2/9/13

John Tottenham - a sequence of mean-spirited love poems, paying particular respect to the institution of marriage, and a meditation on the subjects of regret and resentment. Morbid, bitter, self-pitying

Antiepithalamia: & Other Poems of Regret and Resentment (Success and Failure Series)

John Tottenham, Antiepithalamia & Other Poems of Regret and Resentment, Penny-Ante Editions,2012.

johntottenham.com
twitter.com/johntottenham

Antiepithalamia & Other Poems of Regret and Resentment is John Tottenham's second book of poetry, a sequence of mean-spirited love poems, paying particular respect to the institution of marriage, and a meditation on the subjects of regret and resentment. Morbid, bitter, self-pitying… perhaps, but offered in the spirit of giving as a tonic to those who are not blissfully content in love and work, and as a bracing antidote to the disease of unconvincing positivity that seems to infect almost every area of contemporary culture.

Book trailer - Courtesy of Adam Goldberg

John Tottenham reads his poems very slowly. An expat Brit who seemingly hates all other British people (and occasionally himself), his readings are simultaneously hilarious and uncomfortable. But, as he himself says, that’s part of being an entertainer. Reading the poetry is a different experience than hearing it. Distanced from the spectacle, the language resonates in an astoundingly fantastic fashion. The work, the poetry, is excellent. It’s emotive in a way that’s separate from sentimental, and it carries such a heaviness that’s articulated in a severely acute fashion. - Mike Kitchell

Marriage is not a splendid form of love for poet John Tottenham. It is sort of a combination of hell and a bad night out. Or maybe the one and the other are the same. Nevertheless "Antiepithalamia" is a collection of bite sized poems that gives the reader a very humorous ride into the outskirts of an imagined state of mind where the need is too much of a bother. The flip side of Pablo Neruda's love poetry, Tottenham serves as the dark prince or adviser to those who find the taste of love... a slight disappointment. That feeling is well documented and well-said through Tottenham's skill with the right turn of a phrase.

Reading this beautifully designed book (like all the other editions by the publisher Penny-Ante) is sort of like the Bonnie & Clyde of paper meets poet. The book is beautiful to hold and look at, but it contains the poison of its poetry - and its the poison that adds the aftertaste of romantic failure done in a very seductive heady manner. Once can say "Antihistamine" is an anti-valentine classic, but I see it as the essential book for that holiday and times. The Baudelaire of Los Angeles tasting the bitter yet desirable fruit that is past its prime - yet the aspects of love is hanging on a desired tree. it is how one eats the fruit, that is the art of it all. - Tosh at tamtambooks-tosh.blogspot.com/

Philip Larkin’s noted poem This Be the Verse harpoons familial sanctity.

“Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf
Get out early as you can
And don’t have any kids yourself.”

Not solely an angry poem, This Be the Verse is a recalcitrant force. In reality, Larkin’s fucked up benefaction is as much a sly smirk as it is contemptuous memorial. Along the lines of that anonymous dictum, it takes one to know one.
What Larkin has been to the anti-familial, John Tottenham strives to be for the anti-marriage set. Tottenham’s second poetic issue is Antiepithalamia and other Poems of Regret and Resentment, from Penny-Ante Editions. The epithalamia the title sets itself against is an obscurity and so is defined on the back- epi-tha-la-mium n., pl. –miums or mia: A song or poem in honor of a bride and bridegroom. Right from the start, the book winks at its reader, for it is a screwed up invention about what it perceives as a screwed up invention. As the first line of the book’s first Antiepithalmium stresses “At last their smugness is united.” Quite.
Tottenham brushes off the Larkin influence, “best not to emphasize the connection, other than him being a poet I like and our shared pessimism.” True enough the English ex-pat, who has called Los Angeles home for years, links more deliberately with Ambrose Bierce, the long dead and oft forgotten American grouser. Blending a hybrid of the two, Tottenham decants his own lachrymosity with a taunt in Regrets,

“I always knew I’d end up feeling this way:
It was a setup. Regret was something
I worked towards, something I felt I had to earn.
And now, naturally, I regret that too.”
Tottenham adds he claims no influence at this stage —a vanity only in that he is not lying. His jaundiced eye and merciless wit combine with his staged acrimony to summon dereliction. His assaultive take on marriage informs the tumorous self assessments that come after the antiepithalamiums much more than Larkin, or Samuel Beckett, or Frederick Exley; all writers who have concerned themselves with exhuming demise in the face of valor, all three writers Tottenham respects.
For all of his torment Tottenham flecks hope into Antiepithalamia’s poems. Well hidden, and quietly seeded, it arrives with a sneer. This sneer allies with Bierce’s own take on regret, and operates much like a brothel, where aspiration and faith are supplanted by rouged cheeks and tawdry implications. Or, as Tottenham writes- I saw the sun rise by accident, it was a horrible sight. But to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, hope is hope is hope.
The hooker’s golden heart thumps beneath the ruthless cynicism of Passing Wind, Passing Water,

“…the lava flow of night traffic pours
into a dying shade of blue,”

And there it is in the delicate appreciation of On the Road Again,

“A good humor man nurtures a roadside weed
with water from a Dixie Cup.”

The hammer strikes most fully in Desire and Desirability,

“my heart swells
at the prospect of being desired
by someone desirable.”

No matter he lets that swelling heart become septic. That it swelled in the first place is the point. As with the crabby ardor of A Year Since Sunday,

“If I could only see you again,
it might dull these pangs for an hour or two.
Of that… maybe not.
Either way, please hurry.”

