http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Exhaust Angel Exhaust is a magazine with an immense history, and was begun back in the late1970s by Adrian Clarke, amongst others, who is a poet I was exposed to early in my involvement in the London scene through the writers forum and who had an intense affect on my own writing at the time. This latest issue of Angel Exhaust features a subsection of poets who have been featured in Freaklung magazine, edited by Linus Slug, where I appear.
I owe Mendoza (Linus Slug) more than just this publication. When I first took the decision to physically involve myself in readings and the poetry community, after years of writing privately, without seeking other poets or publications, Mendoza was one of the most generous people I met, inviting me to the Bill Griffiths memorial reading as my very first experience of what London poetry might offer. An incredible night to begin such a thing, the bar being set uneviably high. When I look back now, with Griffiths work having become so important to me, it is sad I never met him, arriving poetically, as he departed.
Mendoza not only published me and invited me to this reading but to the Morden tower Barry MacSweeney reading, which has become a significant milestone in the recent history of innovative British poetics. And her work is also magnificient, lacing together the vital strains of experimental poetry and Northumberland lore, as greats like Griffiths and Basil Bunting did. These viking heartlands grow ever more in my poetic consciousness as time passes, and I become further removed from my own three years in the North, when I studied in Durham. I regret not knowing then what I know now. Mendoza has been very significant in cultivating that feeling for me.
It's not the editors fault but the intro in Angel Exhaust to the Freaklung section somewhat purports an idea of London poetics which I think is mythical at worst and out dated at best. The idea there is a rolling movement of poetry through the squats and warehouses of East London, and a culture built purely on zines is a misnomer I think, and is another limitation of definition which is not necessary. I think I don't like it's connotation because it suggests the few enclaves of the avant garde which are an insiders club, and remain so, positing themselves as a hermetic society of experimentation so experimental they suppose they tower over others. It is my experience when you actually speak to younger poets in London, everyone is both inside and outside, everyone has a reason to feel left out and included at the same time.
Though my featured poems feel very, very old to me, from Red Museum, my first book, and so I don't like them, the magazine itself is extraordinary, full of great work including a fascinating interview with Zoe Skoulding. http://angelexhaust.blogspot.co.uk/
I owe Mendoza (Linus Slug) more than just this publication. When I first took the decision to physically involve myself in readings and the poetry community, after years of writing privately, without seeking other poets or publications, Mendoza was one of the most generous people I met, inviting me to the Bill Griffiths memorial reading as my very first experience of what London poetry might offer. An incredible night to begin such a thing, the bar being set uneviably high. When I look back now, with Griffiths work having become so important to me, it is sad I never met him, arriving poetically, as he departed.
It's not the editors fault but the intro in Angel Exhaust to the Freaklung section somewhat purports an idea of London poetics which I think is mythical at worst and out dated at best. The idea there is a rolling movement of poetry through the squats and warehouses of East London, and a culture built purely on zines is a misnomer I think, and is another limitation of definition which is not necessary. I think I don't like it's connotation because it suggests the few enclaves of the avant garde which are an insiders club, and remain so, positing themselves as a hermetic society of experimentation so experimental they suppose they tower over others. It is my experience when you actually speak to younger poets in London, everyone is both inside and outside, everyone has a reason to feel left out and included at the same time.
Though my featured poems feel very, very old to me, from Red Museum, my first book, and so I don't like them, the magazine itself is extraordinary, full of great work including a fascinating interview with Zoe Skoulding. http://angelexhaust.blogspot.co.uk/