Clive Fencott

I'm definitely guilty here of conflating the excitement of a particular time of my life w/ the quality of this object. In March of 1982, Desire Prods (a production of the Merzaum Collective) & the Krononautic Organism (a time traveller's society) put on a mnth of events every other night called "Odd Nights in March" (or some such) to coincide w/ a "Party for People from the Future". It was probably the pinnacle of performance in the time that I lived in Baltimore. An amazing, amazing time. BUT, being in Baltimore, a working class city w/ little or no recognition as a cultural hotbed even INSIDE its own city limits, very little of this time has been 'immortalized'. I reckon that Baltimore was as exciting a place to be as just about anywhere in the world at the time.

& here were 2 London-based sound poets adding their contribution. Cobbing is introduced in this bk:

"BOB COBBING, "the grand old man of British sound-poetry", has seemingly always been around. An experimental workshop which he founded in London in 1952 is still meeting after thirty years. His publishing-house, Writers Forum, which grew out of this, is about to issue its three-hundredth publication.

"He was invited to the first international sound-poetry (text-sound composition) festival in Stockholm in 1968 and has attended and performed at all subsequent ones - in Stockholm, Amsterdam, London, Glasgow, Toronto, and New York."

This goes on for 3 more paragraphs. Fencott's bio presents a younger but equally energetic fellow. I suppose these days a similarly exciting event for people younger than myself might be a Slam Poetry Fest.… (more)