David Lee Guss Mexican funeral bier, 1890's-2009

Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957) was an English poet and novelist. His masterpiece is "Under the Volcano" (1937), set in Mexico where he lived from 1936 to 1939. Like many celebrated writers, he was an alcoholic. "Volcano" has been placed at number 11 by The Modern Library's Best Novels of the 20th century. "Under the Volcano" was made into a 1984 motion picture by director John Huston. It explores one day in the life of an alcoholic British diplomat on the eve of WW2 and the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration. As with Huston's "Night of the Iguana," "Volcano" was shot by the Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa (1907-1997). @2009 David Lee Guss Mexican funeral bier, 1890's-2009 Read more

Turkish Under The Volcano

Charles Arthur Wells, Jr: Malcolm Lowry

 Malcolm Lowry no date, before 1989dry point, 22/30

Pierre Alechinsky,: Pour Malcolm Lowry

Pour Malcolm Lowry. Farbradierung auf BFK Rives-Velin. 39,5 x 48,2 cm (Plattenrand); 49,5 x 64,2 cm (Blattgröße). Signiert. Auflage 150 num. Ex. (1969). Rivière 392.
Prachtvoller, farbfrischer Druck mit dem vollen Rand.

Hungarian Copy of Under The Volcano

Andrzej Brakoniecki Eridanus 1998 - 2004

Consuls Vision

Andrzej Brakoniecki, painter and printmaker. He has made Vancouver, British Columbia his home for the past 30 years. He studied painting at the Collage of Fine Arts in Gdansk, Poland and classical animation at Vancouver Film School.His paintings and prints are in public and private collections in anada,USA,Mexico, Germany, France, England, Russia and Poland. Read more and see the series of paintings

Bedřich Dlouhý Přítomnost Pompejí: Malcolm Lowry: Světová literatura 1964

Přítomnost Pompejí: Malcolm Lowry: Světová literatura 1964 (illustration)

Autor The Steppe and In The Woods at the Specialised Ceramics school in Prague (1949 – 1952) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (1953 – 1959; Miroslav Holý, Karel Souček). Taugh at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague from 1990 – 1995. Has exhibited as part of a group since 1954, and on his own since 1962. Member of the group Šmidrové (from the year 1954), Umělecká beseda (Art Meeting; 1964 – 1972), the group Zaostalí (Retarded; from the year 1987) and the Association of Visual Artists Mánes (from the year 1995). Created twenty-three film posters over the years 1962 – 1971. he is considered one of the prominent authors of the 60’s and 70’s. His posters for films like 8 ½, Hiroshima, My Love and The Pink Panther are known worldwide. Read more

Wistbook 005 “City Hospital”

loscil
“City Hospital”

Sound report on Malcolm Lowry’s
novella “Lunar Caustic”.

Registry no. Wistbook 005
Edition series. 100
Format. 3″cd and novella
Released Feb 29
http://wistrec.com/wistbook-005/

Has anyone got a copy of this as I missed it?

Professor Chris Ackerley – The Nordic vision of Malcolm Lowry’s In Ballast to the White Sea

Thanks to Nicolas Labbe for informing me that Chris Ackerley's paper was now available as a podcast.

Listen to the above paper delivered at the conference below HERE

Event Date: 18-20 July 2012
Hotel Solstrand
Solstrandveien 200, Postboks 54,
5201 Os, Norway
Modernism, Christianity, and Apocalypse

A conference organised by the Department of Foreign Languages at the University of Bergen, Norway; funded by the Bergen Research Foundation through the ‘Modernism and Christianity’ research project.

Professor Chris Ackerley – The Nordic vision of Malcolm Lowry’s In Ballast to the White Sea Malcolm Lowry’s re-discovered novel, In Ballast to the White Sea, is set in the 1930s and depicts its central character as caught between a vision of Cambridge Socialism (Russia) and a Nordic vision (Norway); but the latter is complicated by the Nazi appropriation of the Aryan ideal and the Axis desire to create a sphere of influence throughout the Baltic countries. This political theme is complemented and mediated by the literary one: Lowry’s deliberate adoption of Nordic themes and allusions, most notably from Nordahl Grieg, The Ship Sails On and Johannes Jensen, The Long Journey, but many others as well. These constitute a dialogue between Grieg’s socialism, Jensen’s advocacy of a Nordic vision, and Lowry’s attraction to both, despite their incompatibility; an attraction that led him to a complex understanding (often acute, sometimes incongruous) of the political climate as he perceived it to be in Norway, and with reference to himself.

