g.j. de rook – a & bla

G.J. de Rook (1943) was co-founder of ‘Bloknoot'(1968-1982), a magazine for concrete and visual poetry and compiled the anthologies of visual poetry ‘xprmntl ptry’ in 1971 and ‘Anthologie Visuele Poëzie’ in 1975. In the 1970s he also put together a large number of exhibitions on visual poetry, mail art and stamp art for several museums and art institutes. As a publisher he ran his own imprint ‘exp/press’ and nowadays publishes the periodical IZ.

No Basement Is Deep Enough dedicates its #38 cassette release to a number of recordings of G.J. de Rook’s live performances of sound poetry. The cassette is called ‘a & bla’ and comes aptly packaged, sandwiched as it were, between the hand-cut letters A and BLA. The tape contains recordings of an unchained G.J. de Rook who ambushes the audience with high-speed rounds of phonetic fire or takes them for a jerky ride in his consonant carriage. Existing texts are stripped to the bone and are read with their original intonations and rhythms but devoid of meaning. G.J. de Rook drives minimalism to the extreme, where it turns into a tongue twisting delirium, a madman’s raving or gossipy whispers and obscene lisps, in which a tongue flapping De Rook appears to be eating language’s pussy.