Bob Cobbing 1950-1978: Performance, Poetry and the Institution Willey, Stephen The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author For additional information about this publication click this link. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/jspui/handle/123456789/8307 Information about this research object was correct at the time of download; we occasionally make corrections to records, please therefore check the published record when citing. For more information contact [email protected] Bob Cobbing 1950-1978: Performance, Poetry and the Institution Stephen Willey Department of English, Queen Mary, University of London and the British Library Sound Archive A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 2012 I confirm that this is my own work and that use of material from other sources has been fully acknowledged. 2 Abstract Bob Cobbing (1920-2002) was a poet known for his performances and as an organiser of poetry events, as a participant in the British Poetry Revival, as a late-modernist and as a sound and concrete poet. This thesis seeks to reconfigure our view of Cobbing as a performer by considering his performances across a range of institutions to argue that this institutionalised nature was their defining aspect. It maps the transition from Cobbing’s defence of amateurism and localism in the 1950s to his self-definition as a professional poet in the mid 1960s and his attempt to professionalise poetry in the 1970s. This process was not uncontested: at each stage the idea of the poet and the reality of what it meant to live as a poet were at stake The first chapter considers Cobbing’s poems and visual artworks of the 1950s in the context of Hendon Arts Together, the suburban amateur arts organisation he ran for ten years, and it situates both in Britain’s postwar social and cultural welfare system. Chapter two analyses Cobbing’s transition from Finchley’s local art circles to his creative and organisational participation in London’s international counterculture, specifically the Destruction in Art Symposium (9-11 September 1966). Chapter three considers ABC in Sound in the context of the International Poetry Incarnation (11 June 1965) and analyses Cobbing’s emergence as a professional poet. Chapter four examines Cobbing’s tape-based poems of 1965-1970 and their associated visual scores in the context of audio technology, and the role they played in Cobbing’s professionalisation. The final chapter examines Cobbing’s performances at the Poetry Society (1968- 1978) in order to investigate the effects of subsidy and friendship on poetic performance. 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 6 List of Figures 7 List of CD Tracks 8 Introduction 9 1. Eric Mottram and the Collaborator as Critic: Upton, Goode and cheek 2. The Social Purpose of Performance 3. Robert Sheppard and the Irrecuperability of Performance 4. Archival Poetics and Archive-Based Readings 5. The Journey of Writers Forum and Chapter-by-Chapter Overview Chapter One 39 The Integrative Aesthetic of the Postwar Amateur Suburbanite and the Readian Roots of an Anarchic Pedagogy 1. Cobbing’s Readian Aesthetics 2. Why Cobbing’s Concrete Poetry Isn’t Necessarily Dirty 3. Welfare-capitalism and the Subsidisation of Art in Postwar Britain 4. Cobbing’s Identity as an Arts Organiser in 1950s Hendon i) The Festival of Britain and Cobbing’s Commitment to Localism ii) Local Figurations of Welfare-Capitalism iii) Building a Sense of Community as the Basis of an Aesthetic iv) Education Through Art 5. Cobbing’s Entry into Poetry Chapter Two 93 From Finchley to the Destruction in Art Symposium 1. Cobbing as a Local-Artist: The Beginning of the End in Hendon 2. Verbal Permutation and Obscenity in Finchley 3. The Destruction in Art Symposium and Visual Permutation Chapter Three 144 Sound Poems and the International Poetry Incarnation 1. Cobbing’s Contributions to the IPI 2. A Distant Reading of Sound Poems: Representations of Internationalism 3. The Innocence of Children: Primitivism and the Politics of Community 4. The Body in Performance: Innocence and Obscenity 5. Institutions and the Poetic Career Chapter Four 192 Listening to the Institution of Audio Technology 1965-1970 1. The European Contexts of Cobbing’s Sound Poetry from 1965 2. Whisper Piece No. 1: Marvo Movies Natter and Distance 3. Chamber Music and People as Echo Chambers. 