Space Cowboy Books and Art Queen Gallery present: Michael Butterworth’s “Circularisations”

 

 

Space Cowboy Books and Art Queen Gallery present: Michael Butterworth’s “Circularisations”

June through July 2023, with an opening reception on June 17^th 6:30-8:30pm

In 1969 U.K. poet, author, editor, publisher, and bookseller Michael Butterworth published his “Circularisations” in New Worlds Magazine, a new form of graphic poetry designed to create a new way of reading. These literary experiments will be on display at the Art Queen Gallery in Joshua Tree, CA through June and July 2023, with an opening reception on June 17^th. Selections of Butterworth’s poetry will be read during live musical performances from Phog Masheeen and Field Collapse, followed by a special screening of Clara Casian’s minidocumentary “House on the Borderland”, a film about Butterworth and his work.

The exhibit follows the release of Butterworth’s Complete Poems 1965-2020 from Space Cowboy Books, and the accompanying musical audiobook, Selected Poems 1965-2020. Books can be found at https://bookshop.org/a/197/9781732825772

Register for free at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/631677593687

 

 

 

 

Complete Poems 1965 - 2020 by Michael Butterworth

 

Release date: February 3, 2023

Subgenre: Poetry Collection

 

About Complete Poems 1965 - 2020:

 

 

For more than fifty years Michael Butterworth, better known for his work as a writer, editor and publisher, has also been a quiet unobtrusive voice in poetry, with roots lying both in the small press poetry journals of the sixties and seventies and in New Wave of Science Fiction. His work is distinguished as much for the restless intelligence, wit and intimacy of his voice as a determination, shown in many of these poems, to paint metaphorical pictures of the perils we face due to our poor regard for the fragile biosphere in which we live. In other poems, he finds, within the events of an ordinary life, scope for the transcendent, and in still others his use of nonsense and absurdity playfully captures the moment, puncturing the illusions of the self. Across his work, elements are reiterated but endlessly transfigured –

The effect is at once familiar and yet profound, in language that has the confessional qualities and simplicity of early influences such as Sylvia Plath and the Beats, and the later influence of Zen poets such as Ryōkan. Occasionally the writing is startlingly radical – a reminder of the poet’s beginnings in the New Wave.

A collection such as this one from Space Cowboy Books is overdue, and Complete Poems: 1965-2020 brings to more deserving attention a less heard voice in modern poetry.

Critical acclaim:

"Michael Butterworth's poetry is rolling news from a since-outlawed territory of ideas; bulletins filed from a redacted country, edited out of cultural continuity. In beautifully clear language, human moments are examined as though artefacts dug from the future, or the debris of a missing world. Caught in a jeweller's eyepiece, fugitive impressions from near sixty years of subterranean endeavour here condense to lyric crystal, ringing with the poet's radical and laser-guided voice. This is a wonderful collection, mined from times that aren't supposed to happen. Lose yourself inside it."

- Alan Moore - author of Watchmen, From Hell and Jerusalem

 

Excerpt: 

 

Hardcover | Paperback

 

About Michael Butterworth:

 

Michael Butterworth (born 1947) is a British author, poet, publisher and campaigner who first became known publicly as an author of New Wave science fiction. He later founded the publishing house Savoy Books with David Britton in 1976 and the contemporary art journal Corridor8 with Sarajane Inkster in 2009.

 

 

 

Michael Butterworth's Selected Poems 1965-2020 by Michael Butterworth

 

Release date: January 20, 2023

Subgenre: Speculative Poetry, Audio Book

About Michael Butterworth's Selected Poems 1965-2020:

 

Across Michael Butterworth's work, elements are reiterated but endlessly transfigured - hitchhiking girlfriends, elm trees, the moon, astronauts, the space race, collage artists, misophonia, marriage, divorce, beached whales, clifftops, the sea, the seasons, mental block, ale houses, the chemical laboratory, ambition, madness, pain, death and impermanence, silver birch trees, suicide, Zazen, riots, train seating indicators, camping, the Welfare State, crows and seagulls, the racist English and Canada geese... are some of his subjects. The subjects of destruction - war, the consumer society, 'progress', humanity's inhumanity, the doings of men (and the necessity of a new woman), galactic war, drug wars, hunting - are never far away, hopefully countered by the tone of optimism found in his later poems inspired by Buddhist philosophy. The effect is at once familiar and yet profound, in language that has the confessional qualities and simplicity of early influences such as Sylvia Plath and the Beats, and the later influence of Zen poets such as Ryōkan. Occasionally the writing is startlingly radical - a reminder of the poet's beginnings in the New Wave. A collection such as this one from Space Cowboy Books is overdue, and Complete Poems: 1965-2020 brings to more deserving attention a less heard voice in modern poetry.

 

Audiobook with music by Phog Masheeen, Julie Carpenter, Field Collapse, Jean-Paul Garnier, and As Deviants Stagger. 

 

Produced by Jean-Paul Garnier with a bonus track produced by Malcolm Whitehead.

Excerpt:

 

 These strange things called trees

 

Book Trailer 

Audio | Print

About Michael Butterworth:

 

Michael Butterworth (born 1947) is a British author, poet publisher and campaigner who first became known publicly as an author of New Wave science fiction. He later founded the publishing house Savoy Books with David Britton in 1976 and the contemporary art journal Corridor8 with Sarajane Inkster in 2009.