New Society not Big Society

The summer issue of the V&A Magazine reminds me that I've only got until the 26th September to go to the V&A exhibition of photos from New Society, of blessed memory. Paul Barker, who edited New Society from 68-86, revisits the magazine and its photographs with an essay for the V&A. If you go you can pick up a copy of his Arts in Society, a book of essays reprinted by Five Leaves a few years ago.
His article (and the book of essays) is a reminder of how important New Society was for leftish of centre people writing and reading in that era. Sadly it disappeared into the New Statesman in 1988. Even more sadly it would be hard to imagine a modern day New Society without the backing of local government and charity job ads, which must have kept the weekly afloat.
A surprising number of New Society regulars have found their way to the Five Leaves list - Richard Boston and Colin Ward, both now sadly deceased; Ray Gosling (our re-issue of his Personal Copy arrived today) and the art director Richard Hollis, now running his own imprint under the Five Leaves umbrella. Richard designed the cover for Paul Barker's book, illustrated here. We have, however, avoided Melanie Philips, however, who is busy ranting from the right in the Daily Mail and other places that should have more sense.

Let's not boycott Waterstone's!

In one sense, as a consumer, I've been boycotting Waterstone's for years. This has been less to do with the chain's policies than for fear of being kneecapped by my otherwise pacifistic friends at The Bookcase in Lowdham or Housmans in London. But now I have a moral dilemma since the Stop the War Campaign has called for people to boycott Waterstone's since they decided to host a signing by Tony Blair. I'm no fan of Blair and would not want to read his tawdry book but as I already boycott Waterstone's as a consumer I can't do more. What about as a supplier though? Surely a boycott calls for customers and suppliers to boycott the chain? Well, last month Waterstone's sold about 20% of Five Leaves' trade books, and they have just ordered 273 copies of one of our advance titles. Some months they have sold 40% of my trade books. This means any principled boycott would put Five Leaves out of business and my action would be as a gnat's bite to an elephant in the way it would affect Waterstone's. But wait, assuming the Stop the War Campaign actually mean a boycott rather than, say, not buying a book in Waterstone's next Tuesday between 10.15am and 10.30am they should be calling for Verso, Lawrence and Wishart and the other radical publishers to boycott Waterstone's. Hey, great, three months and most radical publishers will close down. Result! And Bookmarks? The publishing wing of the Socialist Workers Party - will they now say their books are no longer available through Waterstone's? Let's move on to the authors... just suppose John Berger, Noam Chomsky, Michael Rosen, Jeremy Hardy and every comedian called Mark (to name a few radical writers) said they wanted to boycott Waterstone's... well, sorry guys, since in most places Waterstone's is the only shop you can buy their books, no radical writer need bother trying to be published again.
Nope. This is not a boycott that will work, has a future, or will be followed. But it does look radical on the leaflet, and grabs a headline. And if it did catch on... will Stop the War Campaign encourage people to shop at the anti-union Amazon or that hotbed of left wing bookselling, WH Smith?
ps. Immediately after writing this I read on line that Tony Blair has cancelled his signing at Waterstone's. I will resume not shopping at Waterstone's, but now with a clear conscience.

“Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not.”

Together with a raft of other Nottingham groups, Five Leaves is organising a day in celebration of Alan Sillitoe. Guest speakers include John Harvey, Gwen Grant, David Sillitoe, DJ Taylor, John Lucas, Nicola Monaghan and more. We have sessions on film, on poetry, on other Nottingham working class writers and the chance to sit at Alan's old desk and bash out the first line of your entry to the Arthur Seaton short story comp on his old typewriter. Watch out also for the Castle Rock ale being brewed for the occasion. All this for a fiver. Check out http://www.sillitoe.com/ for the full programme for Saturday October 2nd.
Photo courtesy of Nottingham Post.

