Sinclair Beiles in Cape Town

 Good to see that Gregory Penfold in Cape Town has received his copy of Who was Sinclair Beiles?, published by Dye Hard Press.

Sinclair and the Beat Hotel plaque

"Here are Sinclair’s ‘Last Words,’ written in Paris long before he would have been aware of any pressing need to devise a valedictory.”  Heathcote Williams, from a tribute to Sinclair Beiles, in Bone Hebrew, a collection of Beiles’s writings published in 2013, in a limited edition, Cold Turkey Press. Read more.

Heathcote Williams, radical poet, playwright, actor, and friend of Sinclair Beiles, dies

Heathcote Williams, the radical poet, playwright, actor and polymathic English genius, has died at the age of 75. He had been ill for some time and died on Saturday in Oxford.

He was the author of many polemical poems, written over four decades in a unique documentary style. They included works about the devastation being wrought on the natural environment – Sacred Elephant, Whale Nation and Falling For a Dolphin – and Autogeddon, a grim and majestic attack on the car. Read more.

Heathcote Williams also contributed a chapter to the revised edition of Who was Sinclair Beiles?

Review of Who was Sinclair Beiles? by Dawn Swope

This little book grows and grows. It is a revised and expanded edition, the third edition in all. The book
first surfaced in 2009.

Little was known about Sinclair Beiles outside of his home country, South Africa. He got a name largely by being around Burroughs, Gysin, Ginsberg and Corso at the ‘Beat Hotel’ in Paris in the 1950s. There were photos of them all together. Beiles collaborated on the cult book Minutes To Go in 1960. There were conversations about books in the pipeline. Beiles worked at the Olympia Press, famous of course for Maurice Girodias and Junkie and other things.

Beiles never quite established his name in Europe and he struggled in his homeland also. His Ashes of
Experience won prizes but caused few ripples anywhere.

But he had a gift and a band of people did believe in him over the years. Gary Cummiskey for one, Fred de Vries, Carl Weissner, Heathcote Williams. They all befriended Beiles through Europe, Amsterdam, London, Greece, South Africa.

Beiles was hampered by his drug consumption, his personal issues. He was always on the cusp of something. He was a casualty of the literary world, a sometime Syd Barrett figure. A nearly man.

Gary Cummiskey and Eva Kowalska have researched and then some more to strip away the layers of time and fog around Beiles. More understanding, photos, bibliographies, letters. Well done to them.

Published in Beat Scene no 80, December 2015

Out now: Who was Sinclair Beiles?, revised and expanded edition.

Available from Dye Hard Press at R150 per copy, including postage (South Africa only). Email dyehardpress@iafrica.com.  For overseas orders, price will vary according to increased postal rates - please enquire with publisher.

Due out January 2015: A revised and expanded edition of Who was Sinclair Beiles?

Coming soon: A revised and expanded edition of Who was Sinclair Beiles?

A revised and expanded edition of Who was Sinclair Beiles?, including new material by Heathcote Williams and Carl Weissner, with additional photographs of Sinclair from the 1970s by Gerard Bellaart. Due out November 2014.

Bone Hebrew, published by Cold Turkey Press

Bone Hebrew is a special limited edition book of 76 pages with texts on Sinclair Beiles by Gerard Bellaart, Heathcote Williams, Lilian Lijn and Yannis Livadas, plus an interview with Sinclair by Michael Butterworth, portions of Gerard Bellaart's correspondence with the poet, sketches, drawings and a selection of rare poems by Sinclair Beiles. Published by Cold Turkey Press, France.

Cover painting by Antonin Artaud.

Edited by Gerard Bellaart.

Book orders at: coldturkeypress@gerardbellaart.com

Feedback on Bone Hebrew

What a fine book. The finest. And what a selfless service you've performed. I never told you this but I remembered as I turned the book's pages that, of course, you were the one person that Sinclair always spoke of with an uncritical glow. The man who was invigilating a great renaissance in Rotterdam was I think  how he first spoke of you. You've done him proud. The book's a great prize to have and to hold.    Heathcote Wiliams

dear gerard -- bone hebrew arrived an hour ago. it is magnificent! absolutely stunning. just finished reading Liliane Lijn's memory piece. I couldn't stop. i read the letter to Heathcote, too. and your own sweet poem. i am green with envy. your own "profoundest care" comes through in every page. I love the "look" of the book as much as the content. i haven't finished reading  the rest of the book. felt the need to msg you immediately. i want to go back to the beginning of the book and read straight thru without jumping around. God, I feel lucky.  Jan Herman

Dear Gerard, I'm really enjoying Bone Hebrew. The essays and memoirs really help round out a good portrait of a great poet. Do you have any other collections of Sinclair's poetry still in stock somewhere? I need to read more. You've done a great job with Bone Hebrew, and a great service to Sinclair. Thanks and cheers. Mark Terrill  

A First-Class Letter from the Lost and Found

When I read Heathcote Williams' description of a bizarre project that for a time obsessed the South African poet Sinclair Beiles, who wanted to plant "the barren Sahara desert" with "industrial quantities of  discarded tea-leaves", I remembered a letter than Carl Weissner once wrote ....read more here

Letter from Sinclair Beiles to Jay Jeff Jones, April 1975

Victims Wanted

Sinclair Beiles: The Action Poet

A poem card published by Cold Turkey Press, France. The first side is a photograph of Beiles believed to have been taken in Johannesburg in the early 1980s. The reverse is Beiles's poem 'The Action Poet' from the collection the Idiot's Voice, soon to be published by Cold Turkey Press, in both French and English.

Sinclair Beiles: The first poet in space by Heathcote Williams

"The poetry of Sinclair Beiles is distinguished and long distilled; its unexpected striking images bring a flash of surprised recognition. The poems open slowly in your mind, like Japanese paper flowers in water.”

William Burroughs

Despite Burroughs’ impressive recommendation Sinclair Beiles often fell asleep during his own poetry readings thanks to a hefty diet of prescription drugs which Sinclair would carry around in a large plastic bag and which were always placed beside him on-stage so as to be within easy reach. This was a pity since Sinclair’s poems, as Burroughs had attested, were worth listening to, once he could be aroused...Full text available as a PDF here

(This piece was first published in The Raconteur. Copyright: Heathcote Williams)