reality-street-blog

Valediction

Tue, 12 Jul 2016 17:14:51 +0100

With the publication of Gravity as a consequence of shape by Allen Fisher, Reality Street ceases publication of new titles.

Since 1993 the press has published 67 books of adventurous new writing in poetry and prose, 52 of which are still in print. Reality Street will keep all these in print for the foreseeable future – in the case of those printed before 2003 by conventional means, so long as stocks remain; in the case of those issued or reissued since then as print-on-demand, until further notice.

Reality Street was formed in 1993 as Reality Street Editions, an amalgamation of two independent poetry presses: my own Reality Studios, which had been operating in London since 1978 (starting with Reality Studios magazine, which ran between 1978-88), and Wendy Mulford's Street Editions, founded in Cambridge in 1972.

The two presses recognised a common interest in publishing the poetry of what I once termed the “parallel tradition”: its various formations in the UK being the British Poetry Revival (Eric Mottram's term), the Cambridge diaspora, and what has sometimes been called “linguistically innovative” poetry - all overlapping categories. There was also a common interest in post-New American Poetry, Language Writing and related North American fields, as well as adventurous poetry in other English-speaking regions and from other languages and cultures.

In recent years, Reality Street has also been interested in experimental prose, both narrative and non-narrative.
Wendy decided to retire from small press publishing in 1998, since when Reality Street has been run by myself, with support from my partner Elaine. The press moved from London to Hastings in 2004.

The successes and best-sellers have not always been the ones we expected. When we talk of best-sellers let’s not get too carried away: this is small press publishing, and successes are numbered in the high hundreds or very low thousands of copies sold – a couple of hundred being the norm for most one-author collections of poetry, for example. An early hit was Denise Riley’s Mop Mop Georgette, later subsumed within her Selected Poems (2000), the latter continuing to sell copies steadily today as her reputation has grown over the years. Another success was the 1996 anthology of innovative writing by women in Britain and North America, Out of Everywhere, edited by Maggie O’Sullivan, which had a sequel 19 years later (last year) in Out of Everywhere 2, edited by Emily Critchley.

The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (2008), the idea for which was proposed by Jeff Hilson, who edited it with great imagination and gusto, was another anthology that really took off. Allen Fisher’s Place (2005), collecting the scattered writings of his 1970s project of that name within one set of covers, also continues to sell. And the trilogy of the late Bill Griffiths’ Collected Poems (three volumes, 2010, 2014 and 2016, edited by Alan Halsey) was a revelation for many.

In the Narrative Series, musicologist Paul Griffiths’ miniature masterpiece let me tell you (2008), a short novel composed entirely of the 500-word vocabulary Ophelia is allotted in Hamlet, was another best-seller, as was tapestry by Philip Terry, which was a Guardian Paperback of the Week selected by Nicholas Lezard and also made the shortlist of the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize (the only Reality Street title to trouble prize judges).

But I stand by all the books we published, even those I was bemused to find did not sell. Why one fine poet sells ten times as much as another who is equally fine continues to be an insoluble mystery. I guess demographics, fashion and sheer chance all play their part. Most authors were a delight to work with, a very few less so, but there is not a single book I can say I wish I hadn’t published, even though occasionally I might have regrets about not doing them complete justice.

I enjoy the process of making books, and I shall miss that. Editing, typesetting and design. But the mechanics of publicity, sales, invoicing, accounting, administration … well, I’m better at those things than many poets and writers, which isn’t saying much, but I can’t say I really enjoyed such activities.

What was it all about? I often ask myself. The only stated principle I’ve ever reiterated is: “To create a community of writers and readers.” The inauguration of the Reality Street Supporter Scheme – whereby subscribers provided upfront funding and in return received copies of the books with their names printed in the back – was not only a godsend (together with the advent of print-on-demand, it continued to make the press viable without reliance on increasingly scarce and capricious funding) but an important affirmation that there were people out there who valued the publication programme. Over the years, they numbered up to 250, and they kept me going.

