A CHILD OF THE JAGO: THE JOSEPH RIDGWELL INTERVIEW

As a much published writer, Joseph Ridgwell’s novels, short stories and poems have muscled in and roped off a corner of the underground literary scene and claimed it as its own. His latest book of poesy, A Child Of The Jago, finds Ridgwell in nostalgic mood as he returns to his native East London and reflects on family, relationships and a disappearing culture. With his usual bolshiness and bravado turned down a notch this warm collection is probably his best yet.

As a long-time champion of his work here on Monkey Picks I thought it time to collar Mr. Ridgwell for a chinwag about his new book, poetry, the East End and the curse of the drinking classes.  

Who are you? Explain yourself young man.

Ha, who am I? Fuck knows. You know, Monkey, each morning I get up and look in the mirror and this strange, somewhat desperate looking face leers back at me. Maybe I’m the devil’s footman, maybe I don’t even exist? Word on the lit-vine is that I’m the creation of some millionaire author living in Bermuda, who getting sick of writing safe formula mainstream pap, decided to create me to fulfill his or her inner crazy screwball artistic side? A sort of literary Frankenstein if you like. Or could be I’m just a kid from a small council estate in East London who one day decided he wanted to be a writer and my doodlings are a result of such an out of kilter audacity. A careers advisor once suggested floristry as a suitable occupation for someone with a constitution as delicate, sensitive and refined as mine. I remember walking out of that office with a very confused look adorning my boat. 

I can imagine. This new book of yours, A Child Of The Jago, what's it all about?

The Jago is about my childhood growing up in East London in the 1970’s & 80’s and contemporary London, focusing on lost communities, culture, and a certain way of life that has all but disappeared. Where did all the indigenous Cockney’s go? It’s like they’ve been wiped off the face of history.

Actually, what triggered all this Cockney nostalgia and reflections were two incidents that occurred in my life simultaneously. One, I was posted to an office in Commercial Road, in the heart of the old East End and Jack the Ripper territory. The other was that I began dating a young Swedish girl who resided in a squat in Bethnal Green. Thus, after being away from the East End for decades, I was suddenly spending everyday there.

The job I had at the time was a cushy number, I operated like a lone wolf amongst the massed ranks of frosty adults feigning efficiency. Attached to three different locations nobody knew for certain where I was at any given time. Naturally, I took advantage of this anomaly and exploited it mercilessly. I came in late, left early, took entire days off, and took two to three hour lunches on a regular basis, sometimes never even coming back. I’d go to the White Hart in Whitechapel or the Pride of Spitalfields just off Brick lane for my daily constitutionals, and afterwards go to Kossoff’s for a salt beef roll, mustard and sliced gherkin, and take a stroll around the East End. It was during these mellow interludes, why the rest of the mugs were hard at it, that all the memories came rushing back. Visiting Petticoat Lane for apple fritters on a Sunday, trips to Hoxton Market, Manze for Pie & Mash, looking at the animals in Club Row, (there was a lion there once) etc. What struck me was that although the place was almost unrecognisable to how it had been as a child, if you looked carefully signs of the old way of life were all around.

But what the devil is a Jago?

The title for the collection was taken from a novel by Arthur Morrison of the same name. What Arthur thinks of me nicking his title is unknown as he’s long dead and almost forgotten. In Morrison’s novel the Jago is an imaginary area of the East End, close to an old rookery in what was then and still is, Bethnal Green. It you haven’t read it, check it out.

This sojourn in the East End also encouraged me to write a historical novel about the East End called, The Jago, which is a companion to A Child of the Jago. The novel is currently gathering dust in a forgotten drawer so if publishers are reading this and fancy a bit if it, then don’t hesitate to get in contact. Oh, and by the way, it’s only the best book written about the East End ever.

A Child of the Jago is full of poems. Who wants to read poetry? Isn’t that a hard sell?

