Two new books from Ben Myers in 2008

Seasons greetings,

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to visit my blog.

Stay tuned for much more activity in 2008. Namely....

My second novel THE MISSING KIDNEY, a loosely-woven collection of short stories about tarmac, lion-ghosts, hospital incinerators, escaped convicts, fried fish, Latino bongo players and a kidney that mysteriously goes missing, is published Spring 2008 through Social Disease.

I'm joining the ranks of such authors as Heidi James, HP Tinker, Lee Rourke, Tony O'Neill, Travis Jeppessen and more, so am very pleased.

And before that I can proudly announce the publication of NOWHERE FAST, the debut collection of poetry by The Brutalists - myself, Adelle Stripe and the aforementioned Tony O' Neill. This collection is highly limited to 300 copies worldwide.

It is published February 10 2009 and is the very first book on Captains Of Industry Press. Copies can pre-ordered any day now for £5 plus P&P from the 'shop' section of http://www.captainsof.com/ or mail me directly at ben.myers@ntlworld.com

I also have a few signed copies of my first novel THE BOOK OF FUCK for sale for £10. I've seen copies going for five times that on the 'net so mail me if you'd like to order one.

Thanks - have a great festive season.

Local Headline Of The Day

MORE FAKE

CONDOMS SEIZED.

'Everyday' by Lee Rourke

Lee Rourke's debut collection Everday is out today on Social Disease.

It's great. Buy it. Read it. Support a burgeoning voice (and publisher) of The Off-Beat Generation.

And if you're in London today, the book is being launched at The Aquarium Gallery, Farringdon, London. See you there...

Local Headline Of The Day

TOW-TRUCK MAN

BRICKED IN FACE

Get Thee To Orkney

Here's a piece I've written for The Guardian about the poet George Mackay Brown.

Taken from: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/12/not_just_orkneys_greatest_poet.html


Not just Orkney's greatest poet, but Britain's

In September I wrote a piece about how our reading tastes can often be directed by the changing seasons. One of the writers I mentioned as representing all that is great about British winters was Orkney poet and novelist, George Mackay Brown (1921- 1996). And once again this winter, along with doses of morning porridge, I have found myself drawn to Brown's weighty body of work.

And my realisation is: he's the best British poet of the 20th century I've read, an under-acknowledged titan. It's not just me who thinks that either - Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney and fellow Orcadian mentor Edwin Muir all sang his praises far and wide, while composer Peter Maxwell Davies collaborated extensively with Brown for many of his Orkney-inspired works.

I came to the work of Brown via an unlikely source - Roddy Woomble, singer with the literate indie rockers band Idlewild, first suggested I read him and also the work of another great Scots poet, Edwin Morgan. Roddy was right - Brown's work evokes a landscape and a sense of history that most Brits never even consider. Never having read much historical fiction, I soon found myself enraptured by writing that is at odds with my usual tastes, yet, technically, surpasses all-comers.

In his work, Brown takes in Viking invasions, the reformation of the church, farming practices, the hazardous life of fisherman, the cycle of the seasons, all delivered with a human touch. The vivid characterisation ensures that however distant the past depicted in them, they are immediately approachable.

A converted catholic, Brown wrote of his subjects - Orkney and the characters who inhabited it, mainly - with the reverence of a man who finds God in the crashing waves, the coastal reaches as prominent as his own jawline and the treeless hills of the islands. His is religious writing that is all-inclusive and non-dogmatic, perfect for atheists such as myself. This winter I've been reading Maggie Fergusson's excellent biography George Mackay Brown: The Life, recently published in paperback. In it, Fergusson presents Brown as the poet's poet, an understated master of his craft. I challenge anyone to disagree.

Brown was the total poetic package. Though highly sociable and fond of drinking, he pined for a monastic life, a desire common in writers. He also enjoyed few intimate relations: an engagement in his 30s was terminated when he was unable to consummate the relationship.

Some friends speculated that Brown may have been gay, yet was so deeply closeted that he himself didn't even realise it. Whatever his sexuality - and it has zero bearing on his work - in his productive forties, Brown wrote as someone whose depleted energy supply (thanks to recurring life-threatening bouts of TB) was entirely directed towards writing, and where everything else took a second place. There's something quite admirable about such dedication, if only because most of us know we couldn't make such sacrifices.

The one thing I would question is Brown's total dedication to his muse, Orkney. It is impossible to separate the writer from his habitat. Whether it's the short frosted stories of Winter Tales, the 12th-century historical Norse novel Magnus or his many poems, the place is so inescapable that you can't help but wonder how his creative output would have been affected had he lived elsewhere - or if indeed he would have written at all were he not surrounded by such a dramatic, conducive landscape. At the same time, it is this lifetime's dedication to his first love that makes his work so rich.

