Black ribbon

Hello symbol of all that is good,

My latest book is out now. Seventy-five copies of the first pressing have been printed. It’s hardback with three different cloth covers. Twenty-five of amethyst, twenty-five of kingfisher, twenty-five of forest.

There are three amethysts left, one kingfisher left and one forest left. Five copies left in total. It’s free and being posted to people this week.

The book is a Symbolist collection because I’m a Symbolist at the moment and will always be until I’m something else.

You saw that it was FREE right? I will send the last five to any five readers who want one, anywhere in the world, no cost to you at all. You just have to email me. Don’t forget to say which colour cover you’d like.

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People have a strange reaction to free things. In fact, I’ve found when posting on Instagram that I have to capitalise the word for people to even register it. FREE.

People think free means not as good as something you pay for. Something not desired enough to have a monetary value placed on it.

Somehow it feels *wrong* for an object or artwork that has been crafted carefully, sensitively and luxuriously to then not exist within the capitalist system.

I think the opposite, though it’s taken me quite some time to arrive at both an approach and a philosophy that explains why I’m compelled to give work away.

For some time I’ve been trying to balance two truths.

The first is a truth about the divine nature of art. Feel free to pick your own artistic prophet – they all mostly say the same thing – but I personally like these words from Symbolist Jean Delville because, as I’ve just mentioned, I’m a Symbolist now.

‘There exists somewhere, around us, without or within us, in the depths of the unseen world, spheres which are formed from the eternal images reflected in our intellects, and which the artist or poet pilfer from mystery by the magic power of their imagination, that mysterious divine faculty which must be known in order to be in tune with the harmony of the world.’

Good and sexy truth, well told, Jean.

The other truth I’m trying to balance against the sense of Delville’s words is that to be a poet in the 21st century – and there’s a similar path for other forms of literature and artistic practice – you have to spend a few years submitting your work through a series of administrative online forms to poetry magazines (generally subscribed to only by other poets) before approaching a small, tweely-named publisher hoping that they will print your poems in a cheap paperback and throw you a launch party where you share your mysterious divine faculty in front of that infinite symbol of weary commerce – a terribly-designed pull-up banner.

(Of course, long time readers of my letters will know I’m such an unsuccessful poet I can’t even make *that* bit happen.)

I’m confused about why the great all-knowing divine universal current of consciousness allows our right brain hemispheres to tune into the glorious and eternal images, mysteries and songs … only to then insist we disseminate our heavenly findings through a print run of 200 and the need to email Leicester Waterstones to try and get stocked.

I find it baffling that the pantheon of deities see fit to gift humans with mystical revelations and the music of the spheres … yet want us have to do MFAs in order to have a writer’s CV that’s professional enough for a publisher to take note of.

So I’m guessing either art isn’t divine insight … or the professionalisation of art might be a distraction sent by the demiurge to divert us from the real stuff?

Here’s Jean Delville’s lovely The Women of Eleusis.

For six years now, since April 1st 2019, I’ve been trying to be a writer. Beyond the writing, much of that time has been spent looping back and forth between wanting recognition from the professionalised poetic structure, the literary-critical complex, and a clear awareness that it’s all bit of a game. A game beautifully outlined in Pierre Bourdieu The Field of Cultural Production and a game for various reasons of class, personality-failings and actual quality of work, that I’m not really equipped to play.

And my backwards and forwarding about whether I should try to be ‘properly’ published or just give the stuff out usually ends up with an overriding sense that not only is gifting my work the most sensible and enjoyable option but ALSO feels magickally right.

Meaning, whenever I lose hefty amounts of cash I don’t really have on gorgeous cloth coverings, thick stock, black foiling and extortionate international postage … I find that reciprocal magickal things start to happen in my life.

Could it be that writing the work is only the first step and that for a book to truly be a symbolic representation of a hidden reality unencumbered by the categories that commerce and other grey aspects of our reality impose, it must first escape the gravity of money?

Here’s Jean Delville’s androgyne-packed The School of Plato.

And so this is where I currently am in my thinking about making poetry.

Firstly, it’s vital to regard one’s body of work as a hyper-object spanning a lifetime.

Doing so releases you from any doubts and questions about the short-term reception something might have.

Secondly, if one’s best writing *is* straight from a divine source (and that only happens when your ego steps aside) then one must let it flow into the world as easily as possible.

And seeing as buying poetry books is very very very low on the list of things people will ever buy, FREE is the logical price point.

Thirdly and fourthly, let’s be magickal.

Thirdly, we should regard a lifetime of writing as primarily an alchemical process that works on the writer, rather than the reader.

If you do know my work from the past six years, you’ll know that each new poetic release has been stylistically and thematically drastically different from the previous release.

From cut-up text about Hyperstition rockets to Silver Age Arcadian poetry. From minimalist Fluxus text sculptures to folk-horror Nick Drakean coming-of-age nursery rhymes.

It’s not that I can’t make up my mind about what kind of writer I am … it’s that each mode represents the me that I am then.

The works I write in each period of life directly and alchemically carry me to the next regeneration.

And fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, we should think of the gifting process as a genuine magickal ritual. It is a ritual which involves a deep sacrifice of money and time. The sacrifice, the giving up, the letting go, is the thing.

(For Jon Harris’s fascinating thoughts on sacrifice check out Church of Burn.)

This gifting ritual also embodies something about how I want the world to be. It’s something so precious and, to me, *right*, that I don’t want to ever put it into words.

This is a book that has helped me develop these ideas around gifting.

Turns out gifting is highly Blakean. William Blake gave away huge amounts of work and Blake’s Gifts explores a number of facets of his thinking about gifting – from a particular 18th century economic rhythm to strategic wooing of potential patrons. But it also explores Blake, via Plato, seeing inspiration as a gift from God. It’s Delville all over again.

If art is genuinely a gift from the divine – like, really really, like a separate layer of reality being so generous to send us beauty and truth and love to create with … then should we, or Leicester Waterstones, ever profit from it?

Anyway, five FREE copies of Black ribbon left. Email me.

Here’s a poem from the book. There are nine moments of consciousness in it.

The Peacock Feather Masque

Moving on from my recurring dream
of The Peacock Feather Masque,
I lie in bed psychoanalysing myself
then rise and poach two eggs
(how they wobble like eyes ready to burst open)
season them with homegrown chives,
light a patchouli joss stick,
pray and begin researching medieval 
poetry – thinking in allegories, 
the authors were so anonymous –
I pause to remember The Beatles
having their pianos painted by The Fool
in psychedelic circles of fortune
and then receive a flash of Joe Orton
being murdered in the toffee-coloured
terraces on Noel Road, Islington,
nine shimmering hammer blows to his head.  

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As I hope is clear now, I am my own patron. So that means if you hire me as a Creative Director (see some work here) then know that you’re funding future poetic magickal rituals as well. And if you follow me on Instagram then you’ll always get first opportunity for new FREE releases.