This poem is in Portable Document Format; click the second link below to download. It was first published in issue one of a poetry journal called MAR. As far as I can remember this undated issue appeared some time in 1989. I was invited to contribute by its anonymous editors, presumably they had picked up my name through the Association of Little Presses. There is a typo in Basil, the last line should actually read “You ’ave lost a Backgammon!”, and not as printed. The scan below also includes Nihilism As An Artform (which was published in the same issue), the front cover, and the contributors’ list, which appeared on the inside back cover.
Basil was published on this website January 20, 2009. On February 15, 2025, an audio version was added; recited by me, it is prefixed by Andrew Savage reviewing said issue of MAR for Super Trouper issue 7.
Yes, Basil was a real person (and a right dickhead) and he did indeed lose a backgammon, though as this was in 1985 or more likely 1984, I can’t remember the details but I don’t think it was against me. It may have been against a bloke from the West Country called Jack Horner (his real name). Jack went one better because around the same time he lost a game in which he had borne off fourteen of his fifteen counters before getting the last one trapped. It was unbelievable, nearly as unbelievable was the game I won by throwing a double six when anything else lost.
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