Dear Albie
Thanks for yours. Sounds bleaker than a night with Godly ?Happy? Hill. Does The Gob really imagine that more moolah can be mangled out of it all? I mean two and a half million quid a year can?t be bloody bad, I know I must account for ?1.5 million of that turnover, despite my royalties (shouldn?t they be renamed penuries for poetry?). Seriously, does The Gob think that there?s more to be squeezed out, I thought Wiggy was earning his keep with it all, has he moved up onto the Seventh Level again? It?s all that follicular enhancement.
I warned you about the need for another scraggy anthol. What we need is another war to milk for all its got, can?t you talk to Anthony Charles Lynton about invading somewhere or bombing the Serbs again. How about something on third world poverty instead, does that still sell to the over earnest crumb pushers? Can you hop on the eco bandwagon, lots of nymphs and satyrs in glebes and groves, or is that too BoHo, not quite SoHo ? I know you?d vote for tarmacking the planet and establishing a global circuit for Bentleys if you could. Are there enough cabbage-gnawing soul munchers around for something mind, body and spirit or has wicked LuciBlair converted them all in to raving crusaders? How about an anthology of lies? At least Blair?s reinstalled the cult of Diana. Do you think he actually sees himself as Actaeon?
Look why not do something with the PBS, isn?t Simmo sorting the chaff there just now? He?s always crowing about whom he?s rejected when I see him at Arvon, perhaps that?s just the Bolivian Marching Powder loosening his nasal septum.
Did that thing you did a few years back in selecting the Vexed Degeneration not lead anywhere? I was always pissed off you didn?t choose me but I know you said it was going to be a major service to my writing to be left out. What was it you said? ?Sticking pins in the arse of verse.?
I can?t really see The Gob disciplining you. Honestly. I?ve tried for bleeding years and you?ve never given an inch. Find something simple to fend off the phonies and crawlers and stick a few fivers in the chops of the gobby bards.
Love Ollie
22 November 2006
Dear Pooch,
Cheers me dear. We?ve come up with two corkers. ?Bard to bard?, a bit like feeding rendered slaughterhouse waste to the poor lambs. We?re going to push them out like farts after a Birmingham Balti. The Gob has already gone for it. Sales are beside themselves. Wiggy is lining up the great and the good to crawl all over Palgrave?s Golden Treasury. Calliope here I come. Thank god for the heritage industry. Thank god for Blair sending us to war, I think it really helps to sell Byron and Kipling. There?s something delightful about bloody mistakes, they do shift books in almost every direction.
And ? wait for it ? we?re going to look at bursaries for The List whist we mothball the lot of them. Wiggy?s codenamed it ?Verse in Aspic?. We?ll publish nothing for a few years except regurgitated meatballs. There are some notable exceptions, but we?ll spread the word that this is a major refocus on quality and the pseuds will fall for that. They love it when we preach less is more. It helps them to digest the fact we didn?t settle on them. If no one gets in, everyone?s happy.
As for the disciplinary, picture this, there I was in my best Anderson & Sheppard looking like Jeremy Irons but with a grin like someone had stuffed a volume of Milton up my jacksy and I?d squeezed down a few Daiquir?s over lunch to help lubricate the meeting, and we sat there chewing over the figures and god help me he mentioned that crime, film and music had dropped 43%. I had to clench my buttocks to stop myself farting with laughter. The whole thing simply effervesced and when I imparted the news about mothballs and meat stew he was beside himself, the old barrow boy, counting the units and he almost yelled ?bugger the stock, let?s flog the dead.? You?d be delighted that I kept a straight face and remarked that it was a very disappointing time for the rest of the arts list and that I was happy to bring something to the table with our rights income. It was all over in 10 minutes and he had to dash to CILIP for a meeting with the Leagues of the Living Dead.
I even managed to write a few postcards at my desk, just to keep my hand in.
Your chief mortician
Albie
Deputy Poetry Editor
Castell & Castell
tags: letters?from?our?editor
