HOME
*





Bob Cobbing
Bob Cobbing (30 July 1920 – 29 September 2002) was a British sound, visual, concrete and performance poet who was a central figure in the British Poetry Revival. Early life Cobbing was born in Enfield and grew up within the Plymouth Brethren. He attended Enfield Grammar School and then trained as an accountant. He later went to Bognor Training College to become a teacher. During the Second World War, he was a conscientious objector. Early involvement with poetry and performance His involvement with performance began with the Hendon Experimental Art Club and the Hendon-based magazine ''And'' in 1951. This led to his setting up Writers Forum, which began publishing in 1963. In 1964 he published ''ABC in Sound'', a book that combined his interest in sound and concrete poetry in an exploration of the visual and auditory possibilities of the English alphabet. Better Books He left teaching around this time and managed Better Books on Charing Cross Road, London. Better Books ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Sound Poetry
Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging literacy and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words". By definition, sound poetry is intended primarily for performance. History and development The vanguards of the 20th century While it is sometimes argued that the roots of sound poetry are to be found in oral poetry traditions, the writing of pure sound texts that downplay the roles of meaning and structure is a 20th-century phenomenon. The Futurist and Dadaist Vanguards of the beginning of this century were the pioneers in creating the first sound poetry forms. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti discovered that onomatopoeias were useful to describe a battle in Tripoli where he was a soldier, creating a sound text that became a sort of a spoken photograph of the battle. Dadaists were more involved in sound poetry and they invented different categories: *''Bruitist poem'' i ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Arts Lab
The Arts Lab was an alternative arts centre, founded in 1967 by Jim Haynes at 182 Drury Lane, London. Although only active for two years, it was influential in inspiring many similar centres in the UK, continental Europe and Australia, including the expanded Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, the Milky Way/Melkweg in Amsterdam (where Jack Henry Moore was one of the founders), the Entrepôt in Paris and the Yellow House Artist Collective founded by Martin Sharp in Sydney. Drury Lane Arts Lab The Lab contained a 'soft floor' cinema in the basement designed and run by David Curtis. In the entrance there was a gallery space co-curated by Biddy Peppin (Curtis's partner) and Pamela Zoline. In a separate (but connected) warehouse was the theatre, designed by Jack Henry Moore, who initially co-directed the activities there. Both the cinema and theatre were constructed by David Jeffrey, whose partner, Philippa James, was closely involved in the Lab's day-to-day running. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


David Toop
David Toop (born 5 May 1949) is an English musician, author, curator, and Emeritus Professor. From 2013 to 2021 he was professor of audio culture and improvisation at the London College of Communication. He was a regular contributor to British music magazine ''The Wire'' and the British magazine ''The Face''. He was a member of the Flying Lizards. Early years Soon after his birth, his parents moved to Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, where he grew up. He was educated at Broxbourne Grammar School, which he left in 1967 to study at Hornsey College of Art and Watford School of Art.n Career Toop published his pioneering book on hip hop, ''Rap Attack,'' in 1984. Eleven years later, ''Ocean of Sound'' appeared, described as Toop's "poetic survey of contemporary musical life from Debussy through Ambient, Techno, and drum 'n' bass." Subsequent books include ''Exotica'', a winner of the American Book Awards in 2000, ''Sinister Resonance'' (2010), and ''Into the Maelstrom'', his survey of f ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Paul Burwell
Paul Dean Burwell (24 April 1949 – 4 February 2007) was a British thaumaturge and percussionist, influential in the fields of free improvisation and experimental art. Born in Ruislip, he studied at Ealing Art College and in the workshops organised by drummer John Stevens. Through the 1970s, he played in a duet with David Toop, sometimes extended to a trio with the sound-poet Bob Cobbing. He was also a founder member of the London Musicians Collective, holding membership card no 1, and wrote for the magazine '' Musics'' among others. Paul was also a member of the Resisters. The Resisters played gigs in London and Germany in the late 1970s. During the 1980s he formed the industrial performance group Bow Gamelan Ensemble with Anne Bean and Richard Wilson. In 2000, Burwell moved into the old Kingston Rowing Club in Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, turning it into an experimental art space for both local and nationally recognised artists and musicians. Few recordings of his wor ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Ian Hamilton Finlay
Ian Hamilton Finlay, CBE (28 October 1925 – 27 March 2006) was a Scottish poet, writer, artist and gardener. Life Finlay was born in Nassau, Bahamas, to James Hamilton Finlay and his wife, Annie Pettigrew, both of Scots descent. He was educated at Dollar Academy in Clackmannanshire and later at Glasgow School of Art. At the age of 13, with the outbreak of the Second World War, he was evacuated to family in the countryside. In 1942, he joined the British Army. Finlay was married twice and had two children, Alec and Ailie. He died in Edinburgh. He is buried alone in Abercorn Churchyard in West Lothian. The grave lies in the extreme south-east corner of the churchyard. The gravestone refers to his parents and sister. Poetry At the end of the war, Finlay worked as a shepherd, before beginning to write short stories and poems, while living on Rousay, in Orkney. He published his first book, ''The Sea Bed and Other Stories'', in 1958, with some of his plays broadcast on the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism, and sexual repression, and he embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, hostility to bureaucracy, and openness to Eastern religions. Ginsberg is best known for his poem "Howl", in which he denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States. San Francisco police and US Customs seized "Howl" in 1956, and it attracted widespread publicity in 1957 when it became the subject of an obscenity trial, as it described heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when sodomy laws made (male) homosexual acts a crime in every state. The poem reflected Ginsberg's own sexuality and his relatio ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives. Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition ''4′33″'', which is performed in the absence of deliberate sound; musicians who present the work do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by the title. The content of the composition is not "four minutes and 33 seconds of silence," as is often assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performance. The work's challenge t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Poetry Society
The Poetry Society is a membership organisation, open to all, whose stated aim is "to promote the study, use and enjoyment of poetry". The society was founded in London in February 1909 as the Poetry Recital Society, becoming the Poetry Society in 1912. Its first president was Lady Margaret Sackville. From its current premises in Covent Garden, London, The Poetry Society publishes ''Poetry Review'', Britain's leading poetry magazine. Established in 1912, it provides a forum for poems from both new and established poets. Its current editor is the poet Emily Berry, who succeeded Maurice Riordan in 2017. The magazine's editor from 2005 to 2012 was Fiona Sampson. There is a Poetry Café on the ground floor of the Poetry Society's premises, and performance space in the basement, rooms being available for hire. Awards The society organises several competitions, including the British National Poetry Competition, the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award,
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


