IT (InternationalTimes) – Europe’s first underground newspaper, founded in 1966, is back. www.internationaltimes.it
IT is the only blog with two rooms at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The original newspaper has been archived at the V&A and also made available online. It covers four decades of alternative journalism, cultural criticism, and sheer art anarchism.
Such pieces as J.G. Ballard’s Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan and Paolo Lionni’s A Message to the Queen showed what could be done by creative journalists, artists, writers and activists by creating their own media, rather than trying to go through the official media and being censored, stonewalled or otherwise stymied.
The new IT is an online magazine for radical poetry/art/prose and in its first few months has featured cutting edge pieces by Heathcote Williams on the Monarchy, Paula Rego on female circumcision, John Kinsella’s Manifesto Against Rapacity, Niall McDevitt on the hypocrisy of the Dickens bicentennial, and much much more.
Times New Roman
The emperor twiddles while London burns,
Condemns the flames of his own conflagrating
Policies while his rival Praetor hoists a broom
And rallies cursing residents of a blackened East End street,
Wishes he was still at the Spectator rather than in
The thick of politicking in gutted ghettos, touring
Embarrassing slums, blindfolded to keep his ancient
Principles intact, unchallenged – these are blind emperors,
Hollow orators, complicit critics who throw out riots
Of their own rhetoric in glass houses of transparent
Hypocrisy; all must be swept clean for 2012,
The empire games, when incapacity benefit claimants
Will compete to overturn their ATOS disqualifications
For paltry alms they formerly received to keep them in
Poverty; when rioters, unruly students and socialists
Will be thrown to lions of roaring tabloid-goaded mobs
Clamouring in their misanthropic Colosseum
To echoing choruses of ‘Down! Down!’ All waiting
For the emperor’s thumb to lift and plunge – then
The Olympics will unfold before us like a picnic spread,
A white phosphorous scorch-mark at the scrag end
Of overcooked London, an ice-coated tumour on
The Bow Back River – Tory torch as starting gun.
Alan Morrison
Alan Morrison was born in 1974 and grew up in Sussex and then Cornwall where he started writing, partly in response to the policies of the Thatcher period. He is editor of the Recusant, as well as Emergency Verse – Poetry in Defence of the Welfare State, an e-anthology campaign featuring 107 poets against public-sector cuts and proposals to privatise the NHS. A similar anthology, Robin Hood Book, is due out later this year. Morrison’s poetry is widely published and his collection Blaze a Vanishing is forthcoming from Waterloo Press.
A Widower Watches Their Home Burn Down
Misguided rioters wouldn’t know
how many happy anniversary banners
had hung over the cloakroom door
or that he kept the teal sheets
wrapped round them on their last night
in bed together in the chest of drawers.
Revolutionary bells didn’t ring
when, twenty-six years prior,
he brushed confetti off his lapels
during the registry office ceremony,
unaware that her bones would ache
with cancer the day they decided
to move to Tottenham.
Loot her jewellery and smash the vases
rather than firebomb the shop below
their flat; a thief wouldn’t find
the biscuit barrel filled with letters
and ticket stubs in the kitchen
cupboard but the flames would.
Imagining their photo album melting
in the arson of his memories
he closed his eyes unable
to endure another cremation.
Matthew Hedley Stoppard
Born and brought up in Derbyshire, Stoppard now lives in Leeds after attending university there. His poems have appeared in anthologies published by Earlyworks Press, Cinnamon Press, Rubies In The Darkness and Norwich Writers’ Circle, and are forthcoming in Cake Magazine, Popshot, Cadaverine and Iota. He regularly performs his poetry and works for the Press Association in the Arts and Events department.
I’m very pleased to announce that 2 of the 3 poems I nominated for the PK Poetry Awards 2011 have won.
They are Hindenburg Heart by Simon Barraclough and Orgreave by Ian Parks. Congratulations to both, and thanks to Jim Bennett for choosing them. An ebook will be available soon.
A Tory in Avalon [excerpt]
A Tory in Avalon is missing for 24 hours
but in the rock’n’roll bubble, no one
thinks anything of a locked cubicle.
