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57.
I Will Not Pay Taxes Until.
A typescript broadside by Heathcote Williams, reproduced on two sheets of photo-sensitive paper, probably using a Xerox copier (1970). Geometric design to margins and decorated with short strips of red metallic paper affixed to four corners. Each sheet measures 40.5x33cm. Two lines xxx’d through, with holograph correction to one word.
Heathcote Williams’s best-known diatribe, originally “sent by free post to HM Inspector of Taxes in response to a demand for seven years back tax and £300 in fines”. The text was later modified and updated by the poet, but this is its earliest iteration and corresponds with the version first published in Friends #16 (October 16th, 1970) and in “Manifestoes/Manifesten”, published by the Cold Turkey Press in 1974, although both omit the final line: “I will not pay taxes until the Isle of Wight has risen from the sea, and a New Moon hovers over Inkland drawing all the tides into one place.”
Paper aged and darkened due to light-exposure; a few faint stains and light marks; top left corner crease to second sheet; two small corner losses; creases from old central vertical and horizontal folds; o/w Very Good.