Some of the Reality Street authors also became supporter subscribers. Some authors, by contrast, never supported the press financially. That was their prerogative. It wasn’t a condition of taking them on. Clearly, the vast majority of the supporter subscribers (readers) were not authors published by the press, although many were in fact poets and writers themselves. And one or two got the hump when they realised that supporting the press was not a fast track to being published by it. Presenting me with a project that I was sufficiently engaged with to want to publish was the only way. But I wish I had had the means or inclination to publish ten times as many books.

The thing is, though, I never meant to or really wanted to become a publisher, let alone be known primarily as one. Back in the 1970s, when I was starting to write, I naively hoped to be published by major publishers. I thought it was normal to write adventurously, to make it new (to use a hackneyed phrase). It was disappointing to find that what I was doing was considered too weird. And even more alarming to find there were editors who might give me opportunities in return for straightening out the writing. The small press revolution was at least a pathway to getting the writing out there quickly, in the form that I imagined it. And one thing led to another, your honour.

I wanted to present my own writing in the context of other writing that I admired. And it was really useful to have an outlet for my own work. I was fortunate to find other small presses that would publish my work from time to time, at least my poetry, but it was useful also to have my own imprint on those occasions when others couldn’t or wouldn’t bring out my writing in the way I wanted: Down With Beauty springs to mind.

Anyway … that’s all done now. I have increasingly felt over the past couple of years that I no longer had any enthusiasm for the publishing, and, at the dawn of my old age, wanted to put my energies back where I began – into my writing. I’ve done my bit as a publisher. Also, I want to put on record that poetry as such is not in fact the biggest thing in my life. Most contemporary poetry I read bores me. I know that’s a bit like Glenn Gould when he said “I don’t like the sound of the piano that much.” I can relate to that. I’ve always thought of myself not as a “poet”, whatever that is, but a “writer”. I am interested in new writing, writing that breaks boundaries, which might be poetry.

And as for the poetry scene, it no longer energises me. Perhaps because I’ve been out of London for 12 years. Perhaps because the British avant-garde scene seems to have run its course, and has retreated behind the boundaries of academia. Or that’s how I perceive it today. Poets subverting expectations of what a poem should be, and telling the world the theory of how they do it seem to be two a penny now. It looks like a career move sometimes.

Ah, onward. I’m really 100 per cent enthralled by the writing I am doing now, believe me. And less bothered about how it is perceived.

I want to pay a few tributes. First to Wendy Mulford, with whom I conceived the idea of Reality Street (Editions) twenty-three years ago. I don’t think Wendy gets enough credit. As a founder member of what came to be known as “Cambridge Poetry”, alongside JH Prynne, Andrew Crozier, Doug Oliver and her first husband John James. And as a pioneering small press publisher, publishing all these as well as Tom Raworth, Veronica Forrest-Thomson and the poet she mentored, Denise Riley. And as fighter for the visibility of women in the avant-garde poetry scene. I supported her in wanting to promote the latter, as well as healing the London-Cambridge breach. There were successes.

I would like to thank all those who supported Reality Street with their subscriptions, and all the authors and anthology editors we published. Also one or two major, anonymous donors to the project.

And everybody who helped with advice and practical assistance. I don’t want to single out names. Except Elaine for emotional and practical help too.

As I’ve indicated, I have no interest in being identified as “Ken Edwards, publisher”, but I do want the project to get the credit it deserves.

The imprint and its website continues, and all orders will continue to be fulfilled for the foreseeable future. Please buy the books. I know I’ve gone on about sales in a way which is probably against the accepted norms of the innovative writing scene, let alone of Britishness. But that’s what it’s about. Buy the books. And read them.

The bumper books of Bill and Allen

Fri, 10 Jun 2016 13:51:09 +0100

Phew! Allen Fisher's Gravity as a consequence of shape has at last gone to press - all 596 pages of it.

We're expecting the proof copy next week, and shortly thereafter will be sending out copies to the nearly 80 people who pre-ordered it as Supporter subscribers. The book, which collects together all the poems from the Gravity project (1982-2005) together for the first time, will also be on general sale from the end of June 2016.

