Bibliography 1972-

 

"A writer/artist who is creating a unique place in the late C20th  counterculture." - Tenth Muse

Allen, Tim, Two Terrible Twins from Phlebas, Terrible Work 1, 1993
Allen, Tim, Emotional Geology, Terrible Work 2, 1993
Allen, Tim, Two Riders One Horse, Terrible Work 2, 1993
Allen, Tim, Ladder to the Next Floor Stride Magazine 1-33, Terrible Work 2., 1993
Allen, Tim, The Xantras, Terrible Work 3, 1994
Allen, Tim, Dream Vortex, Terrible Work 8, 1998
Allen, Tim, Earth Ascending An Anthology of Living Poetry, Terrible Work 8, 1998
Allen, Tim, Colour of Dust by A C Evans, Terrible Work 9, 1999
Allen, Tim/Kirke, Alexis, Trombone Pamphlets Received, Terrible Work 8 , 1998
Allen, Tim/Kirke, Alexis, Very Recommendable Stride Books Received, Terrible Work 8 , 1998
Anonymous, Witty Notes on all the Jazz Books (BWT 13 Oct 1972), Braintree & Witham Times, 1972
Anonymous, A's Jazz Catalogue (EWN 12 Oct 1972), Essex Weekly News, 1972
Anonymous, Exosphere A C Evans, The Lamp Of Thoth 14, 1984
Anonymous, Exosphere, Unknown Source, 1984
Anonymous, Decaying Orbits, Scavenger's Newsletter, 1987
Anonymous, Decaying Orbits, The Lamp Of Thoth 20, 1987
Anonymous, Incisive Exposures [Neon Aeon I-V], Frontal Lobe 2, 1995
Anonymous, Angels of Rancid Glamour, PQR (Poetry Quarterly Review) 11, 1998
Anonymous, A C Evans is both the poet and the artist…, Zene 14, 1998
Anonymous, Artist-Poet A C Evans, Ixion 6 , 1999
Austin, Dave, Letters to the Editor [The Bards 1 A C Evans], The Supplement 18, 2005
Barber, Andrew, Such As This, Pulsar Poetry Webzine 15 (67) June 2013,
Barford, Emma, In a Desperate Museum, 10th Muse 5, 1994
Berry, Jake, Responses to A C Evans' Essay Voices in Denial,The Argotist Online, 2006
Bird, Polly, A C Evans Colour of Dust, New Hope International Online, 1999
Blackstone, Leonard, Blackstone's Chippings (Space Opera), TOPS 131, 1998
Bowles, Ebenezer, Delusions of Cosmic Destiny, Planet Clio, 2009
Bradshaw, Paul, Burning Man, Dark Fantasy Newsletter 6, 1999
Brainstorm, Johnny, The Future Was Electric, International Times Oct 2016, 2016
Brooks, Neil, Fractured Moods Vol II, Pulsar Poetry Webzine 15 (67) June 2013,
Bruinsma, Max, Exploding Cinema. Rotterdam Film Course, Sandberg Institute, 1999
Bugle, L, Decaying Orbits, Nox 4, 1987
Callison, J. D, Letter to Rupert M Loydell [Memories of the Future], Unpublished, 1999
Carroll, Pete, Letters to the Editor [Hermetic Art Gnostic Alchemy of the Imagination], Nox 2, 1986
Dafies, Aeronwy, Monas Hieroglyphica 11 and Marginalia, Redsine 4 Online , 2001
Daunt, Will, Pulsar 40 [Even Anarchists], New Hope International Online, 2005
Duncan, Andrew, Responses to A C Evans' Essay Voices in Denial, The Argotist Online, 2006
Duxbury-Hibbert, Susan A, Words from Nowhere (interview), Unpublished, 1996
Finch, Peter, Colour of Dust, Buzz Magazine, 1999
Foley, Jack, Responses to A C Evans' Essay Voices in Denial, The Argotist Online, 2006
Fra Enotomy, Letters to the Editor [The Nightmare of Rejection], The Lamp of Thoth Vol III No 1, 1984
Friend, Sean Russell, Alien Autopsy, Dark Fantasy Newsletter 6, 1999
Friend, Sean Russell, On The Ubiquitous Steve Sneyd, Dark Fantasy Newsletter 6, 1999
Gimblett, John, The Luminous Boat (Work on 2 Paintings by Carl Hoffer), Stride 29, 1987
Grimbleby, David, The Unmagical Art of Salvador Dali, The Lamp Of Thoth 20, 1987
Haines, John F, Colour of Dust A C Evans, Handshake 36, 1999
Haines, John F, Memories of the Future, Handshake 36 , 1999
Haines, John F, Outlaw 2, Handshake 53, 2003
Hamilton, Michael, A Ship To Nowhere, Touchpaper 8, 1998
Hanson, Matt/ Walter, Shane R J, onedotzero3 , Film Four/ICA, 1999
Haynes, Lara, Decaying Orbits, Not Dead But Dreaming Vol XII, 2000
Healy, Randolph, Burning Man An Iconic Narrative, New Hope International Review, 1999
Henderson, Neil K, Letters to the Editor [Woman By A Lake], The Supplement 39, 2008
Henderson, Neil K, Letters to the Editor [Watch This Space], The Supplement 56, 2011
Hooper, Emma, An Interview With RML… [Trajectories/Worlds Known and Not], 10th Muse 7, 1996
Jebb, Keith, A C Evans Space Opera/A C Evans Dream Vortex, PQR (Poetry Quarterly Review), 1998
Jope, Norman, A C Evans Graphic Work Is Featured…, Memes 1, 1989
Jope, Norman, Five Steps, Memes 1, 1989
Jope, Norman, Stride 32, Memes 1, 1989
Jope, Norman, In The Forest of Signs [Occult Connections], Memes 4, 1990
Jope, Norman, Creative Intelligence is as Evident…, Memes 8, 1993
Jope, Norman, Between Alien Worlds , Memes 9, 1994
Jope, Norman, Conversation Piece Number Two [Genteel Outsiders], Memes 9, 1994
Jope, Norman, Timbers Across The Sun, Memes 9, 1994
Jope, Norman, Kingdom of the (Hairless) Heart, Tears in the Fence 24, 1999
Jope, Norman, Ascended Ravens, Tears in the Fence 27, 2000
Jordan, Andrew, Meaning as Artifice [The Inscrutable World], 10th Muse 7, 1996
Kimber, Eve, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Pulsar Poetry Webzine June 2011,
Kirke, Alexis, A Pamphlet To Be Reckoned With [Zones of Impulse], Terrible Work 5, 1995
Kirke, Alexis, The Inscrutable World by A C Evans & Rupert Loydell, Terrible Work 6, 1996
Kopaska-Merkel, David C, Space Opera, Dreams and Nightmares, 1997
Lee, Emma, Dream Vortex, 10th Muse 10, 2000
Lee, Emma, Memories of the Future Tales of the Burning Man, 10th Muse 10, 2000
Lenkiewicz, Alice, Fractured Muse by A C Evans, Neon Highway 7, 2004
Light, John, Review of The Bards 1, 2 and 3, Atlantean Publishing Online, 2005
Lightman, Ira, Responses to A C Evans' Essay Voices in Denial, The Argotist Online, 2006
Lockey, Paul J, A C Evans takes a short surreal train ride…, Unhinged 3 , 1999
Loydell, Rupert, The Stride Interview, Stride 20, 1985
Loydell, Rupert, The Third Alternative, Stride 36, 1994
Loydell, Rupert, Stranger Here Myself (Intro: Colour of Dust), Stride, 1999
Loydell, Rupert, Poetry Is Radar, X-Peri, 2016
Loydell, Rupert, Take It Or Leave It, International Times Dec 2021,
Marsh, Jane, Jane Marsh Interviews The Poet A C Evans, Neon Highway 12 Online, 2006
Marsh, Jane, Jane Marsh Interviews The Poet A C Evans (The Illustrated Jane), Neon Highway 13, 2008
Masoliver, Carmina, Poetry and Paint Future, Poetry and Paint Oct 2015,
McMahon, Gary, Deathmasques VI Silence by A C Evans, Ookami Online, 2004
Orange, Thomas M, On Authorial Voice [Voices in Denial], Heuriskein Online, 2007
Oxley, William, Thirty Three Steps Towards Stride, University of Salzburg, 1993
Pearce, Brian Louis, Exosphere A C Evans, Stride 16, 1984
Perloff, Marjorie, Responses to A C Evans' Essay Voices in Denial,The Argotist Online, 2006
Plevin, John, Fractured Moods Vol I, Pulsar Poetry Webzine 14 (66) March 2013,
Poison Quill, This Sepulchre Avant-Goth Poems by A C Evans, The Seventh Seal 4, 2001
Reed, Chris, Colour of Dust, The BBR Directory, 1999
Rippon, Graham, Fractured Moods, Carillon 34, 2012
Searles, A Langley, Three Titles of A C Evans have recently…, Fantasy Commentator 52, 2000
Side, Jeffrey, A C Evans The Bards 1, New Hope International Online, 2004
Side, Jeffrey, Interview by Jeffrey Side, The Argotist Online, 2006
Side, Jeffrey, Note From The Editor, The Argotist Online, 2006
Smith, Barbara, A C Evans Fractured Muse, New Hope International Online, 2005
Smith, Sam, Such As This, The Journal 36 (46) May 2012,
Smith, Sam, Out Of The Velvet Womb, The Journal 38 (48) Feb 2013,
Smith, Sam, Fractured Moods, The Journal 39 (49) Apr 2013
Sneyd, Steve, Between Alien Worlds, Data Dump 9, 1994
Sneyd, Steve, Mystical/Speculative…, Data Dump 9, 1994
Sneyd, Steve, Space Opera An Interview with A C Evans, Fantasy Commentator 47/48, 1995
Sneyd, Steve, Flights From The Iron Moon, The Hilltop Press, 1995
Sneyd, Steve, Dream Vortex, Data Dump 22, 1997
Sneyd, Steve, Foreword to Space Opera, Stride Publications, 1997
Sneyd, Steve, Visions by Association (Interview), Stride Publications, 1997
Sneyd, Steve, Space Opera, Data Dump 25, 1998
Sneyd, Steve, A Ship to Nowhere, Data Dump 31, 1998
Sneyd, Steve, Two Genre Anthologies… Data Dump 37, 1999
Sneyd, Steve, A C Evans The Stone Door, Data Dump 43, 1999
Sneyd, Steve, Also A C Evans Space Opera poem sequence, Data Dump 43, 1999
Sneyd, Steve, Colour of Dust, Data Dump 43, 1999
Sneyd, Steve, Memories of the Future, Data Dump 43, 1999
Sneyd, Steve, Swan of Yuggoth, Data Dump 44, 1999
Sneyd, Steve, The Burning Man Spacerock Fest, Data Dump 45, 2000
Sneyd, Steve, A C Evans This Sepulchre, Data Dump 49, 2000
Sneyd, Steve, Only Our Opinion [Colour of Dust], Twink 18, 2000
Sneyd, Steve, Fractured Muse, Data Dump 68, 2003
Sneyd, Steve, We Are Glad You Have Come (Sleeping Galaxy), Stark 27, 2003
Sneyd, Steve, A C Evans SF Poetry Sequence Space Opera [Interview by Jane Marsh], Data Dump 104, 2006
Sneyd, Steve, Coinicidentally in the On-Line Interview [Interview by Jane Marsh], Data Dump 104, 2006
Sneyd, Steve, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, Data Dump 118, 2008
Sneyd, Steve, Matters Arising [Lust for a Vampire], Data Dump 119, 2008
Sneyd, Steve, Term Speculative Poetry has more definitions, perhaps…, Data Dump 128, 2008
Sneyd, Steve, Significant Number Issue # 75 of Handshake, Data Dump 129, 2008
Sneyd, Steve, Letters to the Editor [Weirdstuff], The Supplement 42, 2008
Sneyd, Steve, Neogaea And Its Strange Satellite Neon, Data Dump 148, 2010
Sneyd, Steve, This Word Image Mosaic Project, Data Dump 152, 2010
Sneyd, Steve, Avant Goth, Data Dump 161, 2011
Sneyd, Steve, Fractured Moods, Data Dump 179, 2013
Spence, Steve, Wordplay With Worldplay, Poetry Quarterly Review 13, 1999
Spence, Steve, Colour of Dust by A C Evans, Scene Magazine, 1999
Spence, Steve, Neon Highway Issue 2 October 2002, Terrible Work Online, 2003
Spence, Steve, Esophagus Writ, Tears In The Fence No 61 Winter/Spring 2015
Spindoc, Fractured Muse by A C Evans, Dragon's Breath 72, 2004
Spracklen, Jamie, A C Evans is an artist and poet, Monas Hieroglyphica 10 [, 2000
Tennant, Peter, Literary Horror Reviewed, Unhinged Online 1 , 2001
Tyrer, D-J, Old Rossum's Book of Practical Robots, Handshake 75 , 2008
Tyrer, D-J, Vespula Vanishes & Other Poems, The Supplement 38, 2008
Tyrer, D-J, This Sepulchre, The Supplement 56, 2011
Tyrer, D-J, Grave Implications, The Supplement 70, 2014
Tyrer, D-J, Esophagus Writ , The Supplement 73 , 2015
Vaughan, Vittoria, Interactive Patterns Kaleidoscopically… [Zones of Impulse], 10th Muse 6, 1995
Weston, D J, Letters to the Editor [Displacement Effects] , The Supplement 40, 2008
Wiloch, Thomas, Chimaera Obscura, Taproot Reviews 3, 1993
Wiloch, Thomas, Between Alien Worlds, Taproot Reviews 4, 1994
Wiloch, Thomas., Decaying Orbits, Stride 29, 1987
Zine Kat, Space Opera by A C Evans, Dragon's Breath 46/47, 1998
Zine Kat, Colour of Dust by A C Evans, Dragon's Breath 59, 1999
Zine Kat, Asphalt Jungle, Dragon's Breath 59 , 1999
Zine Kat, Handshake, Dragon's Breath 59 , 1999
Zine Kat, The BBR Directory, Dragon's Breath 59 , 1999
Zine Kat, Memories of the Future, Dragon's Breath 60, 1999
Zine Kat, Omega Lightning by A C Evans, Dragon's Breath 64, 1999

