IDRIS DAVIES( 6/1/05 -6/4/53) - Poet of the People

A poet I've long admired  is Idris Davies. born on  6 January 1905 at 16 Field Street, Rhymney, Monmouthshire, the Welsh -speaking son of colliery winderman Evan Davies and his wife Elizabeth Ann.  After leaving the local school at the age of fourteen, for the next seven years following his fathers footsteps he worked underground as a miner in the nearby Abertysswg and Rhymney Mardy Pits. After an accident in which he lost a finger at the coalface, and active participation in the General Strike of 1926, he became unemployed and spent the next four years following what he used to call 'the long and lonely self-tuition game'.  In the mines he'd mixed with people who were the most militant and cultivated in the world. and after attending lectures on Marxism at his local National Miners Institute and having become inspired by words , he decided to train to become a teacher,

He then entered Loughborough Training College and Nottingham University to qualify as a teacher, and eight years later gained the University of London diploma in history. Between 1932 and 1947 he taught in London County Council primary schools and in schools evacuated from wartime London to Pytchley, Northamptonshire, Meesden, Hertfordshire, Treherbert, Glamorganshire and Llandysul, Cardiganshire.

He dedicated his life to expressing his love of the people and to me was the only poet to cover significant events of the early 20th Century in the South Wales Valleys and the South Wales coalfield.

He started of writing in Welsh, but later began to write exclusively in the English language in order to reach the masses. Never particularly trendy or fashionable, he had a rather simple style, but as good as any protest singer writing today. I reckon the forbears of his poems were old street ballads and work songs.I regard him as an archetypal poet of the people, a man who happened to have the faculty of dreaming sensibly. An enthusiast of culture who was particularly inspired by the works of Shelley,  his chief inspiration were his people, working class unemployed Welsh miners reduced to begging in indifferent London streets.

His masterpiece was called " The Angry Summer ", a poem in fifty short sections about the general strike of 1926. His verses though simple become slices of reportage from the frontline.

It is a shame some of his shorter poems have been taken out of this context. Some critics saw him as a naive, simple minded, local propogandist poet. This does him a great disservice, he must not be forgotten, he must be celebrated, as he himself celebrated the grandeur and despair of working class resistance to capitalism in Britain between the wars.
He wrote about treachery, he presented pictures of harsh realities, expressing himself with colloquial instructios, he spoke of " the bread of life," "lifes long squalor " " words of your anger and your love and your pride." I see him as a precursor to many a modern folk troubadour. He had passion, he cared, a diary entry of his reads -

" I am a socialist. That is why I want as much beauty as possible in our everyday lives, and so I am an enemy of pseudo-poetry and pseudo-art of all kinds. Too many poets of the left are badly in need of instructions as to the difference between poetry and propoganda... These people should read William Blake on Imagination until they show signs of understanding him. Then the air will be clear again, and the land be, if not full of, fit for song?"

His revolt came out of direct experience, out of deep love for his people, yes he didn't do to many fancy verses, but he wrote to connect. He also had humour , he also had candour.

In 1947 he returned to his native Rhymney Valley to teach in a junior school at Cwmsyfiog, to read, broadcast, lecture and write until his death from  abdominal cancer at 7 Victoria Road, Rhymney on Easter Monday, 6 April 1953 aged only 48, but a red proletarian poet to his core.He was buried in Rhymney Public Cemetery.

Described as a voice of a generation . he remains  a continuing inspiration to forward thinking socially engaged poets, promoting their own views like Idris Davies, with populist devices.

He has  achieved popularity amongst millions in the wider world, thanks to Peter Seegers setting of Gwalia Desrta XV ( The Bells Of Rhymney ) which became a massive hit for "the Byrds" and has subsequently been covered by many others including "Robin Hitchcock" and " Bob Dylan".The following are a small selection of his better known verses. 

 
GWALIA DESERTA VIII
 

Do you remember 1926?

Do you remember 1926? That summer of soups and speeches,
The sunlight on the tidle wheels and the deserted crossings,
And the laughter and the cursing in the moonlight streets?
Do you remember 1926? The slogans and the penny concerts,
The jazz-bands and the moorland picnics,
And the slanderous tonques of famous cities?
Do you remember 1926? The great dream and the swift disaster,
The fanatic and the traitor, and more than all,
The bravery of the simple, faithful folk?
"Ay, ay, we remember 1926," said Dai and Shinkin,
As they stood on the kerb in Charing Cross Road,
"And we shall remember 1926 until our blood is dry."


Mrs Evans fach, you want butter again

Mrs.Evans fach, you want butter again.
How will you pay for it now, little woman
With your husband out on strike, and full
Of the fiery language? Ay, I know him,
His head is full of fire and brimstone
And a lot of palaver about communism,
And me, little Dan the Grocer
Depending so much on private enterprise.

What, depending on the miners and their
Money too? O yes, in a way, Mrs. Evans,
Come tomorrow, little woman, and I'll tell you then
What I have decided overnight.
Go home now and tell that rash red husband of yours
That your grocer cannot afford to go on strike
Or what would happen to the butter from Carmarthen?
Good day for now, Mrs.Evans fach.

