I've made a little Christmas banger. You can listen to it for free or buy it for £3. It is noisy and horrid and silly and at points fairly gentle....
https://verityspott.bandcamp.com/track/jungle-bells-once-again-you-and-your-jungle-friends-have-ruined-my-nice-quiet-christmas
Monday, 16 December 2019
Tuesday, 10 December 2019
Out of Print!
My book "The Mutiny Aboard the RV Felicity (Tipped Press - 2017) is now out of print. If you'd like a PDF copy drop me an email at verityspott@gmail.com
You can have it for free. Donations / swaps also kindly accepted.
You can have it for free. Donations / swaps also kindly accepted.
Tuesday, 3 December 2019
Some music, a lot of quiet.
Hello, if there's anybody still here. I've been really quiet for ages. I'm trying to finish writing / editing this enormous book called Hopelessness which is feeling like a huge fatberg in my throat waiting to be able to sob itself out. Luckily there are a few sewege technicians down there working on it with their hands, shovels and power hoses. It'll undoubtably fall to bits, form up again in some different configurations and block another sewer.
I want to write something here son about the passing of my friend Sean Bonney, but who knows if I will... Everything that could be said seems to be flaring up everywhere I look and in his poems and the music he showed me... We gathered for Horseplay this month at the Black Dove in Kemptown to remember him, celebrate him, read his poems etc. This was my slightly bleary response the next day:
'Hard to put into words how much last night meant. I've honestly never known a poetry event like it. Devastating. Joyous. Defiant. Radically tender. We read Sean's poems, read things for and to Sean, sat together and really listened. It was incredible to hear all these varied and vast responses; how Sean had moved through so many different stratas. Hearing about a him turning up to a poetry conference in the 90s and talking about autonomous space travel, conversations about nursery rhymes, exerpts from Walter Benjamin, some very early poems from an anthology of "free form and acid house poems", miniature reviews and responses etc etc... and then at the end we all read together. The third set of The Commons, passing the book around the room. I just can't describe it. I can't do it justice. It was beautiful and tender and empowering and devastating and all night there was this feeling that he might just appear. Remembering how delighted he was when he read at Horseplay, and he saw that broken little armchair on the stage and asked how long he could read for; his joy at being told "as long as you need to", and that reading which had someone who had just wondered in lying on the floor in ecstasy. Hearing a story about a teenager who had been thrown out of school detouring Sean's ACAB poem and performing it at a poetry event, and chanting it together. Thank you everyone. I'm not going to start listing folks. There were so many people crowded in it would be impossible anyhow. There were also a great many people who weren't there who I know would have wanted to be. The room was also teaming with ghosts; the ghosts I know Sean is swirling around with now. God. I'm crying writing this. Totally overcome with emotion. My friend. Our friend. Our comrade. Our ridiculous man. Our ghosts. Our poetries. Our eternal fires, solar winds and reveries. Sean Bonney. Love.'
Here's an exerpt of the communal reading of The Commons. Apologies for the poor quality. Reading The Commons at Horseplay
As I said before, I have been pretty quiet, more or less unable to write. I have been meddling with some musical bits and pieces though. Below is one of them. Following a beautiful chat with a friend in the Collondae Bar in Brighton where we discussed care, empathy, acid communism etc etc... It is a bit all over the place but I am quite pleased with it.
Acid Communism - Firs Improvisation
More soon. Tara for now. Send my love to Mabel. xx
I want to write something here son about the passing of my friend Sean Bonney, but who knows if I will... Everything that could be said seems to be flaring up everywhere I look and in his poems and the music he showed me... We gathered for Horseplay this month at the Black Dove in Kemptown to remember him, celebrate him, read his poems etc. This was my slightly bleary response the next day:
'Hard to put into words how much last night meant. I've honestly never known a poetry event like it. Devastating. Joyous. Defiant. Radically tender. We read Sean's poems, read things for and to Sean, sat together and really listened. It was incredible to hear all these varied and vast responses; how Sean had moved through so many different stratas. Hearing about a him turning up to a poetry conference in the 90s and talking about autonomous space travel, conversations about nursery rhymes, exerpts from Walter Benjamin, some very early poems from an anthology of "free form and acid house poems", miniature reviews and responses etc etc... and then at the end we all read together. The third set of The Commons, passing the book around the room. I just can't describe it. I can't do it justice. It was beautiful and tender and empowering and devastating and all night there was this feeling that he might just appear. Remembering how delighted he was when he read at Horseplay, and he saw that broken little armchair on the stage and asked how long he could read for; his joy at being told "as long as you need to", and that reading which had someone who had just wondered in lying on the floor in ecstasy. Hearing a story about a teenager who had been thrown out of school detouring Sean's ACAB poem and performing it at a poetry event, and chanting it together. Thank you everyone. I'm not going to start listing folks. There were so many people crowded in it would be impossible anyhow. There were also a great many people who weren't there who I know would have wanted to be. The room was also teaming with ghosts; the ghosts I know Sean is swirling around with now. God. I'm crying writing this. Totally overcome with emotion. My friend. Our friend. Our comrade. Our ridiculous man. Our ghosts. Our poetries. Our eternal fires, solar winds and reveries. Sean Bonney. Love.'
Here's an exerpt of the communal reading of The Commons. Apologies for the poor quality. Reading The Commons at Horseplay
As I said before, I have been pretty quiet, more or less unable to write. I have been meddling with some musical bits and pieces though. Below is one of them. Following a beautiful chat with a friend in the Collondae Bar in Brighton where we discussed care, empathy, acid communism etc etc... It is a bit all over the place but I am quite pleased with it.
Acid Communism - Firs Improvisation
More soon. Tara for now. Send my love to Mabel. xx
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