GonzoToday
  • Pages
    • Front Page
    • Featured content
    • The GonzoToday Interview
    • Commentary
    • Poetry
    • ART
    • News
    • Travel
  • Music
    • Music videos
    • Music Reviews
  • Columns
    • The Publisher Pontificates
    • Greetings from Scranton
    • The Vinyl Vault
  • Fiction
    • Flying Trees Publishing
    • Books
    • Short Stories
    • FAN Fiction
  • Flying Trees Publishing
  • About
    • Our staff
    • About GonzoToday.com
    • Mission Statement
  • Submissions
  • Log In

An Interview with Heathcote Williams

July 7, 2017 Saira Viola Featured content, Interview, Poetry 0

Tweet

Editors note: Heathcote Williams shuffled off this mortal coil on July 1, 2017. We were honored he granted us this 2015 interview and allowed us to publish some of his work. 

interview by Saira Viola

For Saira Viola and Heathcote Williams: If Art, if poetry is not revolutionary then it is not Art, then it is not poetry! The mythopoet returns to the role of seer by creating myths that resonate, that explode in the minds, the beings of readers, myths that speak with the authority of the ancient myths, myths that are gifts from the holy unholy lightning and thunder stormed realms of the creative imagination. – Ron Whitehead

heatcotrpic (1)We are proud to feature a world exclusive with literary wizard Heathcote Williams. Heathcote is a best–selling poet, critically acclaimed playwright, award winning author, accomplished actor and celebrated activist who pioneered the investigational prose poem and uses this medium to tackle a variety of political and environmental issues.

As a leading figure in the London squatting scene in the 1970s, Williams successfully ran a squatters ‘estate agency’ called: ‘Ruff Tuff Cream Puff’. In 1977, together with a group of fellow squatters, he established the ‘state’ of Frestonia in Notting Hill and declared independence from Britain. Frestonia lasted almost a decade and had its own institutions and postage stamps.

Before Banksy, Heathcote was spraying the walls of Buckingham Palace and Notting Hill’s low rent district with ‘protest’ graffiti and social messages.

In short he is a true literary original and boldly embodies the Gonzo spirit:

Saira Viola asks Heathcote Williams about the significance of poetry in modern society, his influences, and much more: 

SV: Do you think poetry can challenge the social structure of society?

HW: Octavia Paz said, “If society abolishes poetry it commits spiritual suicide” and, according to Denis Diderot, the encyclopaedist and one of the principal mentors of the French Revolution, “Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.”  Why? Because it’s a space where you get to ask and to answer the fundamental questions, and this includes querying the social structure in all its aspects. If poetry isn’t revolutionary, it’s nothing. Poetry is heightened language, and language exists to effect change, not to be a tranquilizer.

SV: Royal Babylon: The Criminal Record of the British Monarchy, is one of the most profound yet polarizing poems of our time, how can a new generation of writers be encouraged to tackle the meaty issues that beset society like corporate greed, racism, poverty and government policy?

Queen in Polyfoto Booth-1967

HW: You’ve answered your own question with that list: these are targets for the sharpest arrows that writers can fish out of their quivers. Sadly their opposition can be bought off and their mouths filled with gold. The ‘gold’ can take many forms: 400 UK poets, for example, recently queued up for the honour of being presented to the Queen at a shameful ceremony in Buckingham Palace – that hoary encrustation built and maintained with slave-trade money. They bowed and scraped to the Chief Panjandrum of the UK’s One PerCent whereas poets, of all people, should find the One PerCent anathema. If they don’t, then the salt risks losing its savour.  

SV: Who is the single greatest influence in your writing? 

HW: Gerard Winstanley; Shelley; Blake; Billy MacGuinness, Hyde Park orator; Burroughs; Pinter (met them first in 1964); Errico Malatesta; Emma Goldman; Bakunin; Kropotkin; Philip O’Connor, who recited his surreal poems in the street wearing purple trousers; Paul Potts the People’s Poet, homeless pamphleteer; Rev. Leon Atkin of The Crypt, a refuge for the homeless in Swansea; the fearless Quentin Crisp; Orwell; Diogenes… but there’s really no single person, just life’s rich, hypnotic and ever-changing tapestry.

SV: Some writers today are fearful of expressing their true feelings, as the innovator and creator of ‘investigative’ style prose poetry, what are your views on censorship in general? 

