In 1977 a 16 year old Billy Childish purposely smashed his own hand with a 3lb club hammer and walked out of his job as an apprentice stone mason. Over the following three years, he was accepted four times into art schools on the 'genius clause', a provision for students who lack the normal entrance qualifications but show exceptional artistic potential, but was expelled for refusing to paint within the schools. Since then he has produced novels, LPs and more than 2,500 paintings, some of which are collected and explored in this volume.
This handsome edition of poetry recreates the format of D.H. Lawrence's 'Selected Poetry' (Penguin, 1959) with Childish's own gritty, moving and tragi-comic poetry. An earlier edition privately published as an artwork by L-13 notoriously copied the Penguin cover inciting questions about open creative rights, authorship and identity. This new edition, being made available to the wider reading public for the first time, once again pastiches the Penguin look but with a copyright-friendly design using Childish's signature hangman gallows symbol.
Billy Childish has released over 100 full length LPs and written more than 1000 songs. A painter and poet of international renown, he is also known for denouncing the poetic worth of song writing. He has, unfortunately, proved himself wrong - the gut-wrenching, rude, funny and often sad rock'n' roll masterpieces stand up on the page just as well, if not better, than his celebrated poetry.
Billy Childish left school in 1976 at the age of 16, an undiagnosed dyslexic with no qualifications. Because of his lack of education he was refused entry to art school without them even looking at his portfolio. With no alternatives on offer, he entered Her Majesty's Dockyard, Chatham, as an apprentice stonemason. This, his fifth novel, takes more raw material from the author's own life and allows it to develop and twist into its own fictional truths as seen through the eyes of Childish's dysfunctional anti-hero, Gus Claudius.
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