Blog Magog


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8.12.04

John Lennon 

It was 24 years ago today, in front of an apartment block opposite Central Park.

I still can't get my head around it.





6.12.04

Anno Birkin 

I get asked a lot which contemporary poets I like. I confess, very few. There seems to be an inclination towards turgid performance art these days, the words themselves are no longer enough. We have such things as "poetry slams", which, for want of a more literate comparison, are to poetry what wet tee shirt contests are to Venus de Milo. Ego has found its way back into the written word, but it is the ego of Eurovision pop singers, rather than budding Napoleons. To these eyes and ears exceptions are woefully rare. But one such exception was Anno Birkin.

Anno Birkin was the son of the artist Andrew Birkin, and the nephew of Jane. He was born in 1980, and died in a road accident in 2001. He liked Baudelaire and Kenneth Patchen, and can be likened to Arthur Rimbaud. His flair seemed destined to blossom into genius, and the tragedy of it's truncation is epic when one considers the sheer volume and movement of his ideas. Like Jeff Buckley, we shall never know, but can only speculate with futile rage on what a body of work was torn from us when he was lost. Anno Birkin may have been a young man, not yet wise in the exploration of ideas, but therein lies his continuing charm as an artist; he never lived long enough to become cynical, thus his words, although disaffected and disenfranchised in the natural tenacity of tender age, land squarely in that beautiful somewhere between truth and reality. He was a visionary whose visions were not yet completely realised, but were that were visionary all the same. His writing is by turns naïve (in the best, most romantic sense), skilled (but not weary with formulaic technique), and punk rock angry (always the best starting point for an English white boy). He writes with the confidence of inspiration, like he knows he could move mountains with his words, but likes the mountains fine where they stand. Birkin was exactly the right mix of light and dark to have expelled important work, indeed this he already achieved, only there was so much more where that came from. It's hard to read him without feeling great sadness at the thought that there shall be no more. Here was an artist who had found his true voice and was figuring out how to use it; within that process he produced some great work. You'll cry, you'll empathise, and you'll laugh out loud.

His book, posthumously compiled by his family, is called "Who Said The Race Is Over?". Anno's poems and song lyrics (which are graceful, glorious, and put me in mind of Astrid Williamson's warmth, sincerity and depth) are the draw, but the addition of his decorative doodles is worth the modest cover price alone. One in particular, evidently from a school exercise book, had me howling with glee and an instant delicious affinity for Anno; the word "Art" is emblazoned on a page, surrounded by multiple "Fucks" - the page is annotated by teacher's scrawl: "What is the meaning of this? See me at 3.20". Fantastic... But, moreover, I feel great affection towards any artist who writes a line that I myself would love to have written. The one that jumped right off the page and lit my fire was "Truth is bold, but bolder still is love that needs no truth or untruth". It's the kind of line that speaks volumes of its creator. Through such words we can still know Anno Birkin. It's an acquaintance that I am the better for having made.





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