Issue #227 / March 2023
Do you ever find that you don’t have time to do your Red Hand File because you’ve spent all week writing songs that are starting to sound really good and you get to Sunday and think oh it’s Sunday I can write one today and then you realise oh fuck I have a signing of my children’s book ‘The Little Thing is Sad’ at Dover Street Market today and so you think I’ll write one tomorrow and then you realise that you are in the studio all next week working on the score to a totally brilliant Australian film called The New Boy starring the great Cate Blanchett and so you think fuck it and just grab pretty much any question at random, and just knock out a quick one so to speak. Does that ever happen? Does it?
NICK, BRIGHTON / LONDON, UK
THE GREAT LANGSTON HUGHES - A POET
No question, a statement instead. In my opinion you are one of the bonzerist geezers around, like Bukowski with a geetar. Thank you Mr. Cave.
SIMON, LUTON, UK
Dear Nick and Simon,
Thank you for your letters but, I’m sorry, Simon, I don’t like being compared to Charles Bukowski. I appreciate you were trying to be kind and make me feel good and everything but I don’t like the man. This a well known fact. Now, if you had called me, say, the ‘Philip Larkin of the Joanna’ or the ‘Stevie Smith of the Ivories’ or the ‘All Singing, All Dancing John Berryman’ or ‘Langston Hughes of the Banger’, I’d be lot happier. But, I don’t know, Simon, I just don’t like Charles Bukowski. In my opinion, Charles Bukowski is the ‘Bukkake of Bad Poetry’, just blowing his junk around. I don’t like him. I just don’t. Not even a bit. No, not at all.
Love, Nick