Bill Griffiths' Collected Poems Volume 3, which weighs in at a slightly less hefty 524 pages, is aready on general sale. This collects all the poetry from five very productive years in Bill's life (1992-96).

There's now a special deal: all three of the Bill Griffiths volumes (1,300 pages!) for £30 + p&p.

And also: Allen Fisher's Place and Gravity... volumes (that's over 1,000 pages) for £25 + p&p.

See the relevant pages of the Reality Street website for details.

Out again soon!

Wed, 05 Aug 2015 16:19:43 +0100

I still have vivid memories of the day Out of Everywhere, that pioneering anthology of innovative writing by women, was launched in London in 1996. The small art gallery in Portobello Road that Reality Street had booked for the launch was inadequate for the number of people who turned up, and several had to strain to listen to the readings from the pavement outside. It cemented the reputation of the press, and the book has been in print ever since, and still sells.

There was never any intention at the time or in the following few years of publishing a successor. But that idea was planted, I think, following a conference Emily Critchley organised in 2006 in Cambridge to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the anthology. Two or three years later, it was a definite proposal. I asked Emily, who was more in touch with the new generation of women writing innovatively than I, to put together a long-list. It was notable for containing a far greater proportion of British-based poets than the original, North American-biased selection. That itself was a significant trend.

Another trend has been signalled by the simultaneous publication of a CD containing audio work by nine of the contributors. Many of these poets are also artists or musicians, or collaborate with others in multi-media settings.

It was never going to be possible to emulate exactly the 30 contributors/250 pages of the original. Too much going on. Even with the number of contributors increased to 44 (two of them presenting a collaboration) and the number of pages to 370, there are inevitably many regrettable omissions. But that's anthologies for you.

It was going to be out in 2011, but that didn't happen for a number of reasons. So now at last it's almost here (published on 26 September), very nearly twenty years after Maggie O'Sullivan's anthology.

We did think about a catchy new title. But we couldn't come up with one. So Out of Everywhere 2 it is, and if that suggests a Hollywood sequel, well, let me tell you - unlike most, it's just as good as the original.

You can read more about it, and pre-order, here.

Compensation

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 07:56:19 +0100

Cheque in the post (a rare thing these days) and a note ordering a copy of Peter Hughes' Quite Frankly. But the cheque is for £12.50, the purchase price of the book only, with no provision for p&p (which should have been £3.50). I pack the book off, with a friendly (I hope) scribbled note on the receipt saying "I'll let you off the p&p this time." A few days later the person, who is known to me by name, sends me a copy of their own poetry pamphlet, a small envelope tucked inside it containing four first-class stamps (total £2.53) and an apologetic note saying that not being online ("dinosaur-like") they hadn't realised p&p was required and hoped this was sufficient recompense. But they had not put enough postage on their own packet, and the way I received this was by traipsing up to the Post Office sorting office and paying £1.11 over the counter. Aw, bless. It's a good thing I'm not trying to make a living out of this lark.

El Ombú

Fri, 22 May 2015 07:49:59 +0100

Reality Street is about to publish, under the ReScript Books imprint (ie not part of the regular Reality Street programme of contemporary writing) a new edition of WH Hudson's El Ombú - an important book in his oeuvre (1st published 1902) which is not currently available in a decent edition. This one is edited with an extensive introduction by the poet David Miller. We're very pleased with it. You can already order it from the RS website, and it will soon be available from online and offline retailers, and also, we hope, as an e-book (a first!).

If anyone would like to review it, please contact the press for a complimentary review copy.

When Reality Street was live...

Wed, 13 May 2015 09:29:33 +0100

I'm so pleased and relieved Reality Street Live 2 (Sunday 10 May) went off almost without a hitch, and that the readings, the music and even the weather were so enjoyable and enjoyed by all.

