Bookpacking’s Blog

Bookpacking had such a good time in Peckham on Tuesday that we headed back there the next night. Red wine and readings with the lovely ladies at Head Space 157 were followed by tea, music and poetry at Persepolis. Sadly we missed the charismatic Bernadette Cremin, but we did see Jazzman John riffing his West Coast beat-style prosody - accompanied by some highly-accomplished Iranian musicians on drums and guitar. All that was missing was Kerouac in the corner shouting “Go! Go! Go! Go!”

The evening was defiantly non-elitist, as you might expect in Peckham. But Bookpacking’s companion was straying into new territory, and was worried about ’saying the wrong thing’ or appearing ignorant. This frustrates Bookpacking no end. The notion that the art of words, music or images - or even ideas themselves - should be reserved for certain sections of society is some kind of sick feudal joke. A Phd is not a prerequisite to recognise repetition, an MA is not a ‘must’ to acknowledge alliteration. Bookpacking is a strong believer in art as a force for good. The wider the net is spread, the better.

This is why Bookpacking likes Beuys, and is dismayed when some gatekeeping hacks - seeking to ringfence their cultural capital (see Bourdieu) and preserve their monopoly - decry the spread of “citizen journalism”. Joan Byrne and Anne-Marie Glasheen at 157 had both self-published, and the results were small things of beauty.

Better out than in. Wir sind die Revolution.

(FYI Bookpacking subscribes fully to neither a red nor blue hue of political paradigm. It’s a post-postmodern world we’re all living in now baby)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 11:00 pm and is filed under poetry, London, books, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.