Illus: Op Art Study, 1969

The Convulsionist Group

 

Could you tell me about the group you formed called The Neo-Surrealist Convulsionist Group?
It is tempting to say we were just a group of alienated teenagers…! We formed the thing around 1968 and it only lasted until around 1971 or 1972. There were about five or six participants based in Chelmsford, Essex. Other places included Colchester, Ipswich and Witham… people used to meet in coffee bars after school – we were all sixth formers doing art or literature, mainly as a way of avoiding sport. The associations continued after everyone left school and tried to get jobs. Some poetry was written and experimental prose cut-up; atonal electronic music was composed and lots of paintings and collages produced. There were occasional expeditions or ‘pilgrimages’ to ‘displaced destinations’ such as the old Hungerford Bridge, the Victoria Embankment Gardens (for the Sullivan Memorial – very ‘convulsive’), The Atlantis Bookshop, or the Dashwood Mausoleum and Hell Fire Caves at West Wycombe. But mainly there was a lot of loafing around, drinking coffee and snogging – or going to see Hammer Horror films and German Expressionist movies at the NFT. There was one exhibition at Hylands House – the exhibition was for all the school leavers but we managed to commandeer a room – as the Convulsionists were the general organisers of the show it was quite easy to get the space! We came up with the term ‘Convulsionism’ after the phrase ‘Beauty will be convulsive…’ (from Breton’s Amour Fou). I felt it implied the ‘visceral’ idea - my ideal work of art was to be a meaningless allegory generated by a kind of neurological spasm or frisson that could be transmitted to the viewer – well, if it gave me a frisson it might give you one as well. One old policy document from my archive says: "CONVULSION IS CONCERNED WITH THE BEAUTY OF PURE IMAGINATION AND FANTASY AND IS VIOLENTLY OPPOSED TO CONTRAPTON IN ANY FORM" (Convulsively Produced Notes On Convulsion, 1968). Earlier, I mentioned some key influences… I should add the Lost Generation to the list – the Francophile ‘Yellow Nineties’ Decadent poets and artists (Arthur Symons, Ernest Dowson et al) and, also, the ultra-Symbolist absurdism (as we saw it) of Laforgue and Alfred Jarry – we were quite keen on ‘Pataphysics as I recall… There was some empathy with English Pop Art, so we rather revelled in the Mass Media – Pop Music (The Doors, Brian Auger), Jazz (Indo Jazz Fusions, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus), Science Fiction and ‘cult TV’. It was ironic that the real Surrealists disbanded in 1969 (Andre Breton died in 1966) so we settled for being Neo-Surrealists!