I suppose I wish I could replay it all now, because I was a bit too wound up - having to cater for guests, deal with the venue (the staff of The Crown were great), work out the scheduling, do the publicity (designing and printing flyers, doing online stuff), practise my bass so as to at least give a passable performance in two bands, set up the PA, take it down again, do the MC bit and introduce it all, actually play and sing, sell books and CDs - to really take it all in and properly enjoy it. That it happened at all is due in large part to my magnificent wife Elaine who (hampered by a broken wrist) managed to both organise much of the cooking and catering and technical preparations for the music but also blew some of the most scorching soprano and tenor sax I've heard from her, not once but in two separate sets, for The Moors and Afrit Nebula. (She also, amazingly, plays flute and accordion, but this would have been a step too far for her broken wrist, though she did substitute the melodica on three numbers for The Moors...)

It wouldn't have happened either but for the goodwill of the other musicians, playing for a free drink and expenses only: Jamie Harris of Afrit Nebula (percussion), and Russell Field (drums), Jenny Benwell (fiddle) and Richard Butler (guitar) of The Moors.

And finally the authors of the new books, which all this was in aid of: Peter Hughes and Lou Rowan (pictures above by Andrea Augé) gave wonderful readings from, respectively, Quite Frankly and Alphabet of Love Serial. They were witty and entertaining and completely professional in their delivery - what more can you ask? (You can replay their readings by going to their respective pages and clicking on the mp3 players at the end of the book descriptions - or, alternatively, going straight here.)

There was a decent audience, attentive and appreciative. What I hadn't bargained for was that on this wonderfully sunny Sunday afternoon the pub would be so busy with regular clientele - such that there was a regular hum of chatter which you can hear on the recordings. I hope some of those who were not there specifically for Reality Street Live ended up enjoying at least some of it. What I also hadn't bargained for was that the performance space was right in the path from the main bar to the loos, so there was a constant procession in both directions, but that in the end became part of the entertainment, the body language of the toilet visitors providing endless fascination, some nervous and apologetic as they ventured past the performers, others brazen.

We had a small group of Hastings-based regulars in the audience, among them Paul A Green, Richard Makin, Antony Mair, Tim and Georgia from the Stone Squid Gallery, and from slightly further afield Brian Marley, and a few others who may have been attracted, either to the music or the words, by the news story I wrote for the Hastings Observer. We sold a handful of books. I am grateful to the gentleman whose name I didn't catch who bought a copy of my Down With Beauty. I am disappointed that no others took up my invitation to come down to Hastings for the day - it was a brilliant day - from London or elsewhere.

I am also disappointed that my efforts to attract others in Hastings and St Leonards with literary interests to Reality Street events has borne so little fruit. For this reason, I doubt there will be another Reality Street Live in Hastings, so we must cherish the memory while it lasts.

Storm the Reality Studios

Sat, 21 Feb 2015 17:14:34 +0100

It's an astonishing thought: the full run of REALITY STUDIOS, the magazine I founded in 1978 and ran for ten years, is now online. All of it - all 10 volumes, every one of the more than 1,000 pages. The early ones were typed onto mimeograph stencils on a manual typewriter. And now those words I typed have been magically transformed into downloadable, searchable and copy-and-pasteable text.

This miracle I owe to the University of Pennsylvania/Kelly Writers House/Jacket2 (never sure about the relationship between them all), and in particular Danny Snelson. It's been a long time coming - I think getting on for a couple of years since we first talked about it and I carefully and with great trepidation packed copies of the full run (some items literally the only copies I had, and many in fragile condition) and airmailed them to be scanned.

The published editions have long been out of print. Now you can download the lot as pdfs, free of charge.

I remember the first issue very well. I had been collaborating on Alembic magazine, liviing in a semi-derelict farmhouse near Orpington, Kent (this era soon to be documented in a book of reminiscences of the London area poetry scene in the 1970s/80s, to be edited by Robert Hampson). I'd become frustrated by the length of time it took for each issue of Alembic to be published. I wanted something more immediate. In fact, what I wanted was a blog, or a webzine, or something like that - but that was impossible, because nobody had heard of such things in 1978, and the internet had not even been invented. I'd been impressed by Charles Bernstein's and Bruce Andrews' L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine (now also fully downloadable!)

