It was Eric Bentcliffe who pushed Lisa [Conesa] in my direction; their paths crossed at the Worcester con in 1972, and in a convivial conversation, he mentioned my name an Old Fan due to be dragged out of retirement and a potential cover artist.
Apparently younger fen were engaged in dragging gafiated veterans back into the fold around that time, and Lisa decided to join in the hunt when she found there was one on her patch, as it were.
So got a fan letter dropping Eric B's name and asking for an interview for the next Zimri. So she turned up, around August I think, accompanied by Andy Stephenson, her co-editor on Z3. The interview, plus artwork coaxed out of me in between session of rewriting Lisa's erratic transcription, duly appeared in Zimri 4, dated Jan 1973.
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For some reason Andy had faded from the picture when this appeared, and as Lisa seemed to have been in reminiscent mood, I can tell you that she'd issued the first two with Phil Muldowney as co-ed, plus two issues of Iseult for OMPA.
Lisa writes that her fannish career started with a fan-letter to Brian Aldiss, early 1967, and his reply put her in touch with the BSFA, and a correspondence with Archie Mercer and and acquaintance with fanzines. No time scale given, but she does say she was too shy to venture to cons until the Worcester con. However, if she was producing both Zimri and Iseult, I would hazard that she had her poetry seeing print before 1971.
Letter to Steve Sneyd, 21 January 1990 |
 design for Zimri #9 front page
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The anthology The Purple Hours contains 5 poems by Lisa Conesa: Search, Birds, Was I dreaming, Prescriptions, & I'm asking you here.
The Purple Hours is also the title of an earlier collection of her poems [Not so much the best as the most recent] comprising: Eyes of a woman from a portrait by Picasso, Return, Shell, Not here . . ., Birds, Conversation, One word, & an untitled poem.
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