It makes sense, his forbears tilled this same land. Tottenham’s grousing equals his predecessors, fanning all hope into the smoky haze of his unemphatic harrumph—in another writer this stance would wrinkle in pitifully demonstrated shrugs of the shoulder. Tottenham hands over his failure with too much pleasure. By which I mean to say—this book is a winner.
At the book release party Tottenham paid strict attention to a rather striking detail. Delivered as comedic routine, he bribed the assembled crowd to his side by declaring that the reader of his poems (himself) was different than the writer (also himself). Laughs bounded through the packed house. But this is a prescient nod to the lives these pages have outside of him. Tottenham is a performer, and once heard aloud, his cycle of crypto-defeatism is more solidly cast. On the page, they vary. Enlivened by performance, the dimensions reduce. Hear them and laugh, read them and steep. In print, they come through slaughter more abruptly.
As phenomenologist philosopher Edmund Husserl wrote to his friend, poet Hugo van Hoffmanstahl, “the intuition of the pure work of art is taking place in a strict cancellation of each existential stance of the intellect and each stance of the feeling and the will, which presupposes the existential stance. Or better: the work of art puts us in a state of pure aesthetic intuition that excludes this kind of existential stance.”
This existential bone isn’t the bone Tottenham raises repeatedly over his head, and yet, Husserl’s comment fits. Tottenham represents the here and now, a purely aesthetic form—if you use applied phenomenology. If you skip through his hoops, and they can be small hoops, you will be rewarded, as in My Last Spurt, a nudging wink to onanism.

“This death, as opposed to my other deaths,
feels dangerously like spring.
A catastrophic waste of time,
But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Nor should the reader. Antiepithalamia delivers in theatrical asides. Stuffed between the endless miasma that grounds each “act” is the same buoyant gloom of Samuel Beckett’s resignation from academia,

“Spend the years of learning squandering 
Courage for the years of wandering 
Through a world politely turning 
From the loutishness of learning.”

Yes Antiepithalamia settles into its own class with a nod and limp wristed salute to those who trod here first. Importantly, where his previous book, 2005’s The Inertia Variations, sheltered the singular negative, this new collection radiates a wider scope. Elation may center on a hand to prick conversation; it is still elation.
Tottenham douses that elation and expectation from the very start. Why not? When you strip the paint off of a house, you predicate a future on the demolished past. Poem titles explore lack of innovation (Parasitology) distrust (Pricksand) and desperation (Artists Only.) Each features the peculiar vigor of the presumed irremediable. Then, the chest cavity opens. Like Bierce writes of faith in his Devil’s Dictionary, “ Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.” So the scythe cuts in Antiepithalamia.
Tottenham dangerously balances fabricated words with archaic ones, a practice that often brings with it self-destruction. It doesn’t here because of Tottenham’s parsing skill. And so he beckons despite whatever tongue plants in his cheek.
The dagger to the heart is the poem Suicidal Hit Parade, a paean to self-offed poets that provides surprising grace instead of the philosophical opprobrium of Camus and Sartre. This is his monument, a “hierarchy of suicided poets.” Certainly it is a no brainer that oven cleaner Sylvia Plath snatches top billing. John “bridge jumper” Berryman follows. Berryman’s fellow alcoholic Hart Crane finds purchase on the list as well. But beside well-known poets Anne Sexton and Randall Jarrell are more recent additions -Marc Penka (O.D.) and Sarah Hannah (heredity.) This precision of inclusion patterns Tottenham’s circuitry. The robust language of his morose visions merely serves as kindling to the complex fire of his concern. “Scratch a cynic, find a romantic,” he admits in a phone conversation. He repeats this again in the poem,

“Suicide is a dying craze in the world of Poetry:
the patina of tragedy enhances a legacy,
capping a lifelong brush with obscurity.”

Tottenham warns this is his last poetry collection. Too bad. He’s hit his stride. His regret bared for all to see, sure, but also celebrated for its nudity, like Titian’s Venus de Uribino, or Goya’s La Maja Desnuda. Call it magical cynicism. But what about the broader context, where else should Husserl, Titian, and Beckett set up shop as Larkin and Bierce slip tender volumes from the shelves but here in the pages of a former art student whose work has shown in New York and Los Angeles galleries?
Summing up his own work, Tottenham suggests sculpture or surgery, framing the creations with physicality, steering them to completion. As he says of the process, “ It’s no good to create a substantial body of work that sheds valuable light on the human condition if it exists in a medium that automatically dooms it to obscurity.” Yet, here we are, sloughing along with Tottenham as jaded guide, hand on heart. Taken specifically as short offerings not all at once, like any good medicine, these poems work much like a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor should. Remember though, these are poems, not Celexa, Prozac, nor Zoloft.
If a weakness should be explicitly diagnosed, it is that over its course Antiepithalamia can be too cleverly dismissive.
In the end Tottenham harangues himself with a pithy epigraph-

the time has finally come
to take myself seriously
but I don’t have the energy. -
Hank Cherry

On several occasions, I have had the pleasure of performing with a fantastic poet, John Tottenham, who is now learning that he has a growing and sophisticated audience. The artist has arrived, and it is a well-deserved honor. His work is arch, smart and hysterically funny. His performance style offers a beautiful accompaniment to the words. Tottenham is on fire.
Last month, at a Standard Hotel reading on the Sunset Strip for Tulsa Kinney's Artillery magazine, the SRO crowd was spilling outside to the pool. Over 200 fans recently attended the launch of Tottenham's second book, Antiepithalamia: And Other Poems of Regret & Resentment for Penny-Ante Editions.
An Englishman, Tottenham is as dreary as a London fog. His droll inflection bares the resentment at having to answer your silly and stupid question. He does not believe in love, ambition or hope. As our civilization edges toward Armageddon, Tottenham is a weary realist. He believes in regret and pointless revelation.

Take some initiative...
Do something with your life:
I get up from the sofa,
Walk across to the table
And write these words
Down on a scrap of paper.
Then I return to the sofa and
Fall asleep.

Life is a lonely street. Tottenham also paints and draws lonely streets. Last summer, he had a successful showing of his drawings at the Rosamund Felson Gallery in Santa Monica. Quite a coup. The gallery is one of the best and many works sold. (See the slideshow below.)

The entire world will become one room
in one town. And nothing of interest lies beyond the city limits.
It's all right, you didn't want to go out anyway.
Other people and their breeding habits
no longer hold any fascination.

