New in French translation: Sinclair Beiles’s Selected Catastrophies & Other Poems

Catastrophes Choisies is not Sinclair Beiles’s first poetry collection to appear in French, but it is the most elaborate. The South African emigré poet, writer, and editor was born in Uganda of Russian-Jewish descent, in 1930, and grew up in Johannesburg from the age of six. An ex-patriate for most of his life, Beiles lived at various times in Tangiers, Athens, London, Rotterdam, and Paris, and sporadically had himself committed to hospital wards to deal with his sometimes fragile mental health  ...  Read more.

Alice in Progeress by Sinclair Beiles and Annie Rooney

 

In the biography note to Ashes of Experience (Wurm, 1969) it was stated that Sinclair Beiles and his wife Annie Rooney were due to have a book called Alice in Progress published by the Nova Broadcast series in the US, which was run by Jan Herman. In was even listed as a forthcoming title by Nova Broadcast in an advertisement published by City Lights. However, this book never appeared and enquiries about the possible whereabouts of the manuscript led nowhere ... until about a month ago when musician and Burroughs enthusiast Jeffrey Ball kindly answered a question of mine about the contribution that Sinclair and Annie Rooney had published in the journal The San Francisco Earthquake 4, published in 1968 -- it was Alice in Progress! Jeffrey also kindly photocopied the respective pages, though due to concerns over the spine cracking was not able to photocopy them flat - but no matter, the pages can be read. The San Francisco Earthquake was also edited by Jan Herman, so obviously for whatever reason(s), it appeared in journal form instead. Thank you, Jeffrey! 

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.

Going Cold Turkey (in Cyberspace), by Jan Herman

The computer screen has become a substitute for reality, dominating us not just by way of social media but — old news — by making artifacts like books on paper seem obsolete. I plead seriously guilty, witness this blogpost with its images and descriptions. A package that came in the mail with several new items from Cold Turkey Press got me to thinking more than usually about this. Issued in minuscule editions, Cold Turkey chapbooks, folios, and cards compose a rare yet necessary archive that subverts the ordinary in literary content and artistic quality. Their scarcity notwithstanding, they are essential cultural documents — scholarly without being academic, exotic but not obscure, their intelligence distinctive. To be truly appreciated, however, these hand-made manifestations of the publisher’s mind must be experienced in the material world and not as digital simulacrums in cyberspace...More here 

Sinclair Beiles: Poet of Many Parts and Places, by Jan Herman

Dye Hard Press has re-issued Who Was Sinclair Beiles? in a revised and expanded edition. I posted an item about the first edition when it was published five years ago. It’s hard to believe so much time has passed. As I wrote then, Beiles was best known for his association with the Beats. He collaborated on Minutes to Go with William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Gregory Corso, and helped to shepherd Burroughs’ manuscript of Naked Lunch into print at the Paris-based Olympia Press, where he worked as an editor. “Best known” is a questionable term, though. If he was known at all, it was only among a certain segment of avant-garde expatriate writers and artists living in Tangier, Paris, London, Rotterdam, Athens, and other far-flung places, where he spent many years scraping by in various capacities....Read more

Gossip Column - a cut-up by Anne Rooney and Sinclair Beiles

Found in a drawer 44 years later, this cut-up first appeared in Jan Herman's arts blog Straight Up.

In Bone Hebrew, the White Kaffir speaks

A long-awaited copy of Bone Hebrew from Cold Turkey Press showed up in my mailbox. The title is taken from Paul Celan. The cover is by Antonin Artaud. The poems are by Sinclair Beiles. Here are two of them...read more here 

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

The Idiot’s Voice: More Dissidence from Cold Turkey

Leonard Cohen, who is not given to easy praise, has called Sinclair Beiles "one of the great poets of the century". Meaning the 20th century - they met back in the early 1960s on the Greek island of Hydra. Was Cohen being uncharacteristically hyperbolic? Well, William S Burroughs, also not given to easy praise, once  wrote: "The poetry of Sinclair Beiles is distinguished and long distilled; its unexpected striking images bring forth a flash of surprised recognition. The poems open slowly in your mind, like Japanese paper flowers in water." ...  Read more here

Advert for Nova Broadcast titles, 1968

Nova Broadcast press was run by Jan Herman back in the late 1960s. As indicated by this advert, it was originally planned as a venture in collaboration with Beach Books, Texts & Documents and the literary journal The San Francisco Earthquake. Among others, Nova published works by Ray Bremser, Norman O Mustill, Carl Weissner, Dick Higgens and Wolf Wostell. However, some of the titles announced in the advert did not make it to publication - including  Alice in Progress by Sinclair Beiles and Annie Rooney, his first wife. (Joyce Mansour's Flash Card was later published by Cherry Valley Editions.)

The San Francisco Earthquake Vol 1, No 3

The San Francisco Earthquake, Volume 1, Number 3, published  San Francisco, 1968.  78pp. Contains writings by Jacob Herman, Robert Duncan, Rod Padgett, Tom Veitch, Jean-Pierre Duprey, Harold Norse,  Gerard Bellaart and Sinclair Beiles, as well as collages by Carl Weissner, Liam O'Gallagher, Mary Beach, Jean-Clarence Lambert, Norman O. Mustill and Pelieu. 

Beiles's contribution is an 8-page film scenario called 'The Last Procession'.

Some evidence amongst the ruins: a previously unpublished poem by Sinclair Beiles from Jan Herman's Straight Up

This report from Athens under the Greek junta 42 years ago turned up in a batch of old letters and postcards that a friend found the other day in a forgotten file. "How I come to have it," he writes, "is a mystery."

Well, mystery solved: He and I were doing VDRSVP at the time, and we had published several other Sinclair Beiles pieces in it. We must've put this one away for future use. So here 'tiz, nearly half a century later.

Sinclair is a cherished memory....read the typescript poem here

Jan Herman on Who was Sinclair Beiles?

Who was Sinclair Beiles?Good question. It's the title of a new book, just published in South Africa by Dye Hard Press. Although Sinclair Beiles was a prolific poet, novelist, and playwright, "there is very little information available" about him and even less about his work, co-editor Gary Cummiskey writes in the introduction...Read more here