Chapbooks II

In the summer of 1970, my first poetry chapbook, Chrylust, was printed at the London New Arts Lab on Roberts Street in London, England. I hawked it on the streets, parks, galleries, theaters, libraries and coffee houses, including the Arts Lab, the Troubadour, and Roundhouse.

The poems came from journals of creative expression I kept while teaching Literature at Buchanan High School in Liberia, West Africa (1969). I left the Peace Corps and traveled with the journals. On the Canary Islands I burnt most of the manuscript in an act meant to unburden me of their weight. I saved a handful of pages, which I carried through Marrakech and Casablanca in Morocco, Leon and Malaga in Spain; and then across France to Amsterdam and over the Channel to London.

The printer at the London New Arts Lab in 1970 was amused by the slim manuscript of expressive writing that I called "anti-literature." The first edition of Chrylust was limited to a few hundred copies, saddle stitched, with a cover illustration that I had drawn.

I often hawked my chapbook, Chrylust, at the psychedelic events at the the Roundhouse on Chalk Farm Road. The poetry reached out to a generation that was forsaking material possessions and unburdening itself from the weight of history. The hippies at the Roundhouse were tripping high above serendipitous safety nets. They were networking for food, shelter, and communication.