So I started a monthly magazine, to be sent to anyone interested. I cranked out the first issue on my trusty Roneo duplicator. Ten A4 pages, poem/prose sequences by James Sherry and Opal Nations. No sooner off the machine than collated, corner-stapled, folded and stuffed into envelopes, and posted to about 40 people.

The name came from William Burroughs via the Situationists, who had adopted as a slogan something like "Storm the reality studios and re-take the universe." Actually, I've looked it up in the opening pages of Burroughs' Nova Express, and what Inspector J Lee actually says is "With your help we can occupy The Reality Studio and retake their universe of Fear Death and Monopoly". So like many famous quotations, it's got distorted over time. Anyway, that was my grandiose plan: an assault on "reality" and its manufacturers using the weapons of avant-garde poetry, conceptual art and philosophy.

I kept this up for a year. Around ten pages a month. Really heterogenous stuff. An essay about Frank Samperi and Cid Corman by David Miller. Notes from our shipping correspondent (Peter Barry). Book reviews. Conceptual poetry by E E Vonna-Michell (father of Tris Vonna-MIchell, shortlisted for the Turner Prize last year, by the way). Poems by Charles Bernstein, Peter Philpott, Jeremy Hilton, and the "two Paul Greens" issue (few people noticed they were two different poets, Paul A Green, now a neighbour of mine in Hastings, and Paul Green the bookseller and editor of Spectacular Diseases in Peterborough).

I couldn't quite sustain the freqency in the second year, so Volumes 2 and 3 were issued quarterly. By this time I had moved back into central London, to a housing co-op in Balfour Street, near Elephant & Castle, which was the magazine's home for the rest of its life. Photocopying gradually replaced mimeo as the method of production. Volume 3 also appeared as a limited-edition collected annual volume, and from then on the frequency became annual. Volumes 4 and 5 were side-stapled A4 with wraparound litho-printed covers. Then from Volume 6 on I made the decision to move to A5 perfect-bound - I farmed out the printing and binding to a Polish printer in north London who could do it astonishingly cheaply (I began to suspect he did this by paying his staff derisory wages, by the way - once, he spoke scornfully to me about how much a rival printer was paying to get collating done: "Collating is nothing - I can get a vooman to do it!").

The readership grew from the original 40, but not by much - I don't think I ever printed more than 300 copies of each volume. The contributors were chiefly a loose grouping of British and American poets and writers, the former mainly associated with what has sometimes been called the "British Poetry Revival" (which included the "Cambridge poets" as a sub-set) and the latter mainly with the "Language Writing" group. But it wasn't that cut and dried. Looking back at the contents, I wince occasionally at some of my decisions, especially in regard to presentation, but I am proud of the fact that REALITY STUDIOS never became the vehicle for a smug coterie of poets. There are weird ideas and failed experiments, there are outsiders, mavericks, people who were in there because they sent me stuff out of the blue, poets who have never been heard of again as well as those who went on to make reputations in the wider world. I feel distanced from a lot of it now, but, essentially, my editorial philosophy has not changed much since those days. I want to shake things up, which means failing often. I don't want to be part of a cool club.

So I don't regret any of it, but I remember I was disappointed by how difficult it was to get people to articulate poetics, to review new books, or to argue about aesthetics and politics without falling out. (One sharp political disagreement in the early pages led to temporary disruption of a friendship.) I think we were still living in buttoned-up Britain - the magazine wasn't anything like L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, with its lively exchanges, in that respect. The internet has probably done something since to loosen up British literary culture.

I was also disappointed by the way, even then, the avant-garde poetry community stuck to what it knew. Volume 7 was guest-edited by Glenda George, then associated with Paul Buck, who introduced a range of new writers, mostly but not all women - it was probably the least popular volume. Volume 9, the prose issue, featured out-there fiction by Kathy Acker, Carlyle Reedy, Johan de Wit and others, but much of the poetry readership did not want to follow me there (a phenomenon that continues with Reality Street's Narrative Series).