Illus: Convulsionist Portrait I: Within The Glass [collage/xerox & pencil],1969

from the Neon Highway Interview With Jane Marsh, 2006

Space Opera An Interview With A C Evans

Space Opera, eight linked poems employing Science Fiction imagery, contains willed ironies reflective of the element of ambiguity so inherent to the works of the writer concerned, ‘hermetic artist’ A. C. Evans.

Neogaea – New Earth – as a term summons up hopeful visions by association, while Space Opera calls upon the reader to expect epic, even glorious, space adventure. Yet, in fact, the sections cumulatively ‘tell a story’, insofar as clear and sequential narrative can be drawn from the image data projected by these pieces (even the use of the word ‘poem’ is rendered ambiguous by Evans’ own preference for the term ‘texts’) not of hope or wonder but of flawed personnel with fractured motivation bedeviled by fragmented data and encountering, finally, only failure of ‘a great attempt’.

This ‘great attempt’ – to explore the massive outer space planet Neogaea and its alien-inhabited satellite Neon, where strange non-human ‘cathedrals’ dominate a bizarre landscape (which is told in the Space Opera itself, and also affects a prior but unrelated Evans piece, ‘Contact Zero’), relates to many illustrations, and continues as an ‘undertow’ or concealed reference point in some of his more recent work – should have been a notable landmark in the development of speculative poetry in Britain.

That this was not so is a function, I suspect, partly of the difficulty of the work, a density of form, and demands on reader concentration more familiar in the ‘cutting edge’ areas of American speculative poetry of the time. It is also, perhaps, a result of the actual place of publication. The sequence appeared not in a genre outlet (though, as an aside, attempts by other writers at experimental work in UK genre outlets at about the same time also met little response), but in a more ‘mainstream’ group of publications, namely issues of Rupert Loydell’s little magazine Stride and related booklets from the same editor’s press: Stride Publications.

As the passage of time gives the perspective to appreciate more easily the importance of the achievement represented by Space Opera, and as a growing number of genre readers develop a capacity to attempt the appreciation of work which combines SF iconography with experiments in communicative form, therefore there is a value in returning to the sequence.

In an interview with Stride’s editor in Spring 1985, published in Stride 20, A. C. Evans gave considerable insight into his sources, inspirations, and methodology; but this interview had concentrated heavily on his artwork, rather than his poetry, and at no point in time overtly touched on the use of Science Fiction or speculative themes and imagery. I felt an interview directed to clarifying these areas would be of value, particularly in terms of contexting the powerful Space Opera sequence.

I began by asking about the use by the writer of the term ‘texts’ for this and other written work.

A. C. Evans: I use the term to distance myself from traditional verse writing. I actually prefer the phrase ‘poems and/or texts’ – so referring to the material as ‘prose-poems’ or just ‘poems’ is not a problem at all.

A related group of questions followed, aiming to elicit the roots of Evans’ use of Science Fiction material, and its meaning to his writing.

Steve Sneyd: How do you see your work in relation to Speculative poetry as a whole – do you see a connection? Are you influenced by others, and if so, who?

A.C. Evans: Regrettably, I am not in touch with Speculative, or Science Fiction, poetry in the UK (although I guess I should be!), so I can’t identify any influences in this context. My only formal connection with the Speculative scene was the appearance of a couple of drawings in the American magazine Velocities (1983), which is definitely “a magazine of speculative poetry”. Influences do surface of course, but they are external to current small press SF. Quite a complex area this, but if asked I would cite J. G. Ballard and Olaf Stapledon (crucial). American influences would be William Burroughs (inescapable) and H.P. Lovecraft, and possibly Harlan Ellison. But the SF influence generally is non-specific, culled from mass media SF and SF/Fantasy art, etc. etc.

Are you someone who has come to these forms/topics via an interest in Science Fiction?

Science Fiction has always been part of the cultural landscape (for me), so SF topics were a natural element in the ‘symbolic repertoire’. I have no real intention of being an SF writer – SF is just a component of the mass media environment we inhabit. I’m using SF as raw material, in fact, so I’m not really working from within the genre – this accentuates the alienation-distancing effect I hope to project. The details of the SF scenario I use probably derive from the mass media SF I mentioned: Dr. Who, Star Trek, or 1960s TV plays such as Collin Kapp’s ‘Lambda 1’; also the films of Andrei Tarkovsky – Solaris and Stalker, and the use of SF in David Bowie’s music (‘Space Oddity’, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and Diamond Dogs) which gave a new slant to things circa 1972.

The use I make of SF material? I use the idea of endless voyages through multi-dimensional space(s) as some kind of metaphor for an underlying theme of voidness (that is, ideas of outer limits, alienation, non-communication, and angst). SF-type ideas fit in with this – or seem to. After all, where are the (scientific) outer limits? High Energy Physics and Cosmology enter in – so some of this comes out like SF, but actually derived from Cosmology – e.g. Black Hole Singularities. This endless voyage thing is archetypal: look at Jung and Coleridge.

It also overlaps with a ‘symbolic repertoire’ of ‘occult themes’, such as the astral plane. I should also note a continuity with other more traditional sources, particularly Apocalyptic/Millenarian visionary materials – hence angels and cathedrals all mixed up with Starfleet Command in Space Opera.

Do you see yourself as part of the SF/Speculative poetry world?

As I said, I’m not ‘in touch’ enough to be part of the Speculative scene – but having said that, I’m not against being classified in this way.

Your very experimental approach is almost unique in this century, certainly within this area of genre poetry in the 80s. What reaction have you found from editors to this kind of material?

I have only worked with a small number of editors who’ve been very supportive – particularly the editors of Stride and Memes. My feeling is that the material we are discussing runs counter to the anecdotal/humanistic mould of most small press straight ‘poetry-verse’, so one regards blank reactions as understandable, given the overtly hermetic and inaccessible style of the pieces themselves. Getting down to the cutting edge inevitably means getting into an area where rational communication starts to break down, and I expect editors not to relate to this sort of thing – although I haven’t submitted poems to pure SF editors, ever, so have no idea how they would react.

Was the Space Opera sequence conceived as a whole?

Yes, although ‘Neogaea’ (Space Opera 5) was actually written first, in 1984. The other parts were derived from it some months later. ‘Space Opera (The First Report)’ was published in Stride 21. I think ‘Gaze Of The Medusa’ was especially written for The Serendipity Caper anthology, as a sort of introduction to the sequence.

Does any other work relate to the sequence?

It was linked to ‘Contact Zero’, which also appeared in The Serendipity Caper, and initially in Stride 19. The Space Opera texts also stimulated a number of drawings such as ‘Centre Of Gravity’ from 1984; and ‘Life On Neogaea’, ‘Angel With Raiding Party’, ‘Styx Insect’, ‘The NeoNova’, ‘Destination Tomorrow’, and others, from 1985.

Have you written other Science Fiction texts?

There are SF-type poems in both of my Stride booklets (Exosphere and Decaying Orbits) – such as ‘Metacropolis’ – which are not part of the Neogaea complex.

Finally, could you explain what you were trying to achieve with the Space Opera sequence, the extent to which you think you achieved your aims, and, perhaps, a few words on how it – the sequence – relates to your body of work as a whole?