MORNING COMES AGAIN

Morning comes again to wake the valleys
And hooters shriek and waggons move again,
And on the hills the heavy clouds hang low,
And warm unwilling thighs cral slowly
Out of half a million ruffled beds.
Mrs Jones' little shop will soon be open
To catch the kiddies on the way to school,
And the cemetery gates will chuckle to the cemetery-keeper,
And the Labour Exchange will meet the servant witha frown.

Morning comes again, the inevitable morning
Full of the threadbare jokes, the convenional crimes,
Morning comes again, a grey-eyed enemy of glamour,
With the sparrows twittering and gossips full of malice,
With the colourless backyards and the morning papers,
The unemployed scratching for coal on the tips,
The fat little grocer and his praise for Mr Chamberlain,
The vicar and his sharp short cough for Bernard Shaw,
And the coliery-manager's wife behind her pet geranium
Snubbing the whole damn lot!

HIGH SUMMER ON THE MOUNTAINS

High summer on the mountains
And on the clover leas,
And on the local sidings,
And on the rhubarb leaves.

Brass bands in all the valleys
Blaring defiant tunes,
Crowds, acclaiming carnival,
Prize pigs and wooden spoons.

Dust on shabby hedgerows
Behind the colliery wall,
Dust on rail and girder
And tram and prop and all.

High summer on the slag heaps
And on polluted steams,
And old men in the morning
Telling the town their dreams

CONSIDER FAMOUS MEN, Dai bach
Consider famous men, Dai bach, consider famous men,
All their slogans, all their deeds,
And folow the funerals to the grave.
Cosider the charlatans, the shepherds of the sheep!
Consider the grease upon the tonque, the hunger of the purse!
Consider the fury of the easy words,
The vulgarity behind the brass,
The dirty hands thstshook the air, that stained the sky!
Yet some there were who lived for you,
Who lay to die remembering you.

Mabon was your champion once upon a time
And his portrait's on the milk-jug yet.
The world has bred no champions for a long time now,
Except the boxing, tennis, golf, and Fascist kind,
And the kind that democracy breeds and feeds for Harringay,
And perhaps the world has grown too bitter or to wise
To breed a prophet or a poet ever again.


from GWALIA DESERTA VII

There are countless tons of rock above his head,
And gases wait in secret corners for a spark;
And his lamp shows dimly in the dust.
His leather belt is warm and moist with sweat,
And he crouches against the hanging coal,
And the pick swings to and fro,
And many beads of salty sweat play about his lips
And trickle down the blackened skin
To the hairy tangle on the chest.
The rats squeak and scamper among the unused props,
And the fungus waxes strong.

And Dai pauses and wipes his sticky brow,
And suddenly wonders if his baby
Shall grow up to crawl in the local Hell,
And if tomorrow's ticket will buy enough food for six days,
And for the Sabbath created for pulpits and bowler hats,
When the under-manager cleans a dirty tongue
And walks with the curate's maiden aunt to church...
Again the pick resumes the swing of toil,
And Dai forgets the world where merchants walk in morning streets
And where the great sun smiles on pithead and pub and church-steeple.

CAPEL CALVIN

There's holy holy people
They are in capel bach-
They don't like surpliced choirs
They don't like Sospan Fach,

They don't like Sunday concerts
Or women playing ball
They don't like William Parry much
Or Shakespeare at all.

They don't like beer or bishops,
Or pictures without texts,
They fon't like any other
Of the nonconformist sects.

And when they goto Heaven,
They won't like that too well,
For the music will be sweeter
Than the music played in Hell.

GWALIA DESERTA XV

O what can you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney.

Is there hope for the future?
Cry the brown bells of Merthyr.

Who made the mineowner?
Say the black bells of Rhondda.

And who robbed the miner?
Cry the grim bells of Blaina.

They will plunder will-nilly,
Say the bells of Carphilly.

They have fangs, they have teeth
Shout the loud bells of Neath.

To the south, things are sullen,
Say the pink bells of Brecon.

Even God is uneasy,
Say the moist bells of Swansea.

Put the vandals in court
Cry the bells of Newport.

All would be well if-if-if-
Say the green bells of Cardiff.

Why so worried, sisters, why
Sing the silver bells of Wye.

FURTHER READING

The cost of strangeness/ essays on the English Poets of Wales
- Anthony Conran, GOMER 1982

Idris Davies - Collected Poems GOMER PRESS 1972

GWALIA DESERTA (1938)

"O What can you give me?"- Nigel Jenkins on Idris Davies/ Poetry Wales volume 40 number 4

The Dragon has two tongues - Glyn Jones LONDON 1968

CUT UPs

The hope of spring,
don't run past
its perplexities
drift towards its absorbed reflections,
lift up our hands
we still have time,
some have departed
some have just arrived,
cupid's funny looking glance
it's sowing done
for another year,
all these years,
I have wondered
I have whispered back
i'm waiting now
for someone to knock back,
I had a dream last night
I was not afraid
it is time now to sing.
contemplation like a door
that never slams shut.

PUNK AM BYTH

CLIFFORD HARPER - ARTIST OF FREEDOM

Gil Scott- Heron - Ladies and Gentlemen the Godfather of Rap is Back!

