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THE BEAT SCENE PRESS
July
30, 2013
I'm slowly
bringing this page up to date. For the moment I can tell you the Beat Scene
Press chapbook series is very much ongoing and recently I published number 41
in the series, Notes From the Beat Underground: An Interview with Herbert
Huncke by John Tytell.
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Charles
Bukowski: Censorship Does Pay by Abel Debritto is a recent publication in the
Beat Scene Press Pocket Book Series, number 25. A brilliant investigative
essay in an edition of 125 numbered copies.
Number 24 in the Beat Scene Pocket Books series
is an interview, or conversation between John Fante (ask the Dust, Wait Until
Spring, Bandina etc) and Ben Pleasants. It is an excerpt from a long series
of taped conversations between the pair in 1979. They have never been aired
and this is the first time anything from that recording has been published.
As always there are 125 numbered copies only.
Taking my lead from a number of small press publishing inspirations, (things
like Yugen, and the Totem Press poetry books et al) these 5
x 8 inch chapbooks are always published in editions of no more than 150 copies. In the series so far have been I'M BUKOWSKI, AND THEN? by
Enrico Francheschini, MARBLE MAN by Dan Fante, DOWNSTREAM FROM TROUT FISHING
IN AMERICA: RICHARD BRAUTIGAN A MEMOIR by Keith Abbott, JACK KEROUAC IN SAN
FRANCISCO by Tom Clark, LETTERS HOME FROM CAMBRIDGE 1963-1965 by Tom Clark,
HIGH PEAK HAIKUS: AN INTERVIEW WITH GARY SNYDER by James Campbell, NEAL AND
ANNE AT GOUGH STREET by
Charles Plymell, MUTATE OR DIE: WITH BURROUGHS IN KANSAS by David Ohle.
SEASONS WITH GINSBERG by Gordon Ball, LETTERS TO BEAT SCENE from Charles
Bukowski, ARIZONA HIGHWAY by Dan Fante, REMEMBERING JACK
KEROUAC by John Clellon Holmes, THE GAME & OTHER POEMS by Jack Hirschman,
Work Conchy by Tom Pickard, Cool Kerouac by Jim Burns, Letters to Beat Scene
- Charles Bukowski and others.
Recent books in the series include a work on William Burroughs
by English writer Iain Sinclair, another on Lew Welch, Richard Brautigan, Charles Bukowski - with others in the pipeline.
From THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (early
January, 2008 - anonymous reviewer)
"We live in hope that this will be the Year of the Short Biography. To start
the trend, we announce publication of Scenes from East Hill Farm:
Seasons with Allen Ginsberg by Gordon Ball, a book so short that its
pages are unnumbered (there are thirty-six), but none the less full of
incident and atmosphere. In 1968, Ball lived at East Hill Farm, Cherry
Valley, New York, with Ginsberg and various friends. He acted as driver,
farm manager and general beacon of sanity in a place where Peter Orlovsky
greeted arrivals (including Ginsberg) "swinging a machete overhead".
Gregory Corso liberally distributed chaos, while others writhed in
"chemical entanglements".
Beards loomed large in Beat lives in 1968. When
Ginsberg and Ball return to the US from Canada, they are subject to
interrogation and inspection. "This happens a lot. Almost anybody with a
beard," the poet tells Ball. When members of the team are involved in a car
crash, people from the other vehicle flee the scene, screaming, "Those
beards! Those beards! Those beards!"
Ginsberg is also revealed as a defacer of
university walls:
One afternoon we went on our way up a flight of
stairs at McMaster when Allen noted a bit of graffiti on the yellow wall:
Power comes from the barrel of a gun.
-Mao
Pausing, he removed a pen from his breast pocket
and wrote beneath it:
Power comes from imagination.
-A Ginsberg
Ball reveals in the preface that his work is
excerpted from a "book-length manuscript". But Scenes from East Hill
Farm is already book-length, though the length is brief. "
It is
published by Beat Scene Press, 27 Court Leet, Binley Woods CV3 2JQ.
ALLEN GINSBERG AT EAST HILL FARM
by Gordon Ball is No 13 in the pocket book series. This is now sold out.
OUT NOW...REXROTH, BUKOWSKI AND THE POLITICS OF LITERATURE
by Ben Pleasants...a long lost and previously unpublished interview with the
late Kenneth Rexroth, he talks about Charles Bukowski. Cost is £6.95
The Beat Scene Press has fairly recently published a memoir of Jack Kerouac by Elizabeth Von Vogt, the
sister of John Clellon Holmes. In a signed and numbered limited edition. The
chapbook, JACK KEROUAC AT 681 LEXINGTON AVENUE, is number 9 in the series.
This issue has also sold out.
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Michael McClure's A FIERCE GOD
AND A FIERCE WAR an interview with Rod Phillips - with the full text of
McClure's long 1965 poem POISONED WHEAT was published Wednesday 28 March. No
8 in the Beat Scene Press Pocket Book series. Signed and numbered.
A recent issue in the series
was
THE SAD AND LONELY DEATH OF RICHARD BRAUTIGAN by ....erm, me, Kevin Ring. One
hundred numbered copies in the typical Beat Scene Press Pocket Books series.
Priced at £6.50. If you would like me to sign it I will, but not compulsory.
We have also recently published Tom Clark's LETTERS
HOME FROM CAMBRIDGE 1963-1965 - an edition of 100 signed and numbered
copies. Cost is £7.99 in UK.
This issue has completely sold out - sorry
TRANSIT 16, issue includes, Diane di
Prima, Michael McClure, Jack Hirschman, Tom Clark, David Meltzer, Barry
Gifford, Dan Fante, Janine Pommy Vega & more.
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