Toryspotting

Tristan Tzara ( 4/4/1896 -25/12/63) Radical Dadaist Poet of vivid imagination.

"  The individual . .  .  lives poetry every moment  that he affirms his existence. The poetic image itself, as much as experience, is not only a product of reason and imagination, it is valid only if it has been lived. Every creation is therefore, for the poet, an aggressive  affirmation of his consciousness."

-Tristan Tzara:- Dialectics of Poetry, 1946 

Tristan Tzara was a writer for whom artistic and political revolution were one and the same. He was a Romanian and French poet, essayist and performance artist and founding member of the anti-establishment artistic movement known as known as Dada.
Born Samuel Rosentsock on April 4th , 1896 in Moinesi, Romania, to a wealthy jewish family.In his early youth was  the lover of the dancer Maja Krusceek, he would go on to  to marry the Swedish aritist and poet Greta Knutson.
In 1915 his parents sent him to Zurich, where he enrolled at a University to study philosophy, inspired by the Symbolist Poets, in particular, the works of Arthur Rimbaud. He adopted  the pseudonym Tristan Tzara (sad in country) as a protest of the treatment of  jews in his native country. It was here in Zurich that he was to write the first Dadaist  texts, after meeting  the German Hugo Ball, an anarchist poet and pianist and his young wife Emmy Hennings, a music hall performer, attending events at the Caberet Voltaire, where he also put on shows that would combine performance art, with his poetry and art manifestos, which were all  to become key components of early Dadaism.
His talent as a performer and event organiser, and his role  on the journal DADA and his founding Dadaist writings quickly placed Tzara at the centre of this blossonming movement.
Dadaism was principally an anti-art, anti-war, anti-bourgeois movement born  as a reaction to World War 1. They reacted in horror and disgust to the brutality of thewar, to the mechanical anonymous killing and to the cynical justifications put forward by the powers that be on both sides, who sought to use the seeming logic of their arguments to legitimise their war policy. The Dadaists  accused the public in the belligerent nations  of a deferentia, nationalist attitude, so they formulated  their own position with a corresponding self confidence. Also together with kindred spirits Tzara and the Dadaists laid out in Hugo Balls' original Dada Manifesto (1916),  their opposition to all characteristics of the middle classes, including materialism, convention and consumerism. They believed art had become a commercial transaction both literally and metaphorically, so they navigated a deeper pulse, swimming in the deep end of sighs. They used Dada as  a form of shock art that intended  to provoke and outrage its audience, using obscenity and humour in an attempt to probe the cultural public. Anarchic, nihilistic and disruptive, childhood and chance its two most important sources of inspiration, the name itself a nonsense, a baby-talk word, born out of dissillusionment, a cult of non-art that became overtly political, that for me has much enduring appeal and the presence of immense passion and beauty. He would collaborate with Breton, Aragon, Soupault, Picabio and Paul Eluard, much illustrious company methinks.

" Freedom: Dada, dada, dada,
crying open the constricted pains,
swallowing the contrasts and all
the contradictions, the grotequeries
and the illogicalities of life."

- Tristan Tzara

Tristan Tzara's writing I have only be able to read in translation, unfortunately, highly experimental, rich and anarchic. His later poems would reveal the anquish of his soul, caught between revolt and wonderment at the daily tragedy of the human condition. He was committed to art being used as a  political weapon and  continued to be involved in politics and political activism throughout his life. A stauch anti-fascist he joined the republicans in the Spanish Civil War and became a member of the French Resistance in World WarII. Though originally alligned  with the Communist Party of France, serving a time  in the French National Assembly, he later distanced  himself fom them after the 1956 Hungarian uprising. He did however, remain a spokesman for Dada, and in 1960 was among the intellectuals who protested against French actions in the Algerian War.
On December 24th, 1963, he died in Paris of lung cancer at the age of sixty-seven.Still a Poet of Revolt, a proud defender of Dada's movements. His legacy still echoes in our rumbling confusions, in every art fad that has since echoed,down the age.
The following poems that I share, have no structure or rhthym, but they speak with boldness, beauty and wonder, translated by someone who understands Tzara's potency, the fine poet Lee Harwood ( who I was fortunate to catch reading his own work in Carmarthen last year),  even in translation, the raw honesty is allowed to  breathe and reveal.
Hope you appreciate them as much as I do.

To Make a Dadaist Poem

Take a newspaper,
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next  take  each cutting one aftr the other.
Copy conscieintiously  in theorder in whichthey left the bag
The poem will reseble you.
And there yu are-an infinitely author of charming
sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.