Gil Scott-Heron is back, next week sees the release of his long awaited new album,
" I'm new here " on independent label XL recordings. Already being cited as a possible contender for record of the year, on all accounts it's going to be a blinder. His first record for thirteen years, I feel it will have been worth the wait.
This legendary poet and political activist had been charting the injustices and cruelty of American society for years, raging against its apparent hypocricy, the irony being, it was this very same system that turned on him, culminating in jail sentences and stretches due to simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, found with too much gear in his pockets, labelled and spat out. Sure he had problems, but when this man needed help, what did they do? They locked him up, that was really going to cure him, no I don't think so, just another sad reflection of a cold stinkin' rotten system.
Anyway in my opinion a brave, charismatic figure, he was seen as a precursor to many of hip hop and rap. The Godfather.
I was lucky to be able to see him perform on a number of occassions in the late nineteen eighties, once at Glastonbury, can't remember the correct year, perhaps someone could remind me, and 3 times more in London at C.N.D and anti apartheid rallies one I think in Hyde Park? My memory has got pretty obliterated over the years.
He never stood on fences, his language and honesty apparent to all who witnessed him. Apparently the era I saw him perform, his talent was on the wain, but I did not notice, I did not care, all I remember was a powerful, incendiary, sweet , soulful, smoky voice , gently rallying us against the cruelty of the world. He became a bit of a hero to me, so it was sad not to have him around for a while, but the thing is, for some of us he never did go away. His songs of freedom lifting us through our sombre histories, stirring and always inspiring.His sad songs and his melancohly somehow reaching and getting through.
Well lets hope this time around he finally confronts some of his demons, and gets the success he really deserves as a truly original lyrical genius. In the meantime I thought I'd quickly post some of my favourite verses by this mercurial figure. Let his gritty words of truth sing out. Peace brothers and sisters our time is now

PAINT IT BLACK

Picture a man of nearly thirty
who seems twice as old with clothes torn and
dirty.
Give him a job shining shoes
or cleaning out toilets with bus station crews.
Give him six children with nothing to eat.
Expose them to life on a ghetto sreet.
Tie an old rag around his wifes's head and
have her pregnant and lying in bed.
Stuff them all in a Harlem House.
Then tell them how bad things are down South.

SPEED KILLS

Speed on by. Don't seem to have the time.
What about this life, what about this life
Can I call mine?
Issues in the paper, But somehow i'm not concerned.
Seems I've been this way before, but I never learn.
Children slowly turn.

Time sped gone. We didn't see it go.
Now what do we have, now what do we have
That we can show?
Friends you swore you'd never lose melted from your style
Down the tunnels of your youth and now you never smile.
Children learn to smile.


SPIRITS

The world spins around us
we search for a balance
The secrets lie in darkness and light
Our lives are like treasures
Unveiled as perfection
A gift to us from spirits on high
Equator. Divider. Equate us. Combine us.
To seek the answers beyond our sight...

I THINK I'LL CALL IT MORNING

I'm gonna take myself a piece of sunshine
and paint it all over my sky.
Be no rain. Be no rain.
I'm gonna take the song from every bird
and make them sing it just for me.
Be no rain.
And I think I'll call it morning from now on.
Why should I survive on sadness
convince myself I've gotta be alone?
Why should I subscribe to this world's
madness
Knowing that I've got to live on?

I think I'll call it morning from now on.
I'm gonna take myself a piece of sunshine
and paint it all over my sky.
Be no rain. Be no rain.
I'm gonna take the song from every bird
and make them sing it just for me.
Why should I hang my head?
Why should I let tears fall from my eyes
when I've seen everything there is to see
and I know that there ain't no sense in crying!
I know that there ain't no sense in crying!
I think I'll call it morning from now on.

BEGINNINGS ( The First Minute of a New Day )

We're sliding through completly new
beginnings.
Ww're searching out our every doubt
and winning.
We want to be free
and yet we have no idea
why we are struggling here
faced with our every fear
just to survive.

We've heard the sound and come around
to listening.
We've touched the vibes time after time
insisting that we know what life means;
still we can't break away
from dues we've got to pay
we hope will somehow say
that we're alive

BILLY GREEN IS DEAD

"The economy's in an uproar,
the whole damn country's in the red,
taxi fares is goin' up... What?
You say Billy Green is dead?"
"The government can't decide on busin'
Or at least that's what they said.
Yeah, I heard when you tol' me,
You said Billy Green is dead."
"But let me tell you 'bout these hotpants
that this big-legged sista wore
when I partied with the frat boys.
You say Billy took an overdose?"
"Well now, junkies will be junkies,
But did you see Gunsmoke las' night?
Man they had themselves a shootout
an' folks wuz dyin' left and right!
At the end when Matt was cornered
I had damn near give up hope...
Why did you keep on interruptin' me?
You say my son is takin' dope?
Call a lawyer! Call a doctor!
What you mean I shouldn't scream?
My only son is on narcotics,
should I stand here like I'm pleased?"
Is that familiar anybody?
Check out what's inside your head,
because it never seems to matter
when it's Billy Green who's dead.

WHEN YOUR GIRLFRIEND HAS A BETTER FRIEND

Let me give you something straight up my friend
Your whole life can turn super funky
And put a too large foot in your rear end
if you're digging a dame who's a junky.

I'm sure I don't need to take you back down the road
And retell all the details about smack
But I believe me it's still out there breaking the codes
And its ten times worse than cheeba or crack.