Poetry, in my opinion, is often unfairly maligned. Think of poet and an image of an effete looking man, wearing a scarf or a cardigan, and sporting a mangy beard springs to mind, (wait up, that’s me) or some mad lesbian with crazed hair. Or all those really boring poems, especially WWI poetry, that we were forced to digest at school. Actually school is the problem, the traumatic experience puts people off for life. Then, there’s all the really bad poetry, for every good poet, there’s a million bad ones. Then there’s mainstream poetry, mostly safe, well written bits of nothingness. So, for any lit fiend looking for something a little different, a little dangerous, a little counter-culture he’s got to do a little bit of digging, a little bit of seeking to unearth anything worth reading. However, if the fiend does take the time to scrape under the surface it can be a worthwhile sometimes life changing experience. Added to this is the fact that poetry can be read fast, a collection easily read in under an hour, and in an age where time is precious poetry should have a far higher profile than is currently does. 

What makes a good poem and what distinguishes it from simply being a few sentences of prose cut into tiny lines?

I think a good poem should leave a lasting imprint on the brain. It has to have one or more killer lines that the reader will not be able to easily forget. Where are the Rebels is a good example, not necessarily the poem but at the very least the title. People might say that anyone can do that, write a line that sticks in the readers mind for years afterward. My answer to that is go on then. Byron's So, We’ll Go No More a Roving; Keats’s La Belle Dames San Merci; Burns’ A Red, Red Rose; Bukowski’s The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hill’s; Li Po’s A Quiet Night Thought; these are all classic examples of what I mean, but there are thousands of others. One of my personal fav’s is Baudelaire’s To A Creole Lady. The line – “Under a canopy of crimson trees” - is unforgettable. Also Swinburn’s Love and Sleep, Bukowski’s I Saw A Tramp Last Night, etc, etc...Keep digging fiends.

One of your earlier collections, you mentioned then, was Where Are The Rebels?, now you're asking where is the rag and bone man, the egg man, the pools man and the Hofmeister Bear. Are you going soft on us?

If anything my life philosophy is hardening. At the moment I’m going through an extreme anti-work phase. I read an essay by US anarchist, Bob Black, the gist of which rails at employment in all forms. Subsequently my latest novel is about work and the misery it creates. Of course I’m sure some work is very rewarding, like say the work of a marine biologist, or a classical conductor, but for the rest of us work is at best tolerable and at worse mind-numbing pointlessness. Unfortunately for those of us, the majority, the only option to being a wage slave is starving to death in the gutter.

And the rebels? Are you still searching for them?

I’m still wondering where they are, for they have to be out there somewhere. At the present time, however, I don’t see many. Life is short, enjoy it while you can. Get drunk, take drugs, be promiscuous, don’t work too hard, go dancing. Retain your inner child. Life makes people hard and they begin to take things way too seriously. Most jobs are utter nonsense so treat them as such.

Your books are published as limited editions by small independent publishers like Blackheath Books and Kilmog Press. They're lovingly and carefully produced; not least Jago with illustrations by your cousin Martin Ridgwell. When will we be able to buy your books at train stations and airports?

I’ve been fortunate enough to be published by a handful of maverick publishers who all produce beautiful artisan craft books. These are books you will never see for sale at train stations or airports. Sometimes I ruminate on why the mainstream has consistently rejected my highly stylised Cockney capers until it is pointed out to me that I never submit my work to any mainstream publishers. Maybe I’ll start doing that and discover that I’m discovered and shortly after this discovery my books, no longer beautiful, but mass produced pulp, will appear for sale in train stations and airports. Realistically though, I fear that I’m going to have to die a tragic death before anyone outside a select circle of sordid lit fiends, takes notice of what I’ve been trying to do for the last fifteen years. 

One of those “sordid lit fiends”, Joe England, editor of litzine PUSH, gives you much credit in encouraging him to launch his mag, to which you contribute each issue. What is your role?

