the leaves darken
I have a new piece on Intercapillary Space, which touches on books by David Wevill, Jeremy Reed, Giles Goodland, Hanne Bramness, Lars Amund-Vaage, María Baranda and Carrie Etter.
Makin and Philpott must have read my mind. Anyway they've been too quick for me (not that this was difficult), and now that Dwelling is about to be published in Reality Street Editions, have adroitly withdrawn its ur-text St Leonards from public display at Great Works. Foreseeing this, I had vaguely planned to take a copy of the text and self-appoint myself as a Makin "scholar" with access to materials denied to the public at large. I'm glad this plan went wrong. You can still go there to read Makin's earlier Work in Process (though the first couple of photos have gone missing). And you should, every day.
Talking of long-deferred plans, I'm bitterly disappointed to discover that Great Works has now ceased trading - I had a quiet but profound ambition to get something published in it. In personal compensation, the final tranche does include a new poem from one of my fave poets, Catherine Daly, which is grand news - all publication activity from her seeming to have dried up for the past four years or so, unless that's a transatlantic illusion. Anyway, Great Works remains a great site for discovering things. Long pause while I go off to dip more deeply into Paul Holman's The Memory of the Drift. And to look up "grimoire" (book of magic), a word employed by both Holman and Makin.
In other news, Daithidh MacEoghaidh heartily detests The Littlest Feeling, for all the right reasons.
Labels: Catherine Daly, Richard Makin
Permalink posted by Michael Peverett @ 10:14 am
6 comments
6 Comments:
I'm obliged to you as always, Michael. My eyes brightened at the mention of St Leonards, once the fulcrum of my travels, the nearest thing to place of origin. So I checked what I could find of Richard Makin, but it didn't evoke St Leonards for me. I'm too old. I'm just coming to terms with Lawrence Durrell's The Black Book (1938), which speaks to me well enough, & stands perhaps in the genealogy between Joyce & Makin.
No, Makin definitely doesn't do evocation. Not as such, anyhow. He does make quite a lot of Joyce references, but I think of his background as more art than literature. So I don't know whether Durrell would figure in his genealogy.
The SL in question is St Leonards on Sea, E. Sussex, which is where RM now lives, - also where I used to live until 1991, and still visit once or twice a year. Is that the same SL that was once your fulcrum? I never knew that. Have you ever posted about it?
Yes, that St Leonards. My mother was born there, my maternal grandparents had their house there at Greenhayes, 46 Springfield Road, where I arrived in 1946 aged 4. It was pulled down and replaced with flats, but my mother completed her wanderings within half a mile of the place, at the end of an adventurous life.
I must correct myself. St Leonards was her fulcrum. I never had one, never lived at one address longer than 3 years, till 1988. I have two of her address books, containing a couple of dozen addresses for me. She changed houses and husbands enough times herself.
I posted a series of autobiographical pieces mainly in 2007. The one which mentions St L. is here
Michael, as Reality Street's publisher I am happy to report good progress on "Dwelling". The delay has been caused by Richard's completely revising the text of "St Leonards" - he has been feeding the revised text to me bit by bit, and about 75% of the book is in now (and a third typeset). It's a 150,000-word ms, so you can imagine the work involved. I was unaware, by the way, that the "St Leonards" text at Great Works had been taken down.
Ken
Ken - I was too hasty. I couldn't find St Leonards on the archive page, but a more specific Google search took me straight to it. Post corrected!
Vincent - marvellous post re St Leons, as always. I feel I remember reading it when you first wrote it, but somehow never took in the location. Springfield Road, oh that was a smart area (once). I lived nearer the sea, in Carisbrooke Rd, and for all the recurring rising damp and the nightmare of not being able to sell the place - it was a basement flat - for all my relief at eventually pocketing a pebble on the beach with a hole in it (for if you don't do that, I was informed, you will never get away from Hastings), still I often go back there, besotted with every inch of the coastline from Romney to Beachy.
Post a Comment
<< Home