‘Sail and Steam’ - Cutty Sark Overtaking the Britannia

Painting by David Cobb

Real Text, Fake Texture

REAL TEXT > FAKE TEXTURE

Real Noise, Fake Music

Photo by Vitasta Raina

Jean-Paul L. Garnier interviews Michael Butterworth

In the following excerpt, Butterworth reflects on his experience publishing with large commercial publishers and small presses, and describes his primary orientation as a poet:

JPG – You’ve worked with both traditional publishers and many small presses and magazines around the world, what do you find to be the strengths of each, and which kinds of outlets do you prefer for your work?

MB – It’s important for a writer to get work published, so both have their strengths, traditional publishers, obviously, for their potential audience-reach, and the small press for writers who aren’t readily taken up by the mainstream publishers. I was lucky to have my first published piece of work taken by New Worlds, a newsstand magazine, and when I became a regular contributor, to have been anthologised widely by mainstream publishers like Hutchinson in London and Doubleday in the US. But there was a problem, in that, even though, in Ballard’s terms, I needed to be more prolific, New Worlds, with a firm sale of 6,000, only took so much of my work. The next rung down, for a magazine with a similar profile, was Ambit, with a sale below 2,000; the editor there didn’t like anything that was Beat inflected, which ruled me out… and so even smaller presses, with sales in the hundreds, became a second home for me, especially for my poetry. After the New Worlds period, for a couple of years when my children were very young, to be able to look after them at home I went freelance and was with much larger houses like Wyndham Publications and Times Warner. Since then, it has been a mixture.

JPG – Your latest book, Complete Poems 1965-2020, features many works that first appeared in small press magazines, it covers a lot of ground and ultimately won you the Laureate Award for Best SF poet, and led to an exhibition of your works in Joshua Tree’s Art Queen Gallery.S omeone known mostly as a publisher and author of fiction what has this meant to you? 

MB – I have always known that I am primarily a poet, who often expresses himself in prose, but I have always written poetry as poetry, and in fact one of my first non-classroom pieces of work at school was a poem, which started my writing. When I assembled Complete Poems, I was surprised to find that they have become something more than their parts. I had always viewed them as being fragmentary. Yet over the years they have been in the background of my life, quietly telling their own story. I was surprised to find the book won an award, and for it to be the focus of an exhibition. I suppose what it means to me is that it has confirmed what I knew, but also that it has unexpectedly provided another slant on my work, which I didn’t expect.

Click HERE for the review in its entirety. 

Click HERE to view the Amazon description

 

Energy... where solar "information" meets its manifestation in plasma

Chris Arabadjis - Untitled (2025-07-001) Ballpoint pen on paper 11" x 10" 2025

 

A Postscript to the Wave IX Review: Artifical Intelligence, Virtual Reality and Related Epistemological Considerations in the Invisible Tower Trilogy and Tally-Ho, Cornelius!

My review of Jean-Paul Garnier's Wave IX on the British Science Fiction Association webpage (HERE) has led me to the following considerations:

Moving beyond computer-generated literature to computer-generated reality and culture, my Invisible Tower trilogy engages a range of AI-related issues.  In Book I Echoes, computer-generated realities, computer-generated medicine (and ersatz medicine), as well as AI-assisted remote viewing are explored.  In Book II We Reign Secure, the character and nature of AI “consciousness” are represented, moreover with a sensitivity to the “unknown” properties of such phenomena, and sketched with an acute and detailed sensitivity as to how contacts among individuals, society and AI might produce startling (but also vague and obscure) effects upon psychology, media, and politics. Political consciousness, political movements, and political theory are sharply challenged by the new technology, and at an ever-accelerating rate.  Some of the revelations—if in fact things are revealed at all—are Miltonic.  In Book III The Sky-Shaped Sarcophagus, the eponymous artifact is a point of departure for exploring related mysteries, moreover holding those mysteries afar off, as is appropriate to the many philosophical entanglements and “unknowns” attending the subject.

 

 

A pastiche blending Michael Moorcock’s Second Ether trilogy and the Jerry Cornelius “brand”, my novel Tally-Ho, Cornelius! presents sharply-drawn contacts with virtual reality, nanobots, postmodern theology, post-artificial intelligence, synthetic beings, theoretical physics, political physics, authoritarianism, “experts”, and related phenomena of institutional corruption at a number of levels.

  

Click the respective cover images to view the Amazon descriptions and reviews.

Underscore yesterday's post...

