Not-Prynne

‘To Mock a Killing-Bird’. The English Intelligencer, 2nd ser., [spoof of] 2 (May 1967), a.k.a. the ‘Spoof Issue’: 330–31. [Birgitta Johansson, The Engineering of Being: An Ontological Approach to J.H. Prynne (Ph.D. Dissertation, Umeå: Umeå University; Acta Universitatis Umensis, Umeå Studies in the Humanities, 135; 1997) lists this as a prose text by Prynne. As Nate Dorward pointed out, this is a double error: first, the entire issue is a spoof written by Tom Raworth and Anselm Hollo. Secondly, Johansson misread Prynne’s name as applying to the preceding prose text (which is instead attributed to Barry MacSweeney), rather than the subsequent poem, which is listed just below].

‘J.H. Prynne’, ‘The English Passive Voice’. The English Intelligencer, 2nd ser., [spoof of] 2 (May 1967), a.k.a. the ‘Spoof Issue’: 331. [This, as opposed to the previous citation, is the definitively correct text not written by Prynne. It is a parody by either Tom Raworth or Anselm Hollo, creators of this hoax issue of the The English Intelligencer].

There are now frequent uses of the name J.H. Prynne as a pseudonym on the internet. Caveat emptor.

There was a band called ‘The Prynne’, extant as of 2007. Previously advertised at http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Prynne/6261396701, and currently at https://myspace.com/theprynne/music/songs. Of no relation to J.H. Prynne; though of J.H. Prynne’s musicality, John Wilkinson notes that ‘Prynne is a keen amateur recorder player, the proud possessor of a Dolmetsch instrument, and plays with astonishing aggression. He is the Albert Ayler of the recorder …’ (Wilkinson, ‘Heigh Ho: A Partial Gloss of Word Order’. Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary, 2 (2010: On the Poems of J.H. Prynne; ed. Ryan Dobran): 295–325 [303]).

‘Brass’ and ‘Cloudy as a mystery’. Issue, 1 (Fall 2008; eds. Stephen McLaughlin and Jim Carpenter, published by Principal Hand): 1662 and 3642. Previously online at http://www.forgodot.com. [This is a parody, or one of those ‘post-modern pastiches’ the kids are so fond of these days. Over three thousand authors are put-on, and I think computers have some say in the matter, arbitrarily cutting up texts from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and reassembling them as other people’s work].

A reading of Ken Fox, ‘Schmutzdeck’, from Fox’s AZMUD: An Oily Saga on the Surface of the Wordbath in 5 Expired Generations (London: Unkant Publishers, 2013), by someone purporting to be J.H. Prynne was broadcast by Out To Lunch [Ben Watson] on his radio show Late Lunch with Out To Lunch on 4 December 2013 in an episode titled ‘Wry Mass Tick Felony’. A recording of the full show is online at https://archive.org/details/WryMassTickFelony4-xii-2013.

HO HO HO ZERO (Lo Zero), 1 ([December 2018]; ed. Verity Spiders): [n.p.]. Under the heading ‘2018, A Year in Sends’, there is a quote credited to ‘JH Prynne on Justin Katko’: ‘Yes. Yes. To hold in my hand a capsule that contains such power, to know that life and death on such a scale was my choice. To know that the tiny pressure on my thumb, enough to break the glass, would end everything. Yes, I would do it! That power would set me up above the gods. And through the Daleks, I shall have that power!’ [This quoted text was originally spoken by ‘Davros’, played by Michael Wisher, on the twelfth season of Doctor Who in the serial ‘Genesis of the Daleks’, written by Terry Nation and originally broadcast in six weekly parts from 8 March to 12 April 1975 on the BBC1 television channel].