Under the wing of dynamite artist Steven Hull and the nod of actor Jack Black, Tottenham exhibited a series of paintings at La Cienega Projects. Well-dressed Victorian-era couples were caught romancing in the English countryside. In each, oddly disturbing, the man's hand was erotically placed in the woman's mouth. His new book, Antiepithalamia: And Other Poems of Regret & Resentment, offers a series of mean-spirited love poems.

My way of giving was to let you give.
But that initial torrent of generosity soon dried up.

Every artist has their moment. This is Tott's. His oeuvre, painting, poetry and performance are in perfect harmony. The work is pure and true. And now, most deservedly, the public is discovering this great talent. Let's hope that this success will not end his misery. click here to visit the artist's website.
Actor and artist Adam Goldberg (Dazed and Confused, Two Days In Paris) has dedicated a suave short documentary to the poet. click here to see a very appropriate and highly recommended insight into the life and times of poet John Tottenham. - GORDY GRUNDY

John Tottenham, The Inertia Variations, KeroseneBomb Publishing, 2010.

Read it at Google Books

inertiavariations.wordpress.com/

Mountain Bar 2010
The Goldberg Variations: A Minor Trilogy

John Tottenham has expanded his collection of meditations on the themes of inertia, procrastination, laziness, boredom, ennui, apathy, torpor, lethargy, disinterest, inaction, sluggishness, indolence, creative blocks, work-avoidance, failure and other afflictions. These are the last words on very tired subjects.

Tottenham's adopted character who cannot rationalize getting out of his chair is very funny and a part of all of us, at least those of us riddled with ennui or plagued with indecision. It has to be a character because the character described wouldn't have had the ambition to write a book. Short poems, dripping with witty truth or truthy wit, I don't know which. I've never seen anything like it, but then I rarely make the effort to find anything new. If you've never had the energy to read a book, this might be the one for you.- Art Fein

A lack of elegy

When it comes to writing poetry, indolence is a crucial part of the creative process.

Put your iambic feet up! A poet creates. Picture: Sarah Lee
All poets are idlers, even if all idlers are not poets. And indeed there is a poetry tradition which actively celebrates loafing about, from the Rubaiy'at of Omar Khayam to Keats' Ode to Indolence to DH Lawrence. Indolence of course is an absolutely crucial part of the creative process: you do not find poets sitting in rows in cavernous word factories, staring at screens. They are rather to be found lolling on the sofa or strolling through the groves, nursing their melancholic temperaments and losing themselves in extended reveries.
A new collection of poems about idleness, written by an extremely idle poet, was given to me recently by my friend Maia. The Inertia Variations is a very slim volume by an Englishman called John Tottenham. The book reveals little by way of biography: there is a blurry picture at the back, of a slim figure with big hair, accompanied by the following text: "John Tottenham was born... he is not available." This author blurb itself is a magnificent rejection of the boastful notes most authors append to their books, and also of course of that modern tendency to be very, very available: business cards now list address, office number, mobile number, home number, email address, website, myspace url and whatever other latest method of staying constantly in touch has been recently sold us. As the Australians say: could you be bothered?
Inside the poems contain witty descriptions of the author's chronic lack of activity and purpose:
I have never done less I keep saying this And yet I keep outdoing myself.
The first line of the first poem sets out his stall:
I lie on the sofa, stretched out like a corpse.
As with many idlers, there is a vein of self-recrimination that runs through the poet's thought. He talks of his idle hours as wasteful rather than productive, showing that even in his attempt to eulogise doing nothing, he is hampered by the Puritan within:
At three-thirty I awake. At four-thirty I bestir myself, Slide off the sofa and stagger to the bathroom, Berating myself for the waste while accepting That it is too late now, to do anything about it.
This terrific collection is published by an LA outfit called Kerosene Bomb Publishing, whose website suggests something of the atmosphere of City Lights, the San Francisco Beatnik bookshop. Poetry, being supremely useless, by its very existence represents a protest against the so-called 'real world' of busy-ness and moneymaking, so we must embrace, salute and support our poets. I recommend The Inertia Variations and I invite readers to recommend their own faves among modern poetry.-

Tom Hodgkinson

My sadness is deeper than yours. My interior life is richer than yours. I am more interesting than you. I don’t care about anybody else’s problems. They are not as serious as mine. Nobody knows the weight I carry, the trouble I’ve seen. There are worlds in my head that nobody has access to: fortunately for them, fortunately for me. I have seen things that you will never see, and I have feelings that you are incapable of feeling, that you would never allow yourself to feel, because you lack the capacity and the curiosity. Once you felt the hint of such a feeling, you would stamp it out. I am a martyr to futility and I don’t expect to be shut down by a pretender. Mothballs are an aphrodisiac to me, beauty depresses me. You could never hope to fathom the depth of my feelings, deeper than death. I look down upon you all from my lofty height of lowliness. The fullness of your satisfaction lacks the cadaverous purity of my pain. Don’t talk to me about failure. You don’t know the meaning of the word. When it comes to failure, you’re strictly an amateur. Bush league stuff. I’m ten times the failure you’ll ever be. I have more to complain about than you, and regrets: more than a few, too many to mention. I am a fully-qualified failure, I have proven it over and over again. My credentials are impeccable, my resume flawless. I have worked hard to put myself in a position of unassailable wretchedness, and I demand to be respected for it. I expect to be rewarded for a struggle that produced nothing. I want the neglect, the lack of acknowledgment. And I want the bitterness that comes with it too.

