Dave Cunliffe Collection

The collection encompasses correspondence, business and financial records relating to Screeches small press (re-named BB Books in 1967), Poetmeat magazine and its successor Global Tapestry Journal. The collection includes around 5000 little poetry magazines, poetry pamphlets and countercultural publications from almost every part of the world many submitted for review and some of which are extremely rare. It documents the British Poetry Revival and includes a set of Poetmeat, which ran for thirteen issues between 1963-1967.

There are also complete runs of its successor Global Tapestry Journal and almost the entire output of Cunliffe’s small press which also included animal rights and vegan material and printed posters, flyers and newsletters for other radical groups.

Also included are the lay-out pages of pamphlets and periodicals alongside original poetry and numerous photographs and images which illuminate the processes of the small press that the couple used to produce the material. The collection also contains a large amount of poetic and countercultural ephemera spanning over seven decades.

The little poetry magazines, and small press poetry pamphlets include issues of Yugen, Evergreen Review, Kulchur, Floating Bear, The Wormwood Review and substantial collections of material from Oyez, City Lights, New Directions and the Artists’ Workshop of Detroit. Small press publications from all over the US and Canada form a substantial element of the collection.

There are significant runs of The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle, Kaleidoscope, Great Swamp Erie da Boom Boom, Illuminations, Grist and The Gar alongside poetry pamphlets published by Cleveland small presses Freelance, Renegade, and 7 Flowers. Douglas Blazek features prominently with all barring one issue of Olé magazine alongside Mimeo and Open Skull press pamphlets.

Through their association with New York poet and editor Kirby Congdon there are Interim and Crank book publications while Tuli Kupferberg’s verse, his Yeah magazine and Birth Press are well represented and there is a good collection of Briton John Wilcock’s New York alternative newspaper Other Scenes. Nine of the ten issues of Black Mask are held through the editors’ connection with Dan Georgakas, whose poetry pamphlet was produced by Screeches press and there are copies of Innerspace psychedelic magazine.

There are copies of Jonathan Zeitlyn’s original periodical Print: How You Can Do It Yourself alongside two editions of the book of the same name. These sit alongside poetry magazines and countercultural publications from Central and South America, Australia, Africa, Europe, Japan, India and China. Probably the most notable element of this material is a substantial number of issues of El Corno Emplumado/ The Plumed Horn journal and pamphlets from the press of the same name, published in Mexico City during the 1960s.

There are two boxes of the Small Press Review which feature the bibliographic details of many little magazines alongside articles by those involved in the scene and academics researching related topics.

From the UK there are hundreds of individual small press poetry pamphlets plus substantial but incomplete runs of the early issues of Tears in the Fence, New Departures, Smoke, Ludd’s Mill, Aylesford Review, Sepia, Krax, Peter Finch’s Second Aeon, Iron magazine and Origins Diversions. There are many pamphlets from Bradford’s Redbeck and Rivelin presses, Spectacular Diseases edited by Paul Buck, Beau Geste Press, Bill Butler’s Unicorn imprint and Excello and Bollard publications. There is a large volume of material by The Medway Poets particularly Billy Childish and Hangman Books press alongside titles from Phyroid, Outcrowd and Laserwolf.

There are substantial numbers of anarchist publications. These include Anarchy, Resurgence, Total Liberty/Anarchist Voices, Anarchism Lancastrium/ The Cunningham Amendment, Greenleaf and Green Anarchist. There are also a few later music and politics zines which includes a couple of issues of The Impossible Dream by anarcho-punk band The Poison Girls.

There is a large collection of poetic and countercultural ephemera spread across much of the archive, including flyers, posters and handouts relating to events and demonstrations over seven decades. There are legal briefing notes given out to protestors at two Committee of 100 actions in the early 1960s and a good deal of material relating to Cunliffe’s landmark 1965 obscenity trial and the benefit readings held to raise funds towards his court costs.

Cunliffe collected press cuttings relating to his poetry, publishing and activism which amount to several boxes of files. There are hundreds of original photographs of poets which accompany submissions of verse. There are also a small number of mail art letters and envelopes which have been circulated and added to by artists around the world.

Cunliffe also collaborated with the Burnley based radical theatre Welfare State, and there are two boxes of programmes, photographs and promotional items from their activities in the 1970s.

The collection holds a substantial series of correspondence with poets, writers, editors, publishers, musicians, journalists, and others. This primary sequence of correspondence is stored in a series of files arranged alphabetically by correspondent name.

The letters date from the 1970s through to roughly 2010 with approximately 60 correspondents, and around 2,500 individual items. Correspondents include Michael Horovitz, Adrian Mitchell, Roger McGough, Ian McMillan, Tracy Emin and Carl Solomon. The US writers and editors represented include people who knew, and wrote about, the first generation of Beat writers – e.g. George Dowden, who compiled the first comprehensive Ginsberg bibliography, and Gerald Nicosia who wrote a biography of Jack Kerouac. Also included are figures already represented in the library’s holdings – notably a file of material relating to polymath Jeff Nuttall, and at least 60 letters from the poet, publisher and author Jim Burns. Also included is financial correspondence with radical bookshops in Britain and the US.

