Rare recordings of William S Burroughs and Brion Gysin are released by the British Library

The British Library has published a new audio CD, The Spoken Word: William S Burroughs and Brion Gysin, to coincide with a major new international exhibition, 'Cut-ups, Cut-ins, Cut-outs, the art of William S Burroughs' at the Kunsthalle, Vienna. The recordings selected for inclusion are rare items sourced from the British Library's own collections. Most have never been published before. The disc brings together the American writer William S Burroughs and British-born artist Brion Gysin, the man Burroughs credited with the invention of the 'cut-up' literary technique. The centre-piece of the collection is a complete, previously unissued recording of Burroughs reading live in Liverpool in 1982. The disc also includes performances by Gysin of a selection of his 'permutated poems', and previously unheard home recordings made by the pair in Paris in 1970