My role, if I had a role, was very small. Mister England got in touch and mentioned that he was thinking of starting a litzine. He then asked what I thought of such an idea. My response was to tell him to, ‘Just go and do it,’ which he took on board and within a couple of weeks the phenomenon that is now Europe’s best-selling litzine was born.

How important in a digital age is it for writers to have their work available in a physical format?

I think it is more important than ever for writers to have their work available in a physical format. I mean, what if we run out of electricity? Where would all those tech geeks be then? Sometimes you have to see the bigger picture and avoid a herd mentality, which is what most people working in today’s media are unable to do.

What kind of soiree have you planned to launch A Child Of The Jago?

No soiree Monkey, this is going to be what can only be described as “a do”. It might bankrupt me financially, but I believe that when embarking on such things, you might as well do them with a bit of style. The evening will feature Joe England, Tim Wells, Pepe Arroyo, Michael Keenaghan and Martin Ridgwell. Alongside readings there will be an art exhibition, book and art sales, and music supplied by Lord Monkey Picks and His Super Sounds. There will also be films of old vaudeville acts and some adult cabaret.  No minors allowed. Canape sized pie and mash, jellied eels, cockles, whelks and winkles from Manze’s Pie and Mash Shop also provided. If anyone reading this is interested the shindig will be held from 7pm on the 20th March 2014 at Orford House Social Club, Walthamstow, E17. 

A Child Of The Jago by Joseph Ridgwell is published by Kilmog Press.  

For more Ridgwell antics see Lost Elation.

KEEP THE FAITH by TIM WELLS (2013)

Boom! This is what we want.

Blackheath Books have come up trumps with a new poetry chapbook. What sets Keep The Faith apart is the all the poems are born from Londoner Tim Wells’s suedehead passion for soul and reggae. His enthusiasm for his subject is infectious and after turning the last page had me reaching for the nearest Sam Cooke album and a clutch of Trojan releases.  

Wells deftly joins the dots between black American and Jamaican artists in Chicago and Kingston, who created music as their way out of hard times, and how this resonates with British white kids from Dalston who use these sacred records to dance their escape from the drudgery of the working week, dressed in their Saturday night finest.  He captures the excitement of living for the weekend, that moment the needle hits the record, of music as a shared experience, and of being in possession of the secret key which unlocks these joyful moments to those in the know.

The twenty poems are all suitably clean, sharp, smart and to the point. Their direct style and subject matter attractive to folk more likely to be found scouring second-hand record shops than the poetry section of Waterstones.

Published as a very limited, numbered edition of 200, Keep The Faith (surely it’s time for moratorium on those three words and the associated clenched – or rather clichéd - fist) should sell out fast, so get in quick as soon it’ll be easier to find a copy of The Wailers “Diamond Baby” on Coxsone.  Highly recommended for suedeheads, mods, soulies or anyone with a passion for music beyond the midnight hour.

Keep The Faith by Tim Wells is published and available from Blackheath Books, priced £8.

THE NEW WORD ON THE STREET: PUSH – ISSUE ONE

New literary fanzine PUSH might better be called KICK or WHACK such is the impact of its writing. Across 42 simply presented pages it features previously unknown writers like Jeff North, Carlton Burns, Ian Scanlon and some character Dirty Boozy Bastard, alongside names familiar to followers of the underground lit scene: Joseph Ridgwell, Michael Kennaghan, That Petrol Emotion’s Raymond Gorman and editor Joe England.

Sold at a giveaway price of £1.50 on the streets, outside football grounds and at gigs, the uncompromising prose isn’t for the faint hearted. Amalgamating pop culture, drug paranoia, rushed sex, football hooligans, and the threat of violence, it is just one glance away from a character in a John King novel. In the way football matches offer a valve to release pressure and tension, these writers hammer their words. By way of balance, the poems offer quieter contemplation and snatches of respite from the onslaught of tough fiction. I asked Joe England about his inspiration for launching a new mag.  

