Archive for May, 2008

When I moved to the Princes’ islands three years ago the town on Buyukada was filled with vegetable shops that sold natural vegetables for low prices. It was awesome, one was able to eat organic, natural food for an affordable price.

Now, three years later, its hardly possible to find non-hormoned, non-manipulated food on the island. Welcome to the new reality: a global monopoly on food. A demonic plan unlike any other, with a simple premise: if you can’t control the production of food then you simply require all food to be treated with your chemicals. Codex alimentarius, ladies and gentlemen, the biggest power grab that has ever occurred on this planet.

Meanwhile girls aged 7 years old are starting to menstruate here in turkey because their bodies get confused by these large infusions of corporate hormones.

Codex Alimentarius, which comes into global effect in 2009, requires all food to be radiated and treated with antibiotics. That includes so called ‘organic food’ because they wouldn’t want anyone to catch a disease from eating natural plants, would they?

People seem unaware what sort of world lies ahead of us. If the oil prices double again half of the world population will not be able to afford simple food. And that can happen in a years time. What can we do, besides make each other aware of these dire problems?

No one seems to question why in 10 years time all food in our supermarkets and grocery stores has simply be replaced by mutated food. The grand tricksters of course have something up their sleeve: the codex is ‘just a voluntary set of guidelines and non-mandatory’. Let’s pause for a moment to realize how truly absurd that statement actually is. Here we have global organization that makes guidelines for trading the markets telling us these guidelines are mandatory – why, then, are there guidelines in the first place? Why do we need global trade guidelines that tell us we better radiate and poison our own food with chemicals?

The catch is of course that any country that does not comply will sooner or later be pushed out of business.And as farmers serve both local and international markets they have no choice: antibiotics and radiation on all food since separating is too expensive and no one seems to have brains enough to complain anyway.

What a pathetic place we are creating. I better find a place with a garden to grow my own food unless I want too see my daughter turn into an obese, over-hormoned entity.

Another international design clock from the hand of M.H.Benders:

The Writersblock Clock. Every writer should own one.





Unique entirely factory-made wallclock with a unique concept: The Writersblock Clock is designed to help you through those hard hours of uninspirational toilings and personal debauchery. For the special price of 24.99 dollar (about 15 euro) you can be the owner of a product that is bound to become a collectors item even if the world comes to an end soon.

Order this clock now!

Now also available: The Stalins Eye clock that partly utilizes the famous Loewak design:





This surreal clock is the situationist must-have, a stern reminder of the mutability of time and human interaction. The centre of the clock has a miniature stalin holding a newspaper, as the header of this site has. Price 24.99$ (15 euro)

Order now

Also for sale now: the unique design clock by M.H.Benders nicknamed ‘De Vriezen Clock’:





For the incredible price of 24 dollars (about 15 euro) you can be one of the few owners of this unique clock that proves dutch composer and poet Samuel Vriezen is always right. Especially recommended for poetry cafe’s, libraries, etc. Buy now before it runs out of stock

Click here to order

Dutch poet Huub Beurkens writes on his weblog that he wasn’t happy at all with the fact that Komrij put some of his poems in one of his canonizing anthologies. The absurd thing about these anthologies, which are thick volumes of dutch poetry Komrij composes after his taste, is that the poets that appear in it are never asked for their permission. In 1979 this lead to a court case when two poets (Kouwenaar and Schierbeek) wanted their works removed from the anthology and claimed it was illegal to copy their works without permission. The Dutch judge, however, ruled otherwise in a rather absurd judgment: he said the anthology was a ‘scholastic work’ (as in meant for schools) and as such it had the right to ‘quote maximum 100 lines of every work’ for free. An absurd judgment because such a work could never be sold commercially. It’s fine if the anthology would be really limited in distribution to schools but these anthologies are sold commercially in every bookstore!

Komrij replies to Beurskens remarks that he wants to be removed from the anthology with the remark ‘Apparently Beurskens wrote some works he’s not too satisfied about personally’. That’s a pretty weird thing to say, as if there wouldn’t be weak and strong poems in anyones corpus. Beurskens complained that Komrij selected weak poems out of his corpus, and this is something I’ve heard privately from other poets as well (‘why the hell did he select THAT work?’) – so there we go: no permission asked and a weak selection, that’s the price one pays nowadays for being canonized.

‘Wat de zee opwerpt’ is a project by Belgian poet Xavier Roelens and designer Gabrielle Marks. It’s a fascinating flash animation integrating poetry, design and sound in a challenging, interactive design. It’s one of the better examples of digital, interactive poetry I have seen lately. Voices by Eva Cox, Xavier Roelens, Norbert de Beule and Herlinda Vekemans:


Wat de zee opwerpt

Nina Braun is an artist that lives and works in Hamburg, Germany. Her textile and wool based works are contemporary compositions that integrate the digital world into textile in a unique and challenging way. She currently has an exhibition at the HeliumCowboy gallery in Hamburg, one of the more interesting contemporary galleries in that town.



Nina Braun: In the countryside (2008. 94 x 84 x 12 cm; wool, fabric, wadding, rubber foam, doll-eyes, wire, paperboard, wood)

Nina’s work is a very dynamic mix of craftmanship and contemporary visuals. I love how she integrates and mutates modern digital influences into neoabsurdist, design-related works that live a life on their own. She has a unique style and manages to create works that not only look contemporary and exciting, but also relate to things like design and science. These are works that sort of mutate their environment, a subject that recently has my major interest.