Great musicians, groupies, journalists
move onto the next, powdering noses
in celebration and jubilation, amid
the real ales and popular songs
that are the apex of English culture.
No one imagines that rigor mortis
is setting in behind a plastic door
or that an ex-Tory is decomposing
even in the fields of Elysium.
(Anway, better him than Thom Yorke.)
He takes no air. The air is taken back.
Niall McDevitt
Irish poet Niall McDevitt confronts the taboo subjects of unemployment, alienation, poverty and immigration in his work. He was resident Pidgin poet/translator on John Peel’s Home Truths, and has featured in Bespoken Word, The Robert Elms Show and BBC Radio 3’s The Verb.
As an activist McDevitt has campaigned to secure the future of the Rimbaud Verlaine House at 8 Royal College Street, and for the release of poet Saw Wai from Insein prison in Myanmar.
This poem is taken from a longer sequence first published at the International Times
Bad
I do not shield Matilda from the news
and when she asked
why did that man kill Sarah
(a girl of equivalent age and loveliness)
I used the word bad
rather than evil, psychopath or sexual predator.
And when she asked about Zimbabwe
(a country we had both admired)
I used the word bad
rather than despot, corruption or racism.
Matilda understands bad
and as she scales the century’s traitorous slopes
I am sure she will expand her vocabulary.
Graham Buchan
Graham Buchan has spent his working life in the film, video and television industries as an editor, writer, producer and director. As well as his poetry appearing in various poetry magazines, he has published short stories, travel writing and film appreciation. This poem is from his collection There is Violence in these Vapours, from tall-lighthouse.
Protest
One cut and the hair worn since childhood
fell upon the floor
dead soft.
A spear-thistle;
her new, bald skull
refused order.
She belonged to heather
and in tail-streams
cupping frogs,
delighting
in the small, green pulse of life
between palms,
not here:
at the dark centre of reunions, separations,
starved of air.
This was a protest of love, against love
demanding
sun, rain, wilderness.
From a finger, she slid a band
placed it underfoot,
pressed down
until the stone
made the sound of a gold chestnut
cracking open.
Annemarie Ni Churreáin
Originally from Donegal, Annemarie Ní Churreáin now lives in Dublin. Her poetry and short stories have been published in journals in Ireland and abroad, and recently her work appeared in the anthology Leave Us Some Unreality. This poem was previously published in Poetry Ireland Review.
Crystallofolia(Frost Flowers)
I have never seen one
but
the mushroom pickers say
they’re real.
Dawn-blood eyes will tell the tale
of morning finds
in blanket-woods of ice
and frill. Smashed by touch
and killed by sun, their frozen sap
is magic-frail. A curl
of petal ghost extrudes
meniscus sprigs
or crownbeard blooms
in fractal kiss.
Not of the sun. Unearthly.
Never cut.
I have never seen one
but
Snow
Fig. 1
Oyster-grit forms the nucleus.
Fig. 2
In thin air
supercooled fossils splay
hexagonal.
Fig. 3
Aggregation.
Means unknown.
Fig. 4
Descent to earth via air.
Fig. 5
Then via hand
the air again.
Another poem commissioned for Alex Carr’s ice project. Two more submissions here and here.
Winter
A fronding kingdom winter makes
of feather ice
of splintered globes
and frozen lakes.
And those defiant fishes
deep below
make lean and famished fishers
of us all.
This poem (and two other ice-themed poems here and here) was commissioned by sculptor Alex Carr. Full details of the project to follow, but I can tell you that Amy Key submitted an excellent poem on nacreous clouds
Overdraft
Profit stalks the wards
like death
a filthy spectre
clawing at the rented beds
offering blood enough
for life
subjugating life
to debt.
Overdraft was commissioned by Alan Morrison for inclusion in the forthcoming poetry anthology Robin Hood Book, the follow-up to Emergency Verse: Poetry in Defence of the Welfare State.
Alistair Noon
The bitterness of British factories. Marx.
The day that starts when night has yet to lift
its parka hood. You clock off in the dark.
Eight labouring hours to clamber up the cliff,
two more to climb the hill behind. Or flop
onto canteen seating between two shifts.
