BUREAU OF LOST CULTURE – This Is Penny Rimbaud: Part One (08/11/2025)
Penny Rimbaud has spent more than half a century living the ideals that most of us only talk about.
Born Jeremy John Ratter in 1943, in the late 1960s, together with artist Gee Vaucher, he founded Dial House, an open community and creative refuge in rural Essex, from which emerged Crass, a band that tore apart punk’s nihilism and replaced it with a fierce moral energy: anti-war, anti-sexism, anti-consumerism — but pro-peace, pro-freedom, and defiantly DIY.
When Crass disbanded in 1984, Penny became a prolific poet, writer, and spoken-word performer, continuing to explore themes of love, pacifism, and spiritual autonomy. Now in his eighties, he still lives and works at Dial House — still questioning authority, still seeking truth through art and language.
We range back and forth across some personal history and Penny’s thoughts on culture, capitalism, art and the very notion of the self.
‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ from What Passing Bells (The War Poems of Wilfred Owen)
‘How?’ from How?
‘Of’s Summer Passing’ with Peter Vukomirovic from Of Summer’s Passing
‘Oh America’ from Oh America – with Youth