Rule

the clashing seas spread the ocean of their idleness
in the beds with white foam sheets
as the sound of pages of waves turned by the reader of
the unsated sky
the loving and steady caress of clouds
dissolves behind the mist
the long awaited promise on the horizon of your smile

the land at its bursting point reveals the young white stone
of a giant's firm breast offered for the length of time
and the wind bites its lips in its black rage

smashed is the clarity passing through the glasses of our lives
the wind chokes the word in the village's throat poor village
its life of strange revelations

shattered is the chain of wors covered in winters and dramas
which connnected the  the intimate revelations of our lives

and the wind spits in our face
the untiring brutality of it all

(Translated by Lee Harwood)

ambling along

the glance's sand
the loose earth
the tower's bark
the exchange of pleasant hills

the first stone
charming octopus
the vines tore off
from the flock of stacks
they're lying

then the low trusting water
and night everywhere
doors banging
unseen hands

the grass sheathed
the voice blocked
the roaf beheaded
the houuse buried

eveything for you you see
you son't see anything anymore

(Lee Harwood)

Way

what is this road that seperates us
across which I hold out the hand of my thoughts
a flower is written at the end of each finger
and the end of the road is a flower which walks with you

glass to pass through peaceful

the joy of lines wind around you soul's central heating
smoke speed steel smoke
geography of silk embroideries
colonised with flowering sponges
the song crystallized
in the
body's vase with the smoke flower

the black's vibration
in your blood
in your blood of the evening's intelligence and wisdom
a blue wrinkled eye in a clear glass
I love you I love you
a vertical comes down  into my tiredeness which no longer enlightenjs me
my heart muffled in an old newsapaper
you can bite it: whistle
let's go

the clouds set in ranks in the offices' fever
the bridges mangle your poor body is very large these milky way
           scissors and cut out the memory in green shapes
in one direction always in the same direction
expanding always expanding


Recommended  Further Reading:-

Chanson Dada :-- Tristan Tzara
Selected poems  translated by Lee Harwood
Black Widow Press, 2005

dada :- art and anti-art
-Hans Richter
Thames and Hudson, 1965

Hugo Ball- Flight out of time
Viking Press, 1974

Support Musician Omar Saad

Eighteen year old  violinist Omar Saad was recently handed down a sixth prison sentence for his ongoing refusal to serve in Israel's occupation army.Hehas declared that he would  refuse to serve in the army even if he was jailed  sixty times.
He wasa first jailed in early December last year, after he and his siblings  performed a musical protest outside  of an Israeli military induction center in the Galilee, where the majority of Palestinians in present day Israel reside. He has since been handed down six consecutive sentences of twenty days imprisonment.
Omar is a member of the Druze  religious minority, which unlike the majority of Palestinian  citizens of Israel, are required to serve in the military.
However growing numbers of Druze youth are refusing to comply, fasing imprisonment in the process.
The anti-militarization group New Profile is encouraging  letters of support for Omar, as well as letters to the Israeli authorities calling for his release, and letters to the media to bring attention to his plight.

http://www.newprofile.org/english/node/421

 Turning 18, for most teenagers, means you are no longer imprisoned by your parents, but turning 18 for a Palestinian living in Palestine  1948 land means you are no longer imprisoned to your parents but you are now imprisoned by the Israelis, this  young man who is a wonderful musician should from a village in Galilee has just turned 18 instead of celebrating his 18th birthday he should be free, out playing his beloved instruments with his awakened conscience.

24th Anniversary Of Anti Poll Tax Riots, London 1990.

On 31st May  24 years ago people took to the streets of London and fought  back against Margaret Thatchers'  hated polltax, leading to running street battles with the police and total chaos in Trafalgar Square - the following has some good footage of this battle.

