Collages

“Chin Oil:” A note on the collages.

In 1974/75, Ted Berrigan & Alice Notley (with Anselm a toddler going on 3, & Edmund just showing as an Alice belly curve) spent time in London & then in Brightlingsea, Essex, where Ted was visiting poet at the University of Essex near Colchester that year. Victoria Smitter (now Barlow) and I spent much time with them, both in London & in Brightlingsea, during that period — with some of the time spent making collages and such. Going through an array of boxes of “stuff” when moving from Albany to Brooklyn a year ago, I came across the original orange plastic folder that held these few surviving collages, some word-based, some more “conceptual” , from those years. They seem worth republishing electronically as Ted & Alice’s collage poems clearly stand the test of time, whatever or whoever that may or may not be. I checked with Alice, & she thought they were indeed worth reproducing and remembered that she “kept using the phrase ‘chin oil’ in her work” after we did these. — Pierre Joris