Eddie Woods

Eddie Woods (born May 8, 1940 in New York) is a poet/prose writer, editor and publisher who lived and traveled in various parts of the world, both East and West, before eventually settling in Amsterdam, Holland, where in 1978 he started "Ins & Outs" magazine and two years later founded Ins & Outs Press.

According to [http://www-sul.stanford.edu/ Stanford University Libraries] , which house Woods’ extensive [http://library.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/EddieWoods.htm archive] : “In his role as a cultural impresario and artistic entrepreneur, Eddie Woods... is an important presence, both in American expatriate circles and among European avant-gardists, especially Dutch and Italian. Woods’ promotional activities made him, in short, a crucial center to the movement, and his archive documents his close connections with its leading figures...”

Early to middle years

After not quite finishing high school (he later took a number of university credit courses, but is essentially an autodidact), Woods worked for two years in Manhattan as a first-generation computer programmer, until in 1960 (“didn’t want to get my fingernails dirty as an Army draftee” but also to finally see Europe) he joined the Air Force for a four-year stint, three years of which were spent in Germany. Honorably discharged following a tour in Wyoming (“it was four years of guerrilla warfare, me against them, ending in a draw”), he returned to Germany, where he married twice, fathered two daughters, and successfully sold encyclopedias to US military personnel for five years, the entire time continuing to write poems, essays and short stories (a calling he first discovered at age 15).

In late 1968, Woods made his first journey to the East, remaining there until early 1973. During that time he was variously a restaurant manager in Hong Kong, a ‘kept man’ in Singapore (by a Chinese drag-queen prostitute), a features writer for the [http://www.bangkokpost.net "Bangkok Post"] (Tennessee Williams, with whom Woods hung out and traveled, through Malaysia to Singapore and back, was but one of many celebrated personalities he encountered at that time), a stringer for both "The New York Times" and "ABC Radio News", a disc jockey (Radio Thailand English-language service), owner of a gay bar (in Pattaya, Thailand) and the managing director of "Dateline Asia" (a Bangkok-based features service he launched with three other journalists). In Bali, where he stayed for six months, he was known as ‘ [http://www.corpse.org/issue_8/foreign_desk/woods2.htm Durian] Ed’ and ‘Mushroom Ed’ (having developed a unique method of liquefying psilocybin mushrooms and rendering them toxin-free). He was additionally in Laos, Okinawa, the Philippines, Macao, Java and Japan. Before returning to Europe, he explored much of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and spent several months as a lay devotee at the Theravada Buddhist [http://www.mettanet.org/temples/ih/Encycl1.htm Island Hermitage] .

In June 1973, in London, he met Jane Harvey, with whom he would years later start Ins & Outs magazine. Shortly thereafter, in the midst of doing a variety of odd jobs for Gentle Ghost, an alternative work agency, Woods authored nearly 30 articles for Edward de Bono’s "Eureka! An Illustrated History of Inventions from the Wheel to the Computer". He and Harvey then traveled overland to Asia, cycled across large stretches of India, were journalists for the Tehran Journal (Woods as sports and night editor, Harvey as business and local news editor), and crisscrossed much of the sub-continent and beyond. 1976 saw Woods visit the USA for the first time in 12 years, where he wrote articles for the Berkeley Barb, published stories and poems in "The Bystander", "Odalisque", etc., and then hitchhiked across the South and up to New York. A two-year stretch back in London was exceptionally prolific: numerous poems and short stories, publication in "Libertine", "Iron" magazine and other literary periodicals, as well as a series of personality profiles and features pieces for International Times (IT), the underground newspaper whose Amsterdam editor he would become during the early 1980s.