“I suppose PUSH had its origins for me when I recently discovered the wonderful world of the small press, firstly through Blackheath Books which I found out about through back-reading Monkey Picks, and then other doors opened up courtesy of Joseph Ridgwell. I love the whole approach of the small press, the limited print runs and the amazing quality in look and writing. I have a great appreciation of online litzine’s like Melissa Mann’s Beat The Dust, but online/e-reading just isn’t the same as holding a publication in your hands. Same reason why the experience of vinyl still cannot be beaten. What kicked this in motion was four weeks ago when I managed to get my hands on an issue of Kevin Williamson’s Rebel Inc. mag from 1993 and in an email conversation I mentioned to Joseph Ridgwell how the world needs a street lit fanzine right now as much as it did back then. ‘Do one then’, he said and within three weeks I was selling PUSH on the street and posting it to various parts of England, Ireland, Scotland, Sweden and Germany. At a football match the other week, witnessing a complete stranger engrossed in issue one was mind-blowing. If the same chap was reading a PDF file of PUSH on a Kindle the impact would have been soul-burning.”

Such is England’s rush of enthusiasm that issue two is already nearing completion. These things tend to succeed or fail on the strength of their editor. Despite making his name and being championed by the small press, Charles Bukowski constantly bitched against them in his letters, claiming they only lasted a couple of decent issues until editors lost their bite and accepted poor quality submissions from their mates or famous poets (even himself). If PUSH can keep the standard of its first issue (Keenaghan’s “Bent” is worth the cover price alone) there’ll be no complaints here and besides, it’s a heck of a lot better than reading the excuses from Sam Allardyce or Harry Redknapp in the match day programme.

Contact pushmag@email.com for ordering details or visit Joe England Books.

West Ham United legend Julian Dicks models PUSH.

TAKING CANDY FROM A DOG (2nd PRINTING) by VIC TEMPLAR

Two years ago I championed Vic Templar’s debut novel Taking Candy From A Dog so I’m very pleased that after selling out the initial run it now has a second printing.  From a personal point of view it’s an honour to see a quote attributed to me on the back cover of the new edition.  It reads:

“Vic Templar’s Taking Candy From A Dog is the part memoir, part fiction tale of a very ordinary boy, living a very ordinary life in a very ordinary part of Kent, yet it is also one of the most touching and hilarious books you could read about life as a child.  It is warm without being cloying and funny without being too knowing.  It is a tale of picnics, wasps, summer that lasts forever, Wimbledon, Fred Perry, the Buzzcocks, Gillingham FC and family life in the 1970s.”

I stand by those words, even if they’re not mine.  Which they’re not, they belong to writer Iain Aitch.  I only noticed today when reading back my own review.  Iain’s quote on the cover is actually mine and for which Iain is now going to have to live with and try to explain away.  He’s a proper writer for daily newspapers, has published books (We’re British, Innit) and has been on the telly and stuff.  I hope his career doesn’t suffer being associated with:

“Written through the eyes of a frequently bemused and incredulous child/teenager, with the chapters interspersed by the savvy interruptions of a sock monkey, it sounds twee, cheesy and to be avoided but it’s far from it – Taking Candy From A Dog is one of the funniest books I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading.  Wonderfully told with keen detail and dry wit, some of the dialogue had tears of laughter streaming down my face.”

As you can see they come from a similar place and for once you have someone corroborating my opinion.  So, read my original review here, get on to Blackheath Books for a copy, make it sell out, make Vic happy, and for the third printing Iain and I can have our own words back.  Everyone's a winner.

THE BUDDHA BAR by JOSEPH RIDGWELL

Regular readers will know I like Joe Ridgwell’s work. If I had a friend down the pub who wrote stories and poems, I’d like to think they’d be like Joe’s. This isn’t to say he writes like a gibbering lunatic, just that he writes like a perceptive mate with a bunch of escapades to tell rather than someone who wants to talk about literature all night; and who’d want to be stuck with them?