It’s easier to answer the last part of the question first. Space Opera fits into a range of discursive prose texts subverted by surreal and aleatoric elements. The Xantras (1992) is a more recent example. It was an attempt to see how ‘far out’ (or in) you can get without being too abstract (I don’t really believe in pure abstraction) or too conceptual. Also, as we’ve said, the sequence relates to graphics like Contact Zero (not in this volume) and a number of line drawings (some of which are in this volume): I like to think there’s a non-rational continuum in my work in all media – unexpected links connecting things in half-hidden patterns. pathways to the outer limits.

I tried to achieve a fusion of ‘genre’ thematics with an ‘experimental’ prose style in order to, as it were, get the genre aspects into another gear - it was a clash of disparate elements – a populist space opera scenario filtered through a linguistic style derived from a more refined ‘arty’ ethos. But technical, aesthetic considerations are only part of the equation. There’s an entertainment factor as well. So if the reader finds the sequence dull then I’ve failed in my objective of translating the reader into another sphere. I wouldn’t want to change or revise any of the sequence – so I guess I feel I achieved my aims. Only the readers can say if Space Opera works for them.

(c) Steve Sneyd, 1995

The Argotist Online Interview

A. C. Evans was born in Hampton Court in 1949, and lived in South London until 1963 when he moved to Essex and co-founded the semi-legendary Neo-Surrealist Convulsionist Group in 1966. Moving back to London in 1973, he currently lives in Mortlake, near Richmond. Working in the tradition of the bizarre and the grotesque, he also considers himself a Realist. Influenced by everything on the dark-side, he is also inspired by the iconoclasm of Dada, revolutionary Surrealism and the immediacy of Pop. He regards all these as points of departure, none as a destination – we live in a post avant-garde world.

His individual author collections include The Xantras (Trombone Press), Chimaera Obscura (Phlebas Press), Dream Vortex (Tabor Press), Colour Of Dust. Poems And/Or Texts 1973-1997 (Stride), This Sepulchre (Springbeach Press) and Fractured Muse (Atlantean Publications). The poetry sequence ‘Space Opera’ was made into a digital film and shown at the onedotzero3 Festival at the ICA in 1999.

He considers creativity to be the indirect effect of irrational drives and desires; an infinite quest for self-discovery and, inevitably, an indictment of both established dogma and fashionable orthodoxy. In his extremist, author-centred, poetry and graphics he uses ambiguity, juxtaposition, irony and objective chance to question assumptions about convention, identity and reality – black humour and the absurd are his constant preoccupations.

 

JeffreySide has had poetry published in various magazines such as Poetry Salzburg Review, and on poetry web sites such as Underground Window, A Little Poetry, Poethia, Nthposition, Eratio, Pirene’s Fountain, Fieralingue, Moria, Ancient Heart, Blazevox, Lily, Big Bridge, Jacket, Textimagepoem, Apochryphaltext, 9th St. Laboratories, P. F. S. Post, Great Works, Hutt, The Dande Review, Poetry Bay and Dusie.

 

He has reviewed poetry for Jacket, Eyewear, The Colorado Review, New Hope International, Stride, Acumen and Shearsman. From 1996 to 2000 he was the deputy editor of The Argotist magazine.

 

His publications include, Carrier of the Seed, Distorted Reflections, Slimvol, Collected Poetry Reviews 2004-2013, Cyclones in High Northern Latitudes (with Jake Berry) and Outside Voices: An Email Correspondence (with Jake Berry), available as a free ebook.

 

 

JS: What are your definitions for the words ‘radical’ and ‘progressive’.

 

ACE: I would define ‘radical’ as pertaining to radix (root) – getting to the root of things. I don’t think there is a direct link between radicalism and formalism, although formal innovation might be a kind of aesthetic radicalism. I don’t think it is useful to tie radicalism to formal innovation – not all ‘radical’ works of art or poems are characterised by formal experimentation. Also the idea of ‘experimental’ or ‘revolutionary’ art is basically a nineteenth century idea – you can trace the use of the term ‘avant-garde’ back to 1825 at least, although it was popularised by Bakunin in the late 1870s. I find it ironic that one of the few artists who could claim to be a real revolutionary was Jacques-Louis David – and he was a Neo-classicist!  As it is very difficult to disconnect the ‘voice’ from a worldview (culture etc.) one has to look closely at the worldview/cultural background of the voice – how far does the worldview of the voice credit the transgressive implications of freedom-to-create? If you evade this question how 'radical' can you claim to be? To use Eliot as an example, I would define ‘The Waste Land’ as a reactionary poem, not a transgressive or ‘radical’ poem in the progressive sense, even though its poetic form might have caused some outrage. In any case none of Eliot's efforts stand comparison with the ‘radical’ Simultanism of say Cendrars' 'Trans Siberian' poem, or the works of Apollinaire. I would define ‘radical’ as pertaining to radix (root) – getting to the root of things. I don’t think there is a direct link between radicalism and formalism, although formal innovation might be a kind of aesthetic radicalism. I don’t think it is useful to tie radicalism to formal innovation – not all ‘radical’ works of art or poems are characterised by formal experimentation. Also the idea of ‘experimental’ or ‘revolutionary’ art is basically a nineteenth century idea – you can trace the use of the term ‘avant-garde’ back to 1825 at least, although it was popularised by Bakunin in the late 1870s. I find it ironic that one of the few artists who could claim to be a real revolutionary was Jacques-Louis David – and he was a Neo-classicist!  As it is very difficult to disconnect the ‘voice’ from a worldview (culture etc.) one has to look closely at the worldview/cultural background of the voice – how far does the worldview of the voice credit the transgressive implications of freedom-to-create? If you evade this question how 'radical' can you claim to be? To use Eliot as an example, I would define ‘The Waste Land’ as a reactionary poem, not a transgressive or ‘radical’ poem in the progressive sense, even though its poetic form might have caused some outrage. In any case none of Eliot's efforts stand comparison with the ‘radical’ Simultanism of say Cendrars' 'Trans Siberian' poem, or the works of Apollinaire.

In my terms 'progressive' must have something to do with freedom. Freedom of expression is closely linked to the concept of the voice – if you deny the voice, you deny the agent of 'expression'. I think that is a 'reactionary' position, not a 'progressive' position because it strikes at one of the most basic principles of freedom. There can be no freedom if there is no free agency: the only sensible definition of a free agency is a free individual. Frazer's Golden Bough was based on an evolutionary schema that postulated a 'progression' from Magic, via Religion to Science. Eliot disregarded this because of his own 'faith' position. I would suggest this points to the fact that Eliot (or the poetic voice we call 'Eliot') was actually an anti-Modernist, not a Modernist or a 'radical', unless of course you wish to think about a reactionary or conservative form of radicalism (you can – Margaret Thatcher is often called 'radical'). This example highlights an issue concerning ‘modern’ and ‘radical’. Rimbaud might be both ‘modern’ and ‘radical’ but Eliot might be ‘anti-modern’ and ‘radical’. So these terms are prone to circular interpretation! This is my observation on confusions or contradictions in general usage.

 

Incidentally, it is a commonly held view that ‘innovative poetries’ in the UK originated in the Nineteen Sixties. In this period we find the literary world separated into two, symbiotic, warring camps: ‘conservatives’ and ‘radicals’. The conservatives are ‘the establishment’, usually Encounter magazine (1953-1967), The Movement (1955), their pre-war predecessors the Georgians, or, sometimes, the more recent Confessional Poets – the Alvarez/Plath ‘suicide school’. The ‘radicals’ composed what is now known as the BPR (British Poetry Revival), called at the time the Underground, or the Children of Albion.