With Volume 10, I completed a decade, moved to Peckham in south London, and decided the project was over. There were a handful of one-off books published under the Reality Studios imprint before, in 1993, the name got subsumed as Reality Street with the amalgamation with Wendy Mulford's Cambridge press Street Editions.

So ... it's all there now, available to the world. And at last I feel I can say goodbye to it - it doesn't belong to me any more.

Lou Rowan and Peter Hughes to print

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 12:16:32 +0100

Lou Rowan's Alphabet of Love Serial and Peter Hughes' Quite Frankly have now been uploaded to print, with the names of 84 Supporters inscribed. If all goes well, copies will start to be distributed to those Supporters and to reviewers within a couple of weeks.

Lou will be in the UK in May, so we're taking the opportunity to launch his and Peter's books then - at the revival of Reality Street Live on Sunday 10 May in Hastings. This will be an afternoon/early evening event (probably starting 4pm), with both authors reading and live music from members of The Moors and others. Free admission. Put it in your diary now!

A dirty weekend in Margate

Mon, 17 Nov 2014 08:31:03 +0100

How better to celebrate my dear wife's birthday than with a dirty weekend in Margate (with her)?

Never been to the town before. The main purpose was to see the Turner Contemporary gallery. (This was in advance of viewing Mike Leigh's magnificent Mr Turner - highly recommended. Though the "Margate" scenes were filmed in Cornwall because it doesn't actually look like that any more.)

Margate is well weird. The hotel we were booked into ... let's say it may be the subject of a surrealist novel I plan to write one day. Good breakfast in a large, mouldering ballroom, where the few other guests appeared to be DSS claimants - I heard one woman confide to the elderly lady who served us our meal that she'd "been in a fight last night" and had been "having seizures". A lot of grime and tat. A wonderful sunset over the harbour arm on the Saturday night, worthy of Mr Turner himself. And the rest of the Island of Thanet (which has not been an island for centuries) (whose name Richard Makin tells me is derived from the Greek thanatos, or death, though this apparently is disputed) was kind of interesting. We started off in lovely Deal, visiting John Tilbury, and also motored around Broadstairs, Ramsgate and Sandwich.

Back to the Turner Contemporary. It sits in a corner of the harbour (apparently on the very site of the boarding house JMW Turner lived in), a modernist building rather at odds with its surroundings. Big, clean spaces, characterless.

I didn't realise there was no permanent collection there. The main current exhibition, occupying the vast majority of the space, was "English Magic" by Jeremy Deller, a re-creation of his multi-room installation for the British Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale.

The handout explains that "'English Magic' explores the diverse nature of British society - its people, icons, myths, folklore and its cultural, socio-political and economic history". Which sleight-of-hand is the kind of thing that understandably gets the Scots desperate for independence, but let's blame the blurb writer rather than the artist.

Deller is basically a conceptual artist who brings together various media - mural painting, fabric, objects, photographs and film - in the service of a complex of interwoven ideas about contemporary culture and politics. He doesn't appear to do much of the hands-on work himself.

Thus, the first of the seven galleries, "We sit starving amidst our gold", is dominated by a vast mural depicting an angry William Morris tossing Roman Abramovich's yacht into the sea, which it turns out is not painted by Deller at all but (the small print says) by Stuart Sam Hughes. It's not very good, in truth. Abramovich is no doubt a worthy symbol of the obscenity of uber-capitalism. The yacht (I once saw it moored off Gibraltar, though I was told Abramovich actually has two identical yachts so as to fox his enemies, which is even more obscene) is depicted as a crude waterline drawing.

Works by Turner, William Morris and John Ruskin, presumably representing a countervailing socialism, or at least public integrity, complete the contents of this room. Actually, I have never "got" Morris or his brand of socialism. Yes, there are examples of his hand-crafted wallpaper there, the irony of course being that it is only billionaires like Abramovich who could afford to have such non-mass-produced decoration on their walls. (Also, I can't help pointing out that Mike Leigh has Ruskin depicted in his film as an effete, lisping, if somewhat likeable, upper-class twit whose compliments and critic-speak Turner barely tolerates, but I guess that's just naughty.)

