“The whole town smelled like chives and onion with a dash of mustard. Maciek sampled the popular dish. Chips, thin as a shoelace, mayo on the side. Clams in large pot with white wine brine. Strange, though, this hankering for deer musk.”
My microfiction, “Deer Musk,” is now up at Literary Garage.
It’s kind of feral.
You can read it over here
Happy to have a new microfiction at Dodo Eraser. It takes place in Trieste, Italy, where I lived many moons ago. Poverty and art and dog walking.
The story is called “Higher Callings.” You can read it here
Some nice news this morning. My micro fiction “Big Fish” has been nominated by Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction from New Zealand for Best Small Fictions 2025. Thank you to Michelle Elvy (editor of Flash Frontier).
I am happy to have a serial prose poem in the new issue of Diagram. Diagram has been around a good while. It was one of my earliest publications in the early part of this century.
My earlier work is in issues 3.4 and 4.4.
This new work is in issue 25.4.
The serial prose poem is different than the work I’ve been publishing lately. It is not microfiction. It is def prose poetry.
Meat Sweats was written a few summers ago, in London and Barcelona and Berlin.
It is hard to stop the meat sweats.
You can read Meat Sweats, and the other fab experimental work in the issue, over here
Thank you to Benjamin Niespodziany for including my book Dream Dust for his favorite reads of 2025. I have always loved Benjamin Niespodziany’s end of year of list of books. I am honored to be included this year.
Check out the roundup over here
“. . . the playful, grotesque, microscopic gaze of the noisy unconscious in Marcus’ poems that makes maneuvers from foaming blond ales to “new lips for new lovers” and, as in the poem ‘Easter Rabbit’, people the poem as thoughts bubbling in someone’s mind. The poems, in giving us the impression that they are emergent and unfolding before us, show the moving face rather than the stillness of a pimple.”
—Devanshi Khetarpal
The Bombay Literary Magazine
I am happy to have some new prose poems in Bombay Literary Magazine. They were written last summer while visiting the French Basque region.
Thanks to the editors!
Read them here
New Absurdities: Peas in G&Ts, Vomited Birds, Ghost Faces
Three micro-stories blending rookie cops, dream shoes & hallway haunts.
You can read it HERE: https://thegorkogazette.com/2025/12/04/3-by-marcus-silcock/
My new prose poem, “Fish,” is now published at Instant Noodles Literary Magazine.
It features mermaid mothers, gravy hounds, and the tiny, powerful tornadoes found in a fishbowl.
Read the full piece: https://instantnoodleslitmag.com/fish-marcus-silcock/
The memory of the 90s Salt Lake City underground—the legendary nights at Bricks and The Sun—was violently punctuated by a freak tornado that slammed downtown as the millennium turned.
You can read the full story now, alongside a brilliant flash by Karen Crawford, as this week’s featured MicroMonday over at Fictive Dream: https://fictivedream.com/2025/11/24/micromonday-33/
I’m thrilled to share that my surreal micro story “Big Fish” appears in the October 2025 issue of Flash Frontier — the Fish Issue.
Read it here: Flash Frontier – October 2025 Issue
“Big Fish” is a short, absurd story about what it means to live inside something vast — a creature, a system, a world — and to keep scrubbing ourselves clean, hoping to come out pure before we’re belched into nothingness.
It’s strange and a little slippery, part satire, part quiet dread. Maybe it’s about futility. Maybe it’s about faith. Either way, it’s about the fish we all live in.
Thanks to the editors at Flash Frontier for featuring “Big Fish” in the fish issue. If you read it, I’d love to hear what surfaces for you.
A few weeks ago, I read some new microfiction for The Mercurius Show at the Lit Balm reading series. Lit Balm is an interactive livestream poetry reading series that features readings, panels, and open mics, often held biweekly.
LIT BALM is brought to you by Marc Vincenz of MadHat and New American Writing (Magazine), Cassandra Atherton of Westerly Magazine, and Jeffrey Cyphers Wright of LIVE Mag!. Most Saturdays at 5:00 pm East Coast time.
It was approaching midnight in Spain when I read and there was some magic there. The good energy of the old spirits of indie presses and creative spaces.
The video of my reading, along with others, including the rest of the Mercurius editorial team, is now on youtube.
Check it out here.
I’m delighted to share that my story “Burning Bush” has just been published in Issue Forty-Seven of the always-exciting magazine Bending Genres!
I’m thrilled and honored to be in such terrific company — with new work by Kim Magowan, Francine Witte, Glen Pourciau, and many more bold, brilliant voices pushing the boundaries of form and feeling.
