Sea Urchin Editions

04/10/2025

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

‘…I used to lie in my bedroom in New York City gazing with a kind of longing love-sickness at the tourist posters I had pinned to my walls. Amalfi was a giant conch shell sheltering in its mountainous side little white houses that clustered the cliffs to the sea. Les Hautes-Alpes was a moraine of snow, chalets and skis. Sicily was a maid of harvested fruits and musical instruments and a suggestive Corinthian column from a ruined Greek temple. How my imagination played upon those images as I heard, below my window, the Third Avenue E1 go roaring by!…’

In 1954 American poet HAROLD NORSE cycled south from Rome (where had been living since 1953) and from there hitch-hiked deeper south, along the coast of Sicily, back to the Italian mainland and up north again to Venice. Equipped with his Baedeker and no more than two dollars to spend each day of his trip, Norse’s idealised views of Italy and his knowledge of its ancient history clashed with everyday reality in the poverty-stricken regions of post-war Italy, where Americans were not greeted as liberators but as rich tourists waiting to be shaken down… Norse’s journal of his trip through Italy, remained unpublished until his friend TODD SWINDELL took it upon himself to have it published posthumously after Norse had died in 2009. Swindell not only recovered the manuscript but also edited it, cleaned it up, wrote an introduction and found a publisher in Ralf Friel’s Moloko+, who did a good job making it available to the public under the title Autostop!

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.

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...

03/10/2025

in stock:

Four KIEV STINGL editions published or distributed by MOLOKO PLUS.

Kiev Stingl was born in 1943 in Aussig a.d. Elbe in Sudetenland, from which he and his mother had to flee after the end of World War II. After having first having found refuge in Mannheim he was relocated to Hamburg in 1949, where he attended secondary school and unsuccessfully studied Politicology and Ethnology. In 1985 he moved from Hamburg to Berlin. Since 1975 he has been active as a composer, lyricist, singer, actor and performer and has authored four acclaimed LPs (‘Teuflisch’, ‘Hart wie Mozart’, ‘Ich wünsch den Deutschen alles Gute’ and ‘Grausam das Gold und jubelnd die Pest’), four books (‘Flacker in der Pfote’, ‘Die besoffene Schlägerei’, ‘Kainer Maria Cowboy’ and ‘Sink Skin’) and many other unpublished and unreleased works. His provocative behaviour and existentialist stance paired with outstanding qualities as a lyricist and author make Kiev Stingl a unique and uncompromising voice of the German post-war generation.

KIEV STINGL - DIE BESOFFENE SCHLÄGEREI
https://www.sea-urchin.net/.../kiev-jaguar-stingl-die.../
KIEV STINGL - FLACKER IN DER PFOTE
https://www.sea-urchin.net/.../kiev-stingl-flacker-in.../
KIEV STINGL - MANDALINA - DER VERDAMMTE DER INSEL
https://www.sea-urchin.net/.../kiev-stingl-mandalina-der.../
KIEV STINGL - X R I NUIT
https://www.sea-urchin.net/.../kiev-stingl-x-r-i-nuit/

29/09/2025

EDDIE WOODS books available through Sea Urchin:

SALE OR RETURN / RECHT VAN RETOUR (published by Ins & Outs Press, 1981):
https://www.sea-urchin.net/books/ins-outs-press/eddie-woods-sale-or-return-recht-van-retour/

TSUNAMI OF LOVE (published by Ins & Outs Press, 2005):
https://www.sea-urchin.net/books/ins-outs-press/eddie-woods-tsunami-of-love-a-poems-cycle/

SMUGGLERS TRAIN (published by Moloko+, 2017):
https://www.sea-urchin.net/books/moloko-books/eddie-woods-smugglers-train/

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS IN BANGKOK (published by Moloko+, 2021):
https://www.sea-urchin.net/books/moloko-books/eddie-woods-tennessee-williams-in-bangkok/

26/09/2025

in stock:

Various SLOWSCAN releases on vinyl. Slowscan is run from 's-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands by Jan van Toorn. Dissatisfied with the limited availability of good artists' recordings, Jan founded his internationally acclaimed label to release cassettes in 1983 and recordings on vinyl since 2000. Most of the record sleeves are designed by Johnny Van de Koolwijk.