London Film-Makers' Co-op
The London Film-makers' Co-op, or LFMC, was a British film-making workshop founded in 1966. It ceased to exist in 1999 when it merged with London Video Arts to form LUX. It grew out of film screenings at the Better Books bookstore, part of the 1960s counter-culture in London, before moving to the original Arts Lab on Drury Lane, then sharing offices with John 'Hoppy' Hopkins' BIT information service and then, with the breakaway group that formed the New Arts Lab, to the Camden-based Institute for Research in Art and Technology. With the end of IRAT's lease in 1971 the Co-op found a base in a long-term squat in a former dairy at 13a Prince of Wales Crescent in Kentish Town. For most of its life the LFMC was based in Gloucester Avenue in Camden in a run down building which for a number of years also housed the London Musicians Collective. In 1997 the LFMC moved together with London Video Arts to the new Lux Centre, Hoxton Square. Founded by, amongst others, Stephen Dwoskin and Bob ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Counterculture
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Houghton Mifflin. . (1993) p. 419. "Members of a cultural protest that began in the U.S. In the 1960s and Europe before fading in the 1970s... fundamentally a cultural rather than a Protest, political protest." A countercultural movement expresses the ethos and aspirations of a specific population during a well-defined era. When oppositional forces reach Critical mass (sociodynamics), critical mass, countercultures can trigger dramatic cultural changes. Prominent examples of countercultures in the Western world include the Levellers (1645–1650), Bohemianism (1850–1910), the more fragmentary counterculture of the Beat Generation (1944–1964), followed by the globalized counterculture of the 1960s (1964–1974). Definition and characteris ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Bomb Culture
''Bomb Culture'' is a book by Jeff Nuttall about the counter-culture in London, which was first published in 1968. Summary It reflected the influence of the threat of nuclear war, while describing the importance of pop music like the Beatles and countercultural figures like the Beat Generation. Nuttall believed in the liberatory power of imagination and "affect", which he hoped could bring about social change. Publication history A new, expanded edition was published bStrange Attractor Pressin December 2018. It features a new foreword by Iain Sinclair, a new afterword by Maria Fusco and an introduction by the editors, Jay Jeff Jones and Douglas Field, which includes archival images. Critical response ''Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...'' called Nut ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Jeff Nuttall
Jeffrey Addison Nuttall (8 July 1933 – 4 January 2004) was an English poet, publisher, actor, painter, sculptor, jazz trumpeter, anarchist and social commentator who was a key part of the British 1960s counter-culture. He was the brother of literary critic A. D. Nuttall. Life and work Nuttall was born in Clitheroe, Lancashire, and grew up in Orcop, a village in Herefordshire. He studied painting in the years after the Second World War and began publishing poetry in the early 1960s. Together with Bob Cobbing, he founded the influential Writers Forum press and writers' workshop. His ''Selected Poems'' was published by Salt Publishing in 2003. Written by James Charnley, ''Anything But Dull: The Life & Art of Jeff Nuttall'' was published in September of 2022 bAcademica Press This is the first full-length biography of Nuttall and is based in several years research and over 80 interviews with Nuttall's family, friends, teaching colleagues and former collaborators. Charnley was on ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]