Ins & Outs years

After editing three issues of "Ins & Outs" magazine in 1978 (contributors included Allen Ginsberg, with the first-ever publication of his "Plutonian Ode", William Levy, Ira Cohen, Rachel Pollack, Simon Vinkenoog, Hans Plomp, Mel Clay, Heathcote Williams, Marc Morrel, and Woods himself; while among the magazine’s international readership, beginning with issue #1, was Henry Miller), Woods and Harvey left Holland, passed through [http://www.parisiana.com/spip.php?article313 Paris] and ended up in Barcelona. Ties to the Dutch capital were already too strong, however. In 1979 the couple (who by then were married, but separated in late 1981, while remaining the closest of friends and professional colleagues) rented an attic flat in the heart of Amsterdam’s red-light district and immediately got involved in publishing projects. "Other World Poetry Newsletter", at once an historical evaluation of P78, the first One World Poetry festival (at which Woods performed, along with William Burroughs, Patti Smith, et al) and a scathing critique of organized literary events, penned by Woods under the pseudonym Woodstock Jones and published/internationally distributed by Ins & Outs Press, caused a minor storm not only in Amsterdam but all the way to San Francisco. (The Newsletter and its years-long aftermath are covered in Woods’ "Soyo Benn: A Profile" and [http://www.corpse.org/issue_8/foreign_desk/woods.htm "A Brief History of Ins & Outs Press"] .)

Early in 1980, Woods, Harvey and the Dutch bookseller Henk van der Does formed the Ins & Outs Press Foundation (known as a stichting in the Netherlands) and also opened the Ins & Outs Bookstore (with the latter continuing for two years; after which Van der Does started his own bookshop and Woods turned the ground floor of the six-story Ins & Outs building into a gallery-cum-performance space).

"Ins & Outs" magazine #4/5 was published in the summer of that year. Within its pages were Paul Bowles, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, [http://www.greeninteger.com/pipbios_detail.cfm?PIPAuthorID=1605 Bert Schierbeek] , Gerard Malanga, Bob Kaufman, Charles Henri Ford, Gregory Corso, [http://www.bigbridge.org/issue6/robertov.htm Roberto Valenza] , John Wilcock, Steve Abbott, the photographers Diana Blok and Marlo Broekmans, Neeli Cherkovski and many others. Further publications followed throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s: ("Natural Jewboy" by William Levy; Eddie Woods’ "Sale or Return"; an ambitious postcard series that included Ira Cohen’s famous "Bandaged Poets"; audio cassettes of live readings at Ins & Outs Press by Jack Micheline and Harold Norse; limited-edition silkscreen prints by [http://blogger.xs4all.nl/kirke1/ Kirke Wilson] of Burroughs, Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, Snuffie the Gangster Woof of Amsterdam, Xaviera Hollander and the ‘night mayor of Rotterdam’ Jules Deelder. After that the Press went into ‘suspended animation’ for more than a decade. Woods, who had secluded himself from 1987, reemerged in 1992 with a string of startling performances as ‘The Gangster Poet’ (North Sea Jazz Festival, Zuiderstrand Festival, Crossing Border Festival, appearances with the Kali Quartet, etc.).

From 1995 through most of 1998, Woods organized monthly poetry-reading evenings at a small, working-class Amsterdam café that quickly became the literary talk of the town, written up in national newspapers and even featured on Dutch television. In the autumn of 1998, Woods relocated to Devonshire, England to live with Jenny Brookes, whom he had first met in India in 1975 but had not seen (prior to visiting her in May 1998) for 18 years. The relationship lasted for six years. Upon its collapse, Woods returned to Amsterdam and Ins & Outs Press resumed its publishing activities. Woods’ spoken-word CD " [http://schmoontherun.blogspot.com/2006/05/great-poets-now-eddie-woods.html Dangerous Precipice] " was released in 2004 and his book " [http://schmoontherun.blogspot.com/2006/05/great-poets-now-eddie-woods.html Tsunami of Love: A Poems Cycle] " (two long narrative poems and four shorter ones, chronicling ‘the rise and fall of an incredible love affair’) in 2005. The CD "Tsunami of Love" (Woods reciting the entire collection, with a special introduction added) appeared in August 2007.

The Eddie Woods Archive was acquired by Stanford University in 2003, after he and the writer/radio disc jockey [http://www.bartplantenga.com Bart Plantenga] had worked for five years assembling it (with Woods regularly shuttling back and forth from England specifically for that purpose).

Quotes on Woods

“Ed Woods? / I call him the Gingko / slender and strange...” Ira Cohen. From his poem "Honorable Discharge".