A bit about the magazine: Bending Genres is a vibrant literary journal devoted to hybrid, experimental, and genre-defying writing. Since its launch, it has carved out a home for the strange, the surreal, the emotionally raw, and the stylistically adventurous.
Burning Bush is a surreal, absurd story about forbidden desires and passion set within a strange, heightened religious world. It begins:
“Knot your neckties. Thick as the bishop’s handshake. The smell of starch starching the air. Welcome to Sunday.”
There’s fire. Ritual. A bishop who spits flame. Worship, confusion, longing — and perhaps a little Anne of Green Gables.
You can read it now at Bending Genres:
👉 Burning Bush
And while you’re there, I encourage you to dive into the rest of Issue 47 — it’s full of wild, inventive, and moving work that defies easy categorization.
Thanks for reading — and for supporting the strange.
Tomorrow we continue the Mercurius surreal absurd show at Backstory Books in Barcelona. Another round of readings. Another dream map improv.
The dream map improv will involve the audience this time. Since there are only three readers (Marcus Silcock, Thomas Helm, Hugh Beim-Steinberg).
“The program will feature short readings from poets in the anthology, followed by a collective, interactive activity: the Dream Map. Together, poets and audience will create an improvised surreal world on paper — naming new lands, seas, and landmarks inspired by the poems themselves. The event will conclude with a guided journey through this dreamscape, led by the poets and enriched by the audience’s imagination.”
The Mercurius surreal absurd show was terrific at Dorothy Circus Gallery in London. A real feast of the imagination with an improv dream map. The space was also delicious with dream rugs. We read surreal absurd stories and poems by flashlight and improvised a performance on the dream map (soon to appear on Spotify with music and some remixing).
You can buy the terrific Mercurius Surreal Absurd anthology over here.
It’s one of a kind!
I’m happy to share that two of my prose poems appear in the inaugural issue of Rawhead Literary Journal — alongside brilliant voices like Meg Pokrass, Brad Rose, Jeff Friedman, and many more fab writers.
Read my other prose poem, and the full issue here:
🔗 https://rawheadjournal.org/issue-one/template-2/
The September 20, 2025 episode of Lit Balm: An Interactive Livestream Reading Series will be the MERCURIUS show, and feature Vik Shirley, Thomas Helm, Marcus Silcock, and Ben Niespodziany! As always, we’ll begin with poems from our hosts and end with an open mic. It’s gonna be a doozy!
I am going to read a prose poem from the Mercurius surreal-absurd anthology and then some new microfiction from my book in progress: Reality Bites.
If you fancy tuning in, click HERE
Mercurius anthology of surreal absurd is out in the world. A joy to co-edit this puppy. Terrific online launch. A reading marathon of 18 readers. Other launches coming soon in London at Dorothy Gallery and Edinburgh, Scotland and Barcelona, Spain.
🎉 Double Whammy: Two New Micro Fictions Just Dropped!
I’m thrilled to share two fresh micro fictions out in the wild.
Set in Northern Ireland, this piece dives into the immigrant experience through the lens of a judo master with a secret.
Published by Maudlin House.
👉 Read The Judo King
A love hotel in Seoul.
License plates covered.
Desire, disguise, and the strange choreography of intimacy.
Published by Blood+Honey Lit.
👉 Read Wiggle
I’m excited to share that my new microfiction, The Judo King, is now live at Maudlin House.
Maudlin House is a small press that celebrates experimental and boundary-pushing literature, blending mainstream pop culture with avant-garde storytelling. Their mission—to challenge readers’ perspectives and explore the human condition through weird, unconventional writing. Yes please!
Read the Story
📖 Click here to read The Judo King at Maudlin House
We’re excited to share the release of the first anthology from Mercurius Magazine — a groundbreaking collection of contemporary surrealist and absurdist poetry.
Edited by Marcus Silcock, Vik Shirley, Thoman Helm, and Benjamin Niespodziany, this volume brings together over 80 poets whose work challenges conventional form and embraces the strange, the uncanny, and the beautifully unclassifiable. Spanning 370 pages, the anthology offers a rare and expansive look at the evolving terrain of surreal-absurd poetics.
This is more than a book — it’s a celebration of language at its most inventive and unpredictable. Whether you’re a longtime enthusiast of surrealism or newly curious, Mercurius invites you to explore a literary space where logic loosens and imagination takes the lead.
We extend our deepest thanks to all the contributors who made this book what it is, and to everyone who continues to support the strange and the luminous in contemporary literature.
👉 Learn more and order your copy here
Founded in 2020, Mercurius Magazine has grown into a dedicated platform for contemporary surrealist writing. Editors Thomas Helm and Marcus Silcock coined the term surreal-absurd to describe a distinct poetic mode — one that blends surrealism with minimalist structure, absurdist tone, and narrative elements, often favoring the prose poem.
