Quid is an occasional journal of poetics, criticism, invective and investigation. Made to the least exacting standards and distributed in a flurry of necessity and relevance: name = cost = image.

Back issues of QUID are now available free on-line. To read or print out your own copy of these issues of Quid as a .pdf, simply click on the issue title.

QUID 18

This is not
"This Ain't No Chicago Review":

the Brighton Issue

FABIAN MACPHERSON | three poems
LUSKA MENGHAM | three poems
MIKE WALLACE-HADRILL | two poems
MAURA HAMER | two poems
MICHAEL KINDELLAN | five poems
NATHAN BLUNT | one poem
JENNIFER COOKE | two poems
JONTY TIPLADY | five poems
ANNA TICEHURST | two poems
JEFFERSON TOAL | one poem
MEREDITH OKELL | one poem
LIANNA VALENTI | two poems
GARETH FARMER | one poem
ALEX PESTELL | review of John Wilkinson,
The Lyric Touch
J.H. PRYNNE | A Brief Comment
on 'Harmony' in Architecture

QUID 18 OUT OF PRINT

QUID 17

for J. H. Prynne

In Celebration

24 June 2006

A festschrift in celebration of the 70th Birthday of J. H. Prynne. Thirty new works of poetry and criticism, in admiration and response to 44 years in writing.

Limited edition. 100 pp. Now out of print.

CONTENTS

1. Tom Raworth, [Poem]
2. Josh Robinson, 'Living in History'
3. Peter Middleton, Thoughts on 'Charm Against Too Many Apples'
4. Hans Thill, 'Aristeas: Biting the Air'
5. Alizon Brunning & Robin Purves, 'Smaller than the Radius of the Planet'
6. Peter Riley, 'Sun Set 4.56'
7. Matt ffytche, 'Es Lebe der Koenig (for Paul Celan, 1920-1970)'
8. Kate Fagan, 'Poem for J. H. Prynne'
9. John Wilkinson, Into the Day
10. David Marriott, 'Of Movement Towards a Natural Place'
11. Jow Lindsay, Excerpt from An Open Letter to J. H. Prynne (on The Plant Time Manifold Transcripts)
12. Peter Manson, 'Birch Birch Birch' [JHP's rune poem]
13. Marianne Morris, Down Where Changed
14. Jeremy Noel-Tod, 'What Stuff' (Down Where Changed)
14. Simon Perril, 'The Oval Window: 'It is life / at the rim of itself'
15. Ian Patterson, 'Fool's Bracelet'
16. Peter Minter, 'Chest Twine Exegete: for J. H. Prynne' [Poem]
17. Michael Haslam, 'Fool's Bracelet'
18. John Hall, 'Punishment Routines'
19. Keston Sutherland, 'Comment and Homage' (Word Order)
20. Ruth Abbott, 'exit pallor' (Not-You)
21. Rod Mengham, 'A Note on Not' (Not-You)
22. Marjorie Welish, Red D Gypsum
23. Ulf Stolterfoht, 'werde schwert (oder stirb beim versuch' [Poem]
24. Will Poole, 'Seductive Forms: Unanswering Rational Shore'
25. Andrea Brady, 'No Turning Back: Acrylic Tips'
26. Robert Potts, 'Yes, why is it like this' (Biting the Air)
27. Out To Lunch, Biting the Air
28. William Fuller, Biting the Air to Work
29. Mazen Himyari, 'As They Tie Whelps to the Bellwether: A Note on "Refuse Collection"'
30. John Kinsella, 'Oxidia: Go' [Poem]

Poems by: Jules Boykoff, Marianne Morris, Neil Pattison, Kaia Sand, Jefferson Toal, Mike Wallace-Hadrill

Plus: J.H. Prynne, Keynote Speech at the Pearl River Poetry Conference, Guangzhou, China, 2005

Theodor Adorno, 'Theses on Need', trans. Keston Sutherland

Kurt Schwitters, 'The Art of Today is the Future of Art', trans. Matt ffytche

Josh Robinson, 'The Visual Poetic of Frank O'Hara'

Marianne Morris, 'Reply to Stuart Calton'

Jennifer Cooke, 'Shopping Around: Stuart Calton's United Snap Up'

Sam Ladkin, 'On Listening'

And you know what?  This bumper bag of brain brisket is still only ONE QUID plus p&p! 

