More on the British Poetry Revival, Royston Ellis, and news of a forthcoming book
In April 1961, the Café was the site of a one-off performance by the radical jazz and poetry group, Live New Departures. ‘The Hypocrite Lecterns are Taking over Everything’ featured both the poets Pete Brown and Michael Horovitz, with (Graham) Bond and (Dick) Heckstall Smith on saxophones, and a rhythm section that included Laurie Morgan on drums and double bassist Malcolm Cecil, renowned a decade later for his synthesiser work... with Stevie Wonder in New York. (JW 310: 17)
It's a pleasant snapshot of a lively venue. But Horovitz and crew weren’t alone at this time. This is where Elle, set (if it is ‘set’) in Brighton of the 1960s, fits in. In the afterward to this deliberately extreme text I note:
At some point during this slow process
[of writing Elle], I watched Daniel Farson’s ATV television programme Living
for Kicks (1960) which partly took as its focus the teenage clientele of
the Whiskey a Go-Go milk bar (such pre-Clockwork Orange innocence!) near
The Clock Tower in Brighton. I already knew that this establishment was part of
the entertainment complex run by Harvey Holford [which provided me with the
main character of my novel (if it contains characters at all)]: upstairs lay
the more exclusive Blue Gardenia and Calypso clubs (where alcohol was served).
Farson’s documentary – the old Soho soak feigns shock at teenagers snogging and
disdaining marriage – features an intelligent and knowing interview with a
proto-Beat poet called Royston Ellis, whose name was familiar to me, but not
from my knowledge of underground poetry of the 1960s, which I’d foolishly
thought comprehensive. [And that unease is what is fuelling these notes, along
with the fact I’m to speak on the topic at a conference in December.] In fact,
the name was floating before me in Ye Cracke pub where, after lockdown, I
regularly met a group of Liverpool friends (the informal [perhaps I should have
written infamous] 1955 Committee). On the mirror under which we often sat is an
engraved commemoration of a joint poetry-music gig by Royston Ellis and John
Lennon in Liverpool in 1960.
I add, parenthetically: ‘(Ellis called his performance poetry ‘rocketry’ and he had already performed with The Shadows. Ellis, who died earlier this year [2023], needs incorporating into that history of the underground.)’ I’m trying to incorporate him now! On the gigs with the Shadows:
This video claims to be ‘Man Gone Squared’ read in 1959 with The Shadows (it is clearly them) at Battersea Town Hall.
I can corroborate a later event from the pages of the second volume of John Haffenden’s monumental biography of William Empson, Against the Christians. ‘In July 1961 during a week-long poetry festival at the Mermaid Theatre in London organised by John Wain. The event included readings by everyone who was anyone from Laurie Lee to Ted Hughes and George Seferis [and Empson, of course]. Even a pop group, The Shadows, was called in to back a performance by a twenty-year-old poet named Royston Ellis.’ Haffenden sees the need to add parenthetically: ‘(The Shadows were to become even more famous when they joined up with Cliff Richard.)’ (p. 459)
Here's another video from YouTube (to which Royston Ellis commented himself four years ago) : ‘You will find that I was the link between many fascinating poets and pop stars in the early 1960s as I was (as a beat poet) a friend of Yevgeni Yevtushenko, Sir John Waller, John Gawsworth (King of Redonda), Sir Francis Rose, Christopher Logue, Bernad Kops, Billy Fury, Cliff Richard, The Shadows, Mark Winter and, of course, The Beetles (whom I persuaded to spell their name as BEATles). Royston Ellis ) October 2021, Sri Lanka. (My latest book is "Beach Shorts").’
Royston Ellis with John Betjeman, 1961 - YouTube (Fascinating discussion. And he is backed on guitar by Jimmy Page (unseen)!)
Ellis, who had already published non-fiction books on early pre-Beatles pop groups, went on to possibly name the Beatles (the Beat- part of the name must come from Beat poetry or from the curious collocation Beatnik), and he may be the ‘writer’ of the Beatles’ hit Paperback Writer. He published with Turret Books and then lived abroad until his death in 2023, writing travel guides and fantasy fiction.
There is more work to be done. The 1959 video certainly confirms that he was putting music to rock music (not the usual jazz) earlier than Horovitz was starting out (or at most simultaneously with it). Logue, whom he names, was there, too, I know. But maybe none of this is to the point.
(I believe there was a woman who pursued a kind of folk-music poetry group at this time, who later emigrated to Scandinavia. I wonder if anyone out there can help on this one. I read her obituary in the last couple of years.)
Also in the Haffenden is Empson’s unexpected enthusiasm for Sheffield student Paul Roche, who edited a sort of ‘answer’ to Children of Albion: Love Love Love. But I’ve run out of energy to write more at this stage. I think I have the anthology somewhere.
24 August 2025
Other links: Yesterday’s beginnings here: Pages: How the British Poetry Revival appears in one history
of its times: Dominic Sandbrook’s White Heat. This is also a hub post for all these 2025 posts.
More on Royston Ellis and Elle here: Pages: My Verse Novel ELLE is excerpted in Shuddhashar 37: Surrealist Poetry edition
Buy ELLE here: Robert Sheppard - Elle, a Verse Novel | Broken Sleep Books
