It is hoped that everything in this newsletter is of interest and use to you; but PLEASE PAY PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO THE FIRST TWO ITEMS
1 GUEST POET
From time to time, we invite a guest poet to join us. For instance, the Canadian poets Rob MacLennan and Stephen Brockwell joined us on 23rd September 2006.
We are now very pleased to tell you that our invited guest poet for 26th May 2007 will be Allen Fisher.
2 PLEASE NOTE VENUE CHANGE
Our venue is changing, with immediate effect, to
The Betsey Trotwood
56 Farringdon Road
EC1R 3BL
We meet there on Saturday 17th March 2007. (We have no more meetings at Torriano Meeting House.)
Some may remember our workshops at The Betsey Trotwood a few years ago. Now it has a new management and one that seemingly wishes us well: they invited us back.
Our thanks to John and Susan at Torriano. They helped us just when we needed it and have been very kind to us all. There are considerable regrets at changing our venue.
3a. Next meeting
Writers Forum Workshop meets at The Betsey Trotwood on Saturday 17th March 2007. Meet at 3.30 for 4, as usual.
3b.Venue
The Betsey Trotwood
56 Farringdon Road
EC1R 3BL
Underground: Farringdon (Out of the station, turn right and right again at Farringdon Road
Overground: Farringdon – NB All trains on the Brighton-Luton line in both directions stop there, or always have, and can be a good alternative to other routes. The underground and overground stations are one thing, spread over 4 platforms.
Bus: It is believed that the only bus running down Farringdon Road is # 63; but remember that many other buses go past Mount Pleasant; and that it isn’t that far – for the fit and well - to walk downhill from there to The Betsey, though of course it is uphill on the way back. For instance, one can get a frequent bus to Mount Pleasant at The Angel, from just outside the tube station.
The Betsey Trotwood is opposite The Guardian newspaper. It is on the end of a little island of buildings. The beer is Shepherd Neame.
4. THE SCHEDULE OF MEETINGS
Saturday 17-Mar-07
Saturday 31-Mar-07
Saturday 28-Apr-07
Saturday 26-May-07 Invited guest poet Allen Fisher
Saturday 9-Jun-07
Saturday 30-Jun-07
Saturday 21-Jul-07
5 Meetings
Meetings are scheduled to start at 4 p.m.. That is after a 30 minute period of gathering together. We gather from 3.30 p.m; so please aim to arrive before 4 p.m..You can take drinks into the room.
We have agreed that we shall buy from the bar any drinks we consume on the premises. There will be a 10 minute break about half way through.
PLEASE NOTE: The terms of the agreement with The Betsey Trotwood management are good. Implicit is our acknowledgement that their business is selling drink; so PLEASE don’t turn up with carry outs…
6. WEBSITE
We have had a generous offer of server space for a new WF website (covering press and workshop) and that website is in production. In the meantime no further updates will be made to the existing website and all news will be posted at the blogs and on this newsletter.
7. REISSUED PUBLICATIONS (3rd February 2007)
Cobbing, Bob; Lightsong 2; ISBN 978 0 86162 330 3; 6pp small format in an envelope; December 1983 reissued February 2007
£3.00 + £1 (p & p UK)
Houédard, Dom Sylvester with Cobbing, Bob & Mayer, Peter (editors); Kroklok # 3; 32pp, A4 portrait. Feature: Speech as Mime or Gesture (with examples) by Peter Mayer; poems by Christian Morgenstcrn, Ernst Jandl, Peter Finch, Jeremy Adler, Michael Chant, Peter Greenham, Brion Gysin, Ilya Zdanevich, Helmut Hcissenbuttel, Bob Cobbing, August Stramm (introduction to Stramm by Jeremy Adler). Notes by Bob Cobbing. ISBN 978-0-86162-076-0. December 1972, reissued February 2007
£3.00 + £1 (p & p UK)
Introductory comments on the reissues are posted at the blog.
The reissue programme will continue. New titles are on their way, too.
