London, Ontario

Cancelled

Yes, I've been booted off the bill for the Southbank, either because there wasn't enough space or because I turned up two hours late for the last Brand event.

Charles Reznikoff's 'Karl Marx'

We shall arise while the stars are still shining,
while the street-lights burn brightly in the dawn,
to begin the work we delight in,
and no one shall tell us, Go,
you must go now
to the shop or office you work in
to waste your life for your living.
There shall be no more war, no more hatred:
none of us shall die of sickness;
there shall be bread and no one hunger for bread –
and fruit better than any a wild tree grew.
Wheels of steel and pistons of steel
shall fetch us water and hew us wood;
we shall call nothing mine – nothing for ourselves only.
Proclaim to the seed of man
throughout the length and breadth of the continents,
From each according to his strength,
to each according to his need.

Opportunities to see Richard

Thursday 25th June, 13.30. 'Major League Baseball in Avant-Garde American Poetry from Imagism to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E' at the University of Western Ontario, London (Ontario), Canada as part of the Sport and Literature Association Conference.

Thursday 2nd July, 11.15 'Ezra Pound and Gerhart Münch' and at 16.15 chairing the 'Pound and Editing' panel at the Centro Studi Americani, Palazzo Antici Mattei, Rome, Italy as part of the 23rd Ezra Pound International Conference.

Thursday 9th July, approx. 22.30 Richard (arriving from Paris) will be desperately trying to get to Xing the Line's Onedit launch in the Leather Exchange near London Bridge, at which event, if he magically manages to get there in time, he might be reading.

Sunday 12th July, 19.00, Richard may be (though he has a feeling he's been dropped from the bill due to previous infractions) reading at a 'Brand Shorts' event at the Poetry Library on the South Bank.

Sometime very soon after that Richard will likely be DJing at the next Chlorine event in the Hope in Brighton. Of the last Chris Cheek said there was 'good music'

Freshwater Lens

On the first day of the
Review of clouds there were
No clouds & the sky was

Steel blue, which is alien,
Not a colour of life.
Him looking out of the

Aeroplane window will
Be dead. & addressing
Action committee at

Top of mountain hidden
Among the small bushes
& half-trench dug in clay

Means death. He is of rivers
[Vide my threat at
Assisi]. I would bury

Him beneath riverbed
So that the waters could pick
The dust & the pebbles

& at their ebb leave him
Clean & white so a dog
Would think him sheep’s bones

& a farmer flints of
The river – only the lofty
Hawk might see you sun-stretched

As you were. ‘Don’t pay
To see me suffer
In my under ground

Water prison,’ newt that
Stays newt. Your water gist

To drown or to be cut
Apart with swords, or to
Be destroyed by fire

Or sword, dragonfly or rock.
Ah, salt, at the low point
Of the world, wave bobbing

At the limit of the
Lens – at the limit of
Our dissolution in

This river & after.
Welcome salt & uplift
On warm breeze of the thin

Upper layers as sun
Welcomes the high midday
In littlest hobo release.

Well, as it happens, it wasn't tittle-tattle I was hoisted upon but my own bad self.