Soon I will have more to say about my Wave IX review,  so please do have a look.

Please click HERE to read the review. 

Wave IX edited by Jean-Paul L. Garnier: a compressed essay-review

Highbrow readers will recall a May 14 post in which I promised a review of Wave IX, a J. G. Ballard-inspired collection of stories, poetry and art.  The book includes my fiction piece exercising a fusion of contemporary developments in AI with post-WWII modernist aesthetics: "The Nanopoetic Quest in Theory and Practice." The story reflects a number of Ballardian themes. 

That review has been written and it can be viewed at the website of Vector, which is the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association.

Please click HERE to read the review. 

Click the cover image to view the Amazon sales page.

 

"The Streets That Built Me: Growing Up in India’s Cantonment Towns" by Vitasta Raina

A cantonment (or cantt) is the residential area of a military base, according to Wikipedia. In a new blog post, Vitasta Raina writes about growing up in a cantonment in India.  Please click HERE.

"I remember growing up in Faridkot Cantt, where we used to play chor-police on our bicycles, zooming down the streets without a care, not having to pay heed to speeding trucks or autorickshaws that might mow us down if we didn’t pay attention. Instead, the streets offered us safety, a place where even a three-ton would slow down and allow pedestrians and cyclists the right of way."

 

Plan of Pune Cantonment, 1850.

Vitasta Raina is the author of Writer's Block.  Please click HERE (or the cover image) to view the Amazon description.

"One Word" by Mahavishnu Orchestra (entrancing figures, spaces, textures and pointillisms)

  

Memorable highbrow drollery with Professor Hodges

 Please click HERE.

"Flee to the Enchenedian Islands!”

 Photos: Burt Glinn, 1959

Gregory Corso arguing with a New York Post reporter, in which Corso screams: “But you don’t understand Kangaroonian weep! Forsake thy trade! Flee to the Enchenedian Islands!”

Upper Manhattan 1917 - Thomas Hart Benton

Not Reactionary: The bold transgressiveness of this narrative invaginates the binary of intersectional liminality

Kidding aside, the film terrified me when I was young, and the John Cline paintings during the opening credits are notable.

Rosemary MacLean on "Realitease: A Cultural Detritus Revue" - by Oz Hardwick

Oz Hardwick interviews his student, Rosemary MacLean, about her contribution to Emanations 11:

I really enjoyed catching up with Leeds trinity University alumna Rosemary MacLean (English and Writing, 2018 and current MA Creative Writing student) recently.

 

Rosemary was celebrating after having her first absurdist/satirical play script published in issue 11 of Emanations, alongside experimental writers from all over the world.

 

We asked Rosemary to tell us a bit more about her submission, what it meant to see her work published and how her time at Leeds Trinity has influenced her work and success.

 

“My submission was an extract from a play I wrote for my Rock Band. It is entitled "Realitease: A Cultural Detritus Revue." The play follows two diva demonologists, Rebecca L’amour and Tiffany Delicious, as they embark on a jukebox musical joyride and ultimately destroy reality. The play was inspired by the writings of the CCRU, Deleuze and Guattari’s Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the Situationist movement, chaos and a generally gnostic understanding of what it means to exist as a transgender woman. It is now published in issue 11 of Emanations, an anthology of experimental writing.

 

“I was incredibly happy to get published, as it allowed me to take my first steps as a writer beyond what is purely for my practice itself and get started taking readers along with me on my journey. It meant that I could share and develop ideas that I find exciting through creative exploration, and that others found that interesting. On a personal level it’s given me a "green light" to go even further with my creative projects.

“Through my BA in English and Writing I was able to explore playwriting as a medium and found myself immersed in critical theory and experimental literature. This allowed me to develop my craft and engage with ideas that have influenced me ever since. After taking time away from studies to focus on performance art and music, I began work on the play. I got back in touch with my incredible tutor, Oz Hardwick, who read my work and encouraged me to submit it for publication before I started my MA. I am incredibly thankful to him and the department as a whole for their ongoing support of alumni like myself. I am thrilled to have returned to study with them and develop further as a writer.

 

“I have always been bent on disrupting reality through literature, art and music. Now, however, I feel emboldened and more refined in my approach, rather than anxious to prove myself. I still remain somewhat of an incredulous, heretical and pretentious goth, though!

 

“I have a collection of poetry that I am nearly ready to self-publish and I am using my MA as a chance to develop a novel.”

Click the cover image to view the Emanations 11 Amazon description.