And "Fuck! How in the world did we come to be friendly?"
And all them other bullshit cliches
And you don't know what you'da done if you'da been me
Just be glad that there wasn't no fuckin way.

Okay then, just for a minute let's both speculate
And since you would be me, I would be you
So now as you (I) can get puffed up and be fuckin great
About what I (meaning you) should or shouldn't do.

I can hear it all nw knowing just what you'd say
About not hangin' out in the streets
And immediately we know there aint no f'n way
'Cause if it wasm.t no hangin' out it wasn't me.
This is gonna sound weak and it ain't no excuse
But it's been years since I'd been around scag
And acting sel-righteous is the quickest way to lose
And to tell you the truth it's a drag

Remembering the shivers and quivers and shakes
Starts to bring the butterflies back to your gut
But junkies don't care what you think are mistakes
She says "Are you givin' up the money or what?"

You can climb in the pulpit for a sermon or two
Keep your money and watch while she packs
But you know more than precisely what she's gonna do
Go for twenty somewhere lying on her back

Or end up in an alley trying to turn a quick trick
Pushers don't care how the money is made
And when the addict starts getting uptight for a fix
They say "Fuck gonorrhea and fuck A.I.D.S!"

In theend it ain't theories or jive-ass philosophy
Or what the papers or politicians think
And nobody needs no more heroin (metadone) sociology
While the speaker pours himself another drink.

So you're right. Congratulations on what was weak about me
I admit I lok like somebody's flunky
But right ain't always the best thing to be
When the girl that you love is a junky.

THE WORLD

The world!
Planet Earth; third from the Sun of a gun, 360 degrees.
And as the new worlds emerge
stay alert. Stay aware.
Watch the Eagle! Watch the Bear!
Earthquaking, foundation shaking,
bias breaking, new day making change.
Accumulating, liberating, educating, stimulating change!
Tomorrow was born yesterday.
From insde the rib or people cage
the era of our firdt blood stage was blotted or erased
or TV screened r defaced.
Remember there's a revolution going in in the world.
One blood of the early morning
revolves to the one idea of our tomorrow.
Homeboy, hold on!
Now more than ever all the family must come together.
Ideas of freedom and harmony, great civilizations
yesterday brought today will bring tomorrow.
We must be about
earthquaking, liberating, investigating
and new day making change in
thw world.

Allen Ginsberg's - Wales Visitation

Llanthoney Valley


... as I read William Blake
In innocence
That day I heard Blake's voice.
I say I heard Blake's voice...
produced by the reconstruction of syllables on
the printed page in iron rhythyms
that rose to my year in a
voice...

- Allen Ginsberg

Way back when,when acid was good in the year of my birth 1967 and flower children shackled their clothes and inhibitions, an iconic moment occurred in the Welsh cultural underground. Allen Ginsberg came to visit Wales to drop some acid. He had visited london for the "dialectcs Liberation Conference ", alongside R.D Laing, Stokely Carmichael and an anthropologist called Geoffrey Bateson, a guy like Ginsberg into far out ideas, holistic ideas, organic and otherwise.
Anyway Ginsberg came down to Wales with his publisher Tom Maschler, to spend some time at his country cottage in the LLanthong Valley in the Black Mountains near to Capel-y- Ffin , long a place of inspiration to writers and artists. A magical part of Wales, I visit about once a year to recharge my batteries, unwind, relax, chill out and look for some meaning in these turbulent times, change a lightbulb in my head so to speak.
Anyway along the way Ginsberg and his companions stopped to tour the ruins of Tintern Abbey, the sight of which put Ginsberg in an even more relaxed contemplative mood. This was to be the first time he had taken acid since a visit to see his friend, the poet, Ferlinghetti in Late 1965, on his trip he noted details that he said later were " the human things that everybody has seen in nature " that people seldom stopped to recognise and appreciate.
Wales Visitation was his happy accident, with acid he was able to trust his mind, leading to poetry of pure thought, a step into the doors of perception and like his hero William Blake he was able to walk down the hills of eternity itself. This poem was all about his acid trip with nature - total nature. It involved a lot of sitting round cross legged under trees for hours, projecting and plasmecizing his breaths into the cosmos, he compares the heavens and the air and vibes over the valley to an ocean tide slowly moving. He compared the breath that came out of his body with the air that soared through the trees.
It's one of Ginsberg's undoubtedly stronger poems, influenced strongly by the Romantic tradition, he came to a realization " that me making noise as poetry was no different from the wind making noise in the branches. It was just as natural. It was a very important point. The fact that there were thoughts flowing through the mind is as much of a natural object as is the milky way floating over the isle of Skye. So, for the first time, I didn't have to feel guilt or psychological conflict about writing while I was high. Also for the first time I was able to exteriorize my attention instead of dwelling n the inner images and symbols and keeping my eyes closed." This was not his last Acid trip but it was his first trip where there were no heavy judgements to be made. In the past he had been plainly provocative but now he had finally embraced an objectivistss viewpoint. All he had to do was see what was in fact in front of him without any subjective paranoia. Perhaps because of this his later poetry got a little lazier ,he perhaps tried to hard, his mind unable to simply turn of and float gently into natures spontaneity, he was still capable of magic, and flowing beautiful verse, but the layering of detail was never captured quite as magnificently than on Wales Visitation, the holy sacrament had worked its magic. He was just another man in a million seeking out a Welsh acid universe , far out man. Time is eternity, eternity is time, lets not get to hung up. Lets rewind, stop the world, release the anxiety, lets go back in time, sweet nostalgia guided by a sweeter medicine.

