Add MS 88998/2/50

28 communications from Douglas Oliver, and a message from Peter Riley (item 28).

• (1). Brightlingsea, 10 January 1974. Typed letter (1 sheet), with envelope. Includes comments on 'Brighton • October' (Collected Poems, p. 224). 'The Uncle Richard reference in the cave manuscript, by the way, has since disappeared. [See previous letter, 22 November 1973] He was one of the two uncle-heroes in The Harmless Building, which is in process of coming out and looks nice.'
• (2). Brightlingsea, 11 February 1974. Typed letter (1 sheet). Has received Harwood, Captain Harwood's Log of Stern Statements and Stout Sayings (Writers Forum). 'Very fan-dancer of you to hint at the coup you and Bob Cobbing are planning. Good on yer mate.' Oliver is still working on his 'cave project, but not getting anything final at all - seems like a long job.'
• (3). Brightlingsea, 22 March 1974. Typed letter (1 sheet), with envelope addressed to Brighton. 'There's a chance, I suppose, I may be seeing you tonight, if you're going to Anne Waldeman's Poetry Society reading.' Gathering material for The Human Handkerchief (University of Essex, co-edited by Oliver).
• (4). Brightlingsea, 4 September 1974. Autograph letter (3 sheets), to 'Lee and Jud'. 'I hope that the move has swept away some of the gloom that seemed to be around earlier this year - disillusionment with writing, and so on. The main point to me of writing is to construct a habitable world for myself, through some kind of audience.' Oliver's 'cave oracles' now completed (In the Cave of Suicession) - manuscript copy was originally enclosed with this letter ('it's rather "odd" as you'll see'). At the University of Essex: Oliver has been given a measure of study autonomy (interested in the French Renaissance); the Berrigans have gone back to U.S.; Ed Dorn will teach next year; and there are rumours that Eric Mottram has been offered a Chair ('Be discreet ... in case I'm not supposed to know'). Oliver's project for next year: 'examining, for example, the relation between sexual perversion and much writing, even such austere and apparently classical work as Racine's (hence the French Renaissance interest).' Further comments on William Burroughs.
• (5). Brightlingsea, 21 April 1975. Typed letter (4 sheets), together with the typed text of a paper (5 sheets) given by Harwood at the Cambridge Festival, 20 April 1975 ('Imagination and Invention in Contemporary British Poetry'). Oliver was an audience member and his long letter is an immediate response: 'my attack is, however, upon your Orwellian notion of morality'.
• (6). Brightlingsea, 21 April 1975. Typed letter (4 sheets). A revised version of the same letter, in which the first page is a photocopy of the letter above, but the three succeeding pages are revised, clarifying the argument. Oliver has amended both versions by hand.
• (7). Brightlingsea, 7 July 1975. Typed letter (2 sheets), with envelope (annotated by Harwood 'not repl.') 'For some reason (it was stuck in the envelope with my official forms) your typescript for the Cambridge forum accompanied me into every exam room. I kept on pulling it out when I took from the envelope the card with my desk number and occasionally thought I should base the answer to some question upon it.' Oliver will be employed at the University of Essex as a Lecturer 'from next year'.
• (8). Brightlingsea, 31 December 1975. Autograph letter (3 sheets), with envelope. 'As for Spanner, I hadn't meant in fact to kick up awkward at all. I must certainly write to Paige [Mitchell] in the same post. All that happened was, she signalled her intention to publish and I demurred over a phrase or two in my letter, where I thought I'd been inexact about points that I really regard as crucial. I thought we left it that she was going to send me a photoprint, or something before going ahead.'
• (9). Brightlingsea, 12 September 1977. Autograph letter (2 sheets), with envelope. 'I'm writing about boxing - a dreadfully delayed project [...] Progress is none too fast, but I'm getting fun out of making a plot cohere - such a rare skill in the avant-garde, that, since we know so much about fragmentation; but I want to learn it rather as a modern artist might decide it's about time he brushed up his pencil drawing.'
• (10). Brightlingsea, 19 February 1978. Autograph letter (2 sheets), with envelope. Comments on Harwood, Boston-Brighton (1977).
• (11). Brightlingsea, 19 February 1979. Autograph letter (2 sheets), with envelope (annotated). Comments on overcoming writer's block.
• (12). Brightlingsea, 3 August 1979. Autograph letter (2 sheets), with envelope. Comments on the Cambridge Poetry Festival.
