From "Rough Music (Ruff Muzhik)"

Abstract

Towards end of 1965 success of Morden Tower was paralleled by pressure from dole to get me into a proper job. It became increasingly intense and hard to handle. started getting visits from National Assistance Board officers every other day to see if was seeking work. thi sen an inspector roon each day of week to see if am lookin for work but av got me coat on and walking toon forst tryin to borrow a short...1 Up until then it had been a low intensity war between dole and myself. They offered whatever work was available for a working-class youth without even most basic qualification, and refused it. They offered more work with vague threats, and still refused it--citing my vocation as a poet-but there is no such category of worker in any modern state, and any work-shy element, they argued, could claim to be a poet. If didn't accept a job then would be penalised. My generation of school leavers were first post WW2 babies to hit an already depressed job market. North East was going through another of its depressions, and dole queues were long. authorities felt they had to fit me up with a job because was yelping that was a poet, state's money was having to feed three mouths, and National Assistance Board were putting pressure on them to get me off their books. We had brought a range of international poets to tower and discovered a regular and new audience for them and had published a looseleaf pop-art one-off magazine devoted to Bunting, King Ida's Watch Chain, and his long poem The Spoils-both designed by Richard Hamilton. My mate Bunting was a great poet and he was showing me ropes; had to be a poet. Morden Tower, situated in an unlit alley backing onto small factories emitting sulphurous fumes where prostitutes took clients for a quick turn, provided a focus for some of forest talents in region. Bryan Ferry, then a student at Arts School under Hamilton, was a regular visitor, and Alan Hull singer songwriter of folk-rock band Lindisfarne was to give his first public performance there. Hamilton was working in his studio at that time on reconstruction of Duchamp great glass, Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even and we took Creeley to see him and it in late 1964. campaign to rescue Kurt Schwitters's wall from barn in Lake District where it was deteriorating and bring it to Hatton Gallery in Newcastle was also being organised by Hamilton. After Creeley's visit in 1964, he became an occasional visitor and a guiding hand. And young badger-eyed Gordon Burn was a regular. He wrote in Independent how he felt enabled, as a working-class school leaver, to come to tower: I was 16 in 1964. Pickard was only two years older, and from a virtually identical background (his father shoveled coal in railway yards in Gateshead;2 mine worked in a factory on Tyne). But whereas was a conventional product of system, a roll-on rolloff grammar-school achiever, he was already married to a beautiful older woman, Connie (a name throbbing with Chatterley connotations at that time) and four years into what he referred to as `my working life on dole' ...the series of readings and `happenings' were first sign to me that writing could be something more than a set text to be slogged through with dutiful encirclings and underlinings and comments of 'v.imp' and 'signif' in margins...3 Clearly we were providing a much needed service outside of institutions of learning and medicinal art. rationale for investing public money in the arts was that it would industry. pompously named North Eastern Association for Arts (NEAA) was peddling argument that it could attract industry by making perceived culturally barren region attractive to managers of multinational companies by creating an environment where they could experience an artistic frisson while putting bite on clients. …