The Insect Trust Gazette was initiated in 1963 by several students at Temple University. The little magazine published avant garde and experimental prose and poetry for several years during the 1960s. The editors published student work and solicited work from prominent avant garde writers such as John Cage, William Burroughs, John Ashberry and Carol Berge?.
Named after a phrase in “The Naked Lunch” (“a trust of giant insects from another galaxy”), or possibly “The Ticket That Exploded (“privileged Aphids who have performed appreciable services for the Insect Trust”), complete runs of this little magazine are almost impossibly rare, since the second issue was seized by Scotland Yard, as co-editor Jed Irwin explained in a 2007 interview: “Bill Levy had moved to London by the time #2 was ready. We shipped many (that is, a large proportion of what must have been a small press run) over to Bill. They never reached him because they were confiscated by Scotland Yard and never released. I don’t recall whether the Yard ever gave any specific reasons for their action.”
1. THE INSECT TRUST GAZETTE, No.1, edited by Robert Basara, Leonard Belasco, Jed Irwin, William Levy
Philadelphia: The Insect Trust Gazette, 1964
First edition, side-stapled and bound into printed and illustrated wrappers, 5.5” x 8.5”, 64 pages, offset-printed. Cover design by Robert Basara.
Contributors include: Stewart Paley, Thomas Jackrell, William Levy, Michael Benedikt, Max Ernst, Paul Eluard, Paul Klee, Jed Irwin, William Burroughs, Leonard Belasco, Hans Arp, Robert Basara, Stuart Gordon, Jackson Mac Low, Antonin Artaud (trans. David Rattray), Brion Gysin, IBM (arranged by Conral A. Belano), Jean Genet, Carol Berge.
2. THE INSECT TRUST GAZETTE, No. 2, edited by Robert Basara, Leonard Belasco, Jed Irwin, William Levy
Philadelphia: The Insect Trust Gazette, Summer 1965
First edition, saddle-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 8.5” x 11”, 88 pages, offset-printed. Cover design by William Levy.
Contributors include: Brion Gysin, Lew Brown, William S. Burroughs, Dom Sylvester Houedard, Eugen Gomringer, Edwin Morgan, Edgard Braga, Augusto De Campos, Philip Ward, Frank Kuenstler, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Jose Lino Grunewald, Stewart Paley, Jackson Mac Low, Clark Coolidge, Christopher Middleton, Jess Collins, Sinclair Beiles, S.J. Leon, Conral A. Belano, Mel Clay, Ira Cohen.
3. THE INSECT TRUST GAZETTE, No. 3, edited by Robert Bassara, Leonard Belasco, Jed Irwin, William Levy
Philadelphia: The Insect Trust Gazette, Summer 1968
First edition, comb-bound in printed and illustrated covers, 9” x 11.5”, 160 pages, offset-printed. Cover design by Annette Riddle (front) and Friedrich Schroder-Sonnenstern (back).
Contributors include: N.B. Shein, Jennifer Stevens, Friedrich Schroder-Sonnenstern, Sinclair Beiles, William Levy, Wolfgang Hallman, Jan Fort, Leonard Belasco, S.J. Leon, Charles Macdermed, Stewart Paley, Carlo Fantom, William Wroth, The Heap, Jed Erwin, Ann Irwin, Robert Bassara, Stuart Gordon, Les Fram, Claude Levi-Strauss, Max Ernst, Roger Hillyard, Stephanie Bjorndahl.
Online resources:
Reality Studio – Insect Trust Gazette
Reality Studio – Jed Irwin on the Insect Trust Gazette