Either way, if you're looking for a read of what we could conceivably call "total poetry" this Christmas, I heartily recommend George Mackay Brown.

Local Headline Of The Day

SCHOOL BOSS

IS CARPETED.

Local Headline Of The Day

CONCERN AS

SEVERED HAND

WOMAN GOES

AWOL.

Sour Face: My Secret Musical Past

All music journalists
are failed musicians;

here then is my raucous failure
in all its early teenage glory:

www.myspace.com/wwwmyspacecomsourface

Article on the The Off-Beat Generation

Article taken from:
http://slagsslatesandtapes.blogspot.com/2007/12/feature-brit-lit-of-post-punk.html


FEATURE: BRIT LIT OF THE POST-PUNK GENERATION

In the burgeoning underground of new British literary talent the ideals of the punk DIY ethic are rampant. Shunned by the major publishing houses that determine trends based upon their potential market viability, and in reaction to the stagnant state of the contemporary literary culture, the latest generation of writers are utilising a new arena to publish their work; the internet.

What began on the blogosphere through websites like 3:Am Magazine, created by editor Andrew Gallix as a small effort to raise greater awareness of new writing in 2000, has transformed into a growing cultural phenomenon. In a recent article on Offbeat writers (a group who have formed a key part of this new wave) in Dazed and Confused, Andrew Gallix suggested that the movement was going over ground and that the prospective release of a new anthology of Offbeat poetry that he is editing was akin to the Sex Pistols 1976 gig at the 100 Club. But already such comparisons are increasingly becoming obsolete.

Members of its ranks are beginning to gain currency in mainstream publishing and the movement itself continues to further diversify by setting up independent presses of it’s own both here and internationally.If such recognition not only in Dazed and Confused but also in the pages of the Guardian and the Independent is to be taken as an indicator of it’s entry into the zeitgeist, then for many this period of its preliminary development is of lessening importance as it moves away from this and into a definably ‘post-punk’ era.

Whatever the case, the achievement of so few in such a short space of time is a revolution in all but name, as the relative success of associated Offbeat writers group the Brutalists illustrates.Formed in the heat wave of summer 2006 by Adelle Stripe, Tony O’Neill and Ben Myers under the butchered punk-motif of ‘Here’s a computer. Here’s a spell check. Now write a novel.’ the trio of have gone on to make big waves from their diminutive roots as a literary collective with only a MySpace page with to their name.

Most recently Tony O’Neill, one time keys player for Kenickie and The Brian Jonestown Massacre and a former junkie, has signed his first major publishing deal with Harper Collins to co-write the memoirs of flunked NFL star Jason Peter, detailing the sportsman’s battle with drug addiction. Elsewhere O’Neill has toured his collections of poetry at high profile readings that have featured Yoko Ono in the audience amongst other notable guests.

Yet despite their rising notoriety the Brutalists, like other Offbeat writers as they are widely known, are continuing to publish their contributions via a network of indie publishing labels and websites that work closely to support each other. In the wake of 3:AM has sprung a number of affiliated websites, such as Ready Steady Book, The Beat, and most notably Scarecrow, co-edited by Lee Rourke, author of the short story collection ‘Everyday’, released by Social Disease, a privately funded publishing project of Offbeat supporter Heidi James. Created from similar frustrations as the writers that she publishes, Social Disease’s approach to the business is reminiscent of the independent houses of Olympia Books or Grove Press that gave luminaries including Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller, James Joyce and William Burroughs a home at a time in the twentieth century when their works were either considered obscene or simply substandard.

With this in mind, and in terms of their techniques for disseminating their works, the Offbeats are nothing particularly unique in the history of literature. Writers and poets have distributed their work in the form of pamphlets, zines and small runs of publications for centuries, by everyone from the Romantics to the Beats. Indeed for that matter, the narrow-minded nature of publishers is nothing new either.

In an industry that is driven by profit, much like any other, publishers occupy the paradoxical position of simultaneously dictating tastes and also being driven to respond to change in sales by altering these accordingly. What is different however is the way in these groups have aligned themselves in direct opposition to this practice as a defining principle of their reason d’etre.

Moreover, with their expanding influence in Europe through other guerrilla bodies in the form of Blatt Magazine (Berlin), Metronome Press (Paris), and the semi-fictitious worldwide arts organisation, the International Necronautical Society chaired by Offbeat associate Tom McCarthy, it would difficult to imagine this situation retrogressing any time soon. In which case contingency plans need to be made for the future as, if the movement truly is going to go overground, then something needs to be done to protect them from being swallowed up into the mucky realms of it’s major publishing foes completely when success inevitably knocks at their door.

'Guilt: A Novel'

Part I
i

Part II
shouldn't

Part III
be

Part IV
here.

