Lay Of The Land Zine

26/03/2024

GB News gives platform to disgraced academic Neema Parvini who has said black people are “low-IQ” and a “different species […] closer to Homo Erectus”...

24/03/2024

On this day, 24 March 1834, designer, artist and libertarian socialist William Morris was born. In Britain his iconic prints are well-known, although his lifetime of revolutionary activism is almost completely unknown.
In an article explaining how he came become a socialist, he wrote: "the consciousness of revolution stirring amidst our hateful modern society prevented me, luckier than many others of artistic perceptions, from crystallising into a mere railer against 'progress' on the one hand, and on the other from wasting time and energy in any of the numerous schemes by which the quasi-artistic of the middle classes hope to make art grow when it has no longer any root, and thus I became a practical Socialist."
Morris also took a view on the role of art in the movement: "civilisation has reduced the workman (sic) to such a skinny and pitiful existence, that he scarcely knows how to frame a desire for any life much better than that which he now endures perforce. It is the province of art to set the true ideal of a full and reasonable life before him, a life to which the perception and creation of beauty, the enjoyment of real pleasure that is, shall be felt to be as necessary to man as his daily bread, and that no man, and no set of men, can be deprived of this except by mere opposition, which should be resisted to the utmost."
Learn more about his life and ideas in this great biography by EP Thompson, and check out some of his prints here in our online store: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/all/william-morris

24/03/2024

William Morris is most famous for his iconic patterns, but a new collection of his writings shows the other passion of his life: a conviction that only the overthrow of capitalism could liberate humanity.

24/03/2024

★The hope of the past times was gone, the struggles of mankind for many ages had produced nothing but this sordid, aimless ugly confusion; the immediate future seemed to me likely to intensify all the present evils, by sweeping away the last survivals of the days before the dull squalor of civilisation had settled down on the world...Think of it! Was it all to end in a counting-house on top of a cinder heap...

William Morris. Born: 24 March 1834, Walthamstow, London. Extract from 'The Slow Burning Fuse: the Lost History of the British Anarchists' by John Quail.

i-D and LOEWE present Love Is Enough, a poem by William Morris: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6ZCJHMamhY

William Morris – Beauty and Anarchy in the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/03/how-william-morris-beauty-and-anarchy-uk?fbclid=IwAR0PtCJxC8H0bZzfO3DC0y5qkGK55ROtP5fmw-Ol3M8KUDipcnuqTNAtHVk

'The Slow Burning Fuse: the Lost History of the British Anarchists' by John Quail: https://libcom.org/article/slow-burning-fuse-lost-history-british-anarchists-john-quail?fbclid=IwAR1PrVnLdKMk3ko5lykQOO6OMR0b2fdiZl0IvsyQSiTybMh72Tjz-2HHYzo

22/03/2024

Excellent Plymouth Language Club event at Rockets & Rascals this evening. Brilliant to see Mark Leahy, Sarah Cave, Matt Carbery, Steve Spence and Sam Machell reading. We need more experimental writing events here. Some photos attached.

20/03/2024

As an accompaniment to his excellent article in Issue One of the zine, Jake Sonny Rowlinson here sings and explains Rigs of the Time.

Rigs of the Time(Roud 876)Notes by Jake Rowlinson, taken from his article in the 'Lay of the Land' zine: https://layofthelandzine.link/The first song in this...

20/03/2024

Issue One of LOTL zine is available here: https://layofthelandzine.link/issues/

Featuring: Chris McCabe, Dylan Williams, Erkembode, Steve Spence, Spencer Shute, Jake Rowlinson, Daniel Leahy, Poppy Jones, Sonny Walker, Matt Carbery, Pascal O’Loughlin, Melisande Fitzsimons, Brian Herdman, ‘In Confidence’, Ben Marsh-Allen, David Greenslade & David Rees Davies, Matt Thomas, Kenny Knight, Miranda Hallett-Pullen, Belinda S, Ed Tapper, Patrick Holden, Norman Jope, Simon Collings, Paul Cooke, Jazz Watts, Sophia Djili, William Telford and Phil Smith.

19/03/2024

A reminder of our submission guidelines.
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18/03/2024

(An Evening of Experimental Poetry).
Plymouth Language Club, Friday 22nd March, 2022, Rockets & Rascals, The Barbican Plymouth. 7pm.

16/03/2024

The LAY OF THE LAND blog, Sluice, is now live. The first post is an article called Tory Extremism about the latest disgraces in UK politics.

https://layofthelandzine.link/deadlines-lotl-blog/

08/03/2024

Experimental Poetry Night.
Plymouth Language Club,
Friday 22nd March, 2022,
Rockets & Rascals. 7pm.

29/02/2024

Issue One is now LIVE! Thank you to all of our many contributors for their work. The next issue submission window will open in the near future.

Issue One