• (13). Brightlingsea, 2 October 1979. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope. Comments on Harwood and Lopez, Wish You Were Here (1979). 'I'm picking up part-time teaching at Essex U & the Open U to keep our ship afloat & meanwhile typing up my long boxing MS.'
• (14). Brightlingsea, 2 September 1980. Autograph letter (1 sheet). 'Down here in Brightlingsea I'm trying to finish my novel yet again and, that accomplished, shall take up the reins of a critical book of which a little is already written.' Oliver will be teaching in Italy, at the University of L'Aquila, November-January.
• (15). Paris, 16 December 1982. Typed letter (1 sheet), with envelope. Harwood selling his copies of original Tristan Tzara publications to Paris booksellers via Oliver. Eight books listed, including L'homme approximatif (1931).
• (16). Paris. 22 January 1983. Autograph letter (1 sheet), withe envelope. Brief note: 'As of today, I haven't yet received your Tzara books.'
• (17). Paris, 22 February 1983. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope. 'I've sold your Tzara books [...].'
• (18). Paris, 4 March 1983. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope. Brief note, originally enclosing cheque in respect of books sold.
• (19). Paris, 8 May 1985. Typed letter (1 sheet), with envelope. 'A dinner last night with "World Glottis Expert", Prof. Ivan Fonagy, an absolutely charming elderly academic [...].'
• (20). Paris, 25 November 1985 (postmark). Undated typed letter (1 sheet), with envelope. 'I wrote a book on my glottis experiments this summer but it has so far been turned down by Harvester and C.U.P. [....] My medieval poem, "The Infant and the Pearl", is being published by Andrew and Jean within a week or so - just a cheap, on-the-run issue to get it on record before it becomes subsumed into the Collected Poems that Anthony Barnett is planning to bring out sometime.'
• (21). Paris, 23 June 1986. Typed letter (1 sheet), originally enclosing Oliver, The Infant and the Pearl (1985). 'Your bizarre opera sounds a promising idea, although you don't say if it's being done in collaboration with a musician.' (See 'The Unfinished Opera for Marian', Collected Poems, pp. 381-7.) Oliver is flying to U.S. for four weeks (includes reading in New York).
• (22). Paris, 3 August 1986. Typed letter (1 sheet), with envelope. 'Yes, I'm just back from New York and New Orleans. Sandy Berrigan turned up at a reading I gave in Soho and asked after you. Glad to see Alice Notely and Simon Pettet again, although some old friends were out of town for July.'
• (23). Paris, 29 October 1995. Typed letter (1 sheet), with envelope. Comments on Harwood, In the Mists: Mountain Poems (1993).
• (24). Paris, 17 July 1996. Typed letter (1 sheet) enclosing typed poem 'Calling them home' (1 sheet), with envelope. 'Both Alice [Notley] and I have books out. Hers is a long feminist epic called The Descent of Alette and mine is a selected from Talisman House of New Jersey - I've only got one copy so far. I was over in England a week or two back, partly to take part in the Conductors of Chaos reading in Spitalfields.' Oliver has 'finished a manuscript of African poems' and continues his 'multi-cultutal examination of Paris'.
• (25). Paris, 28 August, 1998. Typed letter (1 sheet), with envelope. 'My voice is always, essentially, the same and comes out from the heart along with personal concerns and histories like yours. What I am doing (and have always done) is develop each group of work out of what has gone before so that things grow rather like a strawberry patch. I don't calculate to do this: I find I've done it when I look back.'
• (26). Paris, 18 November 1998. Typed letter (1 sheet). Brief note, originally enclosing '[Robert] Anthelme's [sic] book, which is a "concentration camp classic" (delightful category)'. Enjoyed reading with Harwood in Aberystwyth.
• (27). Paris, 6 August 1999. Autograph letter (1 sheet), in the hand of Oliver's son, Anselm, with envelope. A 'gallstone problem' prevents Oliver from writing himself. Responding to Harwood's suggestion that 'we have a readers' inquiry feature on writers' block'.
• (28). Printed e-mail message (28 September 1999) from Peter Riley to various English poets, relaying information from Alice Notley regarding Douglas Oliver's 'quite advanced cancer of the prostate'.
• (29). Hôpital St. Louis, Paris, 10 October 1999. Autograph letter (1 sheet), with envelope. 'Morphine gives me only a little interval for correspondence, I'm afraid.'