Malcolm Lowry

An ode to a book and its writer..

Book your tickets today for Lowry Lounge, our annual celebration of writer, Malcolm Lowry. Hear about three new books exploring Lowry, featuring Helen Tookey, Alberto Rebollo, and Mark Valentine. Sat 31 Oct, 1-4pm £8 (booking required) https://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/whatson/lowry-lounge-2026

This year’s Lowry Lounge @thebluecoat.bsky.social on Sat 31st Oct, featuring international guests and a magical altar. Demons may be raised… www.trybooking.com/uk/event/118...

Editor's note: My cat is currently (not) helping me with a Lowry presentation I'm working on.

Homeward bound with an exciting new volume for the collection. @malcolmlowry.bsky.social @helentookey.bsky.social

Helen Tookey will be in conversation with @thebluecoat.bsky.social's Director of Cultural Legacies Bryan Biggs at the event, and we'll be bringing along the books! We hope to see you there. bit.ly/TookeyLaunch #Liverpool

Editor's note: Received @helentookey.bsky.social latest Lowry offering today. It's always a good day when you are able to pull some Lowryian item from the mailbox..

Malcolm Lowry fans: Last year's Lowry Lounge 'I am pleased to let you know that documentation of and material from last year's Lounge is now available on the Bluecoat website': www.thebluecoat.org.uk/library/the-.... Lots of pictures of Lowry on the Wirral that have not been seen before.

I seem to see us living in some northern country, of mountains and hills and blue water; our house is built on an inlet and one evening we are standing, happy in one another, on the balcony of this house, looking over the water.

"Under the Volcano is therefore a profound meditation on alcohol as pharmakon—the remedy that is also a poison." www.theliftedbrow.com/liftedbrow/2...

To say nothing of what you lose, lose, lose, are losing, man. You fool, you stupid fool ... You've even been insulated from the responsibility of genuine suffering ... Even the suffering you do endure is largely unnecessary.

1) He stopped after a awhile: all was calm. No one had come after him. Was that good? Yes, it was good, he thought, his heart pounding. And since it was so good, he would take the path to Parián, to the Farolito.

2) Before him the volcanoes, precipitous, seemed to have drawn nearer. They towered up over the jungle, into the lowering sky--massive interests moving up in the background.

1) The broken pink pillars, in the half-light, might have been waiting to fall down on him: the pool, covered with green scum, its steps torn away and hanging by one rotting clamp, to close over his head.

2) The shattered evil-smelling chapel, overgrown with weeds, the crumbling walls, splashed with urine, on which scorpions lurked - wrecked entablature, sad archivolt, slippery stones covered with excreta - this place, where love had once brooded, seemed part of a nightmare.

But the stars by their very being consoled her.

Today is a special one for us, the "lunatic admirers" of Lowry (Firminists). I ask that you pause for a moment today, and reflect on that most special book, whose "quality is too rare to be successful".

A sense of a shared, a mountain peace seemed to fall between them; it was false, it was a lie, but for a moment it was almost as though they were returning home from marketing in days past.

1) “Ah, the harbour bells of Cambridge! Whose fountains in moonlight and closed courts and cloisters, whose enduring beauty in its virtuous remote self-assurance, seemed part,

2) less of the loud mosaic of one’s stupid life there, though maintained perhaps by the countless deceitful memories of such lives, than the strange dream of some old monk, eight hundred years dead,

3) whose forbidding house, reared upon piles and stakes driven into the marshy ground, had once shone like a beacon out of the mysterious silence, and solitude of the fens. A dream jealously guarded: Keep off the Grass. And yet whose unearthly beauty compelled one to say: God forgive me."

Lowry Lounge returns this weekend, book your tickets today! 📖 Since 2009 we've been celebrating the life and work of local writer Malcolm Lowry, and this year's celebration will explore his early years spent in the Wirral.

"Besides after a while one begins to feel, if the man can hold his liquor as well as that why shouldn't he drink?"

[F]or some reason this simple fact appeared to make these two good people-for nearly all people are good who walk in parks-very happy again.

Windy shadows swept the pavement.

"I have discovered one first rate author, an American, Julian Green, who writes in French, which is translated back again into English." theamericanreader.com/19-september...

...but still the old bandstand stands where no band stands.

But my lord, Yvonne, surely you know by this time I can’t get drunk however much I drink.

Taken at "Lieben", Bowen Island. Left to right are Reg Watters (Canadian editor and anthologist), Malcolm, Margerie, and Earle Birney. July 1947. Special Collections Library, UBC - BC 1614/25.

Everything that deceives may be said to enchant. Plato, The Republic

How could he have thought so evil of the world when succor was at hand the whole time?

Rain - rain - rain here, Vancouver's Jubilee, and the city full of wild Indians. Yours sincerely, Malcolm Lowry

Some words on David Markson. themillions.com/2016/03/this...

A documentary on Lowry that is not for the faint of spirit. Regardless, a must watch. www.nfb.ca/film/volcano/

"Come amigo, throw away your mind," Dr. Vigil said behind him.

Slightly to the right and below them, below the gigantic red evening, whose reflection bled away in the deserted swimming pools scattered everywhere like so many mirages, lay the peace and sweetness of the town.

The spectators laughed and cheered, though Hugh, really indistinguishable from a Mexican now, looked serious, even grim. He leaned back, holding on determinedly, with feet splayed, heels knocking the sweaty flanks. The charros galloped across the arena.

I have lived only nineteen years and all of them more or less badly. --letter to Conrad Aiken, 1929.

And it seemed to me that until I knew her I had lived my whole life in darkness.

Afraid to imagine what she's dreaming.

"...where is the sunrise? Where is the frost? Where are my seagulls? Where is my coffee? Where is love?" Lowry to Markson, 1951.

Black geometry angled against dark skies.

Nothing is altered, and in spite of God's mercy I am still alone. (Watercolor of Lowry by Arturo Espinosa, May 15, 2012)

...the old bastard would merely grin... 1979 letter from Markson discussing Lowry

[D]eliver me from this dreadful tyranny of self. I have sunk low. Let me sink lower still that I may know the truth.

Round and round we swung rhythmically, moving our bodies now in quick little nervous vibrations, now in long, sweeping drags.

There are accounts dedicated to great 20th century writers Paul Bowles and Malcolm Lowry. I love that people dedicate themselves to a particular writer in this way.