8. THE FUTURE
The disruptions of the last year, caused by the old CPT management and The Plough management, have taken their toll and it has fed back; and numbers attending have dropped and arrival time has slipped. With the move, and then the new website, we hope to return to stability and productive interaction. To that end, we hope that people will attend regularly. It really does make a difference. But an attendance is welcome.
So those who have been saying “I shall go one day” or “I shall go back one day” are encouraged to attend. Try to bring someone with you!
From now on, it should be relatively easy to get to the workshop because the new venue is more accessible than the old to public transport. The arrival period of 3.30 p.m. to 4 p.m. enables us to turn up and have a drink while we all arrive; so that we can start together. It is a communal activity.
Sometimes none of us can avoid being late; but we do urge you to aim for 3.30 until you are used to the journey; and we urge you always to allow time for believable transport delays…. So that you are there on time whenever possible. It can be done most of the time.Let’s take ourselves seriously; and see the workshop grow again to full strength. It has a remarkable history; but let’s not leave it at that. There is nothing permanent about Writers Forum Workshop. If you want it, support it. Please. Also, PLEASE, if you have attended at all this year, let us know if you cannot make it on 17th March.
9 ADDRESSES AND LINKS
WFInfo-subscribe@topica.com
http://writersforumpublications.blogspot.com/
http://writersforum-workshop.blogspot.com/
Tuesday 13 February 2007
Monday 5 February 2007
Introduction to the reissue of Kroklok #3 Saturday 3rd February 2007
Today we reissue Kroklok # 3. In December, when we reissued Kroklok #2, I went into some detail which I shan’t repeat now – that talk is on the blog.
Perhaps the most important thing to tell you today is that there are not many copies of this publication. Kroklok #2 was reissued first because there were enough good quality pages readily available.
In the notes in Kroklok #3, Cobbing has a go at Gestetner
“The delay in publication is largely due to Gestetner’s inability to supply they grey paper on which # 1 was printed. The quality of the paper used for # 2 was less good; the paper for # 3 is a further deterioration”
With that in mind, a small reissue has been achieved by discarding unacceptably poor pages.
There remains an uneven supply of most of the pages. It is just possible that a few more complete copies can be achieved from Cobbing’s printings; but that assumes that some sheets have been mis-sorted and that seems increasingly unllikely.
Attention will now pass to ## 1 and 4 while the possibility of reprinting the missing pages of # 3 is investigated, in order to ensure that it remains in print; but I urge you to buy it now, knowing that things always take longer than one wishes.
Kroklok # 3 is a very interesting issue, starting with a varied feature by Peter Mayer, of which Cobbing dryly remarks “which hopefully has its own logic”, Then there are poems by Morgenstern, Jandle, Peter Finch, Jeremy Adler, Michael Chant, Peter Greenham, Brion Gysin, Zdanevitch, Heissenbutel and Stramm
Copyright © Lawrence Upton 3 February 2007
Perhaps the most important thing to tell you today is that there are not many copies of this publication. Kroklok #2 was reissued first because there were enough good quality pages readily available.
In the notes in Kroklok #3, Cobbing has a go at Gestetner
“The delay in publication is largely due to Gestetner’s inability to supply they grey paper on which # 1 was printed. The quality of the paper used for # 2 was less good; the paper for # 3 is a further deterioration”
With that in mind, a small reissue has been achieved by discarding unacceptably poor pages.
There remains an uneven supply of most of the pages. It is just possible that a few more complete copies can be achieved from Cobbing’s printings; but that assumes that some sheets have been mis-sorted and that seems increasingly unllikely.
Attention will now pass to ## 1 and 4 while the possibility of reprinting the missing pages of # 3 is investigated, in order to ensure that it remains in print; but I urge you to buy it now, knowing that things always take longer than one wishes.
Kroklok # 3 is a very interesting issue, starting with a varied feature by Peter Mayer, of which Cobbing dryly remarks “which hopefully has its own logic”, Then there are poems by Morgenstern, Jandle, Peter Finch, Jeremy Adler, Michael Chant, Peter Greenham, Brion Gysin, Zdanevitch, Heissenbutel and Stramm
Copyright © Lawrence Upton 3 February 2007
Reissue of Lightsong 2 by Bob Cobbing 3rd Feb 2007
This is an item which hasn’t been seen by the many for some years. Lightsong 2 by Bob Cobbing.
