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Enter the Liminal Realm with
Liminal Gate Press
Where Magick meets Reality
LIMINAL THOUGHTS
LIMINAL THOUGHTS
LIMINAL THOUGHTS
Unicorn Bookshop and Unicorn Press by Melissa Seims
The Walrus and The Carpenter by Maggie Blake-Reece
Unicorn Bookshop
The creation of Liminal Gate Press was inspired by the counter-cultural movement of the Brighton Unicorn Bookshop in the 1960s. The Unicorn bookshop was opened in 1967 by Bill Butler and his partner Mike Hughes. Born William Huxford Butler, Bill was an American beat poet, occultist and alternative thinker.
Unicorn specialised in modern poetry of American and British writers and many aspiring poets and authors were able to get their work read there. It also carried a large number of books and pamphlets on such diverse subjects as macrobiotic cooking, survival techniques, magic, esoterica and science-fiction. It had its own publishing arm - Unicorn Press and the well-known authors J. G. Ballard and Michael Moorcock had some of their early work published there. Its wider community of people also included experimental film makers such as Jeff Keen who explored magical ideas through some of his films. The bookshop quickly became a hub for alternative, countercultural thinkers, artists and anarchists.
For a brief spell in late 1967, Bill returned to America. A friend he left to look after the Unicorn decided to start selling marijuana from there which may, or may not, have been related to a police raid that subsequently took place on the 16th of January 1968. This caused quite a stir at the time as the police seized much of Butler’s stock and he was prosecuted for selling ‘obscene’ material. By ‘obscene’ we are talking here about the works of some of the well-known counter-cultural greats like William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg as well as a plethora of other alternative books and magazines.
Amusingly, an early chapbook by J. G. Ballard entitled Why I want To Fuck Ronald Reagan became a much-mentioned piece in the court case following the raid. Written in the style of a scientific paper it details a series of bizarre experiments intended to measure the psychosexual appeal of Ronald Reagan, who was then the Governor of California and candidate for the 1968 Republican presidential election. There is some kind of irony in that originals of this book, are now worth about £1500.
Amongst the array of ‘obscene’ publications seized, was the beautifully illustrated, Brighton Head and Freak magazine edited and lovingly adorned with colour by the mural artist John Upton. It contained poetry by Butler, the Australian anarchist and poet Jim Duke, and various other bards. Printed by Unicorn Press, it was sold in the shop.
In a travesty of justice, Bill lost the court case and didn’t have the money to pay the fine, believed to be £400 (roughly equivalent to £7000 today). A group of fellow poets including Alan Ginsberg, Thom Gunn and Elaine Feinstein, contributed work for a volume of poetry entitled For Bill Butler. Published in 1970, the proceeds went to help Bill.
It is this collaborative and supportive community spirit that Liminal Gate Press want to capture. The world is now very different from the 1960s but we believe the spirit and muse of that era is still lingering and looking for a way to manifest in new ways in these dramatically changing times. It is this approach that means we feel we can offer something a bit different to authors.
Let's go on a literary adventure and open the liminal gate - who knows what we will find on the other side!
Maggie Blake-Reece shares the following:
The Walrus and the Carpenter, a poem by Lewis Carroll that has been interpreted by many people in many different ways.
To John Lennon in his 1967 The Beatles song "I Am the Walrus", it was a story about the dangers of capitalism with him joking that he should have instead sang "I am the Carpenter".
A popular interpretation is that of religion, the Oysters in the poem being the followers blindly walking into the trap laid out by organised religion with the Carpenter representing Jesus or by extension the abrahamic monotheistic faiths and the Walrus representative of other dualistic faiths, his tusks bringing to mind those of Ganesh or perhaps even the horned one. This theory was popularised in the classic 1999 film Dogma, when the former Angel of Death presents the poem as an indictment of organized religion in order to test the faith of a Catholic nun.
The British essayist J. B. Priestley argued that the figures were political, with others agreeing that the Walrus and Carpenter both represent opposing right and left wing ideologies with the outcome being the same for the poor Oysters. Perhaps all these evaluations are correct, perhaps they are all wrong.
What strikes me about this poem is that the Oysters themselves never seem to be the focus of attention or debate. They are seen as us. As the every man or woman shepherded along by coercion to a fate they don't deserve. Blinded by naivety, they walk towards their doom and thus they must be a representative of us.
But what if we choose not to follow? What happens when the Oysters decide not to be carried along by the currents expected of them?
We live in a time where the media we consume is directed by what corporations and businesses want us to have access to. A world where everything would appear to be instantaneous in its availability to us, from takeaway food through Amazon delivery, even social media, with its apparently never-ending supply of "new" information and experiences.
But is this the case? Or by us seemingly being offered everything, are we actually being deprived of the important things?
What happened to the free forms of expression and creativity and ideas that have been pushed to the margins while we follow the Carpenter and Walrus as instructed?
Carroll could not have meant this analogy, he could not have foreseen a time when art and literature and thought itself was filtered to a level that the poor Oysters didn't realise it was gone, yet here we are walking onto the plate.
LGP is a bohemian grassroot publisher doing something different. They are putting the artists back into art and the magic back into the esoteric market, refusing to back down in the face of never-ending trends and fashion.
They stand for the Oysters within the crowd who refuse to follow the Walrus, the ones who look at the Carpenter and say "no more".
Walrus and Carpenter
Somewhere in a space between the worlds, a new portal is opening...
Liminal Gate Press
...where will it take you?
Enter the Liminal Realm with
Liminal Gate Press
Where Magick meets Reality
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