Peter Barlow's Cigarette #49

An afternoon of alternative poetries, celebrating Arcadian Rustbelt: The Second Generation of British Underground Poetry, edited by Andrew Duncan and John Goodby, featuring poets from the anthology.

4.00 - 6.00pm, The Carlton Club, Carlton Road, Whalley Range

Free entry, but booking strongly advised

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The Arcadian Rustbelt anthology is designed to answer a specific question: was there a second generation of alternative poetry in Britain, after the high tide of the Seventies? The inescapable context is poets reacting to Thatcherism. Much of the country was turning into rustbelt. But the enforced leisure could create space in which new art could be made.

The design involves a (theoretical) series of anthologies of the Alternative world, within which this volume records a rigorously and specifically defined chronological section. We recover 28 poets from a period (1980 to 1994) in which the Underground had gone into a winter metabolism, while virtually anything that made poetry more innovative and expressive would lead it off the accepted paths and get it excluded from the High Street outlets. This is a moment of emergence into daylight. –the editors

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DAVID ANNWN ~

(born David Jones) worked for many years for the Open University. He has written on Blake and his namesake David Jones and is an authority on Gothic, phantasmagoric magic lantern shows and early horror films (recent critical books include Sexuality and the Gothic Magic Lantern, 2014, and Gothic effigy: A guide to dark visibilities, 2018). His early poetry, selected in the spirit / that kiss (1993) is inflected by jazz and Welsh origins. From the 1990s his work took a more radical turn, displaying a penchant for wordplay, typographic shapeshifting and performance in Bela Fawr’s Cabaret (2008) and Disco Occident (2013), together with collaborations, often with the calligrapher Thomas Ingmire. The title poem of Bela Fawr involves a music hall singer, a Welsh witch and Gerald Manley Hopkins among others, and reflects a concern with reclaiming marginalised artists. His most recent work, Wonder-rig (2024) is a collaboration with Lee Duggan and the artist Nigel Bird. In turbulent/ /boundaries, ‘get going / camera brittle / councillors Petty’ is part of a sequence written in an eight-year struggle against local-council corruption which accompanied the planners’ scheme to build on the last green-belt fields in Wakefield. In ‘Hiverwand’ section I is translations of the first four lines of 'The Windhover' into 12 languages, translated back into English and reworked. Section III is the foreign words put through an English spellchecker.

JOHN GOODBY ~

Raised in Birmingham, with work taking him to Yorkshire via Cork and Swansea, Goodby was one of the primary anti-Thatcherite poets and has gone the whole route from Trotskyist-minded alternative history cast in mainstream modes to avant garde process work, by way of Denise Riley, Ted Berrigan and John James. Marginal politics led to a special view of history. As a Dylan Thomas scholar (see Under the Spelling Wall, 2013), Goodby was digging up the very roots of the alternative scene. Co-editor with Lyndon Davies of The Edge of Necessary (2018), the first anthology of Welsh innovative poetry, and the Hay Poetry Jamborees 2009-12. Works include A Birmingham Yank (1998), uncaged sea (2008), Wine Night White (2010) and The No Breath (2018). Illennium (2010) was a climactic work.

KEITH JAFFRATE ~

is a jazz musician and his poetry has a jazz feel of always being in the present moment even as the context constantly shifts. He was intensely involved in the scene around Huddersfield while there was a scene, and has since focused on composition, frequently combining his poems with music. He posts at wordhoarddotorg.wordpress.com, where he shows his enthusiasm for improvisation, collaboration, and community arts. “If you are sentient then you will have registered that division, both language and fact, appears to be the zeitgeist. if we are divided, we are unhappy. this is true on every human scale[...] and yet collaboration is constant, is actually mundane (of this world; of the universe). we have evolved through collaboration, we survive through collaboration. as a writer and musician, i must collaborate. it seems like an artistic first commandment.” Poems published in Tears in the Fence and Fire. Finding Space (1982); In Heaven (1984); War Poems (1987); Timeless Postcard, (1994). The main work which converted the unconvinced is the long poem Songs for Eurydice (2004).

ELIZABETH JAMES ~

Poet from Cardiff, whose poems often start from pre-existing textual clippings. They are often interested in the organisation of space by repeating procedures. 1 : 50 000 : sixteen short poems (1992). Renga + (2002) includes two rengas written in collaboration with Peter Manson, unpredictable and intricate works. Elizabeth James worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Other work: Neither the one nor the other (1999), a collaboration with Frances Presley; radio poems with Jane Draycott; and electronic media (now defunct).

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Accessibility info:

There are a small number of steps up to enter the venue; unfortunately they do not currently have ramp access, though they are working to sort it for the future. Once inside, the venue is all level and has accessible toilets. The event will be seated, and some chairs can be moved to accommodate any particular requirements. Children are welcome at our events (though we can't guarantee all poetry will be child-friendly in content). If you have any questions, or any accessibility requirements not covered here which you would like to discuss with us, please do get in touch, and we'll do everything in our power to accommodate you.

Covid safety

Since the risks of the Covid-19 virus are still present, we would like to take what measures we can to make this event as safe as possible. We would ask that you consider taking a lateral flow test before you come to the event, and obviously don't come if it is positive. Similarly, if you have any potential Covid symptoms, or think you've come into contact with someone who might have it, please stay away.