Odds and Ends Essays, Blogs, Internet Discussions, Interviews and Miscellany

and get the convictions
to cause the new frictions
to burn the sad fictions
like Los’s predictions
and all his old dictions
and Ida’s depictions
and Milton’s inflictions
and Beulah’s conflictions
she turned to transfixtions
as she came to the confidante
who showed her the miscreant
who made her feel elegant
with the power of lubricant
and the eyes of the vigilant
and the thoughts of the postulant
and the cowardice of the reverent
and the diplomacy of the celebrant
and the hatefulness of the ignorant
and the safety of the inhabitant
and the words that are blighted
and mediocrity knighted
or the men who are not righted
or the women who are frighted
and soft voices that are spited
with the opinions that are slighted
and the warnings that are lighted
to the ones who feel plighted
as the stalkers who are sighted
turn out to be heighted
for the simple publicity
that crowns our great city
with its glass walled cubicity
and its sky bound toxicity
Lawrence Upton RIP
2 March 2020
A few days ago, I was saddened to hear that the poet and director of Writers Forum, Lawrence Upton, had died on
the 16th February 2020. For about a year early in the last decade, I corresponded with him via email, discussing
many things relating to the UK avant-garde poetry scene, and also about his association with the poet and founder
of Writers Forum, Bob Cobbing, with whom he collaborated on a number of projects.
Around the time of our email correspondence, I published his Commentaries on Bob Cobbing as an ebook with
Argotist Ebooks, which can be found here:
https://www.argotistonline.co.uk/COMMENTARIES%20ON%20BOB%20COBBING.pdf
I also published a poetic work of his, Memory Fictions, which can be found here:
https://www.argotistonline.co.uk/MEMORY%20FICTIONS.pdf
He said he wanted to also write an article for The Argotist Online about a (then) fracas concerning Writers Forum, in
which he felt that certain people involved with Writers Forum were attempting to remove him as its director. He’d
written about this on Writers Forum’s blog but felt that a formal and detailed article by him concerning the
situation would better advertise the unfairness of his treatment. And that as The Argotist Online reached a wider
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