the trouble with Gen Y...

Inspired by Kerouac and brought about by the frustrations of being young now, I did what any aspiring poet of our age would do - I made a video and uploaded it onto Youtube. 'Video' is a slightly misleading term - it's really more of an audio clip with a picture of me performing a different poem somewhere else. But you can still watch it none the less. Let me know your thoughts or if you've felt the same at any point!

it's the beat of your heart

Last week I went to SHUNT, now laying low under the looming point of the Shard at London Bridge, once hidden by a secret door past cash machines and tottering stilettos in the station, to see a performance by some wonderful friends of mine. Their performance was funny, brilliant and absurd, but there were a couple of others that weren't, including a fairly ropey 'interpretive' dance to a Jack Kerouac poem.

Seeing as I am obsessed with him at the moment, I thought I would let you in on the sound of his voice as it echoed past disorientated limbs in a metal space, pervaded by darkness, candlelight and roughly dimmed voices - as it was so much better than the dance. His voice is so satisfying to listen to - and his style is catching, as you can probably tell!

ask me why I mourn

starving hysterical naked - Allen Ginsberg

Mostly due to James Franco's extreme good looks, I have become interested in the Beatnik Poets, have read half of Allen Ginsberg's infamous Howl and bought On The Road by Jack Kerouac. While we may lament the truth of the genre becoming potentially bastardized and 'Hollywood-ized' under Franco's Rayban's and perfectly sculpted cheekbones, the new biopic on Ginsberg will undoubtedly provoke interest in the movement from younger generations - which can only be a good thing, right?

Being one of the aforementioned myself, I have wikipedia-ed the shit out of the subject and have come across a few gems that I hope you will find of interest. This is my favourite: It is Kerouac's Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, a list of 30 'essentials,' particularly if you plan to be inspired by/ copy his Spontaneous Prose method.

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside your own house
4. Be in love with your life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see your exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

(Apparently a 'teahead' is a weed junkie. If you know the derivation, I'd love to hear it. Perhaps because your mind goes all foggy and warm like a cup o' chai?) I particularly like Number 6 - Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind.

Despite, on closer inspection, discovering that Allen Ginsberg resembled Tobias Funke rather more than your R-Pattz-style Hollywood heartthrob, I am still not put off - I'm a gonna see that movie.



Also, in a completely unrelated comment, I just learned the term 'Lurker' in relation to blogs and blogging. Apparently this is someone who peruses blogs but does not comment on what they read. But I'm sure you, dear reader, are not one of those kind of creeps, are you? You want to contribute and discuss, right? Come on, don't a stranger, leave a comment like the best minds of our generation, not destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, but sane, clothed and conversational.