To feed the beasts whose needs will never stop,
sacrifice at the surplus megaliths.
No glaciers dragged those bricks to where they stand
on the plains as sunless temples to time,
but rollers hauled by teams of tiring hands,
a skin of cuts, accumulated grime.
Now fair winds still bring the cotton and wool –
warm coats from hot lands where factories are full.
Alistair Noon
Born in 1970 and brought up in Aylesbury, Noon has been based in Berlin since the early ’90s where he co-ordinates the annual reading series Poetry Hearings. He is an editor of Bordercrossing Berlin and has worked as a language teacher, a German, Russian and Chinese translato,r and most recently in hospital administration. This poem is from his first full-length collection due to appear this year from Nine Arches Press.
I was 10 years old when I first realised poetry was boring.
In school we were learning about personification. Everyone had to write a poem which described an inanimate object or concept as if it were human.
I didn’t like my teacher, so rather than personify the sunshine or love, as he’d suggested, I made my poem as morbid as I possibly could just to spite him.
Entitled Death, it described a war between personified death and a sickly man. A group of creatures surrounded the battle, jeering as the man tried to fight his opponent.
My rebellion backfired. The teacher loved it. Slowly and pointedly he read it to the class.
Then came the question, “What does the poem mean?” The class fell silent.
He chose a line, just after the dying man weakly stands to fight for his life, “Death’s creatures bawl.”
I was 10, and I didn’t actually know what bawl meant. Having only ever come across the expression in the context of bawling with laughter, I had wrongly interpreted it as an expression of mirth. Death’s creatures were laughing at the man’s frailty.
The teacher explained that to bawl is to cry. “Why,” he asked, “were the creatures crying?”
Investigation of an Island(for LK)
Hunger made the cragsmen walk
barefooted down the vertical cliffs.
Even on moonless nights men clung
to hemp ropes and scavenged eggs and chicks.
On rare, sunny days the mountain reflected
so brightly in the sea, it blinded
some into the belief they could fly.
The islanders knew surf in the west
and bright billed puffins gripping
crags foreshadowed storms, but they never
realised fertile land was being turned
poisonous by their own waste.
In the bay waves rise like wings. A path leads
between granite to where roofs have fallen
into raw, stone piles. Nothing will ever grow here.
The air is thick with gannets.
Sally Flint
Sally is co-editor of short story journal Riptide and teaches creative writing at the University of Exeter. She is also an advisor and facilitator for Stories Connect, a community-based project which helps ex-offenders and people with addiction problems change their lives through literature. She has previously been published in Aesthetica, The North, Shearsman, and Tears in the Fence and has also won various awards including a commendation in The Bridport Prize and the Wasafiri Writing Prize.
Pit Closure as a Tarantino Shortafter Ian McMillan
The Suit who pulled the trigger
left a card between the victim’s fingers,
printed white and red, but Business Closed
was all it said.
He wiped his bloodless hands
against his shirt for show,
as if someone still watched him
as he made to go. And as he turned,
he met the dead man’s stare
and noticed, there, between those
two dark eyes, the bullet hole
made up a black ellipsis, then swore
he heard the dead man’s voice
above the heartbeat of the clock:
Nothing’s finished, only given up.
Before he left, he checked the lock.
Helen Mort
Helen Mort was born in Sheffield in 1985. Her collection Division Street is forthcoming from Chatto & Windus. She has published two pamphlets with tall-lighthouse press, The Shape of Every Box and A Pint for the Ghost, a Poetry Book Society Choice for Spring 2010. Five-times winner of the Foyle Young Poets award, she received an Eric Gregory Award from The Society of Authors in 2007 and won the Manchester Young Writer Prize in 2008. In 2010, she became the youngest ever poet in residence at The Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere.
Occupy Poetry? Katy Evans-Bush on the TS Eliot Prize
Alice Oswald
It’s like watching the popcorn pop. Earlier this month Alice Oswald surprised everybody – well, the poetry world – by withdrawing her book from the TS Eliot Prize shortlist in protest at the prize’s new sponsors, a hedge-fund investment company called Aurum (not to be confused with Aurum Press).