WALES VISITATION

White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow
Trees moving in rivers of wind
The clouds arise
as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist
above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed
along a green crag
glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine-

Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught
but what seen by one man in a vale in Albion,
of the folk, whose physical sciences end in Ecology,
the wisdom of earthly relations,
of mouths & eyes interknit ten centuries visible
orchards of mind language manifest human,
of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry
flowering above sister grass-daisies' pink tiny
bloomlets angelic as lightbulbs-

Remember 160 miles from London's symmetrical thorned tower
& network of TV pictures flashing bearded your Self
the lambs on the tree-nooked hillside this day bleating
heard in Blake's old ear, & the silent thought of Wordsworth in eld
Stillness
clouds passing through skeleton arches of Tintern Abbey-
Bard Nameless as the Vast, babble to Vastness!

All the valley quivered, one extended motion, wind
undulating on mossy hills
a giant wash that sank white fog delicately down red runnels
on the mountainside
whose leaf-branch tendrils moved asway
in granitic undertow down-
and lifted the floating Nebulous upward, and lifted the arms of the trees
and lifted the grasses an instant in balance
and lifted the lambs to hold still
and lifted the green of the hill, in one solemn wave

A solid mass of Heaven, mist-infused, ebs thru the vale,
a wavelet of Immensity, lapping gigantic through Llanthony Valley,
the length of all England, valley upon valley under Heaven's ocean
tonned with cloud-hang,
-Heaven balanced on a grassblade.
Roar of the mountain wind slow, sigh of the body,
One Being on the mountainside stirring gently
Exquisite scales trembling everywhere in balance,
one motion thru the cloudy sky-floor shifting on the million feet of
daisies
one Majesty the motion that stirred wet grass quivering
to the farthest tendril of white fog poured down
through shivering flowers on themountain's head-

No imperfection in the budded mountain,
Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,
daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,
grass shimmers green
sheep speckle the mountainside, revolving their jaws with empty eyes,
horses dance in the warm rain,
tree-lined canals network live farmland,
blueberries fringe stone walls on hawthorn'd hills,
pheasants croak on meadows haired with fern-

Out, out on the hillside, into the ocean sound, into delicate gusts of wet
air,
Fall on the ground, O great Wetness, O Mother, No harm on your body!
Stare close, no imperfection in the grass,
each flower Buddha-eye, repeating the story,
myriad-formed-
Kneel before the foxglove raising green buds, mauve bells drooped
doubled down the stem trembling antennae,
& look in the eyes of the branded lambs that stare
breathing stockstill under dripping hawthorn-
I lay down mixing my beardwith the wet hair of the mountainside,
smelling the brown vagina-moist ground, harmless,
tasting the violet thistle-hair, sweetness-
One being so balanced, so vast, that its softest breath
moves every floweret in the stillness of thevalley floor,
trembles lamb-hair hung gossamer rain-beaded in the grass,
lifts trees on their roots, birds in the great draught
hiding their strength in the rain, bearing same weight,

Groan thru breast and neck, a great Oh! to earth heart
Calling our Prescence together
The great secret is no secret
Senses fit the winds,
Visible is visible,
rain-mist curtains wave through the bearded vale,
gray atoms wet the wind's kabbala
Crosslegged on a rock in dusk rain,
rubber booted in soft grass, mind moveless,
breath trembles in white daisies by the roadside,
Heaven breath and my own symmetric
Airs wavering thru antlered green fern
drawn in my navel, same breath as breathes thru Capel-Y-Ffn,
Sounds of Aleph and Aum
through forests of gristle,
my skull and Lord Hereford's Knob equal,
All Albion one.

What did I notice? Particulars! The
vision of the great One is myriad-
smoke curls upward from ashtray,
house fire burned low,
The night, still wet & moody black heaven
starless
upward in motion with wet wind.


July 29, 1967 (LSD)-August 3, 1967 (London)



FURTHER READING :-

The Visionary Poetry of Allen Ginsberg - Paul Portuges
Ross-Erikson 1978

Ginsberg:a biography,- Barry Miles
Virgin 2001 pgs 393-394

Dharma Lion: a biography of Allen Ginsberg _ Michael Schumacher
St Martins Press 1992 

Feeling the ripeness of the moment, Allen Ginsberg requests his host William F. Buckley on 'Firing Line' to allow him to read a poem. When Bill allows this, Allen unleashes ' Wales Visitation '....

JAMIE REID - Peace is Tough

St Dwynwens day - Welsh Patron Saint of Lovers

Today is St Dwynwens day. She lived in the fifth century and was one of the prettiest of Brychan Brycheinions 24 daugters. She fell in love with a prince called Maelon Dafodil unfortunately her father had arranged that she marry someone else.Here is a short piece about her interesting life.