I finished The Buddha Bar a couple of weeks back but it was only yesterday when reading Jack Kerouac’s recently published The Sea Is My Brother that it properly fell into place. Joe hits the same theme in 2011 as Jack did in 1943. In Jack’s book Bill Everhart meets Wesley Martin on a drunken night out and the next day, on a complete whim, leaves his job as a college lecturer and hitchhikes to catch a ship and become a merchant seaman. “Look what twenty four hours and a moment of determination can do!” he exclaimed. “I think I realize now why the pioneer spirit always guided me in my thinking – it’s because he’s free, Wes, free!”

It’s that same restless spirit and search for freedom that dominates The Buddha Bar: the need to explore and to experience, even if those experiences aren’t always positive. Similar to his debut The Last Days of The Cross, we find a wandering Joe boozing, birding and becoming infatuated with the type of woman your mother maybe warned you about. When the opportunity of investing in a small bar in Thailand is put to him by some crazy local he has the hots for, and has just met, he doesn’t need much persuading in handing over the last of his money. “If you don’t take it you will regret it for the rest of your life. Fuck it, I thought,” and the dream of being a big shot bar owner puffing on a cigar takes shape. Things of course don’t work out the way of dreams, they never do, but there are funny times, sad times, scary times and dreary times, and once they’re gone, they’re gone. And from that, there's no escape.

The Buddha Bar by Joseph Ridgwell is published as a limited edition by Blackheath Books.
The Sea Is My Brother by Jack Kerouac is published by Penguin.

THE DEAD QUEEN OF BOHEMIA by JENNI FAGAN

An ex-girlfriend had a tatty book that gathered dust in my old flat. It was called How Poetry Works. I flicked through it a few times but it could’ve been a computer manual from the 1980s for all the sense it made to me. I don’t know how poetry works. I don’t know how computers work either. I couldn’t care less; as long as they do. Music’s the same. Ray Davies on Arena the other week got all tetchy about documentary makers wanting to over-analyze artists when people “either like the song or they don’t”.

I like Jenni Fagan’s poems. They live at the dark end of the street, across the tracks, on the outskirts of town in a world inhabited by junkies, winos, weirdoes and whores. And they’re only the harmless ones. Fagan doesn’t romanticize them but is empowered by her own experiences and wears them proudly like a rusting pin badge rescued from the rain. Out of the human wreckage come phrases like “…the schizophrenic knew fifteen different ways to bring Satan through a crack in the wall like a great vagina of doom” that instantly leave their words stamped in the brain. But there are two sides of every coin and on the flip of Jenni’s feisty confrontations are glimpses of vulnerability and tenderness.

They work for me. They should work for you too.

The Dead Queen of Bohemia by Jenni Fagan is published by Blackheath Books, priced £7.50.

Blackheath Books Website.

TAKING CANDY FROM A DOG by VIC TEMPLAR

I’ve today finished reading two memoirs recounting the 1970s: Nick Kent’s Apathy For The Devil and Vic Templar’s Taking Candy From A Dog. The titles alone suggest two very different beasts. Kent’s is an triple pronged cautionary tale of rock and roll, journalism and drug addiction; the likes of which only seem to happen to other people: flying to America to hang out with David Bowie and Iggy Pop, taking massive lines of heroin and cocaine for breakfast with Keith Richards, and playing in an early incarnation of the Sex Pistols. None of these things happened to me. Templar’s is the everyday heartwarming story of football heroes, boyhood dreams and loving families: travelling to Pontins and Westward Ho! for holidays, eating Count Dracula ice lollies with your sister, and creating major sporting events in the back garden. All of these things happened to me.

Written through the eyes of a frequently bemused and incredulous child/teenager, with the chapters interspersed by the savvy interruptions of a sock monkey, it sounds twee, cheesy and to be avoided but it’s far from it - Taking Candy From A Dog is one of the funniest books I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. Wonderfully told with keen detail and dry wit, some of the dialogue had tears of laughter streaming down my face. I’ve said before I’m no fan of nostalgia, mainly because of the implication things were better in the past when often it’s the brain’s useful capability to filter out most of the shit, but Templar skillfully manages to plant little seeds that nudge the memory to recall much more than “do you remember Spangles?” I thought of so many things about my own childhood and family and uncles and Grandparents that otherwise would have been lost forever.