Chris Ackerley is Professor and previous Head of English at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. His speciality is annotation, particularly of the work of Samuel Beckett and Malcolm Lowry, He has two full-length annotations of Beckett’s Murphy and Watt (republished Edinburgh U P, 2010), and with Stan Gontarski is author of the Grove Press and Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett (2004, 2006). He is currently working on a study of Samuel Beckett and Science, and annotating three texts in the EMiC (Editing Manuscripts in Canada) project, one of which is Lowry’s recently re-discovered novel, In Ballast to the White Sea.

The Voyage That Never Ends

Malcolm Lowry’s heavily annotated working typescript of his most complete articulation of his life’s work: his plan for an epic that would rival in scope the great literary undertakings of the 20th century of Proust, Joyce, and Pound. It is the immediate precursor – with substantial variations – to a foundational document of Lowry scholarship housed in the Lowry Archive at University of British Columbia. Read more here

Malcolm Lowry

Courtesy of Deliberacion

Luis López Loza Serie Ilustraciones a Poemas de Malcolm Lowry

Luis López Loza was born in Mexico City in 1939. He studied in the “Esmeralda” School of Painting and Sculpture, in the Center of Applied Arts, both in Mexico, and the Pratt Graphic Art Center in New York. In 1966 he received Honorary Mention in Casa de las Américas, in Havana, Cuba, and in 1969 in the Triennial of Woodcut in Modena, Italy. In 1973 he received the Biennial of Printmaking Award in Tokyo, Japan, and the National Printmaking Award in Mexico in 1977. In 1975 he was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Read more 

Salud!

Courtesy of Pinterest 

Mario Canali Under The Volcano

Born in Milan, Mario Canali began his artistic career in 1975, devoting the first ten years of his career to painting. Shortly thereafter he turned his attention to electronic and digital art and is considered one of the pioneers of that art form. Second to John Lasseter at Ars Electronica in Linz for two consecutive years and winner of numerous awards at the national level (Nastro d’Argento, Rome) as well as internationally (Imagina, Monte Carlo) in the field of  computer graphics and 3D animation, Mario Canali pioneered immersive virtual reality (Satori, 1992) and interactive installations, using body parameters to probe people’s emotional states. Canali’s studies and research in digital media, new paradigms of science, psychology and neurology earned him teaching credentials at Accademia di Brera in Milan "Virtual Reality and Paradigms of Complexity”  and NABA Academy of Arts and Design in Milan “Emotional Scenes and Cognitive Environments”. After twenty years of experience with new media, Canali returns to painting to create new and exciting spaces for expression, communication and research. Read more

Young Fresh Fellows 'Back Room of the Bar.’

The band The Young Fresh Fellows recorded a song inspired by Lowry’s Under The Volcano called 'Back Room of the Bar.’

Canadian Poetry Magazine Volume II Numbers 1 and 2

These two magazines both contain poems by Malcolm Lowry. Number 1 has 'Sestina in a Cantina'. Number 2 has 'Old Freighter in an Old Port', 'Port Moody', and 'Indian Arm.'

Thanks to James Reynolds

'Infinitas Gracias'

'Repellent,' the Consul said, isn't Guanajuato the place they bury everyone standing up?" Under The Volcano

If you missed the recent Wellcome Foundation exhibition on Mexican Miracle Paintings then yu get a book of postcards of some of the exhibits from here.

Mexican votives are small paintings, usually executed on tin roof tiles or small plaques, depicting the moment of personal humility when an individual asks a saint for help and is delivered from disaster and sometimes death. 'Infinitas Gracias' will feature over 100 votive paintings drawn from five collections held by museums in and around Mexico City and two sanctuaries located in mining communities in the Bajío region to the north: the city of Guanajuato and the distant mountain town of Real de Catorce. Together with images, news reports, photographs, devotional artefacts, film and interviews, the exhibition will illustrate the depth of the votive tradition in Mexico.

Usually commissioned from local artists by the petitioner, votive paintings tell immediate and intensely personal stories, from domestic dramas to revolutionary violence, through which a markedly human history of communities and their culture can be read. The votives displayed in 'Infinitas Gracias' date from the 18th century to the present day. Over this period, thousands of small paintings came to line the walls of Mexican churches as gestures of thanksgiving, replacing powerful doctrine-driven images of the saints with personal and direct pleas for help. The votives are intimate records of the tumultuous dramas of everyday life - lightning strikes, gunfights, motor accidents, ill-health and false imprisonment - in which saintly intervention was believed to have led to survival and reprieve.

