Hilary Alaric MacFaddean Spume FRSL:

When the history of late 20th Century English post-Dada-ist concrete sound poetry comes to be written, (as how much longer can it be postponed?), one name inevitably thrusts itself forward as being at the very top of the second division. That name is Hilary Alaric MacFaddean Spume FRSL.

I first met Spume at the Glastonbury Festival in 1997. My light entertainment duo Your Dad were running a chat show backstage in Theatre Camping, and I was looking for interesting people to talk to. Tony Allen, the founding father of alternative comedy told me that I should get Spume up on stage to talk about his extra-ordinary life. Spume was at Glasto performing on the Spoken Word stage, and Tony took me to see his twenty minute slot. I was enchanted by this ancient habitue of Bohemia, looking like a decrepit Latin master on crystal meth and Bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon, performing poems such as ‘On the Opening of The Scunthorpe Power Station’ and ‘The Unicyclist at 40.’ I knew at once that I wanted to meet him; and during our show that evening, he wowed the crowd with his stories of Larkin, Les Murray, Ritchie out of The Manic Street Preachers and Sir Stafford Cripps.

So began our increasingly close (if occasionally acrimonious) relationship.

It is, I suppose, no secret in the world of English letters that I am Spume’s official biographer, and that in addition I am editing a small festschrift for publication next year on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. The biography itself will appear after Spume’s hopefully long postponed demise, and will run to around 800 pages. I’m sure it will make a huge critical splash, and that many of Spume’s literary friends will choose it as one of their books of the year.

I like to think that I have, in part, been responsible for the revival in interest in his work. The Potato Marketing Board (where Spume is Poet-In-Residence) have kept his dim light under their not inconsiderable bushel for too long. Spume has at last began work on his new collection of nature poems, ‘Mumbles’. Copies of his masterpiece, ‘Centre Point’ change hands for hundreds of pounds on the interweb. He has a colum in ‘The Books Magazine.’ And here, you can read his blog, which he updates daily. Fortnightly, anyway.