Penny Rimbaud
| Penny Rimbaud | |
|---|---|
Penny Rimbaud in Girlfriend in a Kimono, (2005)
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Jeremy John Ratter |
| Born |
8 June 1943 South West London, United Kingdom |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, poet, philosopher, performance artist, musician |
| Instruments | Drums |
| Years active | 1960s–present |
| Labels | Small Wonder, Crass, Exitstencilisms |
| Associated acts | Exit, Crass, Last Amendment, Bloody Beetroots |
| Website | onoffyesno |
Jeremy John Ratter (born 8 June 1943) is better known as Penny (Lapsang) Rimbaud. He is a writer, poet, philosopher, painter, musician and activist. He was a member of the performance art groups EXIT and Ceres Confusion, and in 1972 was co-founder of the Stonehenge Free Festival, together with Phil Russell aka Wally Hope. In 1977, alongside Steve Ignorant, he co-founded the seminal anarchist punk band Crass, who disbanded in 1984. Up until 2000 he devoted himself almost entirely to writing, returning to the public platform in 2001 as a performance poet working alongside Australian saxophonist Louise Elliott and a wide variety of jazz musicians under the umbrella of Penny Rimbaud's Last Amendment.
Having very early on fallen foul of his father's 'real world', Rimbaud adopted a youthful waywardness which developed later into a committed form of bohemianism. Contemptuous of any authority, he was expelled from two public schools: Brentwood School in South East England, and Lindisfarne College in North Wales. Rather than joining the ranks of the unemployed, he elected to study philosophy at Magdalen College, Oxford, before quickly realising that, in his own words: "Oxford wasn't about learning, but about a peculiarly unpleasant form of class indoctrination."
Ratter changed his name by deed poll in 1977, as, in his own words, he "wanted to be his own child." His surname was taken from Rimbaud, the French symbolist poet, whilst the forename of Penny stemmed from his Oxbridge brother, Anthony, who had often referred to him as being 'a toilet-seat philosopher' (a penny being the currency necessary at the time for entry into public toilets). The middle name "Lapsang" was added at the last moment to add what he felt was 'a touch of the exotic'.
Rimbaud enrolled at the South East Essex Technical College and School of Art in the early 1960s, where he met his lifelong creative partner Gee Vaucher. Whilst there, he was quick to realise the potential within the then fledgling pop art movement, scoring considerable success as an innovator. His works were included in the Northern Young Contemporaries, and on the back of this he was offered the possibility of working at Andy Warhol's The Factory. He refused on the grounds that he "had better things to do", something which he claims never to have regretted.
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