'At Llanddwyn in Anglesey there was once the well of St Dwynwen, revered by the islands romatics, St Dwynwen became known as the Welsh patron saint of lovers - the Celtic Aphrodite.
In a dream there came to her a vision. It told of a magic potion which would dispel all her thoughts of love. So from the dells of Newborough Forest she gathered rare herbs and mixed them with her lover's tears and beads of dew from the petals of the snapdragon. Together , she and herlover drank the potion, and Dwynwen drifted into forgetfulness while ythe young prince turned into a pillar of stone.
A while later a vision came to Dwynwen and she was granted three wishes.She restored Maelon from his granite tomb and wished also to be rescued from the tangles of love. Her final wish was that all faithful lovers should have their dreams fulfilled.
So legend has it , that on the ground where her lover had once stood , a pool of fresh water appeared. In time a wall was built around it and it became the lovers' well.
Many years ago there was a young philanderer of Cerig Mawr who admired a fisherman's daughter from LLandwyn. Often during the summer evenings they would stroll together along the cliff paths and gaze at the sunset over Caernarfon Bay.
Although he was a good-looking young man with a winsome smile, she had heard stories of his philandering from as far north as Llangefni.
One evening when they were out walking they lingered a while at the well of St Dwynwen. There he told her of its mystic powers, and her eyes sparkled with interest.
" Sometimes, when you are alone and all is quiet, you can hear a voice calling from the darkness," he began.
Then he unfolded one of the mysteries of Lovers' Well. He lowered his voice in reverence, and she tingled all over with excitement.
"If the name of a girl's lover is called into the cavern of the well," he told her, " and if his love is true, then after a while, his name will echo three times from below." But he warned, the test of fidelity would have to be performed at the witching hour on mid-summer's eve.
June wore on until, at last, mid-summer's day dawned. Eagerly the fisherman's daughter waited for the sunset. And, as midnight approached, she stole along the paths with a lantern to light her way.
The well of St Dwynwen stood before her, silent as a grave. Her heart was beating fast as she leaned over the low stone wall and looked down into the darkness.
"Gwil....ym," she called into the cavern, for Gwilym was the name of the lover, the woodman of Cerig Mawr.
She listened. Moments passed. Then, from the depths of the well, a voice came back, resonant, haunting.
"Gwil...ymmm - Gwil...ymmm - Gwil...ymmm."
The girl gasped at the wonder of it all. She called again, and three times the echo drifted back to her. Fascinated, she peered closer into the well, and the glow of her lamp showed someone hiding there. It was Gwilym who clung to the wall in the cavern of the well.
With a startled cry the girl dropped the lantern over the wall and ran of home. As Gwilym looked up he saw a ball of flame come hurtling toward him. He lost his footing and went tumbling into the chill water of St Dwynwen's well.
No one remember how long he struggled there, or who answered his cries for help. But folk say that his escape at lovers' Well brought an end to his days of philandering.
Today the well is choked with sand, and its votaries are few. But sometimes, when hearts are near to breaking, love-lorn girls moon at its ruined walls.'

FROM
Tales of North Wales ; Ken Radford (1982)


THE LOVER'S SHIRT

As I was washing under a span
of the bridge of Cardigan
and in my hand my lover's shirt
with a golden beetle to drub the dirt,
a man came to me on a steed,
broad in shoulder, proud in speed,
and he asked me if I'd sell
the shirt of the lad I love so well.
But said I wouldn't sell
for a hundred pounds and packs as well,
nor if the grass of two ridges were deep
in wethers and the whitest sheep,
nor if two hay meadows were choked
with oxen which were ready yoked,
nor if St David's nave were filled
with herbs all pressed but not distilled.
Not even for all that would I sell
the shirt of the lad I love so well

ANONYMOUS, 16th century
trans.Gwyn Williams

Andre Breton - (1896 -1966) Surreallism and Painting

I have been impressed by the surrealists and their ability too confront what we take for granted in the name of art,for a while now,their freedom for me offers immediacy with their imagination and dazzling flair and their anarchistic search for freedom in art.
Who were these surrealists . I have often been blindingly confused between them and the dadaists, what was their difference, was it as simple as pure ideology. Can they be seperated or were they like two peas in the same pod? Both bent on confusion, trying to destroy all art forms that came before them.Sometimes all art leads too another, all gives life, indiscipline verses the opposite - do we dream in color or is it totally by chance! Seekers of truth in search of liberty.
Chief protaganist among the surrealists was Andre Breton,, a poet and essayist, who also played an important role in early Dadaist publications and manifestations in Paris. In 1921 he broke away from the Paris Dadaists and in 1924 he published the first Surrealist Manifesto, and followed this with a second one in 1924. His work stimulated the next generation on questions of contemprary art, literature , aesthetics and taste. The supreme incarnation of orthodox surrealism and the jealous guardian of its sanctuary.
The following is reprinted from " Le Surrealisme et La Peinture, 1927.