Shatila again

Peter Mortimer, Kitty Fitzgerald and the rest of the Cullercoats crew have pulled it off again and are bringing another group of Shatila children to the North East, and, this time, the North West and Scotland. Thanks to all those who have or will raise money to make the trip possible, including Creative Scotland and UNISON North-West. The children will be coming in February 2011, together with four teachers, to perform Croak the King and a Change in the Weather, written by Pete and adapted by the children. And - those who have read our Camp Shatila will understand the exciting news that the children will also be performing at the Theatre Monnot in Beirut, a theatre which hitherto had no connection to the Palestinian refugees from Shatila. The logistics of the tour are great, but so are people like Paul Irwin at Eastcoast Taxis who will be ferrying the children round the UK and the Northumbria Hotel and Language School at Whitley Bay where the children will mostly be staying. A website is promised soon, but North Easterners might want to pencil in Feb 28-March 2 for the Sage performances or March 7-9 for the Saville Exchange in North Shields. More on this one nearer the time. But one query. The Shatila events and readings are usually packed, with great sales of the book, already in its second edition, but can we get interest from the book trade? Something is out of sinc.

Anarchy again

Colin Ward keeps getting mentioned in this blog. Fans of his will know he edited the journal Anarchy for ten years. People (well, me and a handful of of others) are still collecting the back issues. Virtually all featured wrap round covers designed by Rufus Segar. For some time now Dan Poyner has also been collecting the series, with a view to something - a book, an exhibition, a website - featuring the covers of the magazines. The new American "journal of international political graphics and culture", Signal, features many of the covers and a long interview with Rufus by Dan, about the design process primarily. He was sent a postcard (oh, those innocent days) listing the articles and given a free hand to produce the cover. This is the first time I've seen so many of them together, other than on my shelves, making a good start on Dan's bigger project, which is about the art, but also the politics that made Anarchy such essential reading, even for those of us who were more interested in marbles than politics when the mag first started in 1961. Copies are available from http://www.pmpress.org/.

J. David Simons joins Five Leaves

We are pleased to announce that J. David Simons will be joining Five Leaves in 2011. His second novel The Liberation of Celia Kahn will be published in February, together with his first novel, The Credit Draper, which will move over from Two Ravens and into a new edition. David Simons got in touch after I'd reviewed The Credit Draper somewhere, which led to my attending a reading of his in London. The Credit Draper was set among the Jewish immigrant community in Glasgow, the main character become a credit draper (a tally man, or pakn treger, as they were sometimes known) in the Highlands. In the way you do we had a grown up conversation about utterly fictional people, in particular about one character, Celia Kahn, who was becoming interested in ideas outside her community, ideas of feminism and socialism getting on for a hundred years back. What happened to her? There was only one way to find out for sure, and the novel was written, and Five Leaves seemed an obvious choice of publisher. We've just finished the editing, which led to the poor writer having to give his publisher a detailed description of how a Dutch cap works to ensure one passage (no pun intended) was correct. Every day is an education.

Edwin Morgan

The first post in the Five Leaves' blog, on 27/10/09, had a long piece about Edwin Morgan and Scotland. Feel free to look it up. Most people reading this will know by now that Edwin Morgan died recently. I never met him, though he did teach my partner at Glasgow University, but his presence is around. The new Eland "Poetry of Place" Highlands and Islands, sitting in the bathroom, includes three poems by Morgan, including his witty and fairly exact "Midge", the world as seen by a Highland midgie. On the bookshelf opposite this work station (no poetic phrase that) sit cards with two of his poems. The first, "Strawberries" (There were never strawberries / like the ones we had / that sultry afternoon....), I regularly used when working with a group of older people, touring readings of poetry about love and sex. A couple of us would pretend to be in love, reading alternate lines. By the end we sometimes were. The second, my favourite poem by Edwin Morgan is "At Eighty" (Push the boat out, companeros / Push the boat out, whatever the sea...), always moving. In the next room nestling on a shelf is his "Siesta of a Hungarian Snake" (s sz sz SZ sz Sz sz ZS zs ZS zs zs z), with apologies to Carcanet for printing the poem in its entirety, it is hard to lift just an extract. Push the boat out then, companeros.