The recent presentation and digitalization of the invaluable Eric Mottram Archives provides the source of today’s post, Allen reading in Waterstone’s Bookshop in London on December 9, 1994.
Listen and enjoy.
AG: Well, I’ll begin as we did last night at St James’ Church with Blake. and I don’t know how many here were at the Church. Anybody? I’ll try and read other poems than I read at St James and sing other songs. The Blake Song is… I’ve forgot the title but from Songs of Innocence. [Editorial note, no, Songs of Experience] Can you hear me clearly? Is it loud enough in the back? – “A flower was offered to me.”….”and her thorns were my only delight’. That was “My Pretty Rose Tree” (by) William Blake
and now a Buddhist country and western – Gospel Noble Truths. – When I’m playing this can you hear the words?) (“Born in this world…”…”Die when you die’)
Now I’ll read poems from 1986 to the present – A little prose-poem, character-sketch (and also an imitation of the prose-poetry of a young Canadian poet I met – “The young kid, horror buff, monster Commissar, ghoul connoisseur, attic bedroom postered with violet skulls, cigarette butts on the floor.. shining eyes I love you too”
“I went to the movie of life”, a longer poem (It was a little long for me to read last night, besides, it was a little more intimate space). This is April 30, 1987, 4.30-6.25 a.m, dream –
“I went to the movie of life – ” In the mud, in the night, In Mississippi Delta Roads/ outside Clarksdale I slogged along. Lights flashed… …1519 “…I woke in bed/ returned at dawn New York wood-slatted venetian blinds over the windows on E 12th St in my white painted room”
So there are a number of poems in this book which are a little dream visions or… another, derived from dream – “Grandmother Earth’s Song” (I started down Capitol Hill side… (includes acapella singing_…. “When dull roots write Laws/ Jerusalem to New York..”..:”Throw me in Walnut Creek/I’ll vomit Pacific Ocean.) … “Anything comes to mind’s the right politics to ruin Police State”
“A Thief Stole This Poem” (“These days steal everything/ People steal your wallet, your watch….”… “…steal your universe”)
“Lunchtime” – (“Birds chirp in the brick backyard… “… “Senior Citizen ready for next week’s angiogram.”)
“Violent Collaboration” (“I had an old friend who sang me a song his mother had taught him from back from the 20s maybe I never located where it originally came from but it was “Violate me in violent time in the vilest way that you know/Ruin me, ravage me, utterly savage me/on me no mercy bestow”). So we did a parody of it..me and.. – (“Violate me/in violet times/the vilest way you know..” … “Double me over/in summertime clover/then hose me down w/ your stud” )
“Charnel Ground”. “..rugged and raw situations and having accepted them as part of your home ground, then some spark of sympathy or compassion could take place. You are not in a hurry to leave such a place immediately..You would like to face the facts, realities of that particular world” This was an epitaph on a commentary on The Sadhana of Mahamudra. Mahamudra ultimately comes down in the iconography as follows. ‘Things are symbols of themselves .So the commentary is by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan lama and he wrote (talking about the whole world actually as a charnel ground – things rise, flowers decay and other things rise while flowers decay.
I guess the last poem…an odd one, a sort of dream vision again. “Fun House Antique Store – (“I’d been motoring through States &/ stopped at a country antique store…”…”..and so we left to go, our party/ on its way to the postmodern Capital”)
I’ll end with an older song Father Death Blues
