Penny Rimbaud is someone who I’d been dying to talk with since I first heard Crass when I was twelve. This interview shows what a dynamic and humble person Penny can be. We talk about poetry, politics, music, meditation, and of course, bread. His work transcends punk and reaches toward the human core of artistic expression. He was an absolute joy to interview. Hope you enjoy the read!

Hey Penny, thanks for doing this interview. Can you please tell us a little bit about yourself and what’s going on at Dial House at the moment?

I’ve spent most of today rebuilding the chicken run because we’ve got foxes in the area and going over some poems of Wilfred Owen which I’ll be doing a recital of later in the year. That’s all I’ve been doing, reading, writing, and meditating. The best news about the house is that we’ve almost paid off everything that we owed on it for the better part of ten years and we’re now about to start the process of setting up a trust so that we can turn it into a state institution for the radical arts. It’ll be held as close as it can be to perpetuity and hopefully have a long life beyond that of the three current residents as a center for activism and the arts.

In the beginning, did you have any misgivings about Dial House becoming a state institution?

No, not at all. We live in the state, like it or not. If I can oblige the state to take on an institution of learning, peace, wisdom, and joy, I’m pleased to do that. We’re not going to change the state by standing outside of it and shaking our fists. We’re going to change it through our profound belief in kindness. It’s about using the power of the state to make it change itself. We’re all responsible; there’s no point in wagging fingers and blaming others. What can you do that’s practical and helps others as well as yourself? I’ve spent fifty years trying to demonstrate my way of doing that, and if that becomes part of the body of the state, fantastic. Bit by bit, that’s how it’s all changing.

You vacation in Barcelona once a year, right? Have you come across the expropriated bank in Gracia?

No, I don’t do much work with activists over there. It’s my few days off a year where I wander around, sit in cafés, and maybe write down a note on a napkin here or there. Last year, we got involved with a group of anarchist printers and I did a reading using the printing presses as backing music. My mind is always working on stuff, but I consider that my time off.

What do you think are the biggest benefits of taking time off?

You get a perspective. I think that one can become very dug-in on one’s own domain. My domain happens to be England, it’s just Dial House, but all of Britain. Being out of one’s own culture is always valuable. I can understand a small amount of Spanish, but I don’t understand the whole social set-up. If I’m in England, I can read every face and every action and understand what’s going on. Being outside of that helps me be a freer person for a while. I can also take stock of things and look at what I’m doing in life from a distance. There are a few things that are constant in my life and that’s my great faith in life, my love of and devotion to life, and my view of death as an exact mirror of life. I carry that with me wherever I go. The day-to-day things of the material world can sometimes be seen better if you’re not living in the middle of it. Having the time to assess what’s important makes practical decisions easier because you’re not actually weighed down with all of it.

Have you made any effort to make Dial House accessible to travelers?

Not really. As a human experiment about fifty years ago, I removed the locks of the door. I’m still seeing what’s happening. I’m not advertising it or trying to get anything from it, I’m allowing it to make its own demands in its own way. I made that decision and I’ve stuck to it faithfully. It wouldn’t be in my nature put out ads, people find their own way here in large numbers. I can share time or not share time with them. It’s not a social center in that sense. I’m working all the time, whether it’s writing poetry or making bread. There’s no difference between work and play. I decided fifty years ago to be here now.

A lot of what you’re saying reminds me of Alan Watts, can you speak to his influence at all?

Yeah, I first started reading Watts when I was 18. It inspired me greatly: I don’t think influence is quite the right word. His work, the Beat poets, and what was happening in the ‘60s in the West End of London all really inspired me. It was the whole DIY essence of all of that, especially Gary Snyder’s work, which struck a chord with me. The finding of oneself within nature was very inspiring to me. It was a new attitude; they were showing us a different way to live.

Have you crossed paths with Gary Snyder at all?

Not Snyder, no. I did a reading last year at City Lights bookshop and Ferlinghetti was going to come, but he’s an old guy now and he wasn’t well. If I’d been on the West Coast for a bit longer, I would have tried to make contact with Snyder, but I was flying in, doing the reading, and flying out. I can’t afford to do otherwise.

How do you approach revising your poems?