 

Constructing timelines can be great fun – one likes to isolate those key moments or watersheds, those defining episodes or momentous years – here are some for the Sixties. 1963: the Kennedy Assassination, Wilson leader of the Labour Party, The Liverpool Scene, Writers Forum, Plath kills herself. 1966: the year of ‘swinging’ London (according to Time Magazine) and the Situationists. 1968: the May Events in Paris, the death of Duchamp, Bomb Culture.  Perhaps 1969: was a significant year – did Zabriskie Point symbolise the end of Modern architecture and the birth of Postmodernism? Of course, in the main, the ‘Sixties’ was – and, for popular ‘folk memory’, still is – a fashion statement. It was a statement defined by clothes (the Mary Quant mini-skirt, the Cecil Gee suit, the monokini and the topless dress), James Bond films, Art Nouveau posters (in the style of Mucha) and pop music – The Stones, The Who, Pink Floyd, the ‘acid dandyism’ of Jimi Hendrix.

 

JS: So this was, for you, the real impact of the Sixties not changes in literature and poetic practice?

 

ACE: Absolutely, however, fashionable Sixties culture was mainly confined to large urban centres, mainly London and Liverpool: the rest of the country, stunned by the Profumo affair, traumatised by the death of Churchill, was still in a state of denial, living in a drab, post-war cultural desert of Fifties kitsch. The various items of new legislation – the abolition of theatre censorship, for example – that helped to make the so-called ‘permissive society’ did, of course, have lasting, positive, long-term effects. At the outset it should be recognised that the BPR was a sideshow for everybody except its participants: then, as now, very few members of the general public read ‘innovative’ poetry. If the truth be known the most ‘innovative’ publications of the Sixties were in the field of prose, not poetry – for example Thomas Pynchon’s novel V (1963) or Samuel Beckett’s collection No’s Knife 1945-1966 (1967).

 

Perhaps, on our imaginary timeline, the defining moment or year for the BPR sideshow was 1965. This was the year of the Cultural Revolution in China: Maoism was to become very trendy over the next few years after Godard made La Chinoise. 1965 also saw the death of T. S. Eliot, and, coincidentally, the beginnings of an ‘anti-permissive’ backlash in the shape of the NVALA (National Viewers and Listeners Association) founded by Mary Whitehouse. The International Poetry Incarnation (at the Albert Hall), organised by the Poet’s Cooperative, was the big literary event of the year. The abiding image of the Incarnation is preserved in grainy film of the nudist buffoonery of Allen Ginsberg, semi-official envoy of the American Beat Generation. ‘Albion’ was all about the Beat Generation.

 

According to Kerouac the Beats were the generation that came of age after World War II, their aims, expressed in ‘spontaneous prose’ and vernacular, freeform poetry, were the ‘relaxation of social and sexual tensions’ and the espousal of ‘mystical detachment’. This ‘mystical detachment’ seemed to mean a fascination for Zen and, in sharp contradiction with British Pop Art, rejection of capitalist consumerism in the cause of unworldly anti-materialism. William Burroughs, a distinguished London resident of the time, and one of the few writers associated with the Beats whose work has any lasting value, dissociated himself from the mystical stuff but this went largely unnoticed. On a technical level, Burrough’s Naked Lunch (1959) far outstripped the work of his Beat contemporaries.

 

JS:  Historically what route do you see British poetry as having traversed to get to the point it is at now?

 

ACE: I suspect there is no clear historical trajectory for British poetry in the modern era, which I define as 1890 to the present. I would say that the most 'radical' innovations of the Eighteen Nineties (due to 'Symbolist' influences) were (a) the formal understanding that a poem must be short (no more epics) (b) urban themes and subjects (c) subjects from popular entertainment (e.g. Music Hall). (d) a problematic approach to religion and morality. I see the fin de siecle as the defining watershed for modern British poetry.

 

JS: I always thought points a, b, c, and d were not a result of Symbolist or Decadent influences. These points seem grounded in naturalism and realism, something that Symbolist poets would not have comfortably endorsed. The Symbolists were dedicated to pseudo-romantic notions of ‘truth’ and the ‘Ideal’; they were against plain meanings and matter-of-fact description. The points you mention are more overtly identifiable in the work of Eliot than in Symbolism per se.

 

ACE: I think this is a stereotypical, post hoc view of Symbolism – the actual poems and practices of key 'Symbolists' (e.g. Mallarmé, Verlaine, Laforgue) don't evade naturalism/realism. The godfather of 'Symbolism', Baudelaire pioneered the 'modern' urban poem of gritty realism, alienation, fetish sex, and a number of other things. His ‘Correspondences’ is a kind of mini ars poetica for later writers, but I don't think his inheritors actually referred to themselves as Symbolists at the outset. The crystallisation of Symbolism as a movement was quite a late development (circa 1886). The Symbolist concern for 'vagueness' and the ephemeral is really an inflection of Impressionism (itself a mode of realism concerned with the fleeting experiences and perceptions of everyday life) and a realisation that poetry is intra-subjective experience. This concern with interior subjectivity is very important. However, one has to realise that terms like Symbolism, Decadence, Impressionism and so on were quite fluid and not well defined at the time. Idealism (Ideism) was a sort of Neo Platonic occult doctrine about 'higher' realities, the basis for much Abstract Art (Kandinsky, Brancusi). But I don't buy the idea that the Symbolists were  'pseudo-Romantic'. Symons’ models were Huysmans, Whistler and Degas. Again, it’s just using ‘Romantic’ as a pejorative, bogey word.

 

JS: On the point of the short poem; surely, it was Edgar Allan Poe in his essay The Poetic Principle (1850) who initiated the idea of the short poem as being true poetry.  Poe believed that the important thing was for the poem to have an effect on the reader, this effect can normally only be sustained for a short period hence the longer the poem the less lasting the effect. Baudelaire was influenced by Poe and translated him into French. Poe’s influence on French poetry was therefore significant, so much so that you could say that Symbolism was essentially an American invention.

 

ACE: True! In this respect Poe must be counted an honorary Frenchman. I don't think his poetry was much appreciated in America! The modern American poetic 'canon' dates from Whitman, I would guess – not Poe, who is usually dismissed as a minor curiosity and an inconsequential poet. The English Nineties poets inherited the principle of the short form poem from Poe (partly) via the French influences – but they could read him for themselves no doubt. Poe is definitely a precursor of Symbolism (whatever we mean by the word) although his own poetry was Late Romantic. It’s an overstatement to say that Symbolism was an American invention on the strength of Poe. (Poe's poetry was translated into French by Mallarmé, while Baudelaire was known for his earlier translations of the Tales of Mystery and Imagination.) Also the short poem principle was not the only formal feature of Symbolism as a movement. Vers Libre, the Prose Poem and Open Field were all 'Symbolist' innovations before WWI.  

 

JS: What do you mean exactly by ‘naturalism’?

 

ACE: When I say Naturalism I mean specifically the Naturalist Movement associated with Zola and Huysmans, the plays of Ibsen and, in Germany, the work of Gerhart Hauptmann. It means something quite specific involving 'exposure' of difficult social truths, not a loose real-life descriptiveness or picturesque nature poetry (evocations of daffodils or mountain scenery). Naturalist Realism was considered ‘decadent’ and 'degenerate' by its opponents – because it questioned the status quo it was subversive. Decadence celebrated modernity, low life, physical sensation and the 'artificial'. In many respects quite different from Symbolism in the narrow sense, the Decadent Movement elevated technology over nature. What we call 'symbolism' is a loose bucket-term that encompasses all these things: a lineage of writers and artists influenced by Baudelaire.

 

JS: To the extent that your own poetry (whether you intend it or not) enables readers to bring meaning out of the text indicates that you have some connection with the experimental, however tenuous.

 

ACE: This 'reader' thing is political correctness. It's a truism isn't it? Of course the reader brings meaning out of the text – I bet Sappho would have agreed that her audience functioned at a level of creative engagement with her work. But then to assert that only the reader is important, removing the author from the picture altogether, is just ridiculous – it’s a kind of pseudo-democracy, a populist dodge – its just ‘gesture politics’. So far as my own poetry is concerned, I like to 'tease rather than tell' and I think poetry works primarily on an irrational level. I like the idea that the reader can identify with the poem or text on a level of emotional empathy as well as on a level of ambivalent, oblique psychic symbolism or imagery. Surreal elements of ‘objective chance’ enhance the shared nature of empathic engagement with the reader, because they can derail expectations but I don’t think this engagement is concerned with simple issues of semantic meaning. It is quite possible that a truly ‘poetic’ poem might be incomprehensible on the rational level. I certainly don't think poetry (or any art) should be didactic – if you want to deal with ‘issues’ become a journalist.

