Sea Urchin Editions

04/06/2026

in stock:

YANNIS LIVADAS - THREE SKETCHES OF CRITICISM + THE ROUTINES OF POETRY

Published by Moloko Plus, Schönebeck, 2021. Language: English. Design: Andrea Lühr.
€ 10,00

Yannis Livadas is a contemporary Greek poet, born in 1969. He is also an editor; essayist, translator, of more than fifty books of American poetry and prose; an independent scholar with specialization on modernism, beat literature, postmodernism and haiku. He is also a columnist and freelancer contributor to various literary magazines, both in Greece and other countries. His poems and essays have been translated in eight languages. He currently lives in Paris, France.

Livadas’s ‘Three Sketches of Criticism + The Routines of Poetry’ brings together four short essays written between 2006 and 2017: ‘The Dream Songs of John Berryman; a perilous Orientation’, ‘Postmodern Divergence, the Poetry of Gregory Corso’, ‘Poetry today, Austerity Measures and the Reign of Versimilitude’ and ‘The Routines of Poetry’. The four essays have been compiled as one of Moloko’s risographed chapbooks, which are printed by Stencilwerck, The Hague.

The four essays disclose part of Livadas’s concept of poetry. According to the author the essays are “based on the reprioritization of the absolute impossibility of poetry; of poetry as the maximal difference, in total antithesis to the contemporary epidemic of poetic psychology and ideological poetics”. Livadas’s original use of the Greek language normally makes his critical works hard to translate, but this handsome edition offers the reader four fine translations provided by the author himself.

4 essays written and translated by Yannis Livadas

02/06/2026

new arrival in the tapetopia series from Berlin:

UNITED STATES OF MELANCHOLIA, PART I

C-90 released by tapetopia/aufnahme + wiedergabe/Iron Curtain Radio, Berlin, 2026. Hand numbered edition of 100. Cover art: Igor Tatschke. Design: Maik Reichenbach, Laireen & tapetopia
Compiled by Henryk Gericke, Maik Reichenbach & Alexander Pehlemann. Liner notes: Henryk Gericke.
€15,00

‘…The political revolt of punk was succeeded by the aesthetic adventure of post-punk. During the Cold War, dark wave, gothic and industrial also had their equivalents under the unlucky star of the GDR. The title “United States Of Melancholia” refers to a shadowland behind the perpetually rising façade of construction and to a nationally ingrained melancholy that, in the GDR, seemed to well up from deeper strata beneath an officially prescribed cheerfulness. Therefore, “United States of Melancholia” shifts its focus to little-known bands and projects that preferred to stay out of the light in the socialist model state—not least because, for them, the sun set in the East.

‘“United States of Melancholia” is conceived as a triptych, bringing together different soundscapes within the same genre. Part I reflects the transition from punk to the emancipation from punk rock. Part II compiles songs rooted in a classic understanding of new wave. Finally, part III offers darkly tinged electronic and semi-acoustic tracks. The hand numbered C-90 “United States of Melancholia, Part I” contains tracks by Rosa Extra, Kein Plan, Kein Mitleid, Death Joy, Volkr Zimmermann and others.

“United States Of Melancholia” is a joint release by Iron Curtain Radio and the tapetopia series. The ICR and the tapetopia series release Eastern Bloc sounds from the 1980s. tapetopia focuses on cassette editions from the GDR, using original layouts and track lists that were never released on vinyl or CD, but were often regarded as cult classics within subcultural circles and viewed with suspicion by official circles. ICR also turns its attention to the so-called “actually existing socialist” brother countries…’

(Henryk Gericke)

C-90 released by tapetopia/aufnahme + wiedergabe/Iron Curtain Radio, Berlin, 2026. Hand numbered edition of 100. ‘United States of Melancholia‘ is conceived as a triptych, bringing together different soundscapes within the same genre. Part I reflects the transition from punk to the emancipation ...