QUID 15

April 2005

14 Oct 2004

CONTENTS: Rod Smith, ‘A Poem’; Marianne Morris, ‘The Abused Become the Abusers: The Poetry of Barry MacSweeney’; Jeff Hilson, ‘2 Stretchers’; Sean Bonney, from Filth Screed; Keston Sutherland, ‘The True, the Good, the Beautiful and the Baghdad Central Detention Centre’; Stuart Calton, from United Snap Up; Keston Sutherland, ‘Dildo Ode’

This is the untruth facility common to the majority of aestheticians at least since Schiller, those white men for whom the concept of possession (and self-possession in particular) is inducted by a sleight of sentiment into aesthetic equivalence with real or reconciled or authentic life itself.  Real life is real when we own it ourselves: we are told this: it is a dictum rented to us.  And owned/real life is the opposite of alienation.  But what of my desire not to own my life?  I want you to own me.  Is it perverse or in some degree neurotic to believe that my life would be better if I could own less rather than more of it?  Is it, that sweet word, apathetic not to care about owning it?  Well might you be frantic to ask: is this the masochistic sublimation-speak of the Ahnlehnungstypus feigning ignorance of even the most basic economic concepts and their significance for non-economic existence?  Mucking about?  I want you to own me.

full text only available by post:
£4.00 or $6.00, plus $2 postage
to the USA. 

read the poem by J. H. Prynne here

Chronic relativism is a thing of the past. But acute relativism is still up and about and able, depending on the looseness of your joints, to make sense of things and thus to compact and box-up and scar them; and still likely, depending on your degreasing agent (e.g. cyclic ether), to make that sense of things glow faintly black like a star. Poetry in its relation to politically effective action--you know, action, what acts are--is at a dreadful ebb. Structuralist theorists of reading are underwritten by the Western ideology of consumer rights, the prerogative of the indignant shopper to pick and choose what she buys. Ascetic tunnel-visionaries don't want to buy very much, thankyou. What to do instead: proclaim the existence of a free hermeneutic capacity, cross-matching the chips and parings of significance that matter (materially), whip these up into whatever beautiful half-impression of a resistant attitude you feel most comfortable with, and be thankful that this wasn't bought but that you produced it yourself. The half-life for sex elimination is 59 min (plasma) or 48 min (urine), nurseth hir whelps. Arrange to meet this relation in a dark corridor.

There must be, the locution is a good one, more to it.

QUID 11

3 US Poets

CONTENTS: on Laura Elrick: Taylor Brady (US) and Andrea Brady (UK). on Heather Fuller: Kristen Gallagher (US) and Ian Patterson (UK). on Carol Mirakove: Brian Kim Stefans (US) and Keston Sutherland (UK).

You end up with THIS, with QUID 11, a document with certain priorities. Among its priorities is the head-on recognition of a certain dialectic. That dialectic is now hosted by the United States. The dialectic is ancient as Anaxagoras in the bright flush of his youth: as the imperial power of a nation and the real extension of its violent imperium increase, so also do the powers of abstraction in the national language to which the national poetry can be raised. A national language like “American English” which is cross-enlivened and multiplied by other languages present within the same society is not any less singular or monumental on that account; rather, multiplicity becomes itself a singular predicate and monument-aspect of the national language, in line with U.S. ideology as a whole. Can the same thing remain true of poetry’s differences also: is poetry in this way bound to duplicate itself as a monument and paean to the political economy in which its owners are sustained? One considerable and vital task now facing U.S. poets—and, you know, we’re all U.S. poets in some sense—might be a confrontation with abstraction per se, a fire-drill inside it. What chunks of material life are shaken out.

x

So that I do absolutely want to neglect tactics, though in the most positive and conscious manner only: to refuse them. The second imperative is not to make the refusal to escape itself tactical. The predicament that we're stuck in is not such that we can creditably mirror the rationale of what keeps us there, "matching" the withheld object lessons of Capital point for point. Those lessons are by current definition precisely matchless. The rational punctum we might want negatively to reduplicate is a kind of stab-wound. So why not stab back? Because, as John Wieners wrote with respect to a barely different predicament, it is senseless to try.

QUID 9

Against Imperialism

CONTENTS: Keston Sutherland, 'Against Imperialism: A Prolegomenon'. John Wilkinson, 'September 11th'. Andrea Brady, 'Grief Work in a War Economy' [essay]. Pascal Boulanger, '( 11 September 2001'. Stuart Calton, poem. Eric Suchère, 'N° 48 (septembre 2001), L'achèvement'. Harry Gilonis, 'Three Misreadings of Horatian Odes'. Chris Emery, three poems. Sean Bonney, 'The Management Consultant Has Gone For Lunch'. Chris Goode, text. Jérôme Game, 'this aggression will not stand, man'. Peter Middleton, 'And We Had Those Nightmares Where'. Hubert Lucot, 'Operations'. Marie-Angelique Bueler, 'Bombs and Bangs' [score].

But for now, in the universal highchair of the “double vacuum” (so politely undermultiplied by Amiri Baraka way back in 1977), what do we do? Suck or blow? Is resistance only a day away? To be idiomatic within a vacuum is a shining thing; to be vacuous in a plenary idiom is how we can now do this, it’s a kind of gluttonous fasting, Jerome on a diet of roasted peanuts in manic fast-forward, all chanting desperately and honestly and hatefully against the new season’s injustice, cantors with gobs blue-tacked to the hollering brick wall. Is irony in this way essentially a kind of clausal pile-up. Beckett: “It’s vague, life and death.” It’s a matter of, what? Maybe the body. Is the body now vaguer still? Since September 11th I’ve found that I’m able to come only intermittently, not in the continuous Heraclitean flux of our former estrangement.' Animals sense these things.A lioness whelped. Horses neigh.Ghosts shriek and squeal about the streets on CCTV. Is this a prophecy? Entausserung “as” family planning? Is my orgasm a fluent euphemism for bullet-spray, cut out by pacifist balls?