The second room houses the best bit of the exhibition, a film composed of a montage of images, including the London Lord Mayor's parade (armed forces marching, freemasons on a bus), a Range Rover being crushed in a scrapyard (the actual crushed vehicle has been fashioned into the bench on which you watch the film) and various raptors swooping in slow motion, all synched to incredibly mournful sounding steel band versions of Vaughan Williams' music and David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World".

Stunning as the raptor images are, we are confronted here with the major problem I have with this exhibition, and with much so-called "political" art in general. The birds' talons are over-obviously juxtaposed with the claws of the wrecking machine that is disposing of the Range Rover, and, in case you didn't get the message, in a further gallery there is another huge mural with, lo and behold, a hen harrier (the reference is to a bird allegedly shot by Prince Harry and a friend in Sandringham in 2007) with a Range Rover in its claws.

In other rooms, photographs of David Bowie's 1972-73 Ziggy Stardust tour of the UK are alternated with news pictures over the same period depicting industrial action, economic depression and IRA bombing incidents; there's an exhibition of drawings and paintings by UK prisoners ("many of whom are former soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan" - how many, and in what precise way is this linked with the death of Dr David Kelly, documented here?); and a display of banners and another indifferent mural, depicting St Helier, the capital of Jersey in the Channel Islands, burning down after "the UK public descend on the town, angered by Jersey's status as a tax haven". This last puzzled me at first, because I couldn't remember this incident, until I noticed the dateline "12 June 2017". So it's a wish-fulfilment fantasy set in the future, though why the ordinary residents of St Helier, rather than the UK tax avoiders themselves, should be punished in this way is a troubling question.

I'm sorry, but I'm really rather embarrassed this lot represented Britain at the Venice Biennale last year. It's "engaged art" at its worst, the politics jejune, the iconography obvious to the point of banality. Roman Abramovich and his yacht, Range Rovers, the island of Jersey and its tax-avoidance industry, Prince Harry and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are Bad. Morris, Ruskin, Turner, birds of prey (representing the natural world?), perhaps David Bowie, multi-cultural steel band orchestras (though we can't help noticing the one seen in the film appears to be directed by a white person, so a hint of ambiguity here) are Good. The claws of the wrecking machine are identified with the raptors' talons, so are they Good or are they part of the Bad capitalist machine? Another rare hint of ambivalence.

Does it undermine assumptions? Does it make you think? Does it transform your vision of the world?

Hmm.

Now I'm on a roll, I'll turn my attention next to the Chapman brothers at the Jerwood Gallery, just down the road from me.

"English Magic" is at the Turner Contemporary in Margate until January 2015

Support us in 2015

Fri, 17 Oct 2014 15:38:42 +0100

Really gratifying results from the first promotion of Reality Street's 2015 Supporter programme.

Within a month of announcing it, we already have nearly 60 Supporters for our package of three books. A lot of old friends rejoining: some who have been with us since the beginning (16 years ago - the press itself has been around for 21 years, though we forgot to celebrate our coming of age); but quite a few welcome newcomers too.

Typesetting and design of Peter Hughes' Quite Frankly and Lou Rowan's Alphabet of Love Serial is now done. Next week I shall embark on the gigantic task of typesetting Emily Critchley's multifarious anthology Out of Everywhere 2, which is a wonderful homage to the original 1996 book edited by Maggie O'Sullivan as well as a triumph in its own right.

The aim is to get the first two books to press before Xmas so that they can start to be sent out to Supporter subscribers and reviewers early in the new year. The anthology should follow shortly after, including the CD that will be available free to Supporters at first and thereafter only on sale from the Reality Street website.

There will be launches. I don't yet know where or when.

There's still plenty of time to subscribe: to become a Reality Street Supporter for the first time, or to rejoin the fold. But obviously if you want your name on the books before they go to press it would be advisable to join up soon.