02/06/2026

in stock:

WILLEM DE RIDDER - ALL CHEMIX RADIO

Double-LP released by Slowscan, 2020. Edition of 300. Design: Johnny Van de Koolwijk.
€ 29,00

Willem de Ridder (1939) is a prolific storyteller, cassette freak and Fluxus artist. George Maciunas made him chairman of Fluxus for Northern Europe and in this role he organised several concerts and Fluxfestivals. He cooperated with Nam June Paik and presented his Piano for all Senses in Amsterdam in his gallery Amstel 47. De Ridder was a co-founder of the Mood Engineering Society (MES) with Dick Raaijmakers, Louis Andriessen, Peter Schat, Ton Bruynèl, Rob Dubois, Jaap Spek and Misja Mengelberg. He also founded the European Mail Order House and Fluxshop and started the Society for Party Organizing (SPO) to introduce audience-generated theatre. Together with Wim T. Schippers he founded the Association for Scientific Research in New Methods of Recreation (Afsrinmor International) and they organised and participated in Fluxus events in different European countries.

Together with William Levy, Jim Haynes, Germain Greer & Heathcote Williams he started working on SUCK (The First European S*x Paper) in the early 1970s. The paper became a cult item from New York to Tokyo, which led to the very first Erotic Film Festival in the world: The Wet Dream Film Festival. After having concluded that the era of the printing press was over, he moved to Hollywood where he started Radio Cadillac and studied Chinese Medicine, Shiatsu, Zen Macrobiotics and Taoism. He introduced the Cassette Safari in which listeners in their car followed instructions and stories from a cassette transforming the surrounding landscapes.

De Ridder also produced the All Chemix Radio series transmitted by various radio stations in America, Canada and Australia. These narrative pieces were produced on the spot and include spoken word, field recordings and electronic sounds. Previously released on cassette in very limited editions, these pieces have now been released on vinyl by Slowscan for the first time. Eight radio plays have been mixed into four long pieces including collaborators such as Cora Emens, Stefan Weisser, Andrew McKenzie, Nick Nicole, Annie Sprinkle, Alvin Curran, Julia Romanov, William Levy & Hessel Veldman.
The double LP was edited at Radio Art Studios, Amsterdam, Willem de Ridder & EXART studios, IJmuiden by Hessel Veldman and designed by Johnny Van de Koolwijk.
https://www.sea-urchin.net/audio-video/slowscan/willem-de-ridder-all-chemix-radio-2lp/

in stock:

WILLEM DE RIDDER - ALL CHEMIX RADIO

Double-LP released by Slowscan, 2020. Edition of 300. Design: Johnny Van de Koolwijk.
€ 29,00

Willem de Ridder (1939) is a prolific storyteller, cassette freak and Fluxus artist. George Maciunas made him chairman of Fluxus for Northern Europe and in this role he organised several concerts and Fluxfestivals. He cooperated with Nam June Paik and presented his Piano for all Senses in Amsterdam in his gallery Amstel 47. De Ridder was a co-founder of the Mood Engineering Society (MES) with Dick Raaijmakers, Louis Andriessen, Peter Schat, Ton Bruynèl, Rob Dubois, Jaap Spek and Misja Mengelberg. He also founded the European Mail Order House and Fluxshop and started the Society for Party Organizing (SPO) to introduce audience-generated theatre. Together with Wim T. Schippers he founded the Association for Scientific Research in New Methods of Recreation (Afsrinmor International) and they organised and participated in Fluxus events in different European countries.

Together with William Levy, Jim Haynes, Germain Greer & Heathcote Williams he started working on SUCK (The First European S*x Paper) in the early 1970s. The paper became a cult item from New York to Tokyo, which led to the very first Erotic Film Festival in the world: The Wet Dream Film Festival. After having concluded that the era of the printing press was over, he moved to Hollywood where he started Radio Cadillac and studied Chinese Medicine, Shiatsu, Zen Macrobiotics and Taoism. He introduced the Cassette Safari in which listeners in their car followed instructions and stories from a cassette transforming the surrounding landscapes.