25/09/2025

Back in stock:

OLIVER HARRIS / FARID GHADAMI - TWO ASSASSINS: HASSAN SABBAH / WILLIAM BURROUGHS

Published by MOLOKO PLUS. Language: English. Cover art: Elia Inderle. Design: Robert Schalinski.
€ 24,00

“Two Assassins is a unique collaborative work, part detective story, part literary scholarship, part historical research, and part personal memoir that seeks to unravel a mystery: what the 11th-century Persian master of the Assassins, Hassan Sabbah, really meant for William Burroughs. Oliver Harris sheds light on the many untold backstories and dark textual secrets behind Burroughs’ invocations of Hassan Sabbah by retracing his own path of scholarship over the past 40 years. The result is a quest to discover the emotional as well as intellectual connections between the American writer and his most dedicated scholar. Farid Ghadami, on the other hand, tells the story of the real historical figure of Hassan Sabbah and his Ismaili successors, drawing on Persian and Arab sources to uncover some of the most important facts behind the legends. But he too follows a personal journey, tracing the intersection of William Burroughs and Hassan Sabbah back to his own roots as a descendent of the peoples of Alamout, his citadel in northern Iran. Tracking back and forth between individual and cultural memory, fact and fantasy, ‘Two Assassins’ brings to life the fascinating story of an unlikely and extraordinary relationship.“
(from the blurb)

Oliver Harris’ life as a Burroughsian began in 1984 with a PhD at Oxford that nobody would supervise. He has since gone on to publish seventeen books about and by Burroughs. He is Professor of American Literature at Keele University, President of the European Beat Studies Network and the proud father of Ella, Mia, Nina and Vivi.

Farid Ghadami is an Iranian writer and literary translator, who has to date published more than fifty books in the fields of literature, art, philosophy, engineering sciences and mathematics. In 2021, after many years of teaching in Iranian engineering faculties, he came to Paris to write his doctoral thesis in American literature at Université Paris-Est Créteil.

A unique collaborative work, part detective story, part literary scholarship, part historical research, and part personal memoir that seeks to unravel a mystery: what the 11th-century Persian master of the Assassins, Hassan Sabbah, really meant for William Burroughs.

23/09/2025

in stock:

VARIOUS CASSETTES IN THE TAPETOPIA SERIES, BERLIN.

tapetopia is a series of releases based on cassettes from East Germany’s 80s underground, particularly from the East Berlin Mauerstadt music scene, featuring original layouts and track lists. For over 30 years after their initial “release” the music on these tapes was neither available on vinyl nor CD, but they were important statements in the canon of the GDR subculture. Despite the miniscule number of original cassettes in circulation at the time many of the bands were popular in countercultural circles, a factor that made them highly suspect among the government’s own inner circles. tapetopia is run by Henryk Gericke. The cassettes are released on tapetopia & aufnahme + wiedergabe, Berlin.

20/09/2025

in stock:

ALEXANDRA PHILLIPS & JAN HENDERIKSE - YOU & I

10" vinyl released by SLOWSCAN, 2018. Limited edition of 250.
€ 21,00

Jan Henderikse (1937) is one of the founders of the Nederlandse Nul-beweging, the Dutch branch of the international Zero-group, active from 1960 to 1966. Henderikse has radically banned notions of authenticity, uniqueness and personal expression from his work since. Appropriation and recontextualisation of everyday materials, such as discarded objects and found photos and film footage, are a key strategy in Henderikse’s varied body of work. His work often has a deadpan sense of humour. Henderikse is the Buster Keaton of Zero.

‘You & I’ is a collaboration of Jan Henderikse and partner-in-crime Alexandra Phillips, a young American artist who currently lives in The Netherlands. Released by Slowscan as vol. 41, one side of this 10” black vinyl edition consists of a collage of the word ‘you’ culled from all sorts of existing records, and a collage of the word ‘I’ on the flip side. ‘You & I’ is a beautiful piece of work with an iron inner logic and a warm sense of humour. The 10” comes with an insert by Pure Propaganda, a magazine run by Henderikse and Phillips. You & I. Always.

You and I. Always.

18/09/2025

in stock:

ROGER KNOEBBER - HYSTERESIS: A PROFILE OF BRION GYSIN

Published by Inkblot and Theo Green in collaboration with LargerNovae, 2024. Edition of 300 copies. Forewords: Theo Green & Roger Knoebber. Layout: Tim Furman. Cover Design: Janet Galore. Cover photograph: Udo Breger.
€ 47,50

Hysteresis (physics): The continuation of an effect after its cause has been removed.

