Happy New Year

I’d like to wish a Happy New Year to all the readers of Beatdom magazine. 2009 was a kind year to us. We have successfully built upon our fanbase, passed the two year milestone since our founding in 2007, and we have continued to grow and change.

As we move into 2010 and towards our third anniversary, Beatdom is still changing. We are developing and finding new writers; attempting to make literature as significant and inventive today as it was when the Beats were in their heyday.

January will see the release of the fifth issue of Beatdom magazine, which will be followed closely by number six, a travel issue. If we continue to receive excellent submissions, we will probably release a seventh issue shortly after that.

As always, Beatdom remains a non-profit organization dedicated to the memory of the Beats and to the continuation of their legacy. We need all your support in this endeavour. I trust that 2010 will see our fans as loyal as ever.

Please follow our Twitter page, our MySpace and our Facebook group. And as always, please keeping checking the website.

I hope you all have a great New Year!

David S. Wills,

Editor,

Beatdom

The New Beatdom

The Beat Generation is something people have trouble in defining. The participating members often later contested the name and their role within the group, and if we’re being strict and specific about it, one could boil the group down to a handful of writers.

More than that, the Beat Generation was an ethos. The Beats embodied a spirit that was created in reaction to their surroundings. They existed at a specific place in time and probably would not have existed elsewhere.

People become confused about who the Beats were. They might know a few names and facts, but often the word “Beat” or “Beatnik” is applied incorrectly.

Beatdom began as a literary journal devoted to the study of the Beat Generation. However, it has changed since then. Today more than 95% of submissions for Beatdom are poetry or short fiction. Also, the bulk of our fan mail is in praise of our poets and fiction writers.

It seems that our readers consider themselves modern Beatniks…

Which as I’ve noted is a silly notion. We are not Beatniks. We are something different. As the Beats recognised their influences, so shall we. We shall hold Ginsberg as our inspiration as he held Blake.

We can take their ethos and change it and apply it and become something significant in ourselves. The Beats sought to make their own special place in a cold, unforgiving world, and that is an important message. They sought to reveal their souls through their art, and that is something we can do.

We are not part of the Beat Generation. We may perhaps be a New Beat Generation or Beatdom Generation, but we are something different from our predecessors

And so Beatdom magazine will be different from our original ideas. We will no longer devote the majority of our pages to studies of the past, but instead focus on tying the past, the present and the future together with the Beat ethos.

Beatdom will publish more modern poetry and fiction, and help advance the cause of literature today.

In doing this, we need the help of our readers and contributors, so please see our new submission guidelines. .

On Green Publishing

When Beatdom was first published in the summer of 2007, we made sure that our magazine was an innovation in green publishing. We didn’t want to cut down trees to make magazines that no one wanted to buy, so we made Beatdom a print-on-demand operation.

Print-on-demand is not exactly the most popular option for publishing magazines. For one thing, it pushes printing costs higher. For another it brings with it the stigma of an ill-conceived, under-edited vanity operation.

But print-on-demand allows our readers to purchase a copy of Beatdom whenever they wish, anywhere in the world, simply by using the internet. Our magazine has maintained its professional standards, ultimately pushing the boundaries of print-on-demand publishing. We don’t believe that damaging the environment is necessary to prove that you have a quality product.

Furthermore, we are very much aware of the sensitive issue of price. Beatdom is an expensive magazine and we wish it wasn’t. In an ideal world it would be free, but we have to pay the printers. What we don’t do, however, is take a cut for ourselves. The editors and writers of Beatdom are unpaid. This is a non-profit organization.

Beatdom is available for free online – through Lulu, through our website, and through Google Books. We don’t make aim to make money – we just want people to read and enjoy our product without hurting the Earth.

If you like what you read online, we encourage you to buy a copy of Beatdom. But we won't stock our magazines in stores and let the trees that made them go to waste. When you are finished with Beatdom, we invite you to share your copy with your friends and family.

Tropic of Cancer Quotes

Sorry for not posting much on here, folks, but I’ve been a busy man. Issue Five is coming along nicely and I’ll keep you updated, but for now here are a few quotes from Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. I know it’s random, but they knocked me over as so damn brilliant I just had to share them.

When the tide is on the ebb and only a few syphilitic mermaids are left stranded in the much, and Dome looks like a shooting gallery that’s been struck by a cyclone. P161

There is a bone in my prick six inches long. I will ream out every wrinkle in your cunt… I will send you home… with an ache in your belly and your womb turned inside out… He knows how to build a fire, but I know how to inflame a cunt… I shoot hot bolts into you… I make your ovaries incandescent… I have set the shores a little wider, I have ironed out the wrinkles. After me you can take on stallions, bulls… I am fucking you… so that you’ll stay fucked. P.5