'Infinitas Gracias' will explore the reaction of individuals at the moment of crisis in which their strength of faith comes into play. The profound influence of these vernacular paintings, and the artists and individuals who painted them, can be seen in the work of such figures as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, who were avid collectors. The contemporary legacy of the votive ritual will be present in the exhibition through a wall covered with modern-day offerings from one church in Guanajuato: a paper shower of letters, certificates, photographs, clothing and flowers, through which the tradition of votive offering continues today. The sanctuaries at Guanajuato and Real de Catorce remain centres of annual pilgrimage, attracting thousands of people to thank and celebrate their chosen saints.

Under The Volcano

An edition that I had never sen before?

Just the Worst of Times: Denis Johnson Goes Iambic

A teacher at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop once asked his student Denis Johnson what he’d been reading in his spare time. “I only ever read one book,” he responded, Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano. Slackers love Denis Johnson and his cast of degenerates, so this Spicoli-style answer feels appropriate in tone. It’s also spot-on in content, since Volcano anticipates the author’s central theme. 

Read full article by Dan Duray on New York Observer

Garden of Evil 1954

I thought the title of this film had a certain ironic ring, thinking of Under The Volcano, given that it was supposed to have been filmed in the mountains around Cuernavaca according to some commentators! Log 24 Some sources state it was filmed in Uruapan west of Cuernavaca. Gary Cooper Scrapbook

Garden of Evil (1954) is a Western film about three somewhat disreputable 19th-century soldiers of fortune, played by Gary Cooper, Richard Widmark, and Cameron Mitchell, who are hired by a woman, portrayed by Susan Hayward, to rescue her husband. The movie was directed by Henry Hathaway.

En route to California to prospect for gold, Hooker (Gary Cooper), Fiske (Richard Widmark), and Luke Daly (Cameron Mitchell) stop over in a tiny Mexican village. The three men and Vicente Madariaga (Victor Manuel Mendoza) are hired by a desperate Leah Fuller (Susan Hayward) to rescue her husband John (Hugh Marlowe), who is trapped in a gold mine in hostile Indian territory.


During the harrowing journey, the party's already frayed nerves are aggravated when the men become attracted to the woman. The group then arrives at the mine site — called the "Garden of Evil" because the Indians regard it as the domain of evil spirits. They find an injured, but living John Fuller.
As they leave, they are pursued by Apaches. Eventually, only Hooker, Fiske and Leah are left alive. At a narrow point in the road, the two men draw cards to see who will stay behind to hold off the Indians while the other two ride to safety. Fiske "wins" and succeeds in killing or driving off the enemy. After seeing that Leah is safe, Hooker returns to talk with a dying Fiske, who urges him to settle down with Leah.

On another romantic front, Mitchell became infatuated with Hayward. However, Hayward, who was in the process of divorcing her husband, Jess Barker, was not interested in Mitchell. During a New Year's Eve celebration of cast and crew in nearby Cuernavaca, a slightly intoxicated Hayward leaned over to Mitchell and ran her fingernails down his cheek, drawing blood and forcing director Hathaway to delay filming until the facial wounds healed.

On another romantic front, Mitchell became infatuated with Hayward. However, Hayward, who was in the process of divorcing her husband, Jess Barker, was not interested in Mitchell. During a New Year's Eve celebration of cast and crew in nearby Cuernavaca, a slightly intoxicated Hayward leaned over to Mitchell and ran her fingernails down his cheek, drawing blood and forcing director Hathaway to delay filming until the facial wounds healed. Wikipedia

Susan Hayward later went to a jammed cafe in Cuernavaca with the cast to celebrate New Year's Eve. After a few brandies she leaned over to Mitchell, knowing his attraction to her, and ran her long fingernails deeply along his cheek, drawing blood and leaving wounds that caused director Hathaway to delay further shooting until the scabs vanished. Mitchell was scarred for life. Hathaway had a difficult time with Hayward, who delayed productions and often walked off the set when annoyed with his brusque ways. The film went over budget and beyond schedule, although Cooper remained mute about the temperament his costar displayed; Hayward was then one of the top box-office actresses. Movies TV Guide

Under The Volcano Books, Mexico City

Under The Volcano Books
Cerrada Chiapas 40-C
Col. Roma Norte
Del. Cuauhtémoc
Distrito Federal
MEXICO 06700
http://underthevolcanobooks.com/


Mission 

To establish: an embassy for the soul of the English-speaking world - its literature - in Mexico; an educational resource for Chilangos learning English and eager to explore the artistic reach of the language; a foundation for an international literary magazine, Mexico Review, appearing in 2013; a web-free, Kindle-less island of analog time in the digital sea; a community center for Commonwealth and American expatriates in the most exciting, vibrant and accessible city on Earth; an institution that will pay tribute to that city's magnificence with the best our native culture has to offer.

