New Weird Shepherds part 1: Folk Suburb

…being a quick introduction to three sites that have become important links on the Old Weird Albion reading list during my hiatus, each of which looks at folk music and folk tale in an interesting new light….

Hey! Let’s take a trip to Folk Suburb! is an extremely odd creation: the reification of English folk songs as modern folk tales of suburban English life. Both on the blog and in the first issue of This Roaring Peace – a new .pdf-based zine of these materials created by the sister site Jack’s Tray – Folk Suburb imagines lyrics such as “Lovely Joan” set in today’s suburban netherworlds; a Martin Carthy reared on J.G. Ballard.

 

Back in Action

Phase two of my locative documentary poetry project, Public Record, is well under way, so it’s time to reenter the world of blogging. Please allow this to serve as both line-break, and invitation to check out the Public Record website!

 

Hiatus

The Old Weird Albion is on a li’l hiatus, just for a few more weeks, while my Public Record project gets sorted out and launched… check back this summer for new material on The Copper Family, English magic, medieval church painting, contemporary artists Matt Stokes and Jem Finer, and a ton more…

 

On the Downs

“On the Downs” - John Masefield (published Sept., 1918)

Up on the downs the red-eyed kestrels hover,

Eyeing the grass.

The field-mouse flits like a shadow into cover

As their shadows pass.

Men are burning gorse on the down’s shoulder,

A drift of smoke

Glitters and hangs and the skies smoulder

And the lungs choke.

Once the tribe did thus on the downs, burning

Men in the frame,

Crying to the gods of the downs ’til their brains were burning

And the gods came.

And today on the downs, in the wind, the hawkes of the grasses

In blood and air,

Something passes me and cries as it passes,

On the chalk downland bare.

 

Iain Sinclair via Kathy Acker

Not sure how long this has been up, but hey – I just found out about it via the official unofficial site for Sinclair, that patron saint of the Old Weird Albion. An excellent interview with Iain Sinclair, written by the late Kathy Acker, at the time of Lights Out for the Territory.

Who but the irreconcilable irrepressible Acker could turn what might’ve been a run-of-the-mill conversation about lit-mysticism and beatnik neo-paganism into a beautiful dissection (nee exhibition) of the linguistic balance of Sinclair’s visionary novels and their arc into “non”-fiction? Coming soon: A roundup revisitation of some of the excellent recent webwise material from the ubiquitous Mr. Sinclair…