While many poets were already working in this style, their voices were scattered across various publications. Helm and Silcock envisioned a space where this form could thrive — one that embraced immediacy, accessibility, and a kind of joyful weirdness. Their goal was to create a home for poetry that speaks to the present moment and resonates with a wide range of readers.
In Manchester, a few months ago, I picked up a box of Grzegorz Wróblewski’s asemics. It is part of the delightful Zimzalla project run by Tom Jenks. You can buy your own box of mysteries over here: https://zimzalla.co.uk/067-grzegorz-wroblewski-asemics/
It is a nice compliment to his book of asemic art Shanty Town.
You can see some examples over at Mercurius magazine.
“They were the burning bush in the wilderness of starched fathers. The wolves howled outside. Mother leaned against the dresser to pop out another sister. What big eyes, said mother.”
My latest microfiction, “Bunker,” is now live at Blood+Honey — a surreal, absurdist glimpse into a family’s strange rituals at the edge of the end days.
It’s a short, sharp shock of a piece — part fever dream, part prophecy, part domestic myth. If you like your fiction weird, wild, and a little bit feral, this one’s for you.
🩸 Read it here: Bunker at Blood+Honey
“The detective scans the tree. Jacaranda sticks to her sandals. Yes, you guessed it. It’s that time. The time of flowers. The fiesta of flowers. Old timers are weaving them into great wreaths on the ground, outlined in chalk.”
This week, another flash fiction, just published in the magazine Your Impossible Voice.
It is called “Chalk Talk.”
It is a bit noir. A bit detective. During a fiesta of flowers. Maybe bits of Lynch in there too. There is definitely a donut, but that comes at the end.
Read the rest of the story over here.
It’s been a nice week for publishing some new microfiction.
Broken Antler has just published my fairy tale/mythological story “For the Birds.”
You can read the story, along with some other great stories, in the new issue of Broken Antler over here
A reading of my new surreal-absurd story called “Pickled Herring.” Recently published in the magazine Blood+Honey. You can read the story over here: https://www.bloodhoneylit.com/fiction/pickled-herring
“I do not like to expose my neck to the barber. My head is full of migratory birds, thinks Kato, walking the dust park remembering the lush fish. On the way to work, a plump man always stopped to ask for loose change. She refused until one day. That one day changed the rest of the days. He always found her. Whether she was far from his favourite tram tracks, under a scraggly tree, or lining up to buy beetroot for Borscht, he was there with his hand asking for more loose change. “
My new surreal-absurd new micro fiction in the magazine Blood+Honey.
It’s about the magic of pickled herring. It takes place in Poland. You can read the story at: https://www.bloodhoneylit.com/fiction/pickled-herring
I have a new prose poem in the latest issue (number 159) of Right Hand Pointing. Right Hand Pointing is fab minimalist magazine. I have loved the magazine over the years. I am super happy to my new work in there.
It is a childhood story. A bit of magic beneath the trees.
Check out the rest of the terrific issue over here.
Video of my reading for the launch of my new book, Dream Dust (Broken Sleep 2025), in Manchester. It was a terrific afternoon of surreal-absurd poetry at an incredible community art space: P3 Annihilation Eve – AD England.
A heartfelt thank you to the dream team of fellow poets and friends who also read that afternoon: Vik Shirley Tom Jenks and Stephen Emmerson.
Special thanks to my cousin Leanne Siwoku for capturing the afternoon on film. 🎥
And of course, a huge thank you to the terrific audience who made the event so special. Community and support. It means so much.
Manchester, England. 13 April 2025.
Dream trees, wolf eyes, hot pockets, and wing chairs. A string of new prose poems published over at Talking about Strawberries All the Time.
Talking about Strawberries All the Time is an online literary journal based out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. They publish new issues of the magazine every October and April
I am happy to have my new prose poems in the April issue with some other fab mad poets for company. They are from a recently completed book manuscript entitled REALITY BITES. Little bite sized surreal-absurd stories.
You can read them over here
“I have my personal number, I know my name and when I was born. I feel a bit like a time traveler. My own reactions to people, to the phenomena of life, still surprise me. Apparently, there is such a thing as identity, soul, and personality. This is problematic for me. People are metabolism, a two-legged protein. I search for myself through literature, art, and contacts with other people. It is a kind of self-verification. My essence is an attempt to find some meaning in existence. This process will probably last until the end of my life.”
Grzegorz Wróblewski
“I search for myself through literature, art, and contacts with other people. It is a kind of self-verification. My essence is an attempt to find some meaning in existence. This process will probably last until the end of my life.”