I met John Tottenham at a party hosted in an arcade in March 2012. He approached my friend and asked for a beer from the case she was carrying under her arm. “Let me have one of those,” he said in his British accent. She looked over to me, rolled her eyes and begrudgingly handed him one. “Yes, thanks,” he muttered, pivoting quickly to wander away.
“What an asshole,” my friend mumbled.
I later saw him standing in a dark corner, alone, his eyes half-drawn, leaning on a pinball machine. He looked absolutely miserable. I laughed to myself. His display soothed my own misery. I had been looking for a way home since I arrived.
Six months later, John’s second collection of poetry – Antiepithalamia: And Other Poems of Regret & Resentment – was released on my press, Penny-Ante Editions.
I spoke with John via email.
***
Rebekah Weikel: Your work seems to be embraced by people who don’t normally read poetry.
John Tottenham: Which automatically dooms it to obscurity. All poetry, of course, is automatically doomed to obscurity, but to produce work that is accessible is to make it inaccessible to critics. It leaves them with nothing to do. And the critic has pulled off the outrageous feat of raising himself to the level of the artist and somehow making himself indispensable. But if there’s a direct line between poet and reader, then the critic becomes irrelevant, it could drive them out of business. Clarity is also anathema to people who are steeped in critical theory. The waters must be muddied to make them appear deeper, to give the serious readers and theoreticians something to fish for. Critical theory is a lot of fun but that’s all it is, fun: precisely what it’s supposed to not be. It’s a game for the overeducated. Nobody’s going to go there for wisdom, guidance, solace.
RW: You often write in the first person, but there’s also a contradictory quality.
JT: That’s due to the thorny issue of the unreliable narrator in poetry. It’s something one can get away with in prose – which, for example, Nabokov and Iris Murdoch do very well. But it’s difficult with poetry. People automatically assume that if you’re writing in the first person, you’re being confessional, especially if you’re addressing matters of the heart. I never sit down with the intention of writing a poem about anything or anybody in particular. The way I work is more like surgery or sculpture – a long process of accumulating notes, then chipping away, taking apart, piecing back together.
RW: I’m surprised to hear you like Iris Murdoch.
JT: She’s not very fashionable. A couple of her novels – The Sea, The Sea and The Black Prince – are great personal favorites. When she writes in the first person, from the perspective of an embittered middle-aged man with frustrated artistic ambitions, she’s unbeatable. Women write with much more insight into male sexuality than men do into feminine sexuality. On the whole, men don’t want to ‘go there.’
RW: While we’re on the subject of embittered middle-aged men with frustrated artistic ambitions, might we touch upon your new book: Antiepithalamia & Other Poems of Regret and Resentment?
JT: It’s my second and – I hope – final collection of poetry. It comprises the supposed cream of my poetic output over the last seven years, since my last slender volume, The Inertia Variations, was first published. An epithalamium is a classical poem celebrating a marriage. These are antiepithalamiums. About half of the book consists of mean-spirited love poems, with particular respect paid to the institution of marriage. It’s a morbid, bitter, mean-spirited, self-pitying book. Taken en masse it constitutes an irredeemably one-dimensional concentration of negativity… best administered in small doses… if at all. I’m told these feelings are normal, but every morning for the last month I’ve woken up in a state of stark horror, contemplating the nature of this monstrosity that is about to be unleashed – not that anybody is likely to pay much attention but by those who do I am sure to be branded as a raving misogynist and misanthrope. Now I realize that people are actually going to be reading this stuff, I’m questioning why I found it necessary or useful to explore the various sordid and unpleasant themes addressed in the book, to really get in touch with feelings of regret, resentment, rejection and revulsion. Mostly, I suppose, because it seemed that nobody else was doing it. Perhaps I flatter myself, but I only hope the innocent reader won’t be as appalled by it as I am.
RW: I’m not appalled by it at all. I love it. I feel you’re providing a valuable service.
JT: That’s what one hopes: that perhaps some poor soul might derive solace or amusement from these bitter words.
RW: That’s the second time you’ve mentioned solace. Is it an important element for you?
JT: Having been cheered and consoled by the bitter words of others, one can only hope that one might be providing a similar service. Where would I be without all of the books I’ve read and music I’ve listened to – that have provided the backdrop, even the substance, to every moment of my existence?

I am the stale receptor, the superfluous accumulator,
the redundant completist trapped in his cave of musty retention,
buried under years of absorption… unaborted,
decades of consumption… consumed,
sacrificed at the altar of other people’s art,
while everything else fell apart.
Pondering, at last, all the pointless consolation,
questioning if it was really necessary to devour entire genres
until I was crapulous from gorging myself on culture.
As if it were some kind of achievement
to accumulate all this knowledge that will die with me.
So that on my headstone it will read: that I read
and lived a lot of fiction… that Art ruined my Life.

RW: In a couple of poems in this collection – Avalanche and Parasitology – you lament having consumed too much culture.
JT: That’s definitely a problem. Completism has been one of the banes of my existence. When I consider the ratio between the amount of time I’ve spent consuming other people’s work and the amount of time I’ve spent producing my own, it is deeply dispiriting. I think I felt that I had to read, listen, watch, even live as much as possible before producing work of my own. Unfortunately, out of indolence and contrariness, I dragged out this perverse form of empiricism for ten, perhaps twenty
years longer than necessary before making a move