 

JS: How do you define the individual voice in poetry? Surely to insist upon one is didactic.

 

ACE: I'm not insisting on it, I'm saying you can't surgically remove the individual ('voice') from the creative process without destroying the mechanism of the creative process itself. But to define the voice is very difficult – I would be the first to agree. There are all sorts of pitfalls here. For instance when Barthes proclaimed the ‘death of the author’ in 1968 he did so on the premise that the omnipotent author was a surrogate for God. The death of the author was also the death of God. It was an act of liberation. I can certainly see his point. Without going into too much detail I would suggest that, beyond all the textual analysis and critical theory that can be directed towards a specific poem the ultimate defining characteristic of the work is the unique 'signature' (strong or weak) of the writer. The essential difference between a poem by Stevie Smith and poem by, say, W. H. Auden, is ultimately a difference of personality, irrespective of literary theory. I would say this is self-evident. It is also true of poems written by poets who tell us they deny the voice – all you hear is their voice. A poem without a voice is an impossibility (obviously a voice can be unobtrusive, boring or inconsequential, but that is beside the point). This becomes a complicated matter of psychology and philosophy (masks, multiple personality, false identity, alter-egos, selfhood and instability, automatism, fictional personalities and characters) and not a literary question at all.

 

'Expression' is coming under attack every day.... check out the PEN website. As Terry Eagleton has pointed out in one of his critiques of Postmodernism, significant transformative action – artistic creativity counts as transformative action – in the real world requires the participation of an integrated unified, human individual/subject. Postmodernism usually denies this possibility. Eliot, if he were still with us, would be quite at home with all this self-denial stuff. What would he make of all the other related fads of radical chic? These include social constructionism, reader response theory, linguistic determinism, ethical criticism, post-colonialism and eco-criticism – whatever intellectually hypertrophied school of thought the current wave of ‘radical’ poets use to advance the next generational revolt – theory as power dressing. There is major issue of identity here, all bound up with a stereotyped Anti-Romanticism (T. E. Hulme via T. S. Eliot).

 

JS: Hulme’s attack on the Romantics was based on his mistaken belief that they were not writing poetry that was particular and descriptively accurate. He thought them flowery and vague. In fact, his call for more precision in poetry was ironically the same one that Wordsworth advocated. Both Romantic and Modernist poetry have more in common than is often recognised.

 

ACE: I'm sure your description of Hulme's position is quite correct – I agree – actually I think Modernism is a development of Romanticism. You could argue that some aspects of aesthetic Postmodernism are a development of or amplification of, the idea of Romantic Irony – Byron saw a close link between Romanticism and burlesque. However the ‘modern’ or most recent form of anti-Romanticism is an authoritarian attack on the so-called ‘paradigm’ of self-expression. Yet this is not so contemporary as one might think – Orwell noticed a tendency to conflate ‘Romanticism’ with a negative interpretation of ‘individualism’ in the Thirties and Forties as well. Not much has changed since those days, unfortunately.

 

JS: Are you advocating a sort of neo-Romantic poetic aesthetic?

 

ACE: Perhaps this use of the term neo-Romantic conforms to the dictates of the anti-Romantic propaganda line. What is Romantic? I tend to find that anti-Romanticists don't really know what Romanticism is/was.

 

JS: My understanding of what Romanticism is that it is about self-expression via a stable authorial voice or ego. Keats criticised Wordsworth for his self-obsession and coined the term ‘Egotistical Sublime’ to describe it. In principle I’ve nothing against an individual voice in poetry but I think that the text is, and should be, ultimately in the control of the reader.

 

ACE: I think this is just far too narrow – Romanticism is or was (historically) a diverse, widespread phenomenon – it can include everything from the Gothic novel to science, philosophy and politics. Romanticism was a tendency or movement that affected all parts of society and all the arts. Also, I suggest that associating the idea of a ‘stable’ authorial voice or ‘ego’ with ‘self-obsession’ is unnecessarily tendentious – it sounds like a thinly disguised moral agenda. It’s like saying Romantics are/were ‘bad people’, because bad people are self-obsessed and nice people are not egotistical. This is not the Romanticism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it is the political correctness of the late twentieth century. Schlegel described Romantic poetry as ‘continually becoming, never complete and infinitely free’. I would affirm Romanticism, or a form of Romanticism, as a movement about freedom, revolution and transgression – the dogma against Romanticism is a dogma against change, against the ‘voice’, against the individual. Where Romanticism is for the individual, count me in!

 

JS: But don’t you find it ironic that the concept of the authorial voice disallows the reader the freedom to make of the text what he/she will? Surely, the text under such conditions becomes dictatorial. How is one to find personal significance in a text that claims itself as being only applicable to the ‘voice’ that wrote it? Surely, this leads to didacticism.

 

ACE: I just don't agree with any of this – the mere existence of a 'voice' disallows nothing – the existence of the authorial presence in no way implies interpretative exclusivity of signification in the way that you say – why should it? Also, didacticism is not dependent upon the 'voice' in any way. It is a quite separate matter, I think. Propaganda is often disembodied, anonymous and impersonal. Mind you, I guess there might be conflicting views on the nature of the didactic. My ideal poem would always resist clear-cut interpretations or didactic messages. Protest poets might have a different view. What has happened since the Seventies is that theorists have replaced the iconic (‘Romantic’) personality cult of the artist with a personality cult of academic gurus, a pantheon of celebrities drawn from the post-Structuralist intelligentsia (e.g. Baudrillard, Foucault, Lyotard, Kristeva, Cixous, precursors such as Levinas, and a number of others). It is in the interests of theorists to deny the crucial role of the artist and elevate the ‘reader’ to a central position in the discourse, but it is their discourse – a discourse of academic command and control using the ‘reader’ is a propaganda ploy. I would assert that most readers relate to the ‘voices’ of their chosen authors living or dead, and this intimate, one-to-one relationship is a defining aesthetic experience for most readers most of the time.

 

JS: Do the US Beats and the British ‘Children of Albion’ poets confirm or deny the idea of an authorial voice/subject in poetry?

 

ACE: In my scheme of things I suggest the 'denial of the voice' is a characteristic of Postmodernism. Barthes' ‘Death Of The Author’ article was first published in 1968. The Poetry Incarnation was 1965 so the British Beats pre-date Barthes in this regard. Barthes himself cites the prime Symbolist Mallarme as 'the first to recognise' that language should be the prime element of a poem. Closer to home, I always quote Olson as the main US initiator – all that 'wash out the ego' malarky. However, as I observed elsewhere, the Beats seem to me to conform to the Romantic concept of the artist-poet. The decisive break was the Language Poets (c 1971) who I see as Postmodernists: they quite specifically attacked the 'workshop aesthetic of individual expression'. 1971 is usually quoted as the beginning of Postmodernism in literature. The historical origins of Postmodernism in the arts generally are confused (but that is another story I guess).

 

JS: In your writings you use phrases such as ‘defected to Americanism’, ‘literary Americanism’, and ‘like their American friends’ the tone of which may make people think that your poetic viewpoint is insular and anti-American because of political considerations. Can you expand on exactly what you mean?

 

ACE: I realise the implications of using a term like ‘Americanism’. I'm not being narrowly political here – in this context I would define Americanism as an academic trend or ethos – high-level interaction between academics and others that conforms to The Fall of Paris scenario. The idea that, after WWII, the centre of cultural innovation moved from Paris to New York. The assertion that New York in particular and the USA generally has set the pace and the agenda for innovation in the arts since 1945. I don't deny the reality of the geopolitical shift, but I feel that the situation is compromised by the rise of the global mass media – this Fall of Paris idea is another highbrow propaganda ploy. Avant-garde innovation was a nineteenth century concept. By the middle of the twentieth century the idea of the avant-garde (and Modernism as a movement) has been completely trashed and exhausted, mass-produced and commodified. Academia and critical theorists have to keep these myths going – too many jobs depend on such cultural histories. Americanism is a kind of academic Historicism. This is only indirectly related to 'hard' politics and foreign policy. In any case I am only applying this critique to poetry.