Thatcher Poll Tax Riots

Prior to this momentous occasion, Anti-Poll Tax Unions had sprung up all across Britain, in defiance many people refused to pay, I remember the Labour Party  shamefully anouncing that they would not support those who refused to pay.
Over 250,000 people sweeped into London on this day, for many people it was not a case of wanting to demonstrate, it was a case of having too. There was no choice, this cruel tax would have seriously impacted on peoples lives.
Most people on the day of this demonstration, arrived unaligned - ordinary people, families, pensioners, the unemployed, students, black  and white, all united as one to fight against this immoral tax.I'd travelled up from West Wales.
The overiding opinion of the time,is that what started as a peaceful protest, with an almost carnival feel to it against an illegal tax was quickly turned into a bloody battle  by uniformed thugs acting under Thatcher's orders, with aided and abetted by agent provocateurs.The use of  charged mounted police also aggravated the situation, leading to many peaceful byestanders  with heads streaming with blood. A very frightening experience.
To this day many people  lay the responsibility of the violence that happened on this day, firmly on the shoulders of Thatcher and her government.
Despite the demonisation of the protestors in the mass media,  people still refused to pay, the campaign  flourished, culminating in millions of people's non payment, bailiffs resisted, courts unable to cope because of opposition and active resistance. It would see the Poll Tax eventually being destroyed, also  helping bring down Thatchers hated tory government.
Today, it seems the tories have still not learnt from  their past mistakes, with  the introduction of the bedroom tax and other horrors.
Hopefully we can bring them down again.

London Poll Tax Riot Documentary 1990

strongly reccommended

What is Palestinians Land Day?

Land Day is held on the anniversary of March 30, 1978, when Palestinian villages and cities across the country witnessed mass demonstrations against the states plans to expropriate 2,000 hectares of land in Israel's Galilee region. In  coordination with the military, some 4,000 police officers were  dispatched  to quell the unrest. At the end of the day, six Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed  by state security forces.
The Day of the land - or Land Day marked the first mass mobilization of Palestinians within Israel against internal colonialism and  land theft. It's commemoration is a reaffirmation that the Palestinians who remained in the area on which Israel was declared in 1948, are an inseperable part of the Palestinian people and their struggle.
It commemorates the Palestinians sense of belonging to a people, to a cause and a country, to stand united against racial oppression and rules of apartheid,and the discriminatory practices of the Israeli government, giving continual potency to the Palestinians cause. Land Day continues  to be poignantly relevant, amid news  of plans for forced evictions of Bedouin in the Negev/Nagab, demolitions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank and the often lethal enforcement of a no-go-zone in Gaza.
As relevent as ever as Israel pushes to confiscate land, expand their colonies, and  continue to build their illegal settlements.

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/what-palestines-land-day

Palestinian  planting olive Trees on Land Day

'if the olive trees knew  the hands that planted them, thir oil would become tears.'

- Mahmoud Darwish

 

  

 

Hooray! Same Sex marriages legalised in England and Wales: BUT

Gay rights campaigners  and advocates up and down the country have been celebrating as marriage laws have finally changed. It is being seen as a nationally symbolic day.But marriage for many remains an economic institution, based around social structures, legal systems, workplaces, welfare  and families. Marriage at the end of the day is the legal and religious sanctioning of interpersonal relationships, so is foremost about equality.
The diversity of humanity's love should be embraced and celebrated . Personally relationships should be built on love alone not based  on church or state authority, I personally regret the state validitating an earlier relationship, but all institutions are better, I guess when they are made equal. So any law that achieves a form of balance is one that I can support.
Hope it stops the hate that is still inflicted though, on people, from all walks of life. After all Trangender people are still dismissed, become targets for violence  on the ground of their gender identity and expression. Gay people are also still subject to harrasment and bullying to wildly disproportionate degrees. Intolerance can run deep.... based on stigmas of fear, see also how the mentally ill are marginalised, people from different ethnic backgrounds etc etc.
So though I welcome todays news I still strive  for a world based on equality, a more radical blueprint against the institutions of patriarchy, for all to share. Marriage should exist as a social ritual for those interested, but not as an arrangement with any currency beyond any other social arrangement, and in the end no sense of coersion or social obligation to enter into it at all.
Down with all walls, paths of liberation for all.

Tom Robinson Band - (Sing if you're)  Glad to be Gay

BEGONE FOUL ATOS!

Atos Healthcare the foul company  responsible for carrying out 'fit for work' tests on disability benefit claimants is quitting its contract. Ministers have made it clear that Atos will not receive any  compensation from the taxpayer and had made a 'substantial' financial settlement to the Department for Work and Pensions in order to terminate its £500 million contract early. I say good riddance to bad rubbish.
There game is up, a company that has made money  from the misery of the disabled and the vulnerable. Profit before people was their mantra, conductors of humiliations process.Unfit for purpose and criminally incompetent.
Atos have become a lightning rod for widespread public and political rage and fury.
Atos  is a disgrace, of the 600,000 people who have appealed against decisions made by the government to support the Atos  decision to cut  their benefits, 60% were successful.
Many of this number - have been terminally ill, leading to tragic deaths, as a result of people  being stripped of benefis and found fit for work.
Atos are villains, but there partners in crime is this coalition government and its cruel austerity policies designed to pay for the  banks' crisis.
Time for us to keep up the pressure on this government, they are the real culprits- they must be made to admit that they got it wrong and be held for account, and make sure  that private comanies are taken out of  the benefit system in there entirety. Will the replacement for Atos, be the same shit as before.Possibly.
One thing is certain, the countless victims of Atos and the Con-dem's policies are in need of an apology.

