Saturday, November 25, 2006

Ubuweb and the Edge Lane Avant-Garde

UbuWeb has some great experimental film, poetry and music. Here's a couple of links you might enjoy:

Marcel Broodthaers: Interview with a Cat

Eric Satie: Four Gnossiennes

On its main page UbuWeb announces itself as the YouTube of the Avant-Garde. Whenever I see or hear the words avant-garde, it reminds me of an occasion when I was a student in Liverpool. I was looking for a new lodging after being practically fire-bombed out of my previous flat on Edge Lane, a rough area of Liverpool.

Thus it was that I stumbled on Mr Goodfriend, a classically sleazy landlord with an incredibly oily demeanour. As I looked around the tiny flat he was offering for let in Allerton, he asked a lot of probing questions and somehow found out that I was interested in writing poetry. Then he asked me where I had lived before. I told him: Edge Lane.

With a very serious look on his face he said: "Ah yes, I've heard it's very avant-garde around there."

Unfortunately, I took the apartment and signed his watertight contract which kept me paying the rent for two months after I left the flat six months later. I had to leave. It was so cold I would go to bed in a tracksuit, sleeping bag and two duvets. Eventually, I gave up on that and just started sleeping on the sofa in front of the gas fire. Now that's Avant-Garde.

Below is a poem called 'Wallpaper' which I wrote while living in that place. It was published in the New Statesman magazine thanks to Hugo Williams who was the poetry editor at that time.


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