this book got me fired!

EEL PIE ISLAND DHARMA: a hippie memoir/haibun


But Tai Grove's Hidden Brook Press is going to do a re-issue anyway this fall.

First published with Unfinished Monument Press in 1990 as Eel Pie Dharma: a memoir/haibun, fellow Eel Pie Island Hotel communard Weed put this online in the early 2000s. Six years ago I was fired after a decade as Head Librarian by a village library for putting 'sexual content online'. This must have been the culprit. Buy a copy of this beautiful & comprehensive edition & learn my sordid secrets ...

This new version will also contain Weed's personal heady memoirs of our misspent hippie youth.

Meet a Beatle, attend the first Glastonbury Music Festival and both Isle of Wight Festivals, hitchhike and walk across the British Isles to visit sacred sites, drop acid (LSD), fight with skinheads in the infamous 144 Piccadilly Squat, and get seduced by schoolgirls. Visit Formentera in the Balearic Islands and sleep in a cave on a cliff above swimming sharks.

As well as being a sixties memoir, Eel Pie Island Dharma is also a seminal haibun: prose interspersed with haiku. Many of these haiku have been widely published and are now classics in the exploding genre of English language haiku.    

Readers of Riffs & Ripples will be kept informed of the publication date & the availability of copies.
I was there, and I remembered almost all of it ... and fortunately I wrote it down.

- Chris Faiers/cricket/Canadian Chris

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Conrad DiDiodato has left a new comment on your post "this book got me fired!":

Chris,

you're living proof that Canada is not really a place where viewpoints can be freely expressed without penalty. Censorship (and oftentimes in the guise of 'political correctness')is alive and well here.

I salute you. You got balls, my friend.


Posted by Conrad DiDiodato to Riffs & Ripples from ZenRiver Gardens at 8 September 2012
17:06

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Thanks, Conrad, for your support & for  immediately comprehending the hidden  'politiks' behind the firing. Even some friends & supporters haven't clearly understood this.

An irony in the firing is that it was by very reactionary people, who used (or tried to use) progressive rhetoric as their weapon. Their ruse failed on one count, in that I received wrongful dismissal payments for 8 months. But it did succeed in that I'm no longer in charge there, & now reactionary backstabbers are.

Also the firing did force me into premature retirement (at age 58), and ever since I've been able to focus on my true callings, which are writing & publishing poetry*, organizing PurdyFests & grooming ZenRiver Gardens for meditation and nature appreciation. Wouldn't trade back but do miss the money sometimes  :  )

peace & poetry power!
Chris ... and Chase ... wrffffffffffffffffff!

*including this blog
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"this book got me fired!"

3 Comments - Show Original Post Collapse comments

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Conrad DiDiodato said...

Chris,

you're living proof that Canada is not really a place where viewpoints can be freely expressed without penalty. Censorship (and oftentimes in the guise of 'political correctness')is alive and well here.

I salute you. You got balls, my friend.

8 September 2012 17:06

Ed Baker said...

well... they most likely didn't have the foggiest
notion

nor a single clue as to your (the pieces') intention

well-lll just goes to show you that

politics and religion are bologna ... except when
sex-you'all in-you-end-dohs enter ?

further-ly will look for this "eel" and
just matebe I/we can trade my forth cuming
with yore froth-comin ? My
ARS POETIC HER for your "Eels Pie" ?

My opening line if this was 1966 (or 1990) or (next week) I'd be arrested !

well I just can't hep my self. Here is the opening line

(and, it s ALL about commerce, eh?):125 ofTaCTA

"Sometimes you can kiss my pussy," she said.

28 September 2012 05:22

Ed Baker said...

just found you Eel Pie Island Dharma
en toto on the net... and read "Alice"

now DIG THIS:

on the way back from Greece (Lindos)
late 1969 early 1970
I made my way to London and stayed for about 3 weeks on a friend's (Bill Canada)friend's boat .. On the Thames on the Chelsea Embankment ...

(is Eel Island near there? Was Alice ?)

in the next boat was living a band
who was all night long playing and singing I went over one night to complain and this cute bare-breasted girl said: "ask Donovan"

will wait for the print version of your book... reading books via an electronic device... not my 'cup of tea'

28 September 2012 05:46

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 Sept. 28/12
Hi Ed,
Thanks for posting yer comments on the blog; they're always appreciated to clarify & further the cause ...    Definitely up for trading forthcoming books, & looking forward to reading ARS POETIC HER : )  We've improved the title for the republication to EEL PIE ISLAND DHARMA (added "island" to the title - books with the words "island, river, lake" etc. are always popular with book buyers - & besides, some peeple thought the book was a recipe collection, or a Jeffrey Dahmer memoir or somesuch!!!).

I wrote a piece, now posted on my blog & added as an intro to the republication, about EPD as an example of haibun serving a variety of lit funcitons: memoir, historical document & personal spiritual diary of sorts. I'll forward you my publisher's pdf for the new book. We are currently in limbo, waiting for the Nat. Library of Canada to supply CIP data so the book can be shipped off to the printer. Should be out in early to mid-November. I'm honoured that it'll launch in TO, prob. at THE IMPERIAL PUBLIC LIBRARY, along with another premiere of Milton Acorn's new selected, IN A SPRINGTIME INSTANT.

Yeah, the small town, small minded mofos here in rural Ontario really don't like writers, poets esp. - we're dangerous anywhere of course, always the first to be shot in a revolution, a coup, etc.. So what they conducted to fire me was a good ol' fashioned rural backstabbing cowardly witch hunt. They were so afraid of this semi-articulate little old hippie (maybe 5 1/2 feet) & beer bellied, that the entire library board (several 6 foot++ reactionaries) were afraid to even let me speak. And their lies to justify my firing were so outrageous their lawyers tried to prevent me from showing them to anybody but my own family! At least I got 8 months severance pay from the cowards, & thank God in a way they fired me, because I was just about working miracles for their library & their miserable little community. Now I can focus on my writing & hanging out at ZenRiver Gardens & organizing annual PurdyFest poetry confabs  ... oh yeah, & blathering on this blog  ;  )

thanks again for contributing a riff, a few ripples & a rant or two  :  )
peace & poetry power!
Chris/cricket ... and Chase ... Wrffffffffffffffffffffffffff! (coffee's ready!)



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