François Righi Under The Volcano Volume 4 2009

François Righi Under The Volcano Volume 4 2009

Es habitual recurrir al libro como medio para transmitir un significado que se cree consolidado, bien sea mediante palabras o imágenes. En este caso, el arranque del libro parte de otra premisa. No se trata de consignar ninguna solución, pues el libro encierra un misterio de naturaleza inalcanzable, insoluble, que se mantiene intacto a fin de reavivarlo con cada lectura: aquello que nunca se consigue plenamente, y que es lo único que importa, es la razón de ser y la materia de estos libros […]. El juego que palpita en ellos nace de una imagen que representa lo que no es y que, en su ausencia, ocupa ese lugar.

Read more on Arts Libris

Peter Bies Into the West

“(…) he dreamed a moment of battles his soul survived to wander there.” Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano


this is how it works:

soft plastic phantoms of the past

assembling proleptic flashes of sub-poetry

& retrograde evidence & representations

of my edited emotional history:



your languid shape

backlit against the flat sky

your pregnant drawl

shallow & corporate

in scientific locution/

my memory of you

jells into fiction

blotting out over

& beyond the live flesh

& the cold shadow

of your hands

See more on ARTDOXA

Lowry Lounge 27th October 2012

This year's Lowry Lounge will be longer than last year with more contributors.

Details below:

The 2012 Lowry Lounge
11.00am - 6.00pm
Saturday 27th October 2012
The Bluecoat
School Lane
Liverpool L1 3BX

The Bluecoat's annual celebration of Wirral-born writer Malcolm Lowry (Under The Volcano) comprises a pyschogeographical walking tour of Liverpool with artist Colin Dilnot (11am - 1pm) and afternoon at the Bluecoat (2-6pm), including the launch of The Firminist No. 3, an occasional journal of all things Lowry, performances, talks and music.

Tickets: Tour £5 (places limited, so book early)/ Lowry Lounge £3/Combined Ticket £6

Contact The Bluecoat 0151 702 5324 or www.thebluecoat.org.uk

Hope to see you there!

Gutted Arcades of the Past Update

My Gutted Arcades of the Past project continues to grow - I have passed the 300 posts mark with a huge amount of work still to be posted.

I am still making new discoveries about Malc's life and work which mean continual updates to Gutted Arcades. My latest discovery is the exact route Lowry took on his 1927 voyage to the Far East on board the Blue Funnel ship Pyrrhus. This has provided many clues to references in Malc's work especially in Ultramarine. I have now completed several posts on the ports he visited in 1927 - the most recent being on Kobe and Keelung:

http://guttedarcades.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/kobe-japan.html

http://guttedarcades.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/keelung.html

Please drop over!!

Under The Volcano @ The Railway, Tithebarn Street , Liverpool 20/8/12

Literature in Pubs is a community book group searching for literary stimulation in the relaxing atmosphere of a cosy pub. The next meeting will featuring Malc's Under The Volcano:

6.00-8.00pm
Monday 20th August 2012
The Railway
Tithebarn Street
Liverpool L2 2DT


Geoffrey Firmin, a former British consul, has come to Quauhnahuac, Mexico. His debilitating malaise is drinking, an activity that has overshadowed his life. On the most fateful day of the consul's life-- the Day of the Dead, 1938-- his wife, Yvonne, arrives in Quauhnahuac, inspired by a vision of life together away from Mexico and the circumstances that have driven their relationship to the brink of collapse.

She is determined to rescue Firmin and their failing marriage, but her mission is further complicated by the presence of Hugh, the consul's half brother, and Jacques, a childhood friend. The events of this one significant day unfold against an unforgettable backdrop of a Mexico at once magical and diabolical.

"Under the Volcano" remains one of literature's most powerful and lyrical statements on the human condition, and a brilliant portrayal of one man's constant struggle against the elemental forces that threaten to destroy him.

Thanks to Gill Dong for letting me know about the night.