Visit the site of HeliumCowboys – Visit Nina Brauns site

Tumulus :wool, pellets, wadding, doll-eyes, ca 180 x 40 x 70 cm, 140 pieces, 2008



Sumogirls Gruppenfoto: acrylic color on canvas, 50 x 70 cm, 2004

Eli and Whitman rumbled down the mountain like distant thunder rolling in for a summer afternoon storm. Every year on the summer solstice, as the life giving sun sits high on its northern throne, Thursday City holds the Longest Day Festival. The highlight of the festival is the popcorn shrimp eating contest followed by the Pick-Off. The Pick-Off is a musical contest in which bands compete in any genre of instrumental music for Thursday City supremacy. There are three expert judges, honored guests and/or celebrities, and the crowd’s vote counts for 25% of the total. Every year either Eli or Whitman has won the popcorn shrimp eating contest, and they have won the Pick-Off for the past four years with their band “Cotton Gin.” There are no contenders expected to challenge the eating reign, but with Gracey Kallifracks back in town the city is buzzing with excitement in regards to the Pick-Off.

Original post by Jehosephat Sunrays

I recently called Joshua Ray Stephens book ‘The Moth or the Flame’ a ‘magical’ book. In a mail he asked me if I meant what I was saying, but of course I didn’t define what I meant with ‘magical’. Perhaps I should say ‘magickal’ as some people do, to differentiate from the Disney sort of magic, but I have always found that a somewhat daft way of differentiating. It was started once by Aleister Crowley, I think, a man who was as irritating as he was interesting. When I was a teenager, around 15 or so, I read all books i could get my hands on about the occult. For years and years I exclusively read books about occultism, science fiction and higher physics. At some point I finished most books and kind of distilled what I found interesting: on the ‘occult’ subject those were Crowley, Gurdjieff and Casteneda.

Now, of course that was a teenage fascination. Obsession, even, and I threw away almost all my occult books when I moved to Turkey because I could hardly bear reading them later on anyway. I had long since moved on to philosophy and poetry, and most occult works are simply not well crafted enough to keep my interest. Nonetheless these three people did play a role in the formation of my world-view, and many years of practicing their techniques taught me that the mind can be mastered in ways not taught in conventional sciences. I have practiced a range of techniques for more than 15 years, including asana yoga, hatha yoga, ceremonial magic, astral work, kabbalah, kundalini, castanedian techniques and so on. But ‘occult literature’ never interested me after I passed my 21st birthday. Whatever good these techniques are, the instruction manuals will always be just that, instruction manuals. And instruction manuals ain’t literature.

So, what the ‘mob’ defines as ‘magical books’ ain’t magical books for me. I really detest most ‘occult art’ and ‘magical books’ and for a good reason: good art is always magical, so whomever calls a work ‘magical poetry’ is somewhat insane or doesn’t know what poetry is. Yet, the same isn’t true about books. One simply can’t say that ‘all books are magical’ – that’d be a nonsensical statement.

A truly magical book is a rare phenomenon. It’s the synergy that does the trick: the design, the words, the shape, the colors, the intent put in it. A magical book is a very concentrated expression of someones essence. I feel that Joshua created something like that with ‘The Moth or The Flame’ – it’s a very special work that is very carefully crafted. Maybe we should rather call it a ‘grimoire’, I have always liked that word much better.

I keep practicing my skills and techniques, I spend about one to two hours a day on them. It’s greatly efficient since these skills allow me to completely renew or change my own energy levels. This is an extremely useful skill to have: recently I have been almost in a permanent state of being mind-blown by just about everything that surrounds me. But when I want to read magical books I have no use of ‘occult literature’ and neither do I have any desire for ‘occultists’, frankly: they are a rather irritating and small minded crowd. They are simply unwilling to question their own premises, which is the first requirement of any sort of progress. Besides, all occult forums I have occasionally visited banned me usually within a few days time, which I take as as good a sign of enlightenment as anything else.

The Belgian newspaper BN De Stem today had an article about, yes, the marginal role of poetry in the modern world. It seems impossible for journalists and critics to write about any other theme when it relates to poetry, ever since the 60′s. For almost 50 years we can read about two or three articles a month about ‘the marginalization of poetry’, ‘does poetry have a future’, etc. etc. I wrote a guideline for poetry discussion on Loewak one month ago, which I will now internationalize since the problem seems to rear its ugly head almost everywhere:

A short international guideline for Academic poetry discussion

Dear reader/academic/critic:

This is the new short international guideline for Academic poetry discussion around the globe. For the next 50 years please first consult following list of themes and debating items if you are planning an Academic discussion night about poetry or an article:

1. Does poetry have a future?
2. Do literary magazines, readers, books, words, poets, have a future?
3. What is the future of poetry debate as such?
4. Do these sort of questions have a future?
5. If poetry would have a future, would we be there to witness it?
6. Is the poet the future of his own poetics, or not?
7. How much future can a poetry debate bear?
8. If we want to face the future of poetry, do we have to look forward?
9. Where does the future start and poetry end and vice versa?
10. Is the future really comprehensive enough?

This free guideline for Academics worldwide is presented to you for endless citation. As you can see some mild variations crept in regarding the themes that have dominated the last 50 years of poetry debate worldwide, but that’s the sound of progress, gentlemen. The sound of the future.


Footnote: if there’s anything *marginal* it’s these academics and critics that have no imagination whatsoever when they discuss over or write about poetry.

Loewak is joined by a new author today, the British poet James Sheard, author of the book ‘Scattering Eva‘ shortlisted for a Forward Prize and the Glenn Dimplex Award.

He’s also founder and prominent member of the Poetburo.