"The eye exists in a natural state. The marvels of the earth seen from one hundred feet above, the marvels of the sea from hundred feet below, can call as witness only the wid eye which relates all colour to the rainbow. It presides over the conventional exchange of signals apparently required for the navigation of the mind. But who will set up the scale of vision? There are those things which I have already seen many times, and which others likewise tell me they have seen, things I think I can recognise whether or not they matter to me -for example, the facade of the Paris Opera, a horse, the horizon;there are those things which I have rarely seen and have not always chosen to forget ( or not to forget, whichever the case may be); there are those things which having gazed at them in vain, I never dare to see, which are all the things which others have seen and say they have seen, and which they can or cannot make me see by suggestion; there are also those things which I see differently from everyone else, and those things which I am beginning to see but are not visible. And that is not all.
Corresponding to thes varying degrees of sensation are spiritual realizations so precise and distinct as to permit mr to grant plastic expression an importance which I shall always deny to musical expression, which is the most profoundly confusing of all. In fact, auditory images are inferior to visual images not only in clarity but in precision, and , with all due respect to some megalomanics , they do not serve to strengthen the idea of human grandeur. So may night continue to fall upon the orchestra, and may I, who am still seeking something from the world, be left to my silent contemplation, with my eyes open or closed, in broad daylight.
Now I confess that I have passed like a madman through the slippery halls of museums. But I am not the only one. In spite of some marvellous glances thrown to me by woman similar in every way to those of today, I have not for an instant been fooled by what those subterranean and immovable walls had to offer me of the unknown. Without remorse I abandond some charming suppliants. There were too many stages at once upon which I felt no urge to act. Passing by all those religious compositions, all those rustic allegories, I irresistibly lost the sense of my own role. Outside, the street prepared a thousand more real enchantments for me. I am not to blame if I cannot resist a profound lassitude when confrontrd by the interminable parade of rivals for the colossal Prix de Rome in which nothing, neither the subject nor the manner in which it is treated, remains optional.
I do no mean to say that no emotion can be extricated from a painting of " Leda ", that an agonising sun cannot set in a scene of Roman Palaces, or even that it is impossible to impart some resemblance of eternal morality to the illustration of a fable as ridiculous as " Death and the Woodcutter". I think only that genius gains nothing from following these beaten paths and indirect routes. At least such stakes are fruitless. Nothing is more dangerous to to take libeties with than liberty.
But once we have passed the stage of emotion for emotion's sake, remember that for us in this day and age it is reality itself which is at stake. How can we be expected to content ourselves with the fugitive perplexity brought to us by such and such a work of art? There is not one work of art which holds up against our integral primitivism in this respect.When I know where the terrible struggle within me between living and likely to live will end, when I have lost all hope of enlarging the scope of reality - up to now completely confined - to stupefying proportios ( by my own measure ), when my imagination retires within itself and coincides only with my memory, I shall gladly grant myself, like the others, a few relative satisfactions. I shall go over to the "embellishers". I shall forgive them. But not before!

ARTISTIC GENESIS AND PERSPECTIVE OF SURREALISM.

Early in 1925, several months after the publication of the first surrealist Manifesto and several years after that of the first surrealist texts ,the possibility of a painting which could satisfy surrealist demands demands was still being discussed.While some denied that a surrealist painting could exist, others were inclined to think that it could be found in embryonic form in certain recent works, or even that it existed already. Aside from whatever it might have owed at this time to Chirico in the direction of dream, to Duchamp in the acceptance of chance, to Arp , to Man Ray in his photographic "Rayograms", to Klee in the direction of (partial) automatism, we can easily see now that surrealism was already in full force in the work of Max Ernst. In fact, surrealism found itself immediately in his 1920 collages, which expressed an absolutely virgin proposition of visual organzation, corresponding to what Lautreamont and Rimbaud had sought in poetry. I remember the emotion - never again experienced in the same way - which seized Tzara , Aragon, Soupault and myself at their discovery; I happened to be at Picabia's when they arrived from Cologne. The external object had broken with its customary surroundings, its component parts were somehow emancipated from the object in such a way as to set up entirely new relationships with other elements, escaping from the principle of reality while still drawing upon the real plain ( and overthrowing the idea of correspondence). Guided by the prodigious rays which he was the first to make visible, Max Ernst in his first canvases agreed to take great risks. Each one is dependent to a minimum upon the others, and the general effect is in response to the same conception as the poems written by Apollinaire from 1913 to the war, each of which carries the weight of an event in itself. Later, when he arrived at some assurances of the profound meaning of his course and the means of its realization, Max Ernst still did not swerve from the urgent necessity of forever " finding something new", as Baudelaire put it. His work - as its power has steadily increased over these last twenty years - has no equivalent from the point of view of will.
Automatism, inherited from the mediums, remains one of the two major trends of surrealism. Since it has excited and still excites the most violent polemics, it is not too late to attemopt tp penetrate a little further into its function and to try to put across a decisive argument in its favour. In terms of modern psychlogical research, we know that we have been led to compare the construction of a bird's ' nest to the beginning of a melody which tends towards a certain characteristic conclusion. A melody imposes its own structure, in as much as we distinguish ( in spite of their interference) the sounds that belong to it and those that are foreign to it, and for all that is percieved by its own quality, which is totally different from the sum of its component qualities. I maintain that graphic as well as verbal automatism - without damage to the profound individual tensions which it is capable of manifesting and to some extent of resolving - is the only mode of expression which fully satisfies the eye or ear by achieving rhythmic unity ( just as recognisable in the automatic drawing and text as in the melody or the nest). It is only structure that responds to the non-distinction - better and better established - between sentient and intellect functions, which is why it alone can equally satisfy the mind. And I agrre that automatism can enter into composition, in painting as in poetry, with certain premeditated intentions; but there is a great risk of departing from surrealism if the automatism ceases to flow underground.A work cannot be considered surrealist unless the artist strains to reach the total psychological scope of which consciousness is onl a small part. Freud has shown that their prevails at this " unfathomable " depth a total abscence of cotradiction, a new nmobility of the emotional blocks caused by repression, a timelessness and a substitution of psychic reality for external reality, all subject to the principle of pleasure alone. Automatism leads straight to this region. The other route offered to surrealism, the so-called " trompe l'oeil' ( wherin lies its weakness ) fixation on dream images, has been confirmed by experience to be far less safe, and even very susceptible to risks of being led astray.
When Dali introduced himself to surrealism in 1929, nothing strictly personal had been augured by his previous work. On the the theoretical plane he proceeded yo change that by means of borrowing and juxtapositions, the most striking rxample of which is the amalgam - under the name of " paranoic critical activity " - of the lessons of Piero di Cosimo and Leonardo da Vinci ( absorbing oneself in the contemplation of a blob of spittle or an old wall until the eye begins to percieve a second world, which can be equally well revealed by painting), and of methods - along the lines of " frottage " - already recommended by Max Ernst to " intensify the irritability of the mental Faculties". In spite of an undeniably ingenuity in his staging, Dali's venture, ill served by an ultra-retrograde technigue and discredited by a cynical indifference regarding ways of imposing himself on the public, has shown signs of panic for a long time now and has only been salvaged momentarily by the organization of its own vulgarities. Today it flounders in academicism -an academicism declared classicism on its own authority alone - and in any case it has held no interest at all for surrealism since 1936.