De Ridder also produced the All Chemix Radio series transmitted by various radio stations in America, Canada and Australia. These narrative pieces were produced on the spot and include spoken word, field recordings and electronic sounds. Previously released on cassette in very limited editions, these pieces have now been released on vinyl by Slowscan for the first time. Eight radio plays have been mixed into four long pieces including collaborators such as Cora Emens, Stefan Weisser, Andrew McKenzie, Nick Nicole, Annie Sprinkle, Alvin Curran, Julia Romanov, William Levy & Hessel Veldman.
The double LP was edited at Radio Art Studios, Amsterdam, Willem de Ridder & EXART studios, IJmuiden by Hessel Veldman and designed by Johnny Van de Koolwijk.

https://www.sea-urchin.net/audio-video/slowscan/willem-de-ridder-all-chemix-radio-2lp/

31/05/2026

in stock:

WILLIAM LEVY - JEREMIAD CHANTS (An Absolute Polemic)

Published independently, 1979. Illustrations: Peter Pontiac. Design: Willem de Ridder. Paper selected by Anthon Beeke.
€ 40,00

‘For behold, I send among thee serpents, adders which cannot be charmed, And they shall bite you … ‘ Jeremiah, VIII, 17.

JEREMIAD CHANTS, subtitled ‘An Absolute Polemic’, was published independently by William Levy and illustrator Peter Pontiac in 1979. With a print run of only 500 copies and Fluxus artist Willem de Ridder for a designer, this little book is a Rosetta stone of the European counterculture. Levy’s seductively packaged but caustic chapters, often previously published in underground magazines, would form the core of his larger ‘Natural Jewboy’, which was to be published by Ins & Outs Press two years later and would also have Peter Pontiac and Willem de Ridder as partners in crime. ‘From Slavery to Boredom’, one of those chapters, is a recurrent chant of disillusionment, ‘A Call for Chaos’ a subversive invocation, ‘Nihilism in The Netherlands’ a scathing analysis of Dutch progressive and literary circles, and both ‘God Help the Rich, the Poor Can Shift’ and ‘Crystal Night’ penetrating investigations into the power of the written word. All available copies of ‘Jeremiad Chants’ are in fine condition and were supplied directly by the late William Levy.

A Rosetta stone of the European counterculture

26/05/2026

25/05/2026

in stock:

ANNA NIARAKIS - SUNRISE OVER NOTHING

Jointly published by Moloko Plus & Sea Urchin, 2021. Poems: Anna Niarakis. Drawings: Ben Schot. Design: Anneke Auer.
€ 15,00

Twenty poems and eight drawings interact in this slim poetry compilation that was jointly published by Moloko Plus and Sea Urchin in December 2021. Anna Niarakis’s concise and intelligent poems capture universal themes such as death, love, loss and the passing of time in a clear and original language, while the images they evoke flare passionately against a backdrop of existential absurdity. Schot’s ‘hard black’ drawings reject all shades of grey and bring together deliberate and accidental lines in images that appear to be on the verge of obliteration. ‘Sunrise over nothing’ is then a fitting title for this powerful combination of poems and drawings, which was even further invigorated by Anneke Auer’s refreshing design.

Anna Niarakis was born in Athens, Greece on 10 May 1979. She lives in France, where she works as a Professor of Computational Systems Biology and Bioinformatics at the University of Toulouse III-Paul Sabatier. Among her earlier poetry compilations are ‘Lab Notebook’ (Charamanda Publications, 2010), ‘The Fishphone’ (Gavriilides Publishing, 2015) and ‘The Angel’s Share’ (Bibliothèque Publications, 2019).
Ben Schot (1953) is a Dutch artist and publisher from Rotterdam. He has illustrated works by Georg Trakl, Gustav Sack and Georg Heym for Moloko Plus and has run his own publishing house Sea Urchin Editions since 2000.

Jointly published by Moloko Plus & Sea Urchin. Poems: Anna Niarakis. Drawings: Ben Schot. Design: Anneke Auer.