4 4. Whisper Piece No. 4: Whississippi and the Copy-Contact-Contagion Chapter Five 233 The Body of the Poetry Society as a Resonator 1968-1977 1. The Poetry Wars and Jade-Sound Poems: Machination and Abstraction 2. Solidarity and the Subsidised Body: Inside the Poetry Society 3. Solidarity and the Subsidised Body: Modernism and Non-Modernism 4. Bodies Beyond the Poetry Society: Poets Conference 5. Bodies Beyond the Poetry Society: Konkrete Canticle Conclusion 263 Appendix 272 I. Cobbing’s description of Finnegans Wake as a ‘master novel’ and his views on local art societies Bibliography 273 5 Acknowledgements I am delighted to thank all the individuals and institutions who have given me support during this project. Without the resources and staff of the British Library Sound Archive, this project would have been impossible. The staff there helped me immeasurably and always shared their expertise with great cheerfulness, for which I thank them all. My thanks also to librarians and archivists at the University College London Special Collections, King’s College London Archives, The Poetry Library and The Paula Claire Archive of Sound and Visual Poetry. I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council Beyond Text Programme, which funded the Collaborative Doctoral Award that allowed me to pursue this research. I am especially appreciative of the opportunities for collaboration that the Programme afforded. I am also thankful for the financial support provided by the British Library Sound Archive. I wish to express my gratitude to all my supervisors. To Andrea Brady who has been so generous with her time and exacting in her attention to my work. To Steve Cleary for his deep knowledge of the Sound Archive, and for the training he provided. To Peter Howarth who has been enthusiastic and encouraging in his intellectual engagement. His guidance has opened up rich new paths for investigation. Thanks also to Clair Wills for leading me through the opening stages of my research, and for being a supportive presence throughout. Many thanks to Adam Stark, Ed White and Alex Davies who helped by reading my chapters. Thanks also to Sean Bonney, Greg Thomas, Lawrence Upton, Paula Claire, Robert Hampson, Scott Thurston, Mark Sutherland, Robert Sheppard, Mike Weller, Adrian Clarke, John Rowan and Peter Finch for either providing materials or agreeing to be interviewed. Finally, thanks so much to my family and to Tessa for her kindness, love and intelligence and constant, unfailing support. 6 List of Figures Figure 1. ‘World In Ruins (Cataclasm)’ (1951) 39 Figure 2. ‘Dynamic Progress’ (1954) 50 Figure 3. Front cover and editorial from And, 1 (1954) 68 Figure 4. ‘Are Your Children Safe In The Sea’ (1960) (manuscript) 97 Figure 5. ‘Are Your Children Safe In The Sea’ (1966) (print) 99 Figure 6. ‘Strike’ (1956) 102 Figure 7. ‘Typestract One’ (1965) 126 Figure 8. ‘Six Variations on Typestract One for D.I.A.S’ (1966) 130 Figure 9. ‘Destruction in Art’ (1966) six prints 133 Figure 10. Bob Cobbing at the International Poetry Incarnation (1965) 160 Figure 11. Annotated copy of ‘R’ from Sound Poems (1965) 167 Figure 12. Chamber Music (1967) 221 Figure 13. Page from Whississippi (1969) 228 Figure 14. Pages from E colony (1973) 236 Figure 15. Pages from Jade-Sound Poems (1977) 240 7 List of CD tracks Track 1. Are Your Children Safe In The Sea? (1966) [00’51”] 100 Bob Cobbing and Anna Lockwood Track 2. ‘R’ section of an ABC in Sound (1965) [01’57”] 167 Bob Cobbing Track 3. Whisper Piece No. 1: Marvo Movies Natter (1968) [04’12”] 201 Bob Cobbing, Anna Lockwood, Jeff Keen Track 4. Mes Bronches (1968) [05’48”] 210 Henri Chopin Track 5. Chamber Music (1968) [09’00”] 222 Bob Cobbing and Susanne Feingold Track 6. Whisper Piece No. 4: Whississippi (1969) [08’00”] 225 Bob Cobbing and Kerstin Lundberg Tracks 1-3 and track 6 reproduced with permission of Jennifer Cobbing. Track 4 reproduced with permission of the British Library. 8 Introduction: Bob Cobbing’s Performances 1950 – 1978 My diary records a Sub Voicive reading for Cobbing’s 65th birthday on 30th July 1985. After a performance which probably included ‘The Processual Nonny- Nonny’, which he had published (and possibly composed) that day, Fencott, disillusioned with the lack of direction and structure during the performance of the work with Metcalfe, asked Patricia Farrell and I: ‘Is Bird Yak one of the most significant artistic achievements of today?’ to which we replied simultaneously, ‘No!’ Nor would Cobbing have intended it thus, deliberately revelling in the outer limits of performativity with this group, as he growled and rattled percussion instruments, but sometimes incongruously followed a carefully elaborated text or score, while Metcalfe, ignoring this, sawed a dead guitar with a violin bow, or drilled it with a Black and Decker, crashed cymbals, gargled submarine noises through his amplified gas mask, smashed beer glasses, or – worse of all – farted. If, as Cobbing said in 1981, ‘art has been taken out of our hands, it seems to me, and we must be artless,’ then Bird Yak developed artlessness into a fine art.1 In this recollection of a Bird Yak performance, Robert Sheppard relates a conversation he had about the band’s aesthetics.