HW: Not something I’m aware of ever having practiced. 

SV: Given the current socio-political climate around the world and Britain particularly, is it now time for Frestonia to re-declare independence? 

HW: Definitely. While the one percent indulge themselves in ‘property porn’ (i.e. gloating, while houses which they didn’t build in their gated ‘communities’ shoot up in value; and while speculators willfully keep properties vacant, and while estate agents install sharp spikes outside their buildings to discourage ‘rough sleepers’ (i.e. the homeless), then squatting needs to resurface, with added chutzpah, as a corrective.

QUEEN- Birth of (1)

art by Joey Feldman & Ralph STEADman
used by permission

ADDENDUM: WORKS BY WILLIAMS

David Cameron says he is “standing firm and will not be cowed” by ISIS barbarity. Poet Heathcote Williams responds. 

ROYAL BABYLON
16 short films based on Williams’ poem
“Royal Babylon: The Criminal Record of the British Monarchy”:

 

HOW AMERICA WORKS by Heathcote Williams
“The most dangerous country in world history is the United States of America”

 

Related

  • footerfeature
Previous

Bye Bye Batman: Adam West Dead at 88

Next

Doors Defender: John Densmore

SUBSCRIBE TO GONZOTODAY.COM

SEARCH OUR ARCHIVES

Support GonzoToday.com by buying our books... thanks!

or purchase directly through Amazon.com

Music video vibe

“Blackbird” by Sir Paul McCartney

Featured Content

  • A Trip Through Ocean City

    January 29, 2023 0
  • Martin Luther King Jr Died Twice

    January 19, 2023 0
  • So, about Sierra Drummond’s new song “Signs”

    December 14, 2022 0
  • Death of The Killer: Jerry Lee Lewis

    October 30, 2022 0
  • amethyst crystals

    A Sparkling Amethyst Tour in Uruguay

    September 15, 2022 0
  • Traveling Light in a Heavy World

    Todo esta muy tranquilo en Uruguay

    September 8, 2022 0
  • We Need More Gays

    August 8, 2022 0
  • Chapter 1 from The Community Garden … more than tomatoes are dying

    July 21, 2022 0
  • Corrupt

    July 18, 2022 0
  • Armageddon

    Glory to the Heroes

    July 14, 2022 0
  • Remembering Ryan Leone: Author, Filmmaker, and My Friend

    July 13, 2022 0
  • Don’t Run Again, Joe – Greetings from Scranton

    July 6, 2022 0
  • The Relevance of Elvis

    June 29, 2022 0
  • Knock Out Racism 

    June 27, 2022 0
  • Gonzo News Update – Sunday, June 26, 2020

    June 27, 2022 0
  • Roe v. The Religious Right

    June 25, 2022 0
  • The End of Roe v. Wade

    June 24, 2022 0
  • Disney Owns the Sex Pistols and Trivializes Punk

    June 24, 2022 0
  • Why I’m Unvaxed and Proud 

    June 22, 2022 0
  • moving men – chapter 1

    June 21, 2022 0

Hunter S. Thompson 1937-2005

Art
  • ART | How to paint like Ralph STEADman

    September 19, 2017 0
  • The Great Red Shark by Joey Feldman

    July 7, 2017 0
  • “People’s Fears” by Joey Feldman

    November 15, 2016 0

SUBSCRIBE TO GONZOTODAY.COM

Shorts
  • My Encounter with Hunter

    December 21, 2017 0
  • Drug Run | Chapters 1-10

    November 15, 2017 0
  • God’s Grace: An Abortion Story

    September 2, 2015 0
Music
  • Celebrating a Half Century of the Music of Frank Zappa

    June 5, 2017 0
  • Album Review: The Damn Truth’s Devilish Folk

    April 10, 2017 0
  • The Doors First Album and Mary Werbelow: 50 Years on

    December 30, 2016 0
Read more from our writers
The GonzoToday Interview
  • An Interview with Heathcote Williams

    July 7, 2017 0
  • A Quick Talk with Benicio Del Toro

    April 22, 2016 0
  • CIA Whistleblower John C. Kiriakou: the Gonzo Today Interview

    April 2, 2015 0

Copyright © 2023 | WordPress Theme by MH Themes

 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.