RW: Are you referring to The Inertia Variations?
JT: I waited for a subject until waiting itself became the subject. And, frankly, it wasn’t worth the wait. I only fell into this poetry lark by default, as a failed prose stylist, and I intend to return to failing at it. I haven’t been writing poetry for very long compared to the amount of time I’ve spent struggling with prose, although I have very little to show for the twenty years I spent honing my craft. I’ve never stopped writing prose but I finally resigned myself to poeticizing on February 13th 2003, when, quite by accident, I wrote an Inertia Variation. I stopped in the autumn of 2011, also accidentally, having finally, thankfully, run out of steam in that area. The maximalist prose works I always envisioned ended up as miniature poems. Writing poetry is a disgusting habit – a futile, thankless and masochistic pursuit. I’m trying to quit. I haven’t written a poem in a year, and I hope to keep it that way. One day at a time.
RW: Why futile?
JT: As any unknown poet will tell you, the poetry scene is an entirely nepotistic and incestuous arena. There is no recognized standard of quality because there is no ‘supply meets demand’ dynamic such as exists in music or art where middlemen are perpetually scurrying around trying to satisfy the appetites of an ever-multiplying audience hungry for whatever mediocre rubbish is thrown at them. With art and music there’s an actual audience whose response determines popularity. Everybody recognizes a good song but nobody can tell you what constitutes a good poem. Sometimes, for fun, I’ll quote a few lines from a famous poem to somebody and then a few lines of my own, and nobody, even well-informed and educated types, can tell the difference. Because there isn’t much of an audience for poetry and no market value attached to it, it follows that there is no universally recognized criterion of quality, so it’s easy to perpetuate a closed-world incestuousness, which is determined by critical and academic preciosity. It’s not like sport, where you have to be the best player to compete. The cream doesn’t rise to the top, because there is no top. It curdles, at the bottom, into bitterness.
RW: What might you do instead? I know that you’ve achieved some success as an artist lately.
JT: A couple of shows at respectable galleries have surprisingly come my way. But much as I enjoy painting and drawing, and find it satisfying and, of course, more financially rewarding, I can’t entirely give myself over to it. I don’t feel I have anything to offer the world of fine art. There are thousands of better artists than me, but for better or worse, I’m morbidly addicted to writing. I can’t rid myself of the conceit that I have something to say as a writer, even if I don’t want to write it and nobody wants to read it.

RW: I first became aware of you in January 2012 when I was leafing through the LA Weekly and found: The Literary Event of the Year… So Far. John Tottenham reads from The Inertia Variations. That’s quite a statement. Seemed a bit overconfident.
JT: Why not? It was only January, and it was a qualified statement. But it’s true, I have given some memorable and well-received readings around town since then, and the candlelit reading in San Francisco in September, which was orchestrated by the panting and moaning of two lesbians writhing around on the floor in the corridor, was a lot of fun. Then there was the Antiepithalamia publication party at Annie Besant Lodge in Beachwood Canyon a few weeks ago.
RW: With Penny-Ante’s investment in the Besant Lodge, I was of course a tad nervous of the outcome. I don’t think I’ve ever been to such a well-attended poetry reading. In fact, I heard several people make that observation. I also heard several people refer to your act as performance art, rather than ‘reading.’ Is that something you’re conscious of?
JT: That was a gratifying reading because, to my initial horror, I had to win the audience over. It was very unsteady at first. I’d prepared an introductory spiel that I assumed was a guaranteed crowd pleaser but I looked out into a sea of puzzled, pitying expressions. There were silences where I had anticipated laughter and that was unsettling. Once I acknowledged those looks and silences, it went a lot more smoothly.
RW: Do you gauge a ‘successful’ reading by audience laughter?
JT: I’m a whore for the laughter. Half a minute without it makes me nervous, I fear that the material isn’t going over and resort to desperate measures to get cheap laughs, which is perhaps misguided, as many audiences don’t register their appreciation with laughter at all. I don’t know how other performers can stand the lack of it. I’ve seen people read for half an hour without getting a single laugh, yet they view the reading as a success. If people relate to something they will often laugh, even if it isn’t, strictly speaking, funny. There’s laughter of recognition when people are relieved to hear something they have thought being said out loud. But my few forays into stand-up haven’t been too encouraging, and a short tour of the Midwest a few years ago divested me of any notions I previously had about my work having universal appeal. At one reading in Wisconsin I read to an audience of three people: two college girls and a woman in a mobile wheelchair who rolled in halfway during the reading, and none of them ‘got’ it. If you’re going to be a stand-up poet, which sounds horrible, then you’re going to have to make fun of the poetry itself, and I don’t want to do that. It’s too poetic for stand-up, too stand-up for poetry. That’s another of my tragedies. I could go on. But it’s all downhill from here.
RW: Will that hill ever level?
JT: Maybe, if it’s given enough attention.
***
John Tottenham is a British-born poet and artist living in Los Angeles. He is the author of two collections of poetry, The Inertia Variations (K-Bomb) and Antiepithalamia & Other Poems of Regret and Resentment (Penny-Ante Editions). His series of Victorian Choking Paintings and ink works have been shown at Las Cienegas Projects and the Rosamund Felsen Gallery in Los Angeles. -
Interview by Rebekah Weikel

The Poet Upstairs, John Tottenham converses with Anh Do

I have a neighbor who happens to be a poet. I like to say we’ve been trying to steer clear of each other since I moved to Angelino Heights a year and a half ago. Although he’s just right upstairs–I can hear him enter and exit his house (and likewise I’m sure)–I thought an email conversation was apt considering our inclination for mutual avoidance. This conversation mode was actually perfect for both of us as we both isolate ourselves.

In the sun drenched setting of Los Angeles, John’s subjects find bleakness and inertia…

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Anh Do: Although we’ve been neighbors for a while now, I wasn’t really aware of what you did, but then I read your essay “British People in Hot Weather” recently and had a good chuckle. There seem to be quite a few British expats making art, writing, playing music and just existing in Los Angeles right now. How conducive is hot weather to being an English writer? Does it make you more or less productive? Your subject matter generally leans towards the morose and slothful, your recent book of poems is titled The Inertia Variations. Is that symbolic of Los Angeles itself?

John Tottenham: Yes, quite possibly. The constant sunshine was refreshing at first. It has a seductively deadening quality, which I probably sought out as an antidote to the more bracing climate I grew up in. But it’s unnatural, it numbs you out, and these days I’m very conscious of being weather-deprived… and numbed out. Reality seems to lie elsewhere. At the same time, I do prefer writing when it’s sunny outside: it seems to enable the subject matter you refer to… a vicious circle.

AD: I’m glad you described it as “unnatural,” as I’ve been compulsively using that word when describing this physical environment over the last year. It is unnatural here, preposterously so, but if reality lies somewhere else how do you make your own reality? You’ve been here for 20 years (correct me if I’m wrong) so you must to some extent like it here. Is it all that great here or are you just being complacent? And if you were to live in a more “real” setting, would your work then be brighter?