- THE END -

Letter To A Music Website

Written in response to this review:
http://www.the-mag.me.uk/?ArticleId=1965


Dear Sir/Madam,

Many thanks for taking the time to review the debut album by Gay For Johnny Depp, released on the record label I co-own, Captains Of Industry.

While I was pleased to see the record getting some deserved coverage, I was disappointed to see that the reviewer chose to focus only on the press release (a piece of writing inspired by such renowned literary figureheads as Dennis Cooper and the Marquis de Sade) rather than the musical content.

I was also offended by the suggestion that the author of the press release - myself - would be "placed on the sex offender's register" if the offending article in question was read by the police, an outrageous claim for a piece of writing that merely, albeit graphically, describes homosexual practices which are both legal and commonplace.

Such an accusation seems conservative in the extreme and more akin to the sentiments expressed in knee-jerk publications such as The Daily Mail or The Sun.

All the best -
Ben Myers

Captains Of Industry

New poetry article for The Guardian

Taken from: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/12/why_are_we_so_short_of_storyle.html


'Why are we so short of story-length poems?

By Ben Myers

Novels began life as epic verse, and it's a waste of formal riches that the form is now so little used

One of my favourite reads of 2007 was Sharp Teeth, Toby Barlow's novel about a wandering pack of werewolves in modern day LA. If you've read anything about the book you may already know that it is a 300-page novel told in free verse.

What's surprising about the book is not that Barlow has chosen to tell his tale through verse, but that many reviewers have found this something of a novelty. Given that literature began as free verse passed on through storytellers and rhapsodes, readable poetry with a plot and dialogue such as this shouldn't be a rarity. And yet, it's a struggle to list the stories in this form.
I'm not sure why this is, but can only assume that since a poetry collection that sells 1,000 copies is deemed a bestseller, most novelists steer well clear of the genre. Poetry today is still largely viewed as a place for metaphor, abstraction, allegory - a medium through which to express an emotion or capture a scene, but rarely to tell a novel-length story

One of my favourites of recent years is an obscure book called Hard Core Logo, which documents the final tour, pitfalls and subsequent demise of a fictional Canadian punk band. Through a series of short poems, author Michael Turner captures what it means to be in a band with a gritty accuracy that few music biographies or memoirs could hope to achieve (the film adaptation is just as good too). Another recent discovery is UK poet Jeremy Reed's Heartbreak Hotel, a biographical re-imagining of the King's life, told in verse.

Poetry is at the very heart of storytelling, is the root of prose. Furthermore, the poem-as-novel has rhythm, meter and can accelerate or decelerate in ways that prose can't. Perhaps epic poetry is just going through a fallow period and it will take an accessibly mainstream novel in poetry form to change that. Perhaps if - obvious example - Harry Potter used poetic structures and devices, it would steer millions of impressionable readers to at least consider reading verse.

As it stands, the epic poem or poem-as-novel remains synonymous with older, classical works whose importance is perpetuated by perennial academic analysis (Virgil, Dante, Milton), but whose appeal doesn't necessarily extend too far beyond that. And while the likes of Ezra Pound and Derek Walcott created epic poems in the 20th century, I'm not convinced their readership extends far beyond stuffy classrooms and lecture halls either.

For many, poems are riddles to be solved with reference books to hand, rather than the conduits for stories that they can be.

That another famous epic poem, Beowulf, has recently been given the Hollywood treatment is surely a step in the right direction, but what we need is more contemporary story-based poems as novels. I want to read novel-length poems about globalisation, cultural identity, terrorism, celebrity culture and the media. I want to read adventure stories, alcoholic memoirs, erotica, comedies and biographies via the medium of poetry. I want to see Alistair Darling deliver his next budget report in verse. I want poetry to be everywhere. Billboards. Urinals. David Beckham's neck. The moon.

I know it can be done, yet as it stands, poetry remains on the fringes. It's time that this genre that is within the blood of humans was given the respect it deserves. But to gain that, we need more writers to step up and deliver.

Dave’s I’ve Met Or Known

David A ‘The Farmer’
Dave B
Dave B II
David C
Davey ‘Crockett’
Cousin David
‘Cousin Dave’
Dave Concepts
‘Mad’ David D
Diamond Dave
Dave E
Dave The Goth
Irish Dave
Dave J
Davey James
David K
David L
‘Davey-Lad’ (generic)
David Mac
David Mc
David Myers (me. for one week)
“My mate Dave _____” (various selections)
Dave Navarro
Dead Dave de Lorney Pointing
Dave ‘D:Reid’ Reid
David R
‘Babysitter’ David Simmons
Dave Team
Dave T
‘Digger’ Dave Timperley
Dave ‘The Shed’ Sheddola (aka Manny’ No Nose’ Gagliano)
Dave W.