23/05/2026

in stock:

HAROLD NORSE - AUTOSTOP! (Hitching through Italy on $2 a Day)

Published by MOLOKO PLUS, 2024. Introduced by TODD SWINDELL. Language: English. Design: Michael Bulgrin.
€ 20,00

Harold Norse was born Harold Rosen to a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant in 1916. After having graduated from Brooklyn College he became close friends with W.H. Auden (after the latter’s move to the USA in 1939) and William Carlos Williams, who helped publish Norse’s experimental and groundbreaking poems. In the early 1950s Norse got his master’s degree in literature from New York University and saw his first poetry compilation published. Norse lived in Italy in the second half of the 1950s and was a resident of the Beat Hotel in Paris with William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso from 1959 to 1963. After having moved to the Greek island of Hydra and Tangier, Norse returned to the US in 1968. The last 35 years of his life were spent in the Mission District of San Francisco. With his ‘Carnivorous Saint: Gay Poems 1941-1976’ and publications in magazines such as Gay Sunshine, Norse established himself as one of the leading gay liberation poets of his era.

From the blurb of this edition:

‘On 6th July 1954, on the day of his 38th birthday, the American poet Harold Norse set off on an adventure across Italy. Best known for his contributions as a Beat poet, and later as a Gay Liberation poet, Norse travelled around Europe between 1953 and 1968, where he honed his craft as a poet and picaro. Published for the first time, ‘Autostop! Hitching Through Italy on $2 a Day’ is a reminder of Norse’s skill as prose writer and raconteur, here weaving in Italian history and culture – “sketching it,” he tells us “not snapping it in black and white and Kodachrome.”
In ‘Autostop!’, the sounds, smells and eroticism of the country come alive, especially in the accounts of the people he meets in Naples, Capri, Calabria, and Sicily. “I would look at no book, consult no encyclopedia,” Norse explains, “without first consulting the peasant, the laborer, the tradesman, the professional, the aristocrat.” This is the guidebook of a poet; a “love affair,” as Norse puts it in which the country comes alive.‘

On 6th July 1954, on the day of his 38th birthday, the American poet Harold Norse set off on an adventure across Italy. Best known for his contributions as a Beat poet, and later as a Gay Liberation poet, Norse travelled around Europe between 1953 and 1968, where he honed his craft as a poet and pic...

16/05/2026

Last copy, made available from the Sea Urchin archives:

JOHANNES BAADER - FIFI

Hand made pamphlet published by Sea Urchin, 2020. Edition of 15. English Originally published c. 1923. Translation : Ben Schot. Artwork: Puck Schot.
€25,00

Johannes Baader (1875-1955) grew up in Stuttgart and studied architecture in that town from 1898 to 1899. After having met Raoul Hausmann, Baader moved to Berlin in 1905, where Hausmann introduced him to a circle of artists that would germinate into Berlin Dada some ten years later. Johannes Baader was a Dadaist by nature. Idealist, messianic, and mad as a hatter, Baader claimed to be to Christ resurrected and acted accordingly. In 1914 this led to his treatise ‘Vierzehn Briefe Christi’, while three years later he presided Christus GmbH (Christ Ltd), a society all members of which, Baader explained, automatically became Christ too and as such unfit for military service. Once diagnosed with manic depression, Baader used his official insanity as a license for even more outrageous behaviour and provocative performances. A scandal ensued in 1918 when Baader disrupted a sermon at Berlin Cathedral and insulted the believers and clergymen. Reborn as the Oberdada, president of the universe, Baader took part in the first International Dada Fair of 1920, then worked as a journalist for a while to return to architecture in the early 1940s. The Oberdada died in 1955 at the age of 79 in a home for the elderly in Bavaria.