There are 6 pages and they’re somewhat roughly hand cut; so that, though the images remain the same size, the page sizes vary by up to approximately half an inch.
It was hand-printed by Bob Cobbing on a Gestetner ink duplicator and they vary slightly in image; but, looking from another mental angle, the set is remarkably consistent considering the depth of black ink required.
This is a particular problem with ink duplicating and it is a greater and greater problem as one increases the amount of black. In a case like this it would have been difficult to even hold the stencil together.
It is so easy to end up with a mess & it is even easier to make each print look quite different to all the others. When the image is very black, as here, the greatest likelihood is that ink will not be evenly distributed across and down, but will instead come out blotchily or in excess.
Incidentally, when pages are this black, they never quite dry out, so even now it is still possible for ink to transfer – that’s one of the reasons for putting the booklet in an envelope – to stop ink transfer and to stop damage to the books as they are handled by prospective buyers.
There isn’t much that Bob couldn’t make that duplicator do; and this object is proof of it.
He is not the only person who achieved such heights. Here and there among the output of what was hyperbolically called “the mimeo revolution”, one finds prints of great Gestetner skill. I don’t know anyone, however, who did quite so much of it and in some many versions of mechanical impossibility over such a long time. It wasn’t the occasional surprising job, but a sustained exhibition of expertise.
Originally, Cobbing wrote the title of the publication in capital letters at the top left hand of the back of the final page and signed his name and the press name at the bottom right hand. It was done demotically.
This reissue uses some copies he had not so inscribed; and the data have been written on, in the same place and in the same manner; but not attempting to imitate Cobbing’s writing.
Because everything is so dark, it would be easy to give in to lazy observation and dismiss an object like this as having pages which are all the same or pages which are just black… or maybe “too black”.
But look again and you will see variation and order and wit. This is Cobbing the painter, transposed into an art mode and genre of his own making; though few painters lay the dark colour on quite so. But I’ll qualify that remark in a minute.
Comparing it with specific painters would mislead us and likely demean Cobbing’s work; but some ignorant types have made comparisons with Pollock: any comparison to Pollock, except perhaps in the idiosyncratic difference to almost everything else that has been done, would be misleading. One needs to look carelessly to think that it’s like Pollock. In Cobbing’s work, the image has been placed carefully in all its parts and the means of delivering it to the carrier paper has been mechanically controlled at a remove.
The process of the reproduction of the poem has its own method within the generic method of ink-duplication.
It’s not the layering of pigment that you get with, say, Auerbach. The ink would never dry! It’s of a different kind. The blackness of these pages stands out because it is so unexpected and perhaps because many of us know it is so difficult to achieve. He pushed the duplicator beyond its intended capabilities by a long way.
It isn’t just putting more and more colour on. It may feel that the ink is thickly applied as one looks at it, but actually it isn’t like that. There is only one application here, one pass through the machine.
There may be a connection here with his often repeated Cagean advice that if a performance wasn’t working then one kept going till it did. Not that I suggest that this poem didn’t work at an earlier stage. I mean that there is a point or points, extremes to some maybe, at which the poem works; it may be difficult to access that point; but one just stick to it till one gets there.
He did put the paper through the machine twice on some occasions. He did that in Winter Poem # 1 where, it seems he judged, the only way to get two quite different effects of very light ink output and very heavy ink output in much the same space was to use two different stencils. Note, then, that he knew where the apparently impossible became actually impossible; and he had a way round it.
It is, of course, for that reason that each image copy made by Cobbing was slightly different to all the others, because registration is not the ink duplicator’s strongest point.
Thus, one could not use this fix in every situation. Mixing non-alphabetic image and text would be difficult to handle with a misregistering printing machine; so that, as Mottram noted the appropriateness of design to the contents of wf publications, printing techniques were also applied as appropriate. Simply put, Cobbing knew what he was doing; it was just that he was doing things few people had thought of. And he didn’t say what he was doing. Instead he urged you to read the products attentively. That makes more sense. He wanted people to enjoy the outputs, rather than write about them, copying quotes from him, without engaged understanding.
