Beatdom

Beatdom #8

David S. Wills — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 05:13:52 +0000

Beatdom’s long awaited SEX issue is now on sale. Take a look at www.beatdom.com for more info.

New Site

David S. Wills — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 04:16:12 +0000

Although it’s not finished just yet, the new Beatdom website is where you’ll find all Beat news and Beatdom updates, rather than here. So please change your bookmarks to www.beatdom.com. Thanks.

New Website

David S. Wills — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 14:08:48 +0000

Beatdom dot com is currently undergoing another facelift as we attempt to integrate the old site with our current WordPress blog. We think that this will offer a more interactive experience, but in the meantime please bear with us. Our old articles are temporarily offline, and many links are broken. Hopefully we’ll have everything up and running in the next 48 hrs.

30 Days of Writing

David S. Wills — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 03:34:41 +0000

Tomorrow begins the first day of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a time of year when unpublished writers attempt to hammer out a classic within 30 days. The Independent has an interesting article on some famous novelists throughout history who’ve managed to create a classic in under a month.

Included on that list, naturally, is Jack Kerouac. Kerouac famously wrote On the Road in one sitting, although that’s only true if you ignore the years of note taking prior to writing, and the years of editing that followed. Ginsberg is not included (perhaps as he was never a novelist) but he liked to take Kerouac’s approach and use Benzedrine to focus himself for up to 24 hrs of furious writing, and passages from ‘Howl’ and ‘Kaddish’ were thusly composed.

The Spirit of the Female Beats

David S. Wills — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 08:24:26 +0000

“Women of the Beat weren’t afraid to get dirty. They were compassionate, careless,charismatic, marching to a different drummer, out of step. Muses who birthed a poetryso raw and new and full of power that it changed the world. Writers whose words weavespells, whose stories bind, whose vision blinds. Artists for whom curing the disease of artkills.” – Women of the Beat Generation (Brenda Knight, 1998)
This month, Film Streams presents Howl, a movie about Allen Ginsberg’s astounding poem.One of the original “beat” generation, which Jack Kerouac defined in 1957 as “a generationof furtives…a weariness of all the forms, all the conventions of the world,” Ginsberg’s poemignited a controversy over freedom of speech and expression; the publisher of “Howl” wasarrested but in 1957 the courts ruled the poem was not obscene.
Ginsberg and Kerouac, along with Charles Olson, William Burroughs and others are theusual Beat-writing mentionables; but what of the women of the group? The writings ofDenise Levertov, Hettie Jones, Joyce Johnson, Anne Waldman, Joan Vollmer, Diane DiPrima,Jane Bowles and others during that time exhibit enlightening spirit and inventiveness in away only the female spirit can.
Lit Undressed invites you to submit your poetry, short-short fiction or essays (up to 200words) inspired by the spirit of the women of the Beat movement. Selected works will beread during the next Lit Undressed performance at RNG Gallery in March live by nude figuremodels, by authors, or with excerpts painted by an artist on models’ bodies. Submit worksto LitUndressed@yahoo.com by December 15. See Facebook page for more information.

***The above text was written by the good people at Lit Undressed.

European Beat Studies Network

David S. Wills — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 03:14:13 +0000

If you haven’t already seen it, take a look at the European Beat Studies Network (ESBN) – a guide to some of the people studying the Beat Generation. The project is still in its infancy, but looks promising.

Beatdom Anthology

David S. Wills — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 07:38:59 +0000

This may seem a little premature, but planning is important: Around the start of 2012 I would like to release a Beatdom anthology.

The idea is to pick the best essays from the magazine (which by then should have run to ten issues) and condense them into one Beat resource that will be published by City of Recovery Press. Because it is these essays that sell the magazine, and because they are written for free by our talented, generous contributors, hopefully the book will be able to generate royalties as a reward for all their effort. Beatdom and CoRP will take no profit from the book, and instead all sales (after production, shipping etc) will be divided between the authors.

Final decision upon essays included will be made by me, but if there’s a particular one that you feel is deserving of consideration, leave a comment here or e-mail me at the usual address.

To view all our old issues, check out the Beatdom Archives, or download the magazine for free through the CoRP Store.

The Day Kerouac Left Us

David S. Wills — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:01:19 +0000

Just a quick note to remind you all that it was 21st October 1969 that Jack Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Florida.

What’s Beat?

David S. Wills — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 08:34:14 +0000

On my recent travels through Asia I have been reading Barry Miles’ biography of Allen Ginsberg, and for some reason I’ve been pondering the meaning of the word “Beat” and of the very definition of “Beat Generation.” It’s something I did back when I began Beatdom and wanted to explain what Beatdom was and meant and yet in recent years I’ve just come to ignore these questions.

Yet, they tough, valid questions. Knowing what “Beat” means and who the “Beats” were is important not only in studying the past, but in considering our own place here in the present.

So please take a look at my little essay, “What’s Beat?”, which I have labelled as a page, rather than a post, and let me know what you think.

Sorry

David S. Wills — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 06:59:23 +0000

My sincerest apologies… I have been travelling Asia for the past few weeks, penniless and homeless and wandering confused towards somewhere I’m not sure… and have totally neglected this blog. Hopefully I’ll get back to posting Beat news and whatnot, so please don’t forget about us!