£ S D ( love , sex, death pounds, shillings, pence lysergic acid) Alexander Trocchi

Iron leaves glint,
where winds broke in,
red rot in rain:
my death is lead,
cloven by slow,
radium-sharp shark-fin.

In my soft tree-bole
bleeds pearl,
spreads spoor
of wee, unhungering,
ceaseless vole.

An end to blue and green
and tune;
no more delight
in the black cave
of yr feminine night:

the poor silt of years is thin to spread...
after I am dead, " Margarine,"
it will be said
"he mistook it for butter."

An end to the sun
moon, sky,
no young girl now will lie
in hot halter of a pregnancy.
...young witches,
old bitches,
silvered resilience
of stagelit thighs,
hot, husky cries,
mascareaed of highs,
excruciatingly artificial.

Few
virtues,
threadbare ascription...
clues: blues
cruise
unpaid dues;
... dropped Plato
like a hot potato;
wouldn't work:
hasish of the Turk...

There was a door between him and himself.
Out, like the biff-ball
from the bat,
the limit taut,
feet sunk in cement,
tripped over himself,
a closing hinge:
himself something
upon which he couldn't impinge.

REPRINTED FROM " Children of Albion, Poetry of the Underground in Britain, ed Michael Horowitz , 1969


ALEXANDER TROCCHI, PUBLIC JUNKIE, PRIE POUR NOUS - Leonard Cohen.


Who is purer
more simple than you?
Priests play poker with the burghers,
police in underwear
leave crime at the office,
our poets work bankers' hours
retire to wives and fame-reports.
The spike flashes in your blood p
permanent as a silver lighthouse.

I'm apt to loaf
in a coma of newspapers,
avoid the second-hand bodies
which crie to be cataloqued.
I dream I'm
a divine right Prime Minister,
I abandon plans for bloodshed in Canada,
I accept an O.B.E.

Under hard lights
with doctor's instruments
you are at work
in the bathrooms of the City,
changing the Law.

I tend to get distracted
by hydrogen bombs,
by Uncle's disapproval
of my treachery
to the men's clothing industry.
I find myself
believing public clocks,
taking advice
from the Dachau generation.

The spike hunts
constant as a compass
You smile like a Navajo
discovering American oil on his official slum wilderness,
a surprise every half hour,

I'm afraid I sometimes forget
my lady's pretty little blonde package
is an amateur time-bomb
set to fizzle in my middl-age.
I forget the Ice Cap, the pea-minds,
the heaps of expensive teeth.
You don a false nose
line up twice for the Demerol dole;
you set yourself on the steps of the White House
you try to shoot the big arms
of the Lincoln Memorial;
you spy on scientists,
stumble on a cure for scabies;
you drop pamhlets from a stolen jet:
" The Truth about Junk";
you pirate a national tv commercial
shove your face against
the window of the living- room
insist that healthy skin is grey.

A little bood in the sink
Red cog-wheels
shaken from your arm
punctured inflamed
like a road map showing cities
over 10,000 pop.

Your arms tell me
you have been reaching into the coke machine
for strawberries,
you have been humping the thorny crucifix
you have been piloting Mickey Mouse balloons
through the briar patch,
you have been digging for grins in the tooth-pile.

Bonnie Queen Alex Eludes Montreal Houds
Famous Local Love Scribe Implicated

You purity drives me to work.
I must get back to lust and microscopes,


REPRINTED FROM " Flowers for Hitler ", Leonard Cohen , Mclelland and Stuart, Toronto 1964.