Look at the blackness of these pages; and remember that the title is "Light Song". Where’s the light? Is it the white or is it the black? I’d say it’s both. I’d say that as a text for reading he would have been reading the differences, the changes, the conversation between the background of the paper and the foreground of the image; and I think I could go some way to substantiating that.
Imagine it in negative and you will find something quite different to the positive. This way is the right way round. It’s not “darkness visible” then; but it’s not not “darkness visible”.
Finally, a few words about consistency of production. The need to get the same image every time from a printing machine is a human idea, not an innate fault of the machine. The tendency is inherent in the machines ‘ tolerances. We choose to reproduce the image the same way each time, as if repeatability is the same as quality. Perhaps, though, variability is also a characteristic of quality if one lets it be.
This suggestion may not be very popular with those who deduce from their muddy ideas of the properties of democratic life that everyone should have complete access to everything.
Cobbing was quite a democrat and his hand made books could be seen as artistic multiples without that name; but he also accepted variations in production.
Mass production need not be the same as identical production. Repeatability in production originated because of the manufacturers’ desire to make everything as cheaply as possible and sell as many as possible.
I like the carefree – not careless – way that these booklets vary in size. He rarely allowed a page size to vary quite so widely; so there is a suggestion here of deliberation on the poet’s part, of appropriateness to the poem.
There aren’t many copies of this booklet left; and it presents some problems to reprint. Ink duplication is out, were the equipment and materials available now anyway. Photocopying is possible, but there will be probably be dropout. In some ways, we are up against the problem – for those who want accessibility at all costs – of the original work; but it may be valid to select one version and reproduce it by photocopying, or high resolution ink jet or litho and live with any slight degradation of the image from the original. A copy has already been put on one side for that purpose in case its needed.
Of course, however good the reproduction, that will freeze one version as the version, subject to any variations which the process may introduce.
In the meantime, you may buy one of the originals.
Copyright © Lawrence Upton February 2007
There are 6 pages and they’re somewhat roughly hand cut; so that, though the images remain the same size, the page sizes vary by up to approximately half an inch.
It was hand-printed by Bob Cobbing on a Gestetner ink duplicator and they vary slightly in image; but, looking from another mental angle, the set is remarkably consistent considering the depth of black ink required.
This is a particular problem with ink duplicating and it is a greater and greater problem as one increases the amount of black. In a case like this it would have been difficult to even hold the stencil together.
It is so easy to end up with a mess & it is even easier to make each print look quite different to all the others. When the image is very black, as here, the greatest likelihood is that ink will not be evenly distributed across and down, but will instead come out blotchily or in excess.
Incidentally, when pages are this black, they never quite dry out, so even now it is still possible for ink to transfer – that’s one of the reasons for putting the booklet in an envelope – to stop ink transfer and to stop damage to the books as they are handled by prospective buyers.
There isn’t much that Bob couldn’t make that duplicator do; and this object is proof of it.
He is not the only person who achieved such heights. Here and there among the output of what was hyperbolically called “the mimeo revolution”, one finds prints of great Gestetner skill. I don’t know anyone, however, who did quite so much of it and in some many versions of mechanical impossibility over such a long time. It wasn’t the occasional surprising job, but a sustained exhibition of expertise.
Originally, Cobbing wrote the title of the publication in capital letters at the top left hand of the back of the final page and signed his name and the press name at the bottom right hand. It was done demotically.
This reissue uses some copies he had not so inscribed; and the data have been written on, in the same place and in the same manner; but not attempting to imitate Cobbing’s writing.
Because everything is so dark, it would be easy to give in to lazy observation and dismiss an object like this as having pages which are all the same or pages which are just black… or maybe “too black”.
But look again and you will see variation and order and wit. This is Cobbing the painter, transposed into an art mode and genre of his own making; though few painters lay the dark colour on quite so. But I’ll qualify that remark in a minute.
