Beatdom #8

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

New Site

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

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

Tomorrow begins the first day of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a time of year when unpublished writers attempt to hammer out a classic within 30 days.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.

The Spirit of the Female Beats

“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)

European Beat Studies Network

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

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.

The Day Kerouac Left Us

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?

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. 

Sorry

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!