More short fiction coming soon, but in the meantime:
Dr John Cooper Clarke and Kirsty Allison
I’m very pleased to share this insightful recording with the good Doctor, and a full story over on Cold Lips, the magazine that came as a result of the Sylvia Plath Fan Club night enabled by the late darling, Gary Fairfull (RIP), above a Shoreditch strip bar, which is now a restaurant. The purpose of Sylvia Plath Fan Club was to explore lyric and poetry, and hosted musicians, writers, poets, actors, artists - all spitting it down. Cold Lips was a natural extension of that - and when I couldn’t get a commission on an amazing conversation I’d had Danielle De Picciotto, co-founder of the Love Parade, and brilliant artist and musician, who I’m happy to have hosted at The Social, and played with her at HKW and the Volksbuhne in Berlin - I decided to use my YEARS in writing for other people’s magazines by starting one myself.
I’ve shared the original Dr Clarke feature over there - and do have a few copies of that collectible edition in my possession (as some were located in the basement of Donlon Books - so if you set up a paid subscription, or have been kind enough to, let me know if I can send you one). Also in the darkest corners, you’ll also find words from the writer, Nina Antonia, who kindly introduced Dr John Cooper Clarke to the coven.
I intend to digitally publish many of the brilliant people that are Cold Lips over there in the next weeks and months. It’s easy to get notifications of those by signing up there.
This is from Unedited 02, the poetry book I sewed together on my sewing machine
Flyer artwork by Luke McLean - for this most legendary of nights. x
And here’s what you get for subscribing here:
an exclusive preview of the conversation with one of my fave people in Berlin/ the universe, Mark Reeder.
https://anchor.fm/coldlips/episodes/Mark-Reeder-with-Kirsty-Allison-ed3tbv/a-a20flho
Recorded in Berlin, February 2020, around the launch of Martyn Goodacre's book, I first met Mark Reeder in London, at the Tresor retrospective hosted by Red Gallery.
Subsequently I featured him in my Off The Floor arts’ pages in DJMag (where I’ve been editing for 5 years). I featured Mark not once or twice, but over three glorious editions - a trilogy, spanning his beginnings as the Berlin rep for Factory Records in the late 70s, to putting on illegal gigs in East Berlin before the wall fell, to creating MFS Records in the 90s - and now with Chinese band, Stolen. Unknown pleasures.
We met in a coffee shop on a Sunday afternoon.
In other news: gonna drop this on Friday, to tie-in with Bandcamp’s extra support of musicians. It’s a music video I made for Gil De Ray, took me eons to make - but of course, as we’re alone, you can have a sneaky peak.
Love n light. x
Stay safe, if you can. And if you’re finding yourself SAD or LONELY - give a thought out to the prisoners, the imprisoned, the sectioned, the detentioned, the broken, the interned, all the fckin displaced on the planet who don’t have rights, sanitary wear, food, shelter, or access to this chaos matrix of the glorious internet. x
Get in touch if you need to.
And SHARE SHARE SHARE if you dig this.
Kirsty x
https://twitter.com/kirstyallison
Conversations with Dr John Cooper Clarke, Mark Reeder and a film I've made for Gil De Ray