I’m never deliberate. An idea or vision appears and I translate that into words. I don’t depend upon my reasoning intellect to write; it’s a much more intuitive process. I might get up in the morning and think I’m going to write a poem, but I’ll sit at my desk, and ten minutes later, I’ll be off chopping wood or feeding chickens. I don’t feel there’s any difference. There’s you’re doing when you’re writing poetry that you’re not doing when you’re making bread. The poetry comes from something deeper that wants to express itself and ask its own questions. I always start in a notebook with a pen or a pencil. When I’m happy with that, I type it up. There I might play with the shape or the aesthetic of the poem. Change a line break, add in a rhyming line, and get it solid. I’m not bothered about whether it’s good or bad, but about whether it’s true to what I feel.

What was the process like for the poem, “Oh, America” specifically?

I wrote “Oh, America” right when I had the idea. It happened and came out. Gee had this gig showing one of her films at a prestigious concert hall in London and she asked me to do something and this poem suddenly came to me. I wrote that subconsciously to fit to a piece of music which is often used at military marches in America. When I realized that, I thought it was the right music to use in a criticism of the American state. I write out of the same necessities that I make bread out of. I make bread because I need to eat, which feeds my stomach. I write poetry because it feeds my heart and soul.

That’s really beautiful. Did you have the same philosophy when you were drumming in Crass?

Very much so. It was expressed in a different way. It was just Steve and me for the first six months or so. Steve’s got a different take on the world from the one I have. In a way, I translated my feelings into his energy. I come from a privileged background. From that, I knew things could be better and more equal. I’ve used the education I’ve been given to try and undermine the upper class. “Acts of Love,” which I did in the last year of Crass carried very much the same philosophy that I continue to express in different words. I wrote “It’s You Who Makes The World Go ‘Round,” in the late ’60s, which was the same idea as “There Is No Authority But Yourself,” inspired by Alan Watts, as you pointed out and by George Harrison. Everything I did in Crass was inspired by the idea of “be exactly who you want to be,” which we put into the song “Big A, Little A,” a practice of helping people to think about a world that they might like to see, to show them that they had the power to change a world where they’d been told they hadn’t. One of the things I picked up from Alan Watts and that perspective on Eastern philosophy was the practice of karmic yoga, a yoga of service which shows that there’s no greater entity to help you but yourself. That devotion, that service is part of what keeps me going.

When you mentioned George Harrison, I thought of the Beatles art contest that you won in the early sixties. Did you get to talk to him at all?

I was meant to go to dinner after the show with the group, but I just wanted to get back to my mates at art school. I’d spent all day in the studios and it was really busy because The Beatles were beginning to become the absolutely massive band that they became. The whole show was a very over-excited, rowdy business. I was going to get the records signed and all that, but I thought, “Ah, fuck it. I want to get back to my friends.” I laughed it off. I’d gone off The Beatles by then because I thought they were too commercial, but my younger sister was a member of the fan club. I entered that contest with the idea that I was going to win. I don’t know where I got that idea, because there were thousands of entries. I’d invited my sister to come up and meet them, but she couldn’t because she was at convent school. She was doing a choir performance that night. The chief nun in the convent arranged for the entire choir to watch the event on television before they performed.

How and when did you first come up with that archetype of the Glaswegian fourteen year old that I’ve heard you refer to?

During Crass, we were traveling around the U.K. We’d given up touring abroad because we thought people weren’t understanding what we were on about. They were treating us too much like a rock band. Dial House is fairly close to London and this whole area is very affluent. There is poverty here, but very little of it. The further you go north in Britain, the more poverty you’ll see. In Glasgow, it was extreme. It’s one of the poorest cities in Britain. We played several gigs in Glasgow and there was this group of fourteen year old kids who’d spiked up their hair to make it look punky. They were really sweet and they all wanted to meet Eve. They rushed over to her and immediately connected. When I saw that, I thought, “This is why we’re doing this.” Before I made a decision, I’d keep myself in check by asking myself if those kids would do the same. We were being offered these big record deals. If we had wanted to, we could have signed with any label. We could have done gigs in massive theaters. We were turning that down all the time. People would ring up and ask why we didn’t play in their area. We’d tell them, “You arrange it and we’ll come do it.” We would only play in workingmen’s clubs or youth clubs. Occasionally, we’d play a pub or a small theater. Our gigs were small, that way it wasn’t intimidating. Kids in Glasgow might be intimidated by a big theater with stage lights and bouncers. It was a way of breaking that whole rock star mentality and not getting carried away with the possibilities.

Was there any real temptation to play the sold out shows and sign to the bigger record labels?