Johannes Baader’s absurd text ‘Fifi’ was written about 1923 and has now been published in the series of hand made Sea Urchin pamphlets. The original German text was translated into English by Ben Schot and the accompanying drawing was done by Puck Schot. Edition of 15 copies. Soft eggs for all.
https://www.sea-urchin.net/books/sea-urchin-books/johannes-baader-fifi/

15/05/2026

Reduced in price:

GARY SNYDER - A RANGE OF POEMS

Hardcover published by Fulcrum Press, London, 1967. Second edition. Artwork: Gary Snyder & Will Petersen. Photography: Ken Walden. Design: Stuart Montgomery. Condition: Very good, slight discolouration of the page edges. Minor damage to the dust jacket.
€ 25,00

American poet, translator and environmentalist GARY SNYDER was born in San Francisco in 1930. After his parents had moved to Washington State and later to Oregon, Snyder discovered reading, poetry and the folklore of the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest. He published his first poems during his time at Reed College, Portland and graduated with a dual degree in anthropology and literature in 1951. His experiences working summers as a hand in the timber industry were expressed in his poetry of the early 1950s. Having returned to his native San Francisco in 1952, Snyder studied Asian cultures and languages and began practising Zen. He read one of his poems at the famous 1955 poetry readings at the Six Gallery in San Francisco, which heralded the birth of the Beat Generation. But although there are all sorts of connections with the Beats, Snyder was never really part of that circle and rather thought of himself as belonging to the San Francisco Renaissance, which was spearheaded by Kenneth Rexroth. Snyder started studying Zen Buddhism in Kyoto, Japan in 1955, returned to California in 1958 and divided the next decade between Japan and California, writing poetry, translating and furthering his Zen studies. In 1970 he settled in Kitkitdizze, his property in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California. In the 1980s Snyder was appointed a professor at the University of California and became deeper involved in environmental issues. He has been awarded several prizes for his poetry and is held in high esteem as an environmental activist.

‘A Range of Poems’ compiles several of Snyder’s earlier works from ‘Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems’, ‘Myths & Texts’, translations of poems by Kenji Miyazawa and ‘The Back Country’. It was published in 1966 by Fulcrum Press, London, followed by a second edition one year later. This particular copy of the second edition from 1967 is in very good condition with only slight discolouration of the edges of the pages and minor damage to the dust jacket, which has a 42/- price sticker on its front flap.

Hardcover compilation published by Fulcrum Press, London. Second edition, 1967. Condition: very good with only slight discolouration of the edges of the pages and slight damage to the dust jacket.

14/05/2026

in stock:

JEAN-JACQUES LEBEL - KOZMIK ZIGZAG

12" vinyl released by Slowscan in 2023. Edition of 250. Artwork: Jean-Jacques Lebel. Design: Johnny Van de Koolwijk.
€ 25,00

Artist, writer, curator, theorist, and activist Jean-Jacques Lebel (Paris, 1936) has been a spearhead of the avant-garde since the 1950s. Lebel formed an early link between the European avant-garde and the American Beat Generation, introduced Happenings to Europe, was one of the creative minds behind the May 68 revolt, organised the Festival de la libre Expression (which evolved into the Polyphonix festivals), provided first French translations of works by Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and William Burroughs and has curated large exhibitions on Francis Picabia, Antonin Artaud, Henri Michaux, Pablo Picasso a.o. La Maison rouge in 2009 and Centre Pompidou in 2018 dedicated comprehensive shows to Lebel’s works, views and international connections.

The 12″ vinyl ‘Kozmik Zigzag’ that Jan van Toorn’s Slowscan has now released, contains pieces that were recorded at Lebel’s home in Paris in 2021, a performance together with jazz improvisations by Joëlle Léandre in 1993 and a talk (in English) between Lebel and Andres Pardey of the Tinguely Museum, Basel, in 2022. The artwork of this beautiful release is by Jean-Jacques Lebel himself, the design of the sleeve by Johnny Van de Koolwijk.

Pieces that were recorded at Lebel's home in Paris in 2021, a performance together with jazz improvisations by Joëlle Léandre in 1993 and a talk (in English) between Lebel and Andres Pardey of the Tinguely Museum, Basel, in 2022.