She said: “I’m uncomfortable about the fact that Aurum Funds, an investment company which exclusively manages funds of hedge funds, is sponsoring the administration of the Eliot Prize; I think poetry should be questioning not endorsing such institutions and for that reason I’m withdrawing from the Eliot shortlist.”
This was a bit of a poetry bomb.
It’s bad news for the other shortlisted poets who may really need the prize money, or who may not ever get another chance at this most prestigious award. Oswald has already won it once.
The rest of the shortlist is: John Burnside, poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Leontia Flynn, David Harsent, John Kinsella, Esther Morgan, Daljit Nagra, Sean O’Brien and Bernard O’Donoghue.not ever get another chance at this most prestigious award (Oswald has already won it once).
Or, rather: that’s who the shortlist was. Because John Kinsella has stepped down as well.
Canto XCIX
Father Christmas is a Capitalist
and a bastard as well to boot. Exhibit A:
he gives the rich kids ponies and Xboxes
while all the kiddies get down the Estate
is pound shop knock offs of their actual requests-
Barbette, Transform-trons and GI James.
Though he hates Jews and Muslims even worse,
leaving them out of the giveaway completely,
a NATO carpet bombing in reverse
as he rains gifts down casual Christian chimneys.
Exhibit B: You've seen The Snowman, right?
Don't tell me that the bastard didn't see
the bitter end to come, the snowman's plight
to melt into a mush on Boxing Day.
That's why he gave the kid a scarf that night,
so that, when Frosty's soul drifted away,
the scarf would say, "Ha ha! It wasn't a dream!
It happened! Your mate's now a Slush Puppy!"
So poor kids, don't waste your letters on him,
the walking soft drink advert, write instead
to Karl Marx to redress the fat man's crime
to take the surplus from the rich homesteads
and spread them evenly to every creed-
from each according to their Christmas excess
to those according to their daily needs.
Niall O’Sullivan
Niall O’Sullivan was born in Slough of Irish parents back in the seventies. He studied Art in Bath, dropped out and spent the next decade working as a landscape gardener before involving himself full time in London’s poetry scene. Niall has released two full collections of poetry and a pamphlet with Flipped Eye and has recently been resident poet of a housing estate for the South Kilburn Speaks project. This poem is taken from Niall’s blog project The Mundane Comedy which uses the terza rima form of Dante’s epic to document a year of his life. Read it at themundanecomedy.wordpress.com
Life at Ground Zero: Pete the Temp on Occupy London
Like sex, politics is better participated in than watched. This is what we are finding out at Finsbury Square, the “forgotten camp” of Occupy London.
Hidden from the tourists and the day trippers that swarm St Paul’s, we can be found embedded deep within the suits and glass palaces of the central London business community.
We are proud to be one of some 950 such camps taking place in 82 countries worldwide.
Over a month on and ordinary people continue to set the news agenda here. We get visited, filmed, photographed and recorded and our opinions on global politics and finance are sent around the world.
Most are not in a position to camp themselves but we have been overwhelmed by people’s support and solidarity. Much of this has come from businessmen – such as those from the adjacent Bloomberg Financial News – who have given us first-hand insights into just how corrupt things have become.
The camps are an end in themselves but also a stone around which the snowball gathers. In London, as in all the other towns and cities, they provide a space where people can discuss issues, hold workshops and talks and plan direct actions and protests.
Here we can rub up against each other, eat together and sample the local delicacy of direct democracy.
The absence of fathers
There was a strike
as so often
and you wore the half-smile
of a veteran
set your head
into one clean line
and carried your coat
out the door.
I stood and watched you go.
You filled my eyes twice over
your back was broader than the hallway
and I loved you, that day
for the times you left.
Faye Lipson
Faye is currently studying English Literature and Philosophy at Sheffield University where she is also a journalist and reviewer at Forge Press. She received a Foyle Young Poet Commendation in 2007 and more recently became a Barbican Young Poet under the mentorship of Jacob Sam-La Rose. She is one of a small group of poets creating work for the National Trust relating to their acquisition of 575 Wandsworth Road: the unique London home of exiled African poet Khadambi Asalache.