 

JS: Some of the references to the ‘Children of Albion’ in your writings suggest you see them as ‘selling out’ on the authorial voice/subject. If they did so, why was this?

 

ACE: From my frankly cynical viewpoint I would suggest it was susceptibility to academic trends. Even Jeff Nuttall ended up working for a University. I would say that the Academic Left consolidated a position based on Post-Structuralism and similar tendencies (e.g. Social Construction Epistemology) influenced by Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). This book had a tremendous impact and precipitated what is known as the 'science wars'. Key themes were denial of objectivity and the idea that the individual is a 'cultural construction' not an innate entity. I don't think this mode of thinking really filtered into the 'counter-culture' until the Seventies. Having said that I might also observe that there is – at a deeper cultural level – a correlation, or a form of family resemblance, between traditional mystical ideas of self-denial, including puritan asceticism, and ‘the death of the author’ mystique as interpreted by Postmodernists. Such mystical ideas did permeate the Sixties Beat counter-culture and helped to prepare the ground… well, kind of.

 

Incidentally, if one looks among the poets of Albion and their successors for that absolute non-conformism (non-conformisme absolu) demanded by the First Surrealist Manifesto such a ‘radical’ disconnection from established norms is present only in the form of an emotional stance. It was a mere posture or, more appropriately, one might say, a poetical imposture. And even that imposture has been vitiated by the fashionable orthodoxy of Postmodern theorists. Which is why, for many years now, English poetry has been – literally – going nowhere.

(c) Jeffrey Side & A C Evans 2006

This interview first appeared in The Argotist Online

Words From Nowhere

INTERVIEW WITH A C EVANS

Susan A. Duxbury-Hibbert

August-November 1996


You are known as both a writer and an artist. What is the starting point for a project, the drawings or writing?
This is quite a difficult question actually…ignoring external reasons for starting something (like being asked specifically for a poem, or specifically for a drawing) and concentrating purely on the creative viewpoint, one has to recognize the different ‘dynamics’ of different forms. Prose-versus-poetry, collage-versus-drawing. What is meant by a ‘starting point’? In the final analysis a starting point may not be a conscious thing - it’s an inspirational thing. Nevertheless there is sometimes a deliberate, definite, intention to work with visual rather than verbal methods/materials or vice versa, but the origins of the intention are non-rational. A starting point may be generated by idea-level interconnections between verbal and visual output, or continuous immersion in art-literature may prepare the ground for a ‘next step’.

When did you start drawing/writing?
I have childhood memories of drawing from sometime in the mid-1950s. My father had some artistic abilities and tended to encourage me - this was real juvenilia: pictures of soldiers and airplanes or whatever. Later on, about the age of 17 (in 1966) I suddenly started to get more serious about it. The trigger was finding the work of Aubrey Beardsley - the style and general tone of his work was quite an eye-opener...then I discovered Surrealism and started making collages.
Even as a kid I was quite a bibliomaniac, so any crossovers between art and literature interested me. The fact that Surrealism was not just to do with painting was very important. As the first Surrealists were poets, not artists, the whole movement plugged into, and extended, that nineteenth century avant-garde tradition of experimental writing (Baudelaire-Rimbaud-Mallarme-Jarry). This became more and more significant to me. So I got a typewriter for my 21st birthday and started writing: initially fiction (the obligatory, abortive novel and ‘decadent’ short stories) but eventually poetry, after doing some translations of Max Ernst and Messiaen lyrics.

What inspires you to start a new project?
Perhaps inspiration is the unforeseen consequence of immersion - immersion in materials, researches, Myths, influences, precursors. Perhaps, at a deeper level, it is some sort of psychosomatic urge, the result of unfocussed psychic pressure from the unconscious, a surge of neuronal energy, a perturbation of the psychic atmosphere, which finally crystallizes in words and images.
The titles of pictures are a sort of poetry. The collage process is internalized (psycho-montage/ psycho-cut-up) as well as externalized in the traditional Surrealist Ducassian Encounter of disparate material elements. Art emerges from the (al)chemistry of the creative process, through interaction with the prime materia, the massa confusa, of unrefined unconscious matter. Works feed on each other - collages and drawings can inspire poems and poems can inspire drawings. Drawings can evolve from the collage procedure. Works emerge in cycles and spates - groups of poems are somehow related to each other, sets of drawings share the same motifs and techniques.
Sometimes, of course, an external requirement will be the pretext for a project - but the non-rational, chance aleatoric factor must always be there. If a project is to ‘work’ it must be an active element in the transformation process. All art is transformation, the perpetual, unstoppable transformation of the day-to-day in which the mundane becomes the bizarre.

What part, in your opinion, does illustration play in adding to a text?
‘In The Beginning Was The Word’ someone said. Well, don’t believe it. Pictures are primal. The image in the mind’s eye precedes utterance, or, to quote Duke Ellington: ‘There’s always a mental picture’. I think there has to be a kind of synergy - a deep affinity - between any image and the words it is used with. This affinity may not be obvious or concrete. Chance encounters between poems and pictures in the editorial process can often give rise to effective associations.
In a different context one may think of texts illustrating images rather than vice versa. For example The Cascades was a set of poems written to ‘accompany’ some pictures by Rupert Loydell and, more recently, both Martin Duxbury-Hibbert and Norman Jope have collaborated by providing texts (Between Alien Worlds and Zones of Impulse) for sets of images provided in advance of literary composition. In these cases successful!
Illustration depends upon a feeling of ‘rightness’ or integration into the finished product. Equal value resides in both text and illustrations. Textual content can be derived from the images. Literal illustration is ok for factual and instructional situations but I am more interested in these more oblique relationships between words and images.

When did you start publishing your work?
I first started publishing drawings in about 1968 as greeting cards. Then I managed to get drawings
Into various occult magazines during the mid-1970s and also a few lit. crit. articles and reviews from
1980 onwards. My first poetry publication was in Stride Magazine, and Stride published the first
collection of poetry and drawings, Exosphere, in 1984

What artists have influenced you?
The earliest artistic influences I can remember were illustrators - Mervyn Peake (The Hunting of the Snark and other books), Tenniel’s Alice illustrations, Eric Fraser and Joan Kiddell-Monroe - again, this was when I was kid. I really liked fantastic things and, in the case of Frazer and Kiddell-Monroe, hard-edged linearist things. When you’re that young you don’t think about ideas like Abstraction, you react to the imagistic qualities of what you see because that’s the way the imagination is.
Another key influence was Japanese Art. We had some volumes of drawings by Hokusai, which I was always looking at. His work is very naturalistic but it can also be very macabre and grotesque and ultra-stylish. Remembering the period 1966-1970, when I was trying to find my way is very confusing - there were so many ‘influences’.
The closest I got to contemporary fine art or gallery art was Richard Hamilton’s reconstruction of Duchamp’s Bride which he did for a big Tate retrospective around July ‘66. The irony of Duchamp’s stance and the iconoclasm of Dada were very important - an antidote to the Peace ‘n’ Luv culture! But then again I was undoubtedly sympathetic to Psychedelia and Op as well.
I still like Sixties design and art movies like Performance - the influences were an intermedia hotchpotch: Art Nouveau Symbolists like Klimt, Jan Toorop and Khnopff. I like Odilon Redon, Hieronymous Bosch, Grunewald, Durer, William Blake and Goya…Aubrey Beardsley…Alfred Kubin. Also the assemblage sculptures of Louise Nevelson. There was a piece of hers in the Tate called ‘Gold Wall’ which was a stylized structure of abstract, rectilinear box-shapes and compartments encrusted with commonplace, ‘found’ objects such as old chair legs and wooden slats. The whole thing was painted a uniform all-over gold colour. There was a clash of materials in Nevelson’s work, which greatly appealed to me at the time.
It’s necessary to identify different types of influence. There are precursors who influence by style, there are those who influence content and there are those who influence by example. There are some whose influence is a combination of all these factors. This is partly why it is difficult to discuss influences. There is also the problem of ‘originality’. I think everyone is influenced by someone, although lots of artists and writers (in this country at least) think that admitting to influences is like some sort of confession of inadequacy. This is just as complicated with literary influences as it is with artistic ones.

