EDITORIAL

BOUVILLE ON SEA 

I’ve never stayed in Le Havre but been through it many times on my way down the coast road from Dieppe to Honfleur. Slum clearance was carried out, free of charge, in 1944 by the RAF. Then up popped the ferro-concrete genius August Perret who rejigged the place with wide boulevards, fine apartment blocks and the huge St Joseph church with its 110 metre high lantern tower. The 1950s flat in another Perret construction is also worth a visit being a time warp and reminder of the happy days of dearth. Previous to that Sartre located La Nausee here and called it Bouville (shittown) – cheeky sod. It was here his anti-hero Antoine Roquentin experienced provincial boredom and existential terror in the pre-war era (the novel came out in 1938). 

One should also see the Musée Malraux. A fine art gallery facing the port. Many impressionists on view but also, when I last visited, provocative temporary exhibitions like that of the two gayboys Pierre et Gilles – French equivalents of our own Gilbert and George. Oddly oikish too, in my view, and they join a distinguished cohort of Crazy Oik cover artists who resonate with our aesthetic. The likes of Ferdnand Leger, Maurice Vlaminck, Stanley Spencer, William Roberts, Edward Burra, LS Lowry, Henri Rousseau, John Bratby and Otto Dix inter alia, all vaguely representational but with a quirky proletarian disregard for the niceties of fine art. As you drive down the estuary to the bridge over the Seine past miles of oil refineries you cease to wonder why it isn’t a tourist hot spot. 

Elsewhere in the Crazy Oik we note a certain autobiographical quality. We welcome new contributor Aubrey Malone who writes about growing up in provincial Ireland (Ballina, county Mayo) and welcome back the irrepressible Hungarian Ivan de Nemethy, a Hackney boy made good. John Lee combines autobiography with an account of his gayboy friend Cliff (hence quite germane to our cover). Then Ron Horsefield weighs in with further observations on the Uranian tendency. And anyone who thinks Tanner’s pieces too far-fetched to be autobiographical has never been to Liverpool. Perhaps everything is, ultimately, autobiographical – how can it not be? 

We don’t want get too emotional about our anniversary. Yis, 40 issues, 10 years – most small mags expire at this point. It’s a milestone innit? (or should that be millstone?). Is there anyone out there? Course there is. Only this week I got an email from a girl in Manchester (Oldham street in the bohemian Northern Quarter) asking about the prole mag Voices. This conked out in 1984 under the Thatcher reign of terror. It went to 31 issues over 12 years. Heena Patel Co-ordinator of the Commonword Community Archives Project writes to say she came across the Voices website and wonders if I was one of the Northern Gay Writers and if I’d “fancy a catch up?” Good to hear that some little mags never really die – but then again I don’t think I’ll be sending Heena a copy of Oik 40 even though she does describe herself as a comic and a cyclist. 

Ken Clay Jan 2019

FRICTION

ALEXIS LYKIARD

The group soon argued over what was good
and which were purple patches.
Some swore that even the best writers could
get hopelessly bogged down with soggy batches
of dull clichés or archaic terms. How slow
or quickly might a poem be made?
How did a certain old quotation go?

Beyond recall, one drunk punched a lamp-shade
and lurching bade the room farewell while able.
Dismayed to be so bored, he left the rest
if not relieved, bemused at best,
still stranded in contention round the table. 

(Note: The above exercise set and composed in twenty minutes, when tutoring an Arvon Foundation writing-course in 1993. Title picked by a participant randomly from a dictionary; then others selected from the OED one adjective/adverb/colour/verb & noun. Thus: good, quickly, purple, go & table)