There wasn’t any temptation at all. There was always a possibility that we’d get carried away in our own sense of power. When a following grows up around you, it’s not difficult to misuse it. We were planning a massive march, which might have gathered together several thousand people in protest of nuclear proliferation. We were going to go from north to south and stop at each of the nuclear installations in Britain and end up in London. We, as a band, could have gotten in our van and fucked off if things got too dangerous. If you’re planning something that large and creating huge bodies of people, you need to be responsible for each one’s safety and well-being. We saw that it could create some really messy conflict, so we scrapped it. This was following the city riots which we had been involved in. Those didn’t lead to too many arrests, so we thought we might be able to plan something bigger. Again, it comes back to the fourteen year old Glaswegians and what they’d be able to do.

Do you have other ways besides the fourteen year old Glaswegians of checking yourself?

For the past few years, I’ve been trying to balance how much I do for myself and others. The lily grows and gives its perfume, but it’s not aware that it’s giving off such pleasure. I ask myself if I was after something after I do it. When I analyze it and find self-interest in it, I say “Okay, Penny, learn the lesson.” It’s like programming a computer. If you hit the right buttons in the human brain, you can rewire yourself. It’s hard work. It’s easy for me to say this kind of thing because I don’t get on the subway every day and see all the adverts and interact with all the people. I’m not watching television or reading the newspapers or doing any of the things that could distort my sense of beauty.

Do you think that expressions of anger can also be beautiful?

Anger can be beautiful if it’s righteous. You’ve got to be really conscious of how you’re using it in a particular situation or dialog. When I was caring for my dying mother, the only way I could get her to respond was to slap her in the face. She was suffering from brain cancer. She was tearing at herself in these explosive fits of rage and tears. I only did it once and I hated myself for doing it, but it stopped her from hurting herself more. Did I do it because I was pissed off? I think so on some level. When she became overpowered by her rage, she got potentially dangerous to herself and to me. If it’s not malicious, it can sometimes be kind to express anger. It can be a useful tool, but it needs to be used sparingly.

Did righteous anger play into some of your work with Crass?

Of course, that’s an aspect of it. Personally, I was never afraid of nuclear war. If it happened, it happened. I think people become so easily intimidated and lose their joy of life too quickly. I used the nuclear bomb as a metaphor to say, “Look, this is how you might imagine it, but what are you gonna do about it?” As I explained earlier, my relationship with Steve enabled to me to phrase that in a kind of street language that could help me get through to my target audience. When I was a kid, I was listening to blues records and I could see that the people who made those records were coming from a very earnest place and playing what they felt.

Allen Ginsberg called that “street language,” kitchen talk. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, I think so. It wouldn’t be the talk in my kitchen, I like to be alone and in my own space when I cook. There was an arts movement called the kitchen sink artist and their work was very gritty and harsh with a working class ethic.

Are you still in touch with Steve? What’s your relationship like with him now?

Eve and I decided we’d go to his last gig he played with his band. I see him every so often, maybe six or seven times a year. We’ve got different interests, but we still love each other a lot. We don’t have a great deal to say, but we always reaffirm our love and respect for each other.

Do you see Sid and Zillah from Rubella Ballet often?

Sid’s been really ill, so they haven’t come over recently, but they come over when they can. Sid took the same route I did in treating his cancer with homeopathic medicine.

My favorite Crass album “Penis Envy,” is a piece I‘ve wanted to ask you about. How did that come about?

It started when Crass was being viewed as a boot band. All-male, aggressive, and masculine. The women in the group had always been a huge part of what we were about and they seem to be getting the short end of the stick. So, we went ahead and made a feminist album. The music was slightly different because it was centered on women’s voices. We were saying very different things. It was very radical at a time when that sort of message didn’t find its way onto vinyl. It was powerful feminist statement. The only other band that anywhere near matched it were Poison Girls, who were a very powerful feminist outfit.

Thanks so much for the interview, Penny. Do you have any words of wisdom for our readers?

Make bread. I went on a silent retreat thinking I was going to get instruction about meditation and learn all sorts of things. I turn up and the head of the retreat told us we were going to sit. I thought, “Okay, what else are we going to do?” That was it, that was the whole instruction. After that, we sat, looked at a wall, and there was no one telling me what to do, say, or think. We got what was called a Dharma talk every day and I’ll say what he said to me. Just sit. Allow yourself to get out of the way of yourself. Spread that joy of life.