If there was any justice Taking Candy From A Dog would fly off tables in Waterstones and you’d see people smiling to themselves on the tube in the mornings. It's a shame there’s more chance of a line off Keith Richards.

Taking Candy From A Dog by Vic Templar is published by Blackheath Books, priced £10. www.blackheathbooks.org.uk
Apathy For The Devil by Nick Kent is published by Faber, priced £12.99

THE BEAT ANTHOLOGY 2006-2009

Whenever I hear “Can I get a skinny latte?” I summon all my powers of restraint to prevent myself pummeling the head of said speaker against the counter time and time and time again. Fortunately it doesn’t happen often as I’d sooner drink my piss from an old tin cup than enter a coffee shop but it niggles away at the back of my brain with frightening regularity. So, not for the first time, I let out a little cheer and raised a fist in solidarity when Joseph Ridgwell writes “I hated coffee drinkers nearly as much as I was beginning to hate Juliette’s constant criticisms, walking around with their stupid paper cups like toddlers with comfort blankets”. Ahem, brother.

Ridgwell’s typically bolshy “Jim Morrison’s Grave” is one of ten short pieces and three interviews originally published on The Beat website and now collected in the latest book from Blackheath Press. Many of the writers I’ve championed in the past and they again come up with the goods. I like Melissa Mann’s detail in “Beetroot”, the muggy air and detachment in Jenni Fagan’s “The Acid Burn No Face Man” and the flouncing gracefulness in Andrew Gallix’s “Sweet Fanny Adams”. They all have strong individual voices expressed in completely different (and entertaining) ways.

Others skillfully scribing a few pages: Lee Rourke, Susan Tomaselli, Ben Myers, Steve Finbow, Chris Killen, Sean McGahey, Darran Anderson, and U.V. Ray.

The Beat Anthology 2006-2009 Edited by Sean McGahey is published by Blackheath Books, priced £7.50 (or limited edition with spoken word CD £10).

www.blackheathbooks.org.uk
www.the-beat.co.uk

BILLY CHILDISH: UNKNOWABLE BUT CERTAIN at the ICA

Billy Childish has made over 100 albums. The ICA has a wall displaying 95. There must be someone, somewhere, who collects them. If you ever stumble across them in the pub, move away. “Fancy coming round to listen to my Billy Childish records?” No, you’re all right thanks. Can you imagine? Like being relentlessly bludgeoned with an old bicycle pump. I prefer to nibble away in more manageable chunks but as this major exhibition shows if you want to gorge on Chatman’s most famous son there’s an enormous feast to be had.

Oil paintings, poems, music, films, novels, woodcuts, homemade publications, placards and a bright yellow suit also celebrate the dogged determination, artistic integrity, single bloody mindedness and – let’s not forget – talent, of a true maverick treasure.

In the quality versus quantity debate it’s clear which camp Billy’s hobnails are in. Which isn’t to say there isn’t quality but there’s a restless air of stick it out there and move on to the next thing, which is part of the charm, even if it’s an often quickly forgotten one.

Billy Childish: Unknowable but Certain is at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Mall, London, SW1 until 18 April 2010, admission free.

OSWALD'S APARTMENT AND OTHER STORIES by JOSEPH RIDGWELL

Search back through Monkey Picks and you’ll find me championing the work of Joseph Ridgwell: his books of poetry and his novel Last Days of The Cross, yet it was his short stories that introduced me to him, squirreled away in hidden corners of the internet.

Now, at long last, some of these have been scooped up and published in book form by the ever reliable Blackheath Books. I know we’re in 2010 and internet sites are all well and good but one physical, hold-in-your-hands publication is worth of a hundred of those to me.

