Memorex for the Krakens: The Fall's Pulp Modernism

"The Fall extend and performatively critique that mode of high modernism by reversing the impersonation of working class accent, dialect and diction that, for example, Eliot performed in The Waste Land. Smith’s strategy involved aggressively retaining accent while using - in the domain of a supposedly popular entertainment form - highly arcane literary practices. In doing so, he laid waste the notion that intelligence, literary sophistication and artistic experimentalism are the exclusive preserve of the privileged and the formally educated. But Smith knew that aping master class morés presented all sorts of other dangers; it should never be a matter of proving (to the masters) that the white crap could be civilized. Perhaps all his writing was, from the start, an attempt to find a way out of that paradox which all working class aspirants face - the impossiblility of working class achievement..."

indulge your "ostalgia" with these GDR Souvenirs

"Generally speaking, these things are not valuables; the value they possess lies in their symbolic character. In the main, the materials from which they are made, and the subject matter expressed, reflect the national folklore and craft tradition of the country of origin. Presents from other Communist-ruled countries tend often to be of an unsubtle revolutionary nature, and may carry slogans in favour of peace and friendship, solidarity, or the triumph of socialism..."

The Simpsons Movie Trailer

Downtown trees

Nanaimo trees

great glimpse of Gilbert and George on the verge of a big retrospective--

"They expect Tate Modern to be equally swamped: people are mad for art just now - although, personally, he and Gilbert disdain gallery going.

Gilbert: 'We don't look at other artists.'

George: 'We don't socialise with other artists.'

Gilbert: 'We haven't been to a gallery in 30 years.'

George: 'We don't belong to the gallery-going class, you see.'

So they didn't see Velasquez at the National Gallery? George yelps, as if stung. 'Never! Why would I want to join a long line of middle-class twits? We want to see the world as it is, naked. We left the house the other day at 6.25am, and there in the street was a dead, flattened rat, and a crow feasting from it. That's an amazing image, isn't it? I shall remember it forever.' At the memory of this ravenous crow and its macabre breakfast, the pair of them sip their Nescafe contemplatively..."

new poems from Weldon (above) at Value Village Is Booby-Trapped!!

I'm giving a reading next month, here's the official announcement--

"OPEN TEXT READING SERIES #1
Sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts
& The Creative Writing Program at Capilano College

The Spring 2007 OPEN TEXT series at Capilano College begins on March 1st 2007 with a reading by Nanaimo poet Peter Culley, who will be reading from his new work, "The Age of Briggs & Stratton."

12:30
Cedar 136
Capilano College
2055 Purcell Way
North Vancouver

Peter Culley, poet and art critic, has published Twenty-one (Oolican 1980), Fruit Dots (Tsunami 1985), Natural History (Fissure 1986) The Climax Forest (Leech, 1995) and Hammertown (New Star, 2003). The untitled second installment of Hammertown is due from New Star in the fall of '08. His writing on artists such as Stan Douglas, Roy Arden, Kelly Wood and Geoffrey Farmer has appeared in numerous catalogues and journals. Culley resides in South Wellington, near Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island, BC.


L'Orphee

So much of L' Orphee
plays in the grim middle-aged way
poor Spicer never lived to see
that its like I know better;
ie Jean Marais is how we're
supposed to look on the inside
& those hoopleheads at the Cafe
rioting over Johnny Ray
as Mrs. Mills tinkles at 78
& the Hugo Boss bike cops drop their mitts--
what Martian could have predicted an Elvis
emerging from their thin Hugenot gruel?
Why do the youngsters blame me?
Don't their radios get the CBC?

-- from "The Age of Briggs & Stratton"


For info:
Roger Farr
rfarr@capcollege.bc.ca
604.986.1911 (2554)

http://capilanocreativewriting.blogspot.com


[Coming soon: Marie Annharte Baker, March 7th; Dorothy Trujillo Lusk, March 15th]"





~

via metafilter this google video of brilliant lexicographer/editor/writer/dressmaker Erin McKean telling us ten things we need to know about dictionaries...

long trailer for a new film about singer/songwriter Scott Walker

Gung hei fat choi!

Storminess brought out the sun today...

farewell Barbara McNair (1934-2007)

Il Maestro in America

"If Morricone has a signature theme, of all the great music he has created over the past 45 years, it is surely this amazing orchestral invention, combining haunting melodic beauty, savage lust and animal desperation. No one can listen to this and not picture Eli Wallach as Tuco, running among the crosses marking the graves of thousands of war dead, breathlessly seeking the one that marks the hiding place of a treasure beyond imagining.

That show-stopping sequence in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly astonishes everyone who sees that movie for the first time - or for the 31st. A "privileged moment" if ever there was one, it dares to stop the film's narrative for more than three minutes of blood-churning, temperature-raising pure style - a moment that, in case anyone hadn't noticed yet, announced the absolute arrival of both Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone. It is the defining moment of that film, and the first of several defining moments of Morricone's career. And as I watched and listened, I couldn't help thinking how far we have come from 1967, when so many critics considered The Good, the Bad and the Ugly grindhouse grunge from an upstart Italian who knew nothing about that uniquely American genre, the Western; and even those few who were sensitive enough to be struck by the music and the stylistic bravura still wondered why it was wasted on genre trash. Today, here we are, dressed up in our Saturday night finest, to hear the composer perform that music in a hallowed American concert venue. And rightly so. Morricone and his music always deserved this. It just took close to half a century for most people to recognize it..."

wonderful album covers from Jim Flora (via Metafilter)

Site formerly occupied by the old Nanaimo graveyard. At one point some of the gravestones were inset into a wall & what was left of the graveyard was turned into a small park, where Audrey Alexander Brown had the vision that resulted in "A Dryad in Nanaimo" in the 1930's, still by far the most popular poem to come out of Nanaimo. More recently the grove of trees was "accidentally" cut down by the city.

Can I Borrow a Feeling?

Happy Valentine's Day, beloved readers!

pleased to find a very nice fake-buckram three-volume 1981 version of Webster's Third at the Literacy Nanaimo bookstore yesterday for $12...

Site formerly occupied by Schwab's Meats, Cedar. That's the new Duke Point road crossing the Cedar River behind. Schwab's moved but then eventually closed. Very good, lightly smoked hams. I remember walking back from there with a wrapped hock in my jacket pocket to the barking accompaniment of a thousand confused but ravenous dogs...

Site formerly occupied by the entrance to the No. 1 Mine South Wellington. This is a couple of hundred yards from the house.

another website for a poet who died very young of TB, Edinburgh's Robert Fergusson (1750-74)--from "Auld Reekie" (nickname for his then-stinky home town)

"Auld Reikie, wale o' ilka Town
That Scotland kens beneath the Moon;
Where couthy Chiels at E'ening meet
Their bizzing Craigs and Mous to weet;
And blythly gar auld Care gae bye
Wi' blinkit and wi' bleering Eye:
O'er lang frae thee the Muse has been
Sae frisky on the Simmer's Green,
Whan Flowers and Gowans wont to glent
In bonny Blinks upo' the Bent;
But now the Leaves a Yellow die
Peel'd frae the Branches, quickly fly;
And now frae nouther Bush nor Brier
The spreckl'd Mavis greets your ear;
Nor bonny Blackbird Skims and Roves
To seek his Love in yonder Groves.
Then, Reikie, welcome! Thou canst charm
Unfleggit by the year's Alarm;
Not Boreas that sae snelly blows,
Dare here pap in his angry Nose:
Thanks to our Dads, whase biggin stands
A Shelter to surrounding Lands..."