There is a further series of miscellaneous correspondence files, stored alphabetically by name of correspondent, consisting of 24 files containing a total of approximately 800 individual items, mostly relating writers who were submitting work to Cunliffe for publication in Global Tapestry Journal. The files contain hundreds of manuscript and typescript poems, along with newsletters, magazines and cuttings.

The correspondence files relating to BB Books contain far more than correspondence: there are also many signed typescript and manuscript poems, as well as proofs, printed poems, cuttings, photographs and flyers. In later years, Cunliffe habitually kept word-processed printouts of his outgoing letters (often customised with inserted pictures/letterheads), which means that both sides of the correspondence are preserved. There are original layout pages from many of the pamphlets and journals published by Cunliffe and Morris which include alternative covers for some titles. There are subscription lists, mainly for Global Tapestry Journal and Cunliffe’s extensive address card index has been preserved.

Also included are 23 files relating to Dave Cunliffe’s own creative work, as well as various subject-based files holding correspondence, printed material, cuttings and postcards. There are extensive manuscript and typescript drafts of poetry and articles by Cunliffe, including autobiographical pieces, family photographs and printed matter including biographical information. The files also contain material relating to (and copies of) Poetmeat and various other poetry and counterculture magazines and printed matter relating to topics including censorship, peace, beat writing, veganism, and protests against the construction of the M65 motorway through the Lancashire countryside.

A small portion of material relates to the Anglo-Irish anarchist artist and writer Arthur Moyse (1914-2003), who was predominantly known as an art critic and cartoonist for Freedom newspaper. He produced illustrations for Poetmeat and Global Tapestry Journal and contributed to many other alternative publications and little magazines. Included are approximately 350 letters exchanged with Cunliffe, dating from the 1970s to his death in 2003, along with files of cuttings relating to Moyes and his work, publications by Moyes, and copies of his artwork including ink drawings, cartoons and watercolour paintings.

Dave Cunliffe was a poet, publisher, activist and important figure in the development of the early UK counterculture and the ‘British Poetry Revival’ of the 1960s and 1970s. Cunliffe was part of a group of artists, poets and publishers who sparked the 1960s British counterculture and a wave of experimental verse through small press and little magazine activity.

Born January 1941 in Blackburn Lancashire Cunliffe moved to London in 1957 where he initially stayed with the poet Lee Harwood who introduced him to Mike Horovitz, Jeff Nuttall and Adrian Mitchell. They encouraged him to write and become active in the CND. Cunliffe became a regular at the Peace Café and the mass civil disobedience actions of the Committee of 100. The artist and critic Arthur Moyse, who he met selling copies of Freedom newspaper, became Cunliffe’s ‘Anarchist Guru’, influencing his future political direction.

In 1962 Cunliffe returned to Blackburn and used Screeches, his small press, to publish the influential Poetmeat magazine and poetry pamphlets. In 1964 Tina Morris became co-editor and the periodical expanded its range of poetic output to feature verse from the US, Central and South America. Morris was one of only a very few female small press editors of the early-1960s. Cunliffe and Morris also became connected with Alex Trocchi’s sigma project, an attempt to instigate a cultural revolution by developing a global web of artists and Poetmeat grew into an important magazine as the co-editors networked with poets and writers around the globe.

It featured the work of William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Diane Di Prima, Black Panther Pat Parker and Carol Bergé from the US. The pair also connected with the US mimeograph scene, swapping verse and ideas with Tuli Kupferberg, d a levy, Diane di Prima, Douglas Blazek, Black Panther Pat Parker and the anarchist Dan Georgakas.

Connecting with Margaret Randall, Sergio Mondragon and their bi-lingual magazine El Corno Emplumado/ The Plumed Horn in Mexico, Poetmeat also featured the work of significant Latin American authors which included Nobel prize winner Octavio Paz, Nicaraguan poet and activist Ernesto Cardenal and Gonzalo Arango who developed the radical ‘Nadaismo’ concept. Randall and Mondragon were eventually exiled from Mexico for supporting the student uprising (a press release they issued at that time is also held in the collection).

The most celebrated Poetmeat edition, New British Poetry (issue 8, 1965), was the first major attempt to anthologise the new wave of UK avant-garde verse with a promotional reading at the Institute of Contemporary Arts organised by Michael Horovitz. Cunliffe’s editorial coined the term ‘British Poetry Revival’, which is still widely used today. Early work by Penelope Shuttle, Chris Torrance, George Dowden, and Lee Harwood featured in the magazine while the poet Jim Burns contextualised the new verse within a broader poetic history across several issues.

Both vegans, Morris and Cunliffe produced animal rights, anti-war and environmentalist pamphlets, flyers and posters which they used to picket abattoirs and butchers, smashing-up shooting lodges in the nearby Bowland hills.

