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Looking forward to the first absinthe tasting
• IT'S great news that the Rimbaud/Verlaine house has been sold to people who wish to honour its legacy (Poets’ legacy will live on at their old home, November 8).
That this has occurred is very much a team effort, a magic generated by a collective will and energy. When Aidan Dun and myself witnessed, reported and halted the illegal development work in mid-July, this veteran campaign took on a new momentum, and on four fronts: political, media, business and artistic.
Politically, David Bloom of the Camden planning enforcement team responded immediately to the emergency, halting the work, putting up preservation orders, and halting the work again when it had been resumed, and putting up preservation orders again when they had been removed.
Louise Jury and Richard Godwin at the Evening Standard, Robert Elms at BBC London, and the indefatigable Daniel Carrier at Camden New Journal flew the flag and alerted Londoners.
Michael Ogun,who only bought the house in February, Michael Corby, Gerry Harrison and Graham Henderson engaged in high-level business discussions for which most of us would not be qualified.
Artistically, by organising a series of poetry-related events outside the house, we sought to demonstrate to the people of Camden the kind of thing they could expect if the house was to become a cultural centre rather than luxury maisonettes.
The poets, actors, musicians, artists who lent their talents to this side of the campaign include Ken Campbell, Mike Lesser, Terry Hands, Johny Brown, Josh Darcy, Penny Dimond, Mark Newell, James Byrne, Minnie Weisz, Lee Scrivner, James Harvey, and many others (along with Patti Smith whose support has been so influential).
One warning: Any attempt to gentrify the revolutionary, drug-experimenting, homosexual, anarchist, criminal, alcoholic, communard and vagabond legacy of these two poets would be derisory. Aidan Dun and I have envisaged a publishing house and recording studio in the basement, a reception area and Arthurian Library on the ground floor, an absinthe bar and live poetry space on the first floor, a “love must be reinvented” room on the second floor, and a writers’ studio in the beautiful mansard-roof garret (available on a rota basis to Rimbaldian/Verlainean poets). When’s the party?
NIALL McDEVITT
Address supplied
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