 

 

Tony Benn - Last Will and Testament

Tony Benn.

A man of truth and integrity. Never to be forgotten.

Sleep in peace, freedom and Power.

R.I.P

http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/david-cameron-please-put-a-stone-in-parliament-square-in-london

" I would be very pleased when I die if somebody put on a stone: Tony Benn. He encouraged us. I think encouragement is the most important thing you can  do when you are alive. I have encouraged people a lot in my life. Encouragement is a collective relationship which is very fruitful. "

To:

David Cameron, Prime Minister

We would like for you to honour Tony Benn's wish and let all the people who he encouraged and respected him have somewhere to reflect and remember him and his legacy.
Yours
Sincerely,

(your name)

The Citizen's Arrest of War Criminal Tony Blair - Heathcote Williams

BLIAR - is now apparently worth £75,000,000. Was it worth it ? All these deaths in Iran and Afghanistan, does all this money salvage his conscience. Or is he simply a war criminal with too much blood on his hands. Who best served  the two flames in the human heart: the flame of anger against injustice, and the flame of hope you can build a better world. Tony Benn or Tony Bliar?
After the death  of Tony Benn, at the age of 88,the world seems a little darker.

Here's aother
fine poem from Heathcotte Williams.

The Citizen's Arrest  of War Criminal Tony Blair = Heatchcotte Williams.

It's  time for Tony to face charges,
It's time for a citizen's Arrest
There's an empty sock in the Hague
Dying to have him as a guest.

There's  a million bosies buried in Iraq
Whose ghosts cry out in despair,
'There were no mass weapons of mass destruction
So wgere's  @The People versus Tony Blair?'

There were no weapons about to hit London
Wiyhin the space of three quarters of an hour,
Tony was lying to Parliament and ghis country-
For Iraq never toppefd the twin towers.

He and Campbell were comnned by the neo cons
They were impressed by American power
into lettting themselves be drawn into war crimes
With Iraq bwing bombed for hour after hour.

A million were bombed  to smithereens
killed by shells tipped with uranium-
Causing borth defects to pregnant women
Lasting from generation to generation.

As a lawyer you're aware that aggressive warfare
Under the Nuremburg protocals,
Constitutes the ultimate crimde in international law
Your avoiding justice makes people emotional.

To add iinsult to injurt you've profited, Tony.
And you swn about in a private jet,
It's made you popular among the corrupt,
You're part of the International Set.

But the International Criminal Court
is keeping  you're seat in the dockwarm,
And anyone carrying out a successful arrest
Promises to go down a storm.


LINK:-

http://stopwar.org.uk/



Tony Blair - Richard Hamilton

Who Controls the Drones in my Sky?

The above  gives details  of what promises to be an interesting and exciting event at the Small World Theatre here  in Cardigan, West Wales, starting at 7.00 pm next Saturday.
The evening's performance and debate should proff an interesting follow up to all ho attended a meeting on the subject back last December  in the Theatr Mwladan, and  will tie people in  to later activity in the year such as the 'Drape the Drones' event in September.
This is an issue that has long polarised my local community. Over the years people protesting outside Parc Aberporth against the testing of drones here.
Drones, unmanned surveillance and weapons equipped aerial devices) are being tested in Ceredigion. Small World Theatre posed the question ' Who Controls the sky?'
The event above will be an opportunity for the community to creatively disxcuss this controversial subject and share different views.
It is known that Watchkeeper that has been tested here in West Wales since 2012, using the Israeli  built Hermes 450,  a drone that is expected to now  take a sgnificant role in any future military campaigns. Having clocked uo pver 500 hours of flying time above us in West Wales. It is also significant to report, that they have also been field tested in attacks on Gaza, that have left many Palestinians dead?  Though not necessarily illegal they have  used in breach of what is considered international law.

More details here:-

National Theatre Wales

nice banner that was displayed by Bristol Palestine Solidarity Campaign at their own 'Fly Kites not Drones event in Bristol at the weekend, that sums up my view on the subject quite well.

http://nationaltheatrewales.org/who-controls-drones-my-sky-0