When Cunliffe’s Screeches small press produced the Moyse pamphlet Golden Convolvulus in the summer of 1965 it was seized by the police who charged Cunliffe with obscenity. Considered an attempt to set a legal precedent away from London at the time and described later as the first of the 1960s ‘political trials’ in John Sutherland’s Offensive Literature, Cunliffe was found ‘not guilty’ of obscenity but guilty of a minor charge.

Initially co-edited with Morris until 1970, Poetmeat was succeeded by Global Tapestry Journal, which was less ground-breaking than Poetmeat but tapped-into the growing permissiveness of the early 1970s and occasionally caught the zeitgeist, for instance, it published early verse from the Medway Poets.

Living almost self-sufficiently and described as the nexus of almost all local activism in Alternative England and Wales, Cunliffe produced numerous political tracts, co-edited the underground newspaper Blackburn Barker and taught aspiring young zine editors the art of small press publishing in the 1980s.

The collection currently retains its original order, no archival arrangement has yet been imposed.

• 1. Literary magazines
• 2. Counterculture magazines
• 3. Screeches/BB Books publications
• 4. Primary correspondence series
• 5. Miscellaneous correspondence series
• 6. Works by Dave Cunliffe – poetry and prose
• 7. Arthur Moyse papers
• 8. Business papers

The collection includes material which is subject to the Data Protection Act 2018. Under the Act 2018 (DPA), The University of Manchester Library (UML) holds the right to process personal data for archiving and research purposes. In accordance with the DPA, UML has made every attempt to ensure that all personal and sensitive personal data has been processed fairly, lawfully and accurately. Users of the archive are expected to comply with the Data Protection Act 2018, and will be required to sign a form acknowledging that they will abide by the requirements of the Act in any further processing of the material by themselves.

Open parts of this collection, and the catalogue descriptions, may contain personal data about living individuals. Some items in this collection may be closed to public inspection in line with the requirements of the DPA. Restrictions/closures of specific items will be indicated in the catalogue.

Some items in the archive are already closed to public inspection in line with the requirements of the DPA. However, most of the material in the archive has not been checked by an archivist for Data Protection issues. It is therefore essential that researchers contact the Library in advance with a list of the material they wish to consult; the archivist will then check the items to determine whether any further closures are necessary.

Dave Cunliffe’s Papers were acquired by The University of Manchester Library with the help of Bruce Wilkinson and Janette Martin in 2019, with the support of Doug Field and Jay Jeff Jones.

A box list has been compiled for the collection by Bruce Wilkinson.

Photocopies and photographic copies of material in the archive can be supplied for private study purposes only, depending on the condition of the documents.

A number of items within the archive remain within copyright under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988; access to some of these items is restricted, and it is the responsibility of users to obtain the copyright holder's permission for reproduction of copyright material that is available for purposes other than research or private study.

Prior written permission must be obtained from the Library for publication or reproduction of any material within the archive. Please contact the Head of Special Collections, John Rylands Library, 150 Deansgate, Manchester, M3 3EH.

The material in the archive was created or accumulated by Dave Cunliffe during the course of his life and retained by him until its transfer to the Library.

Unfortunately, earlier correspondence, pre-dating a 1969 house move (and including letters from Ginsberg, Burroughs and Trocchi), has been lost.

A box of correspondence between Dave Cunliffe and Peter Good, the editor of Anarchism Lancastrium/The Cunningham Amendment was acquired in 2020. No further accruals are expected.

Additional collections of printed and archival material at the University of Manchester Library relating to the counterculture and small magazines, include the papers and book collection of dom sylvester houédard, the papers of Jeff Nuttall, Robert Bank and the papers/publications of Jim Burns and Richard Wilcocks. There is also relevant material in the archive of Elaine Feinstein, who was an early publisher of work by American Beat, Black Mountain and New York School poets in the UK, and knew several of the key figures in the UK scene represented in our counterculture collections.

Görtschacher, Wolfgang. Little Magazine Profiles: The Little Magazines in Great Britain 1939-1993. University of Salzburg, 1993.

Green, Jonathon. Days in the Life: Voices from the English underground 1961-1971. William Heinemann Ltd., 1988.

Miller, David and Price, Richard (eds). British Poetry Magazines 1914-2000: A History and Bibliography of ‘Little Magazines’. The British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2006.

Monk, Geraldine (ed). Cusp: Recollections of Poetry in Transition. Shearsman Books, 2012.

Nuttall, Jeff. Bomb Culture. MacGibbon and Kee, 1968.

Sutherland, John. Offensive Literature: Decensorship in Britain 1960-1982. Junction Books, 1982.

Wilkinson, Bruce. Beats, Poets, Renegades: A 1960s Northern Poetry Underground and its Countercultural Impact. UCLAN thesis, 2016.

Wilkinson, Bruce. Hidden Culture, Forgotten History: A Northern Poetic Underground and its Countercultural Impact. Penniless Press, 2017.

Wilson, Andrew. ‘A Poetics of Dissent: Notes on a Developing Counterculture in London in the Early Sixties’. Chapter in Art and The 60s: This Was Tomorrow edited by Chris Stephens and Katharine Stout. Tate, 2005.