So what about literary influences?
So far as literature is concerned I would have to mention the French tradition: Baudelaire, Mallarme and Antonin Artaud as a major influence in various ways, also Huysmans and Andre Breton. My Pre-formative reading was Science Fiction (mainly British), Fantasy, Horror (particularly Poe and Lovecraft) and all sorts of myths and legends. This established a continuing involvement with ‘popular’ genres that continues to the present.
As I said I’m a compulsive bibliomaniac and read all the time. It all goes into the creative process. The American Beats had quite an impact. Beat style was so un-English, so un-literary, or so it seamed at the time. I remember reading Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ and Burroughs’ Nova Express and being instantly converted to a more ‘modern’ attitude to writing.
Thinking back to the same period I would name the following ‘literary’ influences: Arthur Machen, Lermontov, Thomas Pynchon (especially), De Quincey, Alfred Jarry (Faustrol), Robert Graves (The White Goddess), De Sade, Gerard de Nerval, Boris Vian, Angela Carter, J.G Ballard, Nabokov (Ada), Barth (The Sotweed Factor), Borges, and Jean Genet.
There were various non-fiction/critical works that were significant I think. For example, Jung’s writing on Alchemy, The Romantic Agony, Marie Bonaparte’s psychoanalytic study of Poe, Masters and Houston’s Psychedelic Art, Robert Greer Cohn’s book on Mallarme, Hans Bellmer’s Anatomie de L‘Image, Colin Wilson’s The Outsider, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and Opium and the Romantic Imagination by Althea Hayter. A later influence was Samuel Beckett. His work, particularly the short prose and the novels (the Trilogy and How It Is) is a landmark in the imagination. Absolutely no one can afford to ignore Beckett. A combination of factors (including the influence of Austin Spare) induced me to read a lot of occult literature - but that’s another story....

Do you exhibit/ sell your artwork?
I participated in an exhibition called Cross Section in Chelmsford 1968 - but that was a one-off. I’ve never seen myself as a gallery artist or involved in the art market - it just isn’t my scene really. I see ‘originals’ as ‘masters’ for reproduction rather than traditional fine art artifacts. I’m not really geared up to do commissions and things like that. As I said - not really my scene.

What is your method of working?
Steve Sneyd has observed that the poetic act is like trying to snapshot the fragmentary immediacy of the brain’s workings and compared his methodology to ‘a trapped animal’s gnawing of it’s own leg....’. In a sense he is right about this. It is difficult to cultivate the self-awareness and objectivity needed to comment on the methodology of the creative process beyond surface characteristics.
In writing I was influenced by the minimalism of Poe who criticized the viability of the long poem - I don’t write long poems in the sense that Spenser’s Faerie Queene, or Paradise Lost are long poems. So minimalism, even miniaturism, is intrinsic to my method in many respects. Also the Postmodernist blurring of boundaries, perhaps inspired by Borges idea of 'ficciones' - cerebral, laconic, hermetic, labyrinthine, enigmatic - these are often some of the qualities I look for in a sphere where the essential differences between poetry and prose are unclear.
The poetic methodology is most elusive, Often I find myself working with a surreal psycho-montage of wordflow, sometimes incorporating ‘found words’ or cut-ups or phrases that simply emerge from the unconscious (Words from Nowhere). I regard many of my ‘poems’ as borderland texts, neither prose nor poetry. There is a narcissistic ‘working up’ of drafts and an element of faction where quasi-autobiographical or historical research material merges with pure fantasy. I reject traditional prosody as the technique of a dead era.

What about drawing methods? How do you go about obtaining the final image? Do you have a clear idea at the outset, or do you do many variations?
Drawing methods are varied. Often I will work from a store of sketches and notes for visual ideas, which I keep. These are usually pencil sketches but can be ink drawings and doodles as well. Sometimes a drawing can be spontaneous and committed to paper right away. Sketches may be quite expressionistic and unformed to begin with but then go through a number of different of versions and stylisations.
Areas of detail in Rapidograph drawings are done directly onto the final drawing in most cases. These are usually detailed areas of stippling and fine-point decoration, a sort of amalgam of Moreau’s encrustation, Beardsley’s stipple technique, Seurat-like textures and Ernstian decalcomania-like textures. This sort of work can be very time consuming. In many cases compositions are derived from pre-existing collages. Sometimes I use ‘found images’ derived from, say, newspaper photographs or magazines. Sometimes there is a pre-existing mental image and it’s like taking a snapshot. In many drawings there is a deliberate use of ‘negative space’ in the composition - space derived from the chance lines of the pen or pencil.

How necessary is it to you that you are published & ‘known’? Would you continue to write/draw if you had no public outlet?
I am reminded of a section in Colin Wilson’s The Outsider - he was quoting T. E. Lawrence (Wilson saw Lawrence as an archetypal ‘outsider’ figure) who said that a craving for the power of self-expression was the most decisive driving force in his life. This craving is the only antidote to the nihilism of our age. Without this craving for self-expression there is nothing, literally, Nothing.
Artistic creativity is the way to achieve maximum self-expression. This is an end in itself but the craving is capable of transformation – self-expression becomes individuation, individuation becomes self-initiation. An infinite process of self-initiation, a sort of Aesthetic Gnosticism perhaps. In this context publication is irrelevant. On the other hand creative editorializing can become part of The Work. Working with Stride and Memes and other magazines has lead to unforeseen creative activity through interaction, publication itself becoming part of a wider transformation process.

Do you conceive of a contemporary context, or do you feel you are working in isolation?
Well, I do conceive of a contemporary context - I also feel I’m quite isolated in what I do as well! I’ve always been interested in what you might call cultural history - the evolution of aesthetic and religious ideas, so this sense of history helps me to try to define my own contemporary context.
On the other hand my interaction with immediate contemporaries is rather limited these days and I find a lot of SP type poetry and stuff rather alienating. It’s always difficult to name names but, if pressed, I might cite Steve Sneyd, Robert Shepherd, lain Sinclair, Norman Jope, Rupert Loydell and Martin Duxbury-Hibbert as current writers who may overlap with some of my own concerns.
My original sense of contemporary context was shaped by a sort of ‘post-everything’ feeling. It seemed to me that the transition from Surrealism to Postmodernism via Pop, Situationism, Psychedelia, Neo-Dada and Op from 1966-1971 was the beginning of some sort of end - an End with a capital ‘E’, in fact. As Hassan said about Postmodernism: it ‘dramatizes its lack of faith in art even as it produces new works.’
The truth is that, in this era of ‘post-everything’ and loss of faith, one didn’t really look among one’s own generation for a contemporary context. Except, perhaps, in semi-commercial fantasy art, Psychedelia and satire (Roger Dean, Bruce Pennington, Wes Wilson, Michael English, Scarfe, Steadman), one looked to the survivors of the avant garde who were still with us. In the visual arts this meant Duchamp, Chirico, Ernst, Bellmer, Leonor Fini, Matta, Burra and Francis Bacon. I think my graphic style was very influenced by Bellmer - he must be one of the greatest draughtsmen of the twentieth century. In literature there was Andre Breton, Borges, Ballard, Angela Carter, David Gascoyne, Beckett and William Burroughs. One was conscious that they were all still around producing new works. They were the contemporary context for me.
Yet, throughout the period the sense of an ending was exacerbated by the deaths of nearly all these major figures. Breton died in 1966 around the same time as the last major International Surrealist Exhibition (‘Absolute Divergence’). He was followed by Duchamp in 1968, Bellmer in 1975, Ernst and Burra in 1976, Chirico in 1978 and, finally, J. L. Borges in 1986. By the time you got to 1976 we were into the ‘break up of Britain’, The Winter of Discontent and the New Dark Age of the ‘Enterprise Culture’…one tried to build on the previous era.


Illustration: One Gothic Night, 2000