FREE POETRY BELOW…so put your pretty lil fingers on yer PayPal for a novel…

Tim Wells is made of reggae, lager top, pie and mash, and Leyton Orient FC.  His elbow rests firmly upon the bar of London’s live poetry scene.  And when his local’s closed, he posts on his Stand Up and Spit blog – it’s essential.  You’re not really a London poet, if you’ve managed to avoid him. Tim is crowdfunding a novel.  He is important.  The book therefore will be too.  We wanted to let you know.  There is a description below, or clicky licky linky.

Our active guardian: Tim,  encouraging quality voices, grooming many through his photocopied zine-y anthology,  RISING.  Wells has documented the punk poetry scene for longer than the Arts Council have been handing out silo-based grants that perpetuate the prison of art democracy (yeah, COLD LIPS have to reapply for a tincy hand-out, because we’re not v good at maths – feeling a lil disgruntled – we’re dealing with our issues, mainly issue 04 currently – and the REAL struggle of distributing off a museum-worth golden bicycle).  Here is a FREE poem to make us all feel better:

All the Skinhead Girls I Ever Went Out With

Were tougher 

than me,

had to be. 

Most could shut

a pub to silence.

All could talk

‘til the Monopoly

boot came home.

The blue of 

Levi jackets

and jeans 

echoed 

india ink

tattoos.

Their eyes

the same green

as the liquor

gracing their

double double.

On Saturday night

I heard ‘Ali Baba’

and I wanted

my dream last

night last night.

Her monkey boots

scraping my shin,

the stick

of cinema carpet

as the adverts

finish

and the action begins.

Tim in the first edition of COLD LIPS ☝️

WHAT OTHERS SAY:

‘London poetry landmark’ – TLS
‘suedehead bard of N16’ – the Grauniad
‘bizarre character from the East End’ – the Times
‘a neatly twisted line in rhetoric’ – NME
‘Working class hero’ – Morning Star
‘like Hogarth’ – Poetry Magazine
‘thug’ – NME, 18.08.84

‘Howling back to the days when we used to pass the Skinhead and Hell’s Angels books around school, and watched Hammer Horror films at home on our black-and-white televisions, Tim Wells has written a fiendish tale of a skinhead werewolf rampaging through London in 1979. Being a sharp-dressed lad (still), the clothes and music are spot on. Snap up a copy before it bites your hand off.’ John King, author of Football Factory, Human Punk, Skinheads, and more.  (COLD LIPS love JOHN KING of LONDON BOOKS – and his zine, VERBAL.)

‘Skinheads and werewolves and reggae and boozers, lager and kicking in fat city losers, Punk rock and Sta-prest when Lene she sings. Tim Wells has written a novel about a few of my favourite things… You can feel the sticky floors of the gigs and the sweaty menace is tangible as you read Tim Wells’ swaggering prose. This is no rose tinted amble down memory lane. The landscape of his world is a London that was swallowed whole by the eighties. For a book so full of life, there’s a lot of death in it as well. Beautiful. Brutal. Brutus. It’s got the lot!’ Phill Jupitus

BOOK BLURB:

1979: punk, reggae, boots, braces, and button down shirts. The full moon rises, a skinhead’s sideburns grow. Packed full of music, style, and bovver, Moonstomp is the written in blood story of a teenage skinhead who’s also a werewolf. Aggro on the streets of London has never been like this.

The full moon rises and bodies fall.

This pulp novel is in the style of the 70s skinhead/Hell’s Angels books churned out by the New English Library, books that were passed round school such as Skinhead, Suedehead, Chopper, and Speed Freaks.

SOUNDS GUT, YA?  SUPPORT IT NOW, IF YOU CAN.

AND SUPPORT COLD LIPS.  BUY EDITION 04 now, all past editions have sold out.  JAH LIT WARRIORS!