“Slim behind the desk, only a rush of hair / eddie woods, he’s got the goods...” Mel Clay, Ira Cohen, Ronald Sauer. From their "Eddie Woods Memorial Poem".

“It would have been a much colder world without your poetry.” Plamen Arnaudov, poet, former New Delta Review poetry editor and [http://www.corpse.org "Exquisite Corpse"] editorial assistant.

“Because it will not be content with a conventional language of expression, a profound love will produce a profound poetry, and it is precisely such poetry which Eddie Woods has achieved.” Richard Livermore, editor of "Chanticleer Magazine" (Edinburgh, Scotland), in his review of "Tsunami of Love: A Poems Cycle".

References

* Norse, Harold. "Memoirs of a Bastard Angel: A Fifty-Year Literary and Erotic Odyssey." New York. 2002. ISBN 1560253851
* Codrescu, Andrei. "Raised by Puppets, Only to Be Killed by Research". Addison-Wesley. 1989. ISBN 0-201-12183-2
* [http://malcolmhartfilms.com Hart, Malcolm.] William Levy: "Beyond Criticism." Biopic film (2006).
* The New Millennium. "A Good Friend." Vol. 2, No. 2, Spring 2003. Kerala, India.
* The New Millennium. "Buddhist Intimations." Vol. 1, No. 3, Summer 2002. Kerala, India.
* Norse, Harold. "Memoirs of a Bastard Angel". William Morrow. 1989. ISBN 0688067042
* P78 Anthology. "Poetry & The Punks: An Apocalyptic Confrontation." Mandala 1112. Uitgeverij In de Knipscher. Haarlem, Netherlands. 1979. ISBN 906265 037 6. ISSN 0165-1234.
* Harvey, Jane. "Pedalling to Puri." The New Millennium. Vol. 1, No.2., Spring 2002. Kerala, India.
* Exquisite Corpse. "So-So." Issue no. 51. 1995. Baton Rouge, LA.
* Exquisite Corpse. "Poems for Corry." Issue no. 36. 1987. Baton Rouge, LA.
* Chanticleer Magazine. Issues 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19 (2006-2008). Edinburgh, Scotland. ISSN 1478 0704.

External links

* [http://net.info.nl/arte/kunstedw/fairiep.html The Faerie Princess] Erotic fairy tale in verse.
* [http://www.corpse.org/archives/issue_12/hedonism/woods.html A Gift from the Goddess] Kali-inspired novella.
* [http://www.corpse.org/archives/issue_10/critiques/woods.html Do You Mind If It’s Menthol?] A memoir of tobacco smoking.
* [http://www.corpse.org/archives/issue_11/critiques/woods.html Either Poetry or a Machine Gun: An Interview with Jack Micheline]
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVHUbBCnSSU Dangerous Precipice] Video clip.
* [http://www.corpse.org/archives/issue_11/critiques/woods2.html Beuy’s Own, or Another Kind of Wound] Review of William Levy's "Impossible: The Otto Muehl Story."
* [http://www.corpse.org/archives/issue_8/foreign_desk/woods2.htm Confessions of a Lascivious Durian-Eater] Erotic short story.
* [http://www.corpse.org/archives/issue_8/foreign_desk/woods.htm A Brief History of Ins & Outs Press]
* [http://www.parisiana.com/spip.php?article313 A Place to Change Trains] Paris' Shakespeare & Co. bookshop revisited.
* [http://www.corpse.org/archives/issue_7/burning_bush/woods.htm Two Poems] "Metaphor for America" and "Execution Poem" (both on capital punishment).
* [http://www.parisiana.com/spip.php?article336 The Ladybug Man] Everything you wanted to know about ladybirds but were afraid to ask.
* [http://schmoontherun.blogspot.com/2006/06/charles-de-menezes-shoot-to-kill.html Shoot to Kill] Poem in memory of Jean Charles de Menezes (killed in London on July 22, 2005 by Metropolitan police officers).
* [http://www.home.zonnet.nl/joke.kaviaar/eddiewoods.html Someone Else for President] Political essay on the 2004 US presidential race.
* [http://www.parisiana.com/spip.php?article40 The Wages of Innocence] Political essay on the Iraq War.
* [http://library.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/EddieWoods.htm The Eddie Woods Archive]