Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 513

“They shoot you in the head but they don’t know the revolution is in the heart”

The appalling news this week of the death, following detention, of Myanmar poet, Khet Thi starts off this week’s Round-Up on a somber note.  Remarkably, Khet Thi wasn’t the first poet to die following the onset of protests after the February 1st military coup. Poet K Za Win, was shot dead during a protest in Monywa in early March. Myint Myint Zin, fellow poet-teacher, was also killed (astonishingly, divulging her blood type on social media just before she died should anyone injured in the protests require a transfusion!)

“Cultural figures and celebrities”, the Reuters wire-service report remarks, “have been prominent supporters of opposition to the coup with protests daily in different parts of the south-east Asian country in spite of the killings and thousands of arrests.”

See PEN International’ s March 17 statement 

For updated information – AAPP (Assistance Association For Political Prisoners – see here 

Essential reading – “”I’ll lay down my life for you all” – Poetry and Activism on the Streets of Myanmar” – James Byrne‘s essay, from back in March, in World Literature Today

 

We put a spotlight on Beatdom a couple of weeks back. Here’s a spotlight on another venerable magazine, Beat Scene, Kevin Ring‘s remarkable magazine (and press) out of Coventry, England.  Beat Scene 100 will be out, we are informed, any day now.  The new issue will be, in the editor’s words, “as varied as usual, no particular theme, just more on the Beat Generation…In reaching this little milestone the hope is that (it) remains enthusiastic but thorough and devoid of any hint of academia..”
There’ll also be, forthcoming, a special issue, gathering together items from the first twenty issues of the mag (covering the period 1988 to 1993). All those back issues are now collector’s items, long out-of-print, hence the idea to compile an anthology . More on that later.

Two recent chapbooks (both from material we’ve featured here – but you can’t beat the old-fashioned book form!) – Clark Coolidge –  Jack Kerouac and the Sounds of Old Angel Midnight

and Robert Creeley on Jack Kerouac and Doctor Sax

Thanks also to Kevin for reminding us of this – Joyce Johnson, back in 2013, speaking on Kerouac at the New York Society Library

Contact info – kevbeatscene@gmail.com

If Beat Scene represents the resolutely non-academic wing of Beat studies, EBSN (the European Beat Studies Network) remains the nexus and co-ordinating engine of contemporary academic Beat research – but more than that – “The EBSN brings together, from across and beyond Europe, those who share an academic or creative interest in the broad field of Beat culture. (It) aims to be inclusive – a genuine community of scholars and students, writers and artists, which not only reaches out to all kinds of people who work on the Beats, but also actively invites their participation.”  Sponsors of an annual conference, this year’s conference, (de facto a “virtual” one), scheduled for October 2021, is broadly focused, on the present and looking to the future of the subject. For more on that tenth-anniversary conference – see here

Ed Sanders, courtesy Kurt Hemmer,  from back in November 2003, interviewed and performing his poetry, at Harper College – see here

Douglas Holder interviews Michael Seth Stewart, editor of the recently-published Yours Presently – The Selected Letters of John Wieners  

Here’s another cut from the new Marianne Faithfull CD (with Warren Ellis) – She Walks In Beauty – Marianne reads Keats‘ “La Belle Dame sans Merci”