In the late 1950s in Paris, at the famed Beat Hotel – 9 rue Gît-le-Coeur – writer Roger Knoebber was living amongst a community of creative people, including the core of what became known as the Beat Generation – Burroughs, Corso, Ginsberg, and others. In this bohemian center of exploration Roger became intimate friends with the artist, writer and mystic Brion Gysin.

From the time that Roger left the Beat Hotel in 1962, through his time raising a family in California, his return to Paris in 1984, and until Gysin’s death in 1986, Roger and Brion maintained a friendship captured in letters. in 1996, ten years after Brion’s death, Roger completed writing ‘Hysteresis: A Profile of Brion Gysin’, a painting-in-words to capture Gysin’s complex personality and history. Within this text are recollections solicited by Roger from many of Brion’s friends and associates including William S. Burroughs, Terry Wilson, Felicity Mason, Françoise Janicot, Ramuntcho Matta and others.

In 2004, Roger Knoebber also passed away, with the manuscript left unpublished. Finally, nearly thirty years after it was written, Hysteresis is here, summoning up the spirit of Brion for us.
(From the blurb of this edition)

In the late 1950s in Paris, at the famed Beat Hotel – 9 rue Gît-le-Coeur – writer Roger Knoebber was living amongst a community of creative people, including the core of what became known as the Beat Generation – Burroughs, Corso, Ginsberg, and others. In this bohemian center of exploration R...

15/09/2025

in stock from Moloko+:

GUSTAV SACK - PARALYSE

Published by Moloko Plus, 2021. Illustrated by Ben Schot. Designed by Robert Schalinski.
€ 15,00

‘Paralyse’ is the title of a novel that Gustav Sack conceived and started in 1913 but never had the chance to finish. The novel was to revolve around the delirious ideas and fantasies of a poet/philosopher who, like Sack’s inspiration Friedrich Nietzsche, suffers from dementia paralytica in the final stages of syphilis. In a letter to his fiancee Paula Harbeck Sack explains that the main character of his novel will be “physically completely miserable, incapable to recollect or think logically, while lapsing into the wildest, most fantastic yet optimistic delusions; a glowing embrace of life and at the same time helpless as a child”. Moloko+ has now published the opening chapters of Sack’s hallucinatory novel, in which the main character’s syphilitic deliria gradually manifests itself and contrasting ideas fuse in a sublime nihilistic fire. Designed by Robert Schalinski and illustrated by Ben Schot this book is another fine publication in Moloko’s expressionist series.

Gustav Sack (1885-1916) grew up in the German village of Schermbeck, close to the Dutch border and the industrial Ruhr district. He attended the grammar school of the nearby town of Wesel and did German Studies and Natural Science at the universities of Greifswald, Münster and Halle before dropping out in 1910. Sack developed an interest in literature during his grammar school days, when he discovered Shakespeare, Shelley, Byron, Schopenhauer and many others and started writing himself. His wild and intoxicated student days were reflected in his first novel Ein verbummelter Student, written in 1910 when Sack was 25 years old. Despite Sack’s high expectations the novel was rejected by a Munich publisher that same year, but determined to pursue a career as a writer, Sack moved to the Bavarian capital anyway in 1913.

In Munich – in those days a mecca of German bohemianism – Sack and his future wife Paula Harbeck got in touch with the literary avant-garde and the first generation of expressionists. But the outbreak of World War I and his inevitable mobilisation made anti-militarist and anti-nationalist Sack decide to leave the country and take refuge in Switzerland. Being treated as a deserter by both the German and Swiss authorities, finding his financial support cut completely by his family and being separated from Paula, whom he had just married, left Sack financially and emotionally bankrupt. He returned to Germany in 1914, reported to the military authorities and was sent to the trenches of the Somme front a month later. In poems and an extensive correspondence with Paula he documented the insanity of the trench war for the next year and a half. After having been arrested for misconduct and insubordination, Sack was transferred to the psychiatric ward of a military hospital, where he stayed for a while and then was reunited with his wife. In 1916 they moved back to Munich. Just as Sack had reconnected with the avant-garde circles there and Paula had managed to raise interest in his work, Sack was sent to the front again – this time to Romania – where he was killed in action a couple of weeks later. None of Sack’s major works saw publication during his lifetime, but through the efforts of Paula they were published posthumously and then were acclaimed by leading authors such as Thomas Mann, Ernst Jünger and Theodor W. Adorno.

