Newspoems

This is the title of a collection of forty-eight poems published in March 1987 (although the poems date back to 1965-1971) by wacy!, London. It was published in an edition of 58 numbered copies, the contents of each copy being in different order.
It was republished the following year as part of another collection, Themes on a Variation, Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1988, in which it appeared in EM's preferred order. Two further poems - O for a Life of Sensations and In Silhouette - were included. (See About Edwin Morgan, ed. by Robert Crawford and Hamish Whyte, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990, p. 161f.)
The content list given here is the one of copy No° XXI; descriptions of the copy were omitted. (see About Edwin Morgan, ibid., p. 160f.)

Contents:

Found Concrete Poem: The Enactment
Ballad 13
An Unpublished Poem by Zukofsky
Caedmon's Second Hymn
New English Riddles: 2
Scrumwear
Möbius's Bed
Car Goes Ape
Hooked
Forgetful Duck
Notice in Hell
Advice to a Corkscrew
Unpublished Poems by Creeley: 5
Ball
The Computer's First Translation
Pigeons: Elizabethan
Hex
Revolt of the Objects
Hair-raising
Unpublished Poems by Creeley: 2
Visual Soundpoem
Epitaph
Hypermarine
Unpublished Poems by Creeley: 1
Apple Girl
Idyll
Cooked
Charon's Song
Legend
Sick Man
Notice in Heaven
Joe's Bar
Revolt of the Elements
Early Days for Dr Moreau
Scotland Enters the Common Market
The Commonest Kind
Said the Pigeon
Cain Said
Holy Flying Saucer Satori
In Mid-Trepan
Talk About Camp
Come in Old Cock
Unpublished Poems by Creeley: 3
New English Riddles: 1
Beckford Heard a Voice Saying
Unpublished Poems by Creeley: 4
Unpublished Poems by Creeley: 6
Concrete Ballad of Reading Gaol

These twelve Newspoems were reprinted in:

Collected Poems, Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1990, pp. 119-130.

Notice in Hell
Notice in Heaven
Sick Man
Charon's Song
Forgetful Duck
Möbius's Bed
Come In Old Cock
Idyll
New English Riddles: 1
Advice to a Corkscrew
Unpublished Poems by Creeley: 2
Visual Soundpoem

The following excerpt of a note on Newspoems by EM was quoted from Collected Poems, ibid., pp. 118:

The Newspoems were cut out from newspapers and other ephemeral material, pasted on to sheets of paper, and photographed. [...] What results is a series of 'inventions' both in the old sense of 'things found' and in the more usual sense of 'things devised'.

back