JT: Yes, I’m definitely being complacent. I worry that after a while (i.e. 20 years, though I did leave for five years in the middle) one begins to suffer from Hotel California-syndrome. Other places I’ve resided in this country – New Orleans, Portland, NYC (briefly) – I didn’t seem to meet as many kindred spirits, never felt as at home. Living here seems to somehow build character. Until recently, at least, it was a much harder place in which to lead a marginal existence, unlike the cities further up the coast, which cater more to a bohemian lifestyle. But nowadays there’s not much difference between Echo Park and the Mission district in San Francisco, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. One of the nicest things about being an Angeleno is that once you get outside the city limits nothing but disdain is heaped upon the place. No other city inspires as much animosity. San Franciscans, in particular, seem to regard it as their civic duty to hate LA, although, curiously enough, the feeling is not reciprocated. New Yorkers are none too fond of us either. A case of empire envy, perhaps. As far as “reality” is concerned, I’m not sure if I’d want to deal with it on a permanent basis. I’d probably be even more of a miserable bastard elsewhere, living here takes the edge off.

AD: For me, existing here seems to degrade my character. Is it because I grew up here that everything is too easy for me, even pedestrian? San Francisco hates us because we perversely mature and New Yorkers envy our space and privacy. But let’s delve into your writings. What drives it?

JT: I’ve always written compulsively. Nowadays, I write more out of a sense of urgency. With the poetry, I only address subjects that haven’t been exhausted and that I am able to speak on, for better or worse (usually the latter) with a degree of authority. Most of the stuff I dredge up has been poisoning my system for a long time. Now I’m interested in poisoning other people’s systems.

I like to think that I’m performing a public service, but the public, of course, couldn’t be less interested.

AD: “Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is performing a public service.” I think a British philosopher said that once.

JT: I’m going to send you a complete version of The Inertia Variations. Don’t judge me too harshly. I don’t want you to think a complete degenerate wastrel lives directly above you. The funny thing is that everybody relates to this stuff, and is amused by it, even people who appear to lead healthy, active lives, because everybody thinks they don’t fulfill their own potential. And don’t feel you have to read all of this, for Mercy’s sakes. The published version contained the first seventy, there are now almost twice as many. A cursory look-over should give you the general idea.

AD: After a quick glance, I wanted to ask you about your use of language. Each word seems exact. When I read your poems, I see what you are saying; you use words as precise visual images.

JT: I hadn’t written poetry before, at least not since I was a teenager. I was more of a frustrated prose stylist. I write rather slowly and I’m not particularly interested in telling a story or creating character. Initially I had planned on writing a more autobiographical sort of novel on a similar theme and struggled with various attempts over the years, but I could barely even finish a short story. Finally, I gave in to the poetic form. It was obviously ideal. But I’d resisted it for a long time: It made me squeamish, owing to the unseemly stigma attached to it. I regret now that it took so long to embrace it. Each short poem is a monument to reams of discarded prose.

AD: I just read the first 28 Variations. You are an entertainer! I’m already poisoned, is that why I find them so delightful? And you’re right, even the most ambitious, as well as the socially driven, will relate to them in some way. I think you have to come from some sort of autobiographical perspective in order to make anything authentic, for it to be strong, to make people believe it. So tell me how this book came about.

JT: It was the fruit of many fruitless years. More than anything, I write out of a sense of duty, and experience a corresponding sense of guilt when I don’t do the work, which was the case for many years and is one of the themes that runs through the Inertias: that of work-avoidance, thwarted promise, guilt-wallowing, self-wrought blockage. It’s definitely not a celebration of indolence (though some people, strangely, interpret it as such), more of a lament. I felt I had to report back, hopefully in a way that others could relate to and be entertained by. Yes, it’s true, I’m ashamed to say, I put in all the empirical drudge work. I’m not going to win any awards for time management. As a result, however, I have become much more disciplined. I’ve done a lot more work since then. And I’m no longer capable of napping.

AD: Clearly you haven’t been suffering from any sort of intellectual laziness all these years. How are you managing your time now that you’re free from napping and chronic indolence?

JT: I have a new series that’s more or less finished: The Antiepithalamia. An epithalamium is a classical poem celebrating a marriage. These are the opposite: basically an evisceration of the concept of romantic love, with particular respect to the institution of marriage, focusing on some of the less exalted aspects of the enterprise. A few of them have been published here and there. I’d like to see them printed in their entirety at some point. They seem to strike a chord with people. The problem is that it’s poetry. A futile, masochistic exercise. In the time it takes to write a short poem, I could probably execute a painting, and sell it. Yet I have become addicted to this moribund form of expression.

AD: I don’t think of poetry as being futile or masochistic, I think it’s pretty badass to be a poet in today’s world.

JT: Too many people have given it a bad name. Anybody who scribbles on a napkin is allowed to call themselves a poet, whereas if you’re a musician you at least have to learn to play an instrument. As Robert Frost said “free verse is like trying to play tennis with the net down.” Another thing, it’s very difficult to get published and even when you do get published, nobody notices, and there’s no money in it. It seems that unless you’re in tight with the incestuous world of academic presses and literary magazines, you don’t stand much of a chance. There is no “supply meets demand” dynamic such as exists in the arena of music or art where middlemen are perpetually scurrying around attempting to satisfy the appetites of an ever-expanding audience hungry for whatever mediocre rubbish is thrown at them. There is no recognized criterion of quality because there isn’t much of an audience, which allows the powers that be to perpetuate a closed system. A few months ago, I took the unusual step of sending out some unsolicited work to about twenty publications and, curiously enough, the only submission that was accepted was the one that went in ‘over the transom’ thanks to the recommendation of a friend who was on good terms with the editor, at a fairly prestigious magazine, as it turned out, which somewhat added fuel to my paranoid theory that nepotism just might exist in the world of letters. I’ll send down a selection of Antiepithalamia. I hope these bitter words bring you solace.