Gustav Sack's unfinished novel, 1913-1916

09/09/2025

new arrival in the tapetopia series from Berlin:

L'AMBASSADEUR DES OMBRES - STAR OF EVIL

C50 published by tapetopia/aufnahme + wierdergabe, Berlin, 2025. Hand numbered edition of 100. Artwork: Laireen & tapetopia. Liner notes: Juliane Liebert
€ 12,00

The name ‘L’Ambassadeur des Ombres’ goes back to the French science fiction comic Valérian et Laureline. The series’ sixth episode in particular had an inspiring effect on Jörg ‘Joggy’ Müller, who founded the band together with René Glofke: L’Ambassadeur des Ombres, Ambassador of the Shadows. This title heralded darkness and morbidity and would serve as the name for a band project branching out from the East Berlin post-punk underground of the 1980s. The Ambassadors of the Shadows combined pop appeal and experimentation as the soundtrack to the zero hour of their generation in the GDR’s waning days. In the short time of their existence in 1988/89, L’Ambassadeur des Ombres did not give a single concert.

L’Ambassadeur des Ombres were less a band than an open ensemble of various East Berlin scene clusters: Joggy Müller played bass in the popular indie band Die Vision. With L’Ambassadeur des Ombres, he was the ambassador of the catchy. René Glofke, keyboardist and singer of experimental and multi-media synth-pop luminaries Neuntage, represented a more left-field approach. For the lyrics, René Glofke would draw on the works of Irish romantic William Butler Yeats, whose volumes of poetry he tended to carry around with him. This appropriation was necessary since L’Ambassadeur des Ombres’ own attempts at lyrics were in a rather creative English of East Berlin provenance.

(from earlier liner notes by Robert Mießner)

‘Star of Evil’ was recorded completely live in Joggy’s children’s room and in Taymur Streng’s studio in the Mahldorf quarter of Berlin. The text of the track ‘Star of Evil, Star of Pain’ was by James Joyce (whose poetry appeared in print in the GDR, unlike Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’). It is borrowed from the poem ‘Bahnhofstrasse’, written in 1918. Other lyrics on the A-side are also Joyce adaptations, lines from the poems ‘A memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight’ or ‘Because your Voice was at my Side’ can be found in songs on Star of Evil. The B-side of the present tapetopia compilation collates outtakes of the bands 1988 tape ‘Strike me if I shriek’.

(from the liner notes of Juliane Liebert)

Re-release on C50 of L'Ambassadeur des Ombres's 1989 cassette ‘Star of Evil’. Hand numbered edition of 100. Released by tapetopia/Aufnahme + Wiedergabe, Berlin, 2025.

02/09/2025

in stock from Slowscan:

JULIEN BLAINE - EXTRAVAGANT CIRCUS OF THE MOUTH

12" vinyl released by Slowscan, 2023. Edition of 250. Design: Johnny Van de Koolwijk.
€ 25,00

French performance artist and poet Julien Blaine was born as Christian Poitevin in Rognac in 1942. Already at the age of twenty he published his first poetry magazine ‘Les Carnets de l’Octéor’ and turned to action poetry with his piece ‘Rep éléphant 306’, in which he interviewed a circus elephant, two years earlier than Michael McClure’s famous poetry reading to lions. In 1976 Blaine launched ‘Doc(k)s’, an international magazine which brought to light and documented new directions in poetry. Apart from his pioneering magazines and performances, Blaine organised leading poetry festivals and events in Marseille and Lodève in the 1980s and 1990s. He abandoned action poetry the next decade, instead turning his creative output to confrontational “demonstr’actions” and “déclar’actions” which focus – often in collaboration with other artists – on physical and lingual poetic interventions. Throughout his work Blaine uncompromisingly explores the bare essence of poetry, its impact on the audience and its function in society. For several years now he has published his revolutionary poetic research in his magazine ‘Les Cahiers de la 5e feuille’.

Slowscan Vol. 60 brings together eleven pieces by Blaine under the title ‘Extravagant Circus of the Mouth’. Beautifully designed by Johnny Van de Koolwijk the album manages to bring across and document Blaine’s explorations of poetry as a powerful human creation. The album comes in a colourful offset printed sleeve with a double-sided insert. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the show!

Slowscan Vol. 60 brings together eleven pieces by Blaine under the title ‘Extravagant Circus of the Mouth’. Beautifully designed by Johnny Van de Koolwijk the album manages to bring across and document Blaine's explorations of poetry as a powerful human creation. The album comes in a colourful o...