Beatscene magazine[s]

Beatscene press is run from Coventry by the Ring's. They publish not one, not two but three long running series of beat generation publications. There is the pocket book series, limited edition booklets with unique material (interviews, memoires) relating to the more recognizable Beat names, for instance Iain Sinclair's reminiscences on his encounters with William Burroughs with a so-far unpublished cut-up by WSB. There is Transit, a little magazine that mainly brings original poetry but my issue is devoted to a long essay on Gary Snyder. But their flagship publication is the Beatscene magzine, a quarterly down to it's 70th issue within a few months. It brings reviews, essays, interviews, scholarly articles, fan writing and original material. In the US especially there is still tons of books being published about anything related to the beats. There is previously unpublishable material like letters and notebooks but there is also a steady stream of biographies, academic works and memories. Some of the original beats are still alive and publishing and Beatscene goes out of their way to speak to them, others are dead and lionized and incorporated into Hollywood and Beatscene will keep up for you. Which is to say that there is still enough happening to keep a magazine filled. The definition for being called a beat is pretty democratic so Beatscene will write with as much zeal for Jack Kerouac as it will for some guy who used to work at City Lights bookstore and published limited edition chapbooks al his life and is probably a complete unknown. The sheer volume of stuff covered is fantastic and, if nothing else, it shows how collectable beat generation material is.