AD: Thanks. Being a recent divorcee, these really touched a nerve. Companionship, loneliness… Aren’t they the same thing? There’s only you at the end of the day… and no one else. When I think of poetry, I think of beauty, compassion, the search for true meaning; perhaps that’s the naive idealist in me. But your Antiepithalamia are beautiful, compassionate and truthful. Like the Inertia Variations, the subject matter hasn’t been done to death and you seem to have a firm grasp on the theme. I love the cadence of these poems. I want to know more about how they were developed.

JT: There doesn’t seem to be much point, at this point, in penning another love poem or song. There are already far too many, and most of them aren’t very convincing. I remember, as a six year-old, being keenly aware of the nauseating preponderance of love songs, and vowing then to do something about it. At the time I thought I’d write songs about fighting and war. But things turned out somewhat differently. The hypocrisies inherent in romantic involvement have turned out to be a surprisingly fertile and relatively untapped field of inquiry. I’m glad you view them as compassionate. Some people find them mean-spirited, can’t imagine why. It just doesn’t seem that the selfish underside of love gets much of an airing.

AD: I’ve been wanting to ask you about music and how it affects your writing. I’m sure it’s a huge part of your life, as it is mine, and I’m completely positive it consumes you as it does me.

JT: Yes, it’s unfair, the advantages music has over the other arts. I almost resent it.

AD: How truly necessary is it to you and how does it affect your writing?

JT: Probably not to the extent that I’m guilty of: consuming entire genres in a retentive, completist-type manner. It disturbs me to consider the amount of time that has been devoured by the pursuit of collecting. The bug, thankfully, has somewhat faded recently. There doesn’t seem to be as much point in holding on to things as there used to be. I’m still very attached to vinyl. But at least I listen to it. And without music I wouldn’t be able to remember anything, it has soundtracked my life to such an extent. Every road trip, every romance can be recaptured by replaying what one was listening to at the time. Regarding my own listening habits, I’m obsessed by old blues records, mostly the pre-war stuff. I’ve pretty much listened it around the clock for the last twenty years. Around that time my tastes began to recede into the past and they’ve never really resurfaced. I had to work my way through a lot of other music to get there. It was a long haul. I like to have music playing softly in the background while I write, mostly old blues or John Fahey or chamber music, it helps to create a mood.

AD: I don’t know much about blues. Is it more about the music or the lyrics for you? Collecting is quite pleasurable. How to you collect? Do you also have CDs? CDs are disposable but not records, which are very tangible, there is real meaning behind them. Have you gotten around to digital music? What do you think of file sharing?

JT: I started collecting records at a young age and have kept it going ever since, never really embraced CDs – a shabby substitute they seemed – and still haven’t got involved in mp3s, file sharing, etc. Used to own a lot of 45s and lament having got rid of most of them. Collected 78s for a while, junked some very desirable ones when I lived in the South: a Charlie Patton on Paramount, various others. But I stopped. The fun’s taken out of it when everybody has access to eBay and the price guides. As far as getting into blues was concerned, I guess I worked my way down to it through other music. I was always attracted to the blues and country elements in the rock music I listened to when I was growing up. I have many lonely passions and when I get interested in something – be it music, literature or a murder case – I study every root and branch of it. I could, perhaps, have been doing something more useful with the time that was thus consumed. But it’s given me a lot of pleasure. Blues lyrics are a kind of whole poetic field of their own, the imagery is extraordinary: “So cold in China the birds can’t hardly sing”; “Blues came across Texas loping like a mule”, just to use Blind Lemon Jefferson’s first record as an example. Admittedly, I find the morbidity, fatalism, anomie and sense of rock-hard resignation very attractive. It serves as a fine aid to contemplation.

AD: Nowadays, anybody who claims they are a musician can be a musician. And anyone with a laptop and Serato (not even vinyl!) can call themselves as DJ. Isn’t this absurd? It doesn’t take any talent or skill whosoever (well perhaps knowing how to use a ‘puter) and this has been proven over and over again in music lately. It’s the standard now. Art as artifice, it’s a total joke. What do you make of the state of contemporary music?

JT: I’ve never even heard of Serato. I’m horribly jaded, of course, but it seems to me that one of the problems with R&R music nowadays is that far too many young people seem to view it as an avenue of self-expression when they have absolutely nothing to say. They like the idea of being “in a band” and living out the R&R dream; they enjoy the lifestyle and the attitude it permits them to exude but they bring nothing new to the form. It doesn’t even occur to them that they could be doing something inventive. There are some questing performers out there but mostly they’re confined to the margins, which is probably the best place to be, anyway.

AD: I really do believe that when it is good, it’s good and there’s no denying it. And yours is good. Perhaps you will be celebrated posthumously? Cult classic or best seller? Which do you prefer?

JT: When artists complain that they only have cult followings, I’m always amazed by their naked greed and vulgar ambition. Mass appeal usually signifies artistic worthlessness. To be understood by everybody would be very disturbing. At this point I would happily settle for posthumous acclaim but it’s difficult to arrange these things in advance. Maybe if I killed myself… that might enhance my legacy.

AD: Since we’re leaning towards what could possibly happen after death, do you think you’ll continue living in LA? Has living here been what you had imagined it to be?

JT: That’s not a very nice way to talk about your hometown. I romanticized the place in advance, from afar, at an impressionable age. It met my expectations. I stayed here. Then it got stale, as places will, as one does. I’d like to live in the country, watch flowers grow, listen to birds sing. That’s the life I fled to begin with, having grown up in the most idyllic bucolic surroundings imaginable. But it’ll probably never happen. I’m in my element here, much as I sometimes get sick of my element. I can’t imagine being as comfortably uncomfortable anywhere else.

ART TICKLES

Hand To Mouth: Poet And Artist John Tottenham Brings Eerie Works To Rosamund Felsen Gallery

John Tottenham's paintings invite you to on an idyllic date, the kind you only read about in Victorian novels. A picnic, a garden stroll, perhaps a round of golf... these are the sorts of activities portrayed in the equally-sweetly named paintings like "Sweetheart's Paradise" and "Garden of My Heart." And then you see the hand.