What appealed – and still does - about Joe’s writing was primarily the subject matter: beer, sex, drugs, rock and roll, random acts of violence. What’s not to like? Then the style itself: rough and ready, bit dog-eared in places, but with bags of brash wide-boy bonhomie to draw the reader in. The influences are clear enough: Bukowski’s solitary drinking in shithole apartments, both the Fantes (especially the more explicit and un- PC Dan), even a swift nod to Kerouac and Hamsun and but he’s his own man. A bit of a boy really. Bit of a geezer. Sort to spin you a yarn in the boozer and for the most part you can’t quite tell which bits are true and which bits are Bertie Bollocks. I like that. Mind you, there are also imaginative and surreal flights of fancy which mix it up nicely. Prostitutes, transsexuals, orgies, blackouts, cheap tarts, death, life, dwarves and giant talking mice drinking bottles of wine. All in a normal day for Ridgwell and these frequently funny vignettes are the perfect way to get these booze sodden tales of excess down with the minimum of fuss. You can almost taste the warm flat can of beer with fag butts in from the night before; and Joe would still drink the bastard. That what-the-heck spirit predominates throughout.

There are fifteen stories here, plenty I remember reading before. You don’t easily forget some of them (who’d forget Fishy Fanny? The title in no way misleading) and that’s what makes a writer. Others may learn and hone their craft with finesse, decorum and a clear head, sod that boring squaresville man, Joe can write but his strength is his attitude, heart, soul and a big pair of dangling balls, and you can’t buy those things. Well, maybe you can, and Joe would probably know where.

Blackheath books are only printed in very limited editions and you’ll have to go to them direct so look sharp and get on the case. Mine has real tit tassels. You won’t find class like that on Amazon.

Oswald’s Apartment and other Stories by Joseph Ridgwell is published by Blackheath Books, priced £7.50

LOST ELATION by JOSEPH RIDGWELL

Joe Ridgwell’s Lost Elation is an object of such outrageous beauty one feels it should be handled with felt gloves, sat on a pillow of the finest Egyptian silk and have the pages turned by the breath from a soft sigh.

Kilmog Press are responsible for taking a collection of grubby impoverished waifs and strays from London’s battle scarred East End (and New Zealand) and rehousing them within such elegant and luxurious splendour: hand printed pages and unique dust jacket, hardback cover and limited to the criminally minuscule number of 50.

Beauty is not only page deep either, as whilst Joe’s poems or characters don’t fit the conventional stereotype, his art and skill is to reveal beauty lurking in unlikely places: a confused woman in park of drunks; in doomed kids playing football on council estates; in the triumphant aftermath of bloody encounters; and in two lovers shagging beneath the scream of midnight (yes, I'm thinking The Jam's "That's Entertainment" here). It’s in these places Joe’s search for the lost elation bears richly rewarding fruit. Seek and ye shall find.

Lost Elation by Joseph Ridgwell is published by Kilmog Press. Write to them at kilmogpress@hotmail.com for details.

POETRY PICKS #1: RELICS by ADELLE STRIPE

RELICS

there’s a place
in haworth
called the golliwog shop
(that’s not its real name)
i don’t suppose any black people
go in there

it sells two tone records,
swastika armbands
and every size of golliwog a man could ever need

they hang on the counter from
a rack by the till
on thick silver chains
a nice ‘kids-size’ keyring,
like long forgotten strange fruit
from a bygone age
before all this ‘nonsense’
from the p.c brigade

they make me uncomfortable,
these faces I collected
from robertson’s jam in the nineteen seventies
the playing cards, the children’s badges
thankfully banished
to the boxes in the attic

when i look at the golliwogs
hung in the shop
i think of alf garnett, the national front
pissed gorilla men at lower league matches
waving blow up bananas at all the black players
and i wonder if here, in heathcliff’s manor
if i’m the only minority
in the crowd of white faces
who doesn’t agree with this new
‘retro trend’

i leave the shop
wanting to return with a brick for its window
but coming up here
with my ‘london ways’
I scuttle off, red faced
into the wind
wishing i was a braver woman
wishing i could be confrontational,
and throw a hard punch at the golliwog man
but instead, like the coward that i really am
i walk to my car, switch on the radio
and swear at the windscreen
vowing never
to return
here again.

