of The Marionettes, Ingmar Bergman. Again. It’s one of his least known, but one of his very best. MS: What about plays? You’re a playwright, aren’t you? MS: None. Plays are much too expensive nowadays. MS: What music do you listen to? MS: Besides myself, the classics, movie soundtracks, great popular music. MS: What great contemporary music do you recommend? MS: The popular song did not survive the sixties, so I don’t know what to say. MS: Is your life interesting or dull? MS: Excruciatingly dull. Good writers experience life, then live very drab existences and do nothing but write about what they’ve endured. Why do you think the vast majority of young writers are no good and have nothing to say? MS: Someone told me you love animals. MS: I’m guilty of that, yes. MS: What’s the most beautiful animal in the world? MS: The rhinoceros viper or river jack. I defy anyone to show me a more beautiful beast. MS: But aren’t they deadly? MS: If beauty weren’t lethal, would it be beauty?
Submission Date:
07 Feb 2009
Category:
Short story
In Podcast and Chap-book
Title:
loners, the new short story collection by Mark SaFranko, reviewed by Joseph Ridgwell
Excerpt:
I’ve always been a voracious reader, always on the look out for exceptional books that encourage you to look at the world in a different light, get you thinking and wondering, and maybe even change your life. But let’s face it books like that are incredibly rare, hard to track down, and once you hav...
Bonnie Parker was the female half of the notorious crime duo, Bonnie and Clyde. She was born on October 1, 1910, in Rowena, Texas. She and partner Clyde Barrow died in a hail of machine gun fire from law enforcement officers on May 23, 1934.
Submission Date:
07 Feb 2009
Category:
Poetry
In Podcast and Chap-book
Title:
the trail's end
Excerpt:
You've read the story of Jesse James Of how he lived and died If you'...
On April 6, 1978, 35-year-old Emmett Grogan was found dead on an F Train subway car in New York City, the victim of a heart attack, possibly induced by chronic heroin use. This has been disputed and alternative theories exist.
Submission Date:
07 Feb 2009
Category:
Novel extract
In Chap-book
Title:
ringolevio
Excerpt:
It was the last Sunday in November of 1965 and his twenty-first birthday when Kenny Wisdom landed at Idlewild airport, which had been renamed John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
A lot of things had changed. Kenny's parents had moved to a different section of Brooklyn a few years back. He took the crumpl...
Christiana Spens, author of The Wrecking Ball and the graphic novel, The Socialite Manifesto - One Day in the Life of Ivana Denisovich, died today by accidentally setting her hair on fire.
Submission Date:
07 Feb 2009
Category:
Commentary
In Chap-book
Title:
factory girl lies exposed!!!
Excerpt:
It came to my attention recently that the bad movie of yesterday, Factory Girl, was a bunch of prettily made up lies. This is perhaps apt, considering that Edie Sedgwick acted only in Warhol’s intentionally bad cinematic ventures, but there was a feeling that Factory Girl thought i...
In March 1978, while on holiday with her parents in Cornwall, Sandy Denny was injured in a fall down a staircase. A month after the fall she collapsed at a friend's home; four days later she died in Atkinson Morley Hospital. Her death was ruled to be the result of a traumatic mid-brain haemorrhage. She was buried at Putney Vale Cemetery.
Submission Date:
07 Feb 2009
Category:
Lyrics
In Chap-book
Title:
john the gun
Excerpt:
My shadow follows me Wherever I should chance to go John the Gun did say If you should chance to meet me As I wander to and fro Sad would be your day
My life is mine and the light did shine Till the guns they did go through me So now I shall never fall Ideals of peace ...
Henry Lawson (17 June 1867 – 2 September 1922) was an Australian writer and poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period, and is often called Australia's ‘greatest short story writer’.
During his later life, the alcohol-addicted writer was probably Australia's best-known celebrity. At the same time, he was also reduced to begging on the streets of Sydney, notably at the Circular Quay ferry turnstiles. The authorities harassed Lawson constantly for unpaid debts, and the somewhat odious Mayor of Sydney and the myopic NSW government, refused to bail him out.
He was imprisoned at Darlinghurst Gaol for drunkenness and non-payment of alimony, and recorded his experience in the haunting poem One Hundred and Three - his prison number - which was published in 1908. He refers to the prison as "Starvinghurst Gaol" because of the meager rations given to the inmates.
On his death, of a cerebral haemorrhage in Abbotsford, Sydney in 1922, the powers that be, being a bunch of useless hypocrites, felt it fitting to give the great man Australia’s first ever state funeral. Many decades later, Henry Lawson was featured on the first (paper) Australian ten dollar note issued in 1966, when decimal currency was first introduced in Australia.
Submission Date:
07 Feb 2009
Category:
Commentary
In Podcast and Chap-book
Title:
letter to the Bulletin (1903)
Excerpt:
Dear Bulletin
I'm awfully surprised to find myself sober. And, being sober, I take up my pen to write a few lines, hoping they will find you as I am at present. I want to know a few things. In the first place: Why does a man get drunk? There seems to be no excuse for it.&n...
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