In nearly every work, the gentleman courter has his hand shoved in the mouth of his date. Although viscerally intrusive and disconcerting, the exact motivation behind the hand-in-mouth is unclear. Is he choking his beloved? Shutting her up? Giving a fetish-spurred sign of affection? Is this some boyfriend-induced bulimia? The ambiguous gesture conjures up references to everything from sadistic dentists to the sexually suggestive accomplishment of sticking a fist in your mouth. The picturesque scenes gone rotten remind us of if Edvard Munch began illustrating children's books on etiquette.

Tottenham's paintings feel as if they were lost archives of a bizzarro Victorian practice, covered up out of shame. Like an earlier form of suburban surrealism, they channel a proto-Lynchian taste of the perverse with the most sanitized backdrops. Tottenham, a British poet and painter who calls himself a "failed visionary," injects his wry sense of humor into his poems and paintings, providing some levity onto the oft over-serious gallery walls. Aside from painting, Tottenham has created a name for himself in Echo Park for attempting to ban the word "awesome," a word which, he insists, means nothing at this point in time. Perhaps the unlucky Victorian damsels he depicts were a bit frivolous with this forbidden word?
Tottenham's work will show alongside the work of Tami Demaree and Dewey Ambrosino at Rosamund Felsen Gallery in Los Angeles until August 11.
What do you think is going on in Tottenham's dates gone wrong? - www.huffingtonpost.com/

Laughing at the Artwork of John Tottenham

by Gordy Grundy

In the art world, the laughs are far and few between. An intellectual-academic howling with a bellyful is as rare as a redneck reciting a haiku. There is no invitation to giggle in a silent white cube with a security guard and a suspicious eye.
Humor in the art world is polarized by the wry, sly deadpan of Ed Ruscha and the Bazooka Joe bubble gum groaner of Richard Prince. Fine Art is a serious business with a brow that is hard to unfurrow. Only an educated outsider would be naïve enough to attempt a punch line.
British born poet John Tottenham has a wit as dry as my martini. His resume reads "After many years of resistance, he finally sold out to the lucrative, fast-paced world of poetry, producing 'The Inertia Variations', an epic and ever-expanding poetic cycle on the subject of work-avoidance, indolence, failure and related topics." [Actor Adam Goldberg has made a series of short 16mm films based on his work. Matt Johnson of The The is making a multi-media interpretation.]
I am a giddy fan of the Variations. When I heard that Tottenham would be showing his visual work at Las Cienegas Projects, I somersaulted over to Culver City, Los Angeles, looking for a laugh. Las Cienegas Projects is the semi-secret collector's hot spot run by Amy Thoner and Steven Hull with backing from a few entertainment and fine art stars. Painting and drawing is not new to the steadfastly primitive Tottenham, for he is a graduate of "the worst art school in London."
The gallery space was appropriately centered with a Victorian tableaux, a symbol of vital forces in decline. A green velvet fainting couch was sandwiched between two period pedestals holding vases of dying red roses. A velvet curtain hung as heavy as a broken heart. A woven Persian rug was thick enough to absorb a river of many tears.

I cannot account for the hours/ That have been smothered into/ Submission. Not only this afternoon/ But day after day, year after year./ Over the wasted course of which time/ I have been repeating this futile lament:/ That I can't go on like this. And this too:/ That it makes no difference. -- From the Inertia Variations

One wall featured a series of drawings, pen and pencil on paper. Each expert cityscape demonstrates a lonely town in a leafless chill. These are small prairie towns in the gasp of abandonment. The streets are solitary and this viewer began to despair...
The drawings are doodlings says the artist. They are made when Tottenham was lollygagging on the phone. Another wall in the gallery is covered with one thousand, bookmark-sized doodlings. The "Women In My Life" are dressed and coiffed almost identically, yet each offer an individual personality. Clearly, Tottenham has a type. And a very full Little Black Book.

Often, around the middle of a week day afternoon,/ I find myself considering the connection/ Between sexual and creative energy./ Torn by futile lusts, I seek refuge/ From the vagueness of the day/ And the promise of endeavor/ In reliable memories and fantasies/ That spill, reliably, into sleep./ --- Art and Eros

A selection of paintings take us on a lonely and oddly-eroticized journey. Edward Hopper could be our Tour Guide. More cityscapes, industrial towns on the wane, take us to the Depression-era Midwest. These oils are alternated with portraits of nude women and their walkers, alone in a rented furnished room. The single women are not necessarily young or old, but appear relatively healthy. They are too hot to need a walker. It must be the weight of their despair. The cityscapes and the gimpy gals are a funny juxtaposition. Tottenham's skill with a brush is considerable. His coloring is emotional and evocative. There is much detail on a sun-dappled thigh. Now, we begin to understand Tottenham's humor.
Gallery notes read, "Decorative, with possible psychological underpinnings, it is hoped that these (Walker) paintings should promote restful reverie, which is the state they were created in.".
The last collage of paintings are the most primitive. They are also the funniest. Each painting refers to a Victorian-era postcard of a romantic interlude. A young courting couple, in their Sunday-best, are embraced in a bucolic setting against sunny skies. It is sweetly romantic. In every painting, the guy has his hand in the girl's mouth. The sordid innocence makes you laugh loudly.
Nervously, I asked the artist if there was a fetish involved. Much to my relief, he replied, "No. I just thought it was funny" and then he laughed heartily and wickedly. And so did I.

Dulling my senses with baths, naps,/ Assorted languishings. For many years/ I have sat down to do the work/ That the world will be no worse off/ Without, and I have not done the work./ And the world is no worse off. Just because/ I haven't done anything with my life,/ Does that make me a lesser man?/ --- Anomic Otiosity

John Tottenham has produced a very solid solo debut, outstanding for a self-professed Sunday painter and educated outsider. Together with his poetry and deadpan comedic timing, Tottenham offers us a package of despair and delight that will make you laugh out loud. This artist is worth our wry eye.