“Relics” is taken from Adelle’s new limited edition signed and numbered chapbook Cigarettes in Bed, published by Blackheath Books and available for a mere £5 alongside other vibrant underground writing at www.blackheathbooks.org.uk

My thanks to Adelle and to Geraint at Blackheath for their permission to include here.

URCHIN BELLE by JENNI FAGAN

Blackheath Books’ reputation as discerning independent publishers climbs another notch with a bruising first collection of poems by Jenni Fagan.

The back cover is proudly stamped with words from the Chairman of Edinburgh & Midlothian Young Offenders Report 1993: “Miss Fagan is a considerable danger, both to herself and to all of society.” In a Bart Simpson way, I’m thinking “cool”; except it’s not cool. Fagan’s accounts of abuse, violence and prostitution in childhood are far too real and unsettling to get off on some vicarious kick.

You can feel the danger throughout Urchin Belle as the fizzing tension and pressure builds like a can of Tennent’s booted down the stairs, ready to explode. It’s not all doom and gloom though; there are moments of snatched tenderness and the end poem about nicking lights from police cars provides a defiant, funny, and triumphant two-fingered finale.

Urchin Belle is published as a strictly limited edition (numbered and signed) by Blackheath Books priced £5.

www.blackheathbooks.org.uk

VIC TEMPLAR DOES HIS CHUNKERS

I like writers who suffer for their art. Who drag themselves through the streets at dawn looking for an angry fix. Who burn in the bowels of hell before clawing themselves back by their filthy fingernails only to lose their grip and slide further in to the abyss. Who slip from wanton hedonism to abject misery in the space of a page.

Vic Templar is not one those writers. Yet his little book of short stories shows he too has suffered. Stung by a wasp, he was. On his tongue. It’s not quite walking 47 miles of barbed wire, using a cobra snake for a necktie, but it’s a start. His warm, matey, nostalgic style is more Nick Hornby than Nick Kent but his musings on his nan, his dustman, playing golf with monks, and forgetting his friend’s name raise a sneaky smile.

Vic Templar Does His Clunkers is the equivalent of sitting for hours on a Sunday watching repeats of Come Dine With Me, with a warm mug of tea in one hand, a custard cream in the other, and the cat curled up on your lap. And, believe it or not, there are times when that’s preferable to drinking absinthe from a shoe with winos, junkies and whores.

Vic Templar Does His Chunkers is published by Blackheath Books, priced £5.
www.blackheathbooks.org.uk

LOAD THE GUNS by JOSEPH RIDGWELL

It’s the BBC Poetry Season, and on their website you can vote to decide the nation’s favourite poet. Well, I want to vote for Joseph Ridgwell yet all I’m presented with is a string of mainly dead old impenetrable duffers who say nothing to me about my life. (Thank you Morrissey).

Fortunately, the more discerning folk at Blackheath Books have this week published their second chapbook of Ridgwell’s poems, and if Where Are The Rebels? lined the targets against the wall, Load The Guns blows their heads clean off.

In the way John Lee Hooker can say more by banging a rhythm on a battered guitar than the combined effort of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Joe Ridgwell can capture more in a few direct uncompromising lines than all the flowery metaphor and allegory of Lords Whatnot, Whoever and Whocares put together.

Joe gets directly to the harsh truth that most everything is pointless, faintly ridiculous and ultimately worthless, yet acknowledging that fact affords a position of strength, enabling one to bask in those fleeting little victories life occasionally offers.

Load The Guns is one such victory. Vote Ridgwell.

Published by Blackheath Books, priced £5. Available from www.blackheathbooks.org.uk