QUID 8i and 8ii

CONTENTS:

8i: Keston Sutherland. 'Edit Chant.' Rod Mengham. 'Bal', 'Work in the Fields.' Robin Purves. 'Some Marginalia on Vagueness, Poetry.' Andrea Brady. 'Review: The Master Thief by Camille Guthrie.' Esther Leslie and Ben Watson. 'Write to Live, Live to Write: Trading Ideas in Academia and Journalism.'

8ii: Peter Manson. 'Envoy.' Peter Middleton. 'Dirigibles.' William Siddle. 'Two Poems.'

QUID
7a 7b 7c

CONTENTS: 7a: Chris Emery. 'Bald Blockages'. Keston Sutherland. 'Do You Blossom', 'Slits in Threes Ode'. Jerome Game. 'Modernity in Contemporary French Poetry.' Li Zhimin. 'Four Different Ways of Looking at J.H. Prynne's Chinese Poem--A Harmony of English and Chinese Cultures.' Malcolm Phillips. 'Poem', 'Keep Out'.

7b: Tim Morris. 'Dramatis Personae'. Out to Lunch. 'Performance VERSUS Art'. Kristin Prevallet. 'Dear Keston'.

7c: John Wilkinson. 'Mouthing Off'. Jules Boykoff. 'how it happens', 'for whom does it boom?' Keston Sutherland. 'Vagueness, Poetry'. Chris Goode. Che Qianzi (trans. Li Zhimin). 'flowers of two persons'

QUID 6

CONTENTS:

Tom Jones. Two Poems.' Drew Milne. Review: Louis Althusser, The Spectre of Hegel: Early Writings. Jennifer Moxley. ‘The Just Real’, ‘Little Brick Walk’. Peter Riley. Two Letters to British Poets (1st Letter). Tim Morris. ‘NHS’.
Peter Riley. Two Letters to British Poets (2nd Letter). Keston Sutherland. ‘Thursday and Forever’. J. H. Prynne. 'A Quick Riposte to Handke’s Dictum about War and Language’.
Ben Friedlander. ‘Statement of Principle’.

Necessarily it would coincide with events massed over the planet fit to sicken us, but QUID this time harmonizes with several keynotes of the destroyed vox populi, of which the combined thin air is worth a chew: the meeting of the reps at Prague, the rise of the people of Serbia in Belgrade and the drivelling into zero of the U.S. franchise. To these and other things some of the following work might be thought to respond, directly or by direct, paradoxless echo. It might alternately be thought not to. These alternatives for thinking are themselves discussed with hopeful abandon, within these very pages.

QUID 5

Aug 2000

CONTENTS: J H Prynne, 'Letter to Dr Andrew George, c/o Penguin Books.' Carol Mirakove, 'glitter galore'. Keston Sutherland, 'Nervous Breakdowns in Chris Emery's The Cutting Room.' Chris Emery, 'Germinator', 'Generator', 'Zero Start Scenario'. Drew Milne, 'California Tonking' (a review of Clark Coolidge). Andrea Brady, 'New Year 0a.' Keston Sutherland, 'By Porchlight', 'Ten Past Nine'.

QUID 4

CONTENTS: Poems by Geraldine Mackenzie, Tim Morris, Drew Milne, Leo Mellor, Keston Sutherland. Reviews by Andrea Brady, Drew Milne and Brian Kim Stefans.

QUID 3

CONTENTS: Christophe Tarkos and Philippe Beck, Jérôme Game, Marina Tsvetayeva (Tom Jones), Caroline DuBois (Andrea Brady), Durs Grünbein (Keston Sutherland), Thomas Kling (Michael Eskin), and reports from Glasgow by the Angel Exhaust field unit (Andrew Duncan).

QUID 2

CONTENTS: David Hess, 'Letter to Kent'. Chris Emery, 'Lullaby'. Leo Mellor, 'new forest'. Mike Sperlinger, Review of Keston Sutherland's Mincemeat Seesaw. Andrea Brady, Three Reviews. (Wagner, Corless-Smith, Morris).

QUID 1

CONTENTS: Brian Kim Stefans, 'Christopher Smart's America'. Tom Jones, 'Hymn'. Peter Manson, 'Switch for Breathing'; 'The Last Century's Late Modernism'. Douglas Oliver, unedited pages from Whisper Louise. John Wilkinson, 'The Line of Definition'. Sam Brenton, 'Bit'. Drew Milne, 'Idylls of the worm'. Tim Morris, 'Mosaics'.

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