Former Turner prize-winner Grayson Perry has called the art establishment disengaged "with the real world".

The cross-dressing artist, known for his often sexually explicit ceramic work, told the Radio Times: "There is no popular wing to it."

Chuck a bottle at those who oppose cultural revolution...

Bill Griffiths (1948-2007)

Quote from Nicholas Johnson's obituary of Bill Griffiths in The Independent: The poet Bill Griffiths was an extraordinary writer: radical, experimental and scholarly, but also fun. His was the poetry of a biker, a cook, a boat owner and a social historian.

http://www.billygriff.sathosting.net/

It was good advice then and it's still good advice now...

It’s there again…

It’s there again…

The pernicious hum

Of my computer,

The white rectangle

With just the cursor

Looking like an ‘I’.

Walker (2011)
© Walker & Jones 2011

Coming Soon!

walkerandjones@gmail.com for details.

1971

Wilf had a nineteen fifty nine Ford Galaxie. It was red with a crème roof. I remember that whenever we went for a drive people would admire the car because it was different. He used to refer to it as ‘my automobile’ in a phoney American drawl. Sometimes when he was staying at home Wilf would pick me up from school or from my friend’s house in the Ford Galaxie. These places were within walking distance from the house, so he just did it as a treat.
 In nineteen seventy one Wilf had to come back home to live. It was strange having him around, seeing him eating his breakfast, having him at home in the evenings. My mother was a great deal calmer when Wilf was around; when he was away she had been very highly strung. I had heard her saying this exact phrase to my auntie: Jeannie, I feel highly strung. In time I began to realise that other than this extraordinary car there was nothing remarkable about Wilf. From time to time he would get drunk and then he and my mother would argue about money.
 Finally things got so bad that Wilf sold the Galaxie to a man called Howard. When Howard came to collect the car he could not disguise his glee. He was leering and rubbing his hands together. My mother said that she hoped that Howard took good care of it. Wilf was very sullen. I had this idea in my head that now that Wilf had got rid of the Galaxie he would never go away again, as if it was the only car that had been capable of taking him away, and that now he was stranded here at home.
 Within a week Howard had crashed the Galaxie. Wilf told us over the supper table that it was a write off and that Howard had been lucky to survive the crash. My mother cried.
Wilf took me to see the Galaxie at Gwyn Cable’s scrapyard. It was sandwiched in the scrapheap between two nondescript cars, crumpled and faded. My throat felt tight. Apparently Wilf went there regularly, standing by the railings of Cable’s yard, as though he was visiting a grave.

Walker (2007)
© Walker & Jones 2011

Homeostasis

'...not untypical of modern South Wales where discipline and belief in anything is at a discount'.

Rugby Football Annual, 1927-28.

JOHN RUSSELL, R.A

John Russell, R.A, who lived from seventeen

Forty four to eighteen hundred and six

Produced vividly detailed drawings of

The moon’s topography having made his

Observations through a small telescope.

Walker (2011)

© Walker & Jones 2011

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_J_Wolman

Charles Horace Jones (1906-1998)

Here was a man who took his poetry out onto the streets and didn't give a fuck about the consequences.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-horace-charles-jones-1198810.html
http://babylonwales.blogspot.com/2006/04/charles-jones-epitaph-for-poet.html
http://cy.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Charles_Jones
Brewer's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics by William Donaldson

The Bad Nerves Gene

The Bad Nerves Gene

Slouched, my

Mother wore her worry

Like a heavy pendant

 Resting near her belly.

Anxious ladies have anxious babies

Cortisol and adrenaline shoots up yr umbilicus like amphetamine

And you never ever recover…

Fear me fear me squealed the garden gate

The daisies screamed

And the kitchen clock ticked

Like dripping blood.

Buried alive by the sky,

Dread pressed down on my axis bone,

  Nostrils stuffed with phobias.

I have tried, you know,

Tried hard

 But you never ever recover…

Walker (2011)
© Walker & Jones 2011

My Old Man’s Calculations.

My Old Man’s Calculations.

The South Wales Evening Post

Was a broadsheet in those days.

It gave you inky fingers

And smelled of damp pulp.

And the Old Man came home late

Smelling of the cold road

And oil.

He ate a warmed up supper

And did his calculations

In the borders with a biro

He kept in a cracked mug.

Cryptic figures,

Long divisions

Under the yellow kitchen bulb.

Concentration ploughed his huge head,

Curls greying on his smeared brow

His broad notched fingers ingrained

With the dirt of days.

He never looked pleased when he’d finished

Never satisfied

One more multiplication

As at last he sipped his tea.

Did he calculate arthritis,

Or the wear and tear on his will?

Did he ever find the number

Of the things his sums could not reveal?

Walker (2011)
© Walker & Jones 2011