Biographical Sketch
Klactoveedsedsteen was a magazine founded by writer
Carl Weissner in 1965 in Heidelberg, Germany. Through his own PANic Press, Weissner
published five issues of Klacto from June 1965 to the
fall of 1967.
Weissner’s connection to a network of writers in England, the United States, and
throughout Europe enabled him to assemble a diverse group of contributors for each
issue, including such luminaries as Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, and
Allen Ginsberg, as well as European writers like Henri Chopin and Claude Pélieu.
Frequent contributors included Doug Blazek, Diane Di Prima, Larry Eigner, Dick
Higgins, Gerard Malanga, Harold Norse, and Jeff Nuttall, among others. Weissner also
contributed his own work, sometimes writing under the pseudonym Kwee Sinh, Sr. With
such an international collection of writers,
Klacto
was multilingual by design, incorporating pieces written in English, German, French,
Dutch, and even Bengali.
Above all, Weissner wanted to create a forum for experimenting with language.
Klacto became an amalgam of innovative literary forms,
such as poem-drawings, concrete poetry, graffiti, and cut-ups, as well as more
traditional verse forms. To exemplify his philosophy, he published Klacto 2 as two 7-foot long scrolls overlapped to create
a series of cut-up texts. Subsequent issues were perhaps less daring in format, but
continued to explore new forms. Klacto 3 included the
first published accounts of William S. Burroughs’ tape recorder experiments that
emerged from his collaboration with Ian Sommerville in London. Weissner’s own
interest in sound recordings prompted the fifth and final issue, Klacto 23, to be published concurrently with an
hour-long audio recording of readings by Klacto
contributors and others, most notably an experimental sound piece by Brion Gysin.
Weissner also published a variant edition of this final issue as Klacto 23 International.
One of Weissner’s closest connections in the United States, poet and contributor
Carol Bergé, helped distribute
Klacto by contacting
bookstores in New York City and introducing Weissner to other writers. As was common
practice in this circle, Weissner traded issues of Klacto for copies of other little magazines, such as Jeff Nuttall’s My Own Mag from London, to distribute them in Germany
and, in turn, circulate Klacto more widely.
Scope and Contents
Creative works, correspondence, production material, and advertisement flyers
document the publishing of the magazine
Klactoveedsedsteen and editor Carl Weissner’s relationships with a
community of writers around the world. The records are organized in a single series,
Production Files, 1965-1969, spanning four issues of the magazine. Issue 2 is not
represented in these files.
The bulk of the material consists of manuscripts submitted to Weissner for
publication, but roughly half of these manuscripts were never published in
Klacto. Manuscripts represent the work of Carol Bergé,
Doug Blazek, Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Diane Di Prima, Larry Eigner,
Allen Ginsberg, Dick Higgins, Gerard Malanga, Harold Norse, and several others.
Letters from these writers commenting upon their work and the magazine are also
included, several of which appeared in Klacto. Since
many of the writers published their own magazines and anthologies, the pieces not
accepted for publication may have been published elsewhere. A complete index of
correspondents and works follows the container list in this guide. Titles of works
in quotation marks indicate that they appeared in Klacto or, according to the author, had been previously published.
Layout and production materials exist for two issues: paste-ups and printing
negatives for the cover and several pages of Issue 1; and paste-ups and some
original artwork that appeared in Issue 23 (5). The Ransom Center Library holds
single copies of Issues 1, 2, 3, 4, and 23 (5).