Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Little magazines are expressions of and monuments to a thriving creative community. Looking through the pages of My Own Mag brings this fact home. The magazine expanded in size and scope from its first four-page issue into a newsletter for an international avant-garde. Within the mimeo’d pages, the contributors commented on and communicated with each other. Of course, the magazine also disseminated this information to interested readers on both sides of the Atlantic.

While Burroughs is one of the most well known, Jeff Nuttall touched many people throughout his life with his talent, his humor and his lust for life. He was a major source of inspiration and a sounding board for William Burroughs in the 1960s.

In an effort to capture the vortex that swirled around Burroughs, Nuttall, and the magazine and scene that brought them together, the Bibliographic Bunker will be posting interviews, recollections, and comments by contributors to My Own Mag, participants in the British Poetry Revival and Swinging London, friends and collaborators of Jeff Nuttall, readers who came in contact with the mimeo in the 1960s, and anything else that fleshes out this fascinating and important story of the international avant garde community.

• Eric Mottram and the Algebra of Need by Jed Birmingham
• “Live All You Can”: A Memoir of Eric Mottram collated by Robert Bank
• Islwyn Watkins Interviewed by David Moore
• Recollections Of Jeff Nuttall by Michael Bartholomew