Comparing it with specific painters would mislead us and likely demean Cobbing’s work; but some ignorant types have made comparisons with Pollock: any comparison to Pollock, except perhaps in the idiosyncratic difference to almost everything else that has been done, would be misleading. One needs to look carelessly to think that it’s like Pollock. In Cobbing’s work, the image has been placed carefully in all its parts and the means of delivering it to the carrier paper has been mechanically controlled at a remove.
The process of the reproduction of the poem has its own method within the generic method of ink-duplication.
It’s not the layering of pigment that you get with, say, Auerbach. The ink would never dry! It’s of a different kind. The blackness of these pages stands out because it is so unexpected and perhaps because many of us know it is so difficult to achieve. He pushed the duplicator beyond its intended capabilities by a long way.
It isn’t just putting more and more colour on. It may feel that the ink is thickly applied as one looks at it, but actually it isn’t like that. There is only one application here, one pass through the machine.
There may be a connection here with his often repeated Cagean advice that if a performance wasn’t working then one kept going till it did. Not that I suggest that this poem didn’t work at an earlier stage. I mean that there is a point or points, extremes to some maybe, at which the poem works; it may be difficult to access that point; but one just stick to it till one gets there.
He did put the paper through the machine twice on some occasions. He did that in Winter Poem # 1 where, it seems he judged, the only way to get two quite different effects of very light ink output and very heavy ink output in much the same space was to use two different stencils. Note, then, that he knew where the apparently impossible became actually impossible; and he had a way round it.
It is, of course, for that reason that each image copy made by Cobbing was slightly different to all the others, because registration is not the ink duplicator’s strongest point.
Thus, one could not use this fix in every situation. Mixing non-alphabetic image and text would be difficult to handle with a misregistering printing machine; so that, as Mottram noted the appropriateness of design to the contents of wf publications, printing techniques were also applied as appropriate. Simply put, Cobbing knew what he was doing; it was just that he was doing things few people had thought of. And he didn’t say what he was doing. Instead he urged you to read the products attentively. That makes more sense. He wanted people to enjoy the outputs, rather than write about them, copying quotes from him, without engaged understanding.
Look at the blackness of these pages; and remember that the title is "Light Song". Where’s the light? Is it the white or is it the black? I’d say it’s both. I’d say that as a text for reading he would have been reading the differences, the changes, the conversation between the background of the paper and the foreground of the image; and I think I could go some way to substantiating that.
Imagine it in negative and you will find something quite different to the positive. This way is the right way round. It’s not “darkness visible” then; but it’s not not “darkness visible”.
Finally, a few words about consistency of production. The need to get the same image every time from a printing machine is a human idea, not an innate fault of the machine. The tendency is inherent in the machines ‘ tolerances. We choose to reproduce the image the same way each time, as if repeatability is the same as quality. Perhaps, though, variability is also a characteristic of quality if one lets it be.
This suggestion may not be very popular with those who deduce from their muddy ideas of the properties of democratic life that everyone should have complete access to everything.
Cobbing was quite a democrat and his hand made books could be seen as artistic multiples without that name; but he also accepted variations in production.
Mass production need not be the same as identical production. Repeatability in production originated because of the manufacturers’ desire to make everything as cheaply as possible and sell as many as possible.
I like the carefree – not careless – way that these booklets vary in size. He rarely allowed a page size to vary quite so widely; so there is a suggestion here of deliberation on the poet’s part, of appropriateness to the poem.
There aren’t many copies of this booklet left; and it presents some problems to reprint. Ink duplication is out, were the equipment and materials available now anyway. Photocopying is possible, but there will be probably be dropout. In some ways, we are up against the problem – for those who want accessibility at all costs – of the original work; but it may be valid to select one version and reproduce it by photocopying, or high resolution ink jet or litho and live with any slight degradation of the image from the original. A copy has already been put on one side for that purpose in case its needed.
Of course, however good the reproduction, that will freeze one version as the version, subject to any variations which the process may introduce.
In the meantime, you may buy one of the originals.
Copyright © Lawrence Upton February 2007
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