Grzegorz Wróblewski
In his own words, Wróblewski describes his journey as one of continuous self-discovery. He views his interactions with the world and his creative endeavors as a means to understand his own identity and place in the cosmos. This introspective approach aligns with existentialist thought, emphasizing the importance of personal experience and the perpetual search for meaning.
Also quantum theory, hermit life, ideas of home. Lots of exploration.
A terrific interview over at Spillwords with the artist, poet, writer Grzegorz Wróblewski.
Read the rest of the interview over here
Reality is the bubbling cauldron of absurdity we are flung into. The giant ladle of surrealism stirs us around and around until we capitulate to its nurturing demands. – Stuart Ross
We are delighted to present this week’s surreal-absurd sampler. The maestro of madcap. Stuart Ross.
Stuart Ross has published over 20 books, most recently the poetry collection The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky, the memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers, and the short story collection I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub. Stuart runs the Feed Dog Book imprint for surrealist poetry at Anvil Press and the 1366 Books imprint for experimental fiction at Guernica Editions. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada, and occasionally blogs at bloggamooga.blogspot.com
Click here to read his surreal-absurd sample.
“Manchester’s live literature scene has been awash with amazing visiting poets this spring and for this free afternoon of absurd surreal poetry, we are agog to see Vik Shirley, Stephen Emmerson and Marcus Silcock corralled by Tom Jenks and reading in a place packed with brilliant books.”
Read the rest of the announcement over here: https://www.creativetourist.com/event/absurd-surreal-poetry/
My first reading for my new book Dream Dust is online.
Tuesday April 1st.
Surreal-absurd stories/prose poems.
Join us. Sign up for the event over here. 20.00 GMT April 1st.
I’m reading in April as part of the launch of my new book Dream Dust (Broken Sleep Books).
Reading with three fab UK poets: Stephen Emmerson, Tom Jenks, and Vik Shirley. Dream team of surreal-absurd writers.
It’s in Manchester. I haven’t been north in quite some time, but loved Manchester over a decade ago as part of The Other Room Reading Series. Excited to read at a cool venue in Manchester, PS Annihilation Eve.
See poster for details. Sign up here to attend (it’s free): https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-afternoon-of-absurd-surreal-poetry-tickets-1276001768639?aff=oddtdtcreator
It seems like so many people love the beach. Millions of humans frolicking on the beach. I am not a cocktail sippin roll in the sand kinda fella. But a beach with howling winds and nobody else around. The only thing packed is the sand. That’s a nice beach. But I moved to a beach place full of super social creatures. I visit the beach often and you know what that means. You need to wear sandals. I wore sandals in my youth. But they weren’t hot beach sandals. They were cold beach sandals. You needed socks.
Here is a true story. Written shortly after moving to Sitges. First published in Sprung Formal, a literary arts journal published annually in association with the Liberal Arts and Graphic Design Departments at the Kansas City Art Institute. Now the microfiction/prose poems is part of my book Dream Dust (surreal-absurd micro stories and prose poetry loosely built around travel). Dream Dust is available from Broken Sleep Books in the UK (and worldwide).
Naked Freedom by Marcus Silcock
Long ago, in my crustacean period, I worked at Chevron. Gorging on beef jerky and graveyard radio. This was the mid 1990s. The world, of course, was very different. I rode the bus to work and read Greek philosophy. Also German was in my ear. I was hungry.
Here is a reading about that time. It’s called “The Bells of Chevron.”
Happy Monday!
January is not an easy month. Post-Christmas. Winter for many. February even more so. My head is spinning. Some lack of sleep. Too many thoughts of what’s next. Finding some kind of purpose. Trying not to read too much news. It is so easy to get lost in the head. It is good to have a head. But I need to remember it is not the only control centre.
The head. It keeps spinning with its thoughts. I am trying to keep loose. Disruptive sleep, but trying to fight it makes it worse. Here is a poem written on train to Wroclaw Poland last summer. There were lots of young people in the compartment with backpacks. Shaggy 70s. But it was 2024. Middle age. What is it? Here is a poem about time and the mind body split. Part of my forthcoming book Dream Dust. Coming in March from Broken Sleep Books.
I just read three new poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski this morning. It is the start of 2025. Well over a week into it really. Also feeling my middle age. I still have at least 17 years of work. Or probably more, since I am not sure I can ever afford to stop working with no property, piddly savings etc. So guess I am still middle aged. Squarely middle aged. Whatever that means. Time to build or let go. Life expanding and contracting.
Well, one thing for certain. I feel my mortality differently. I expect that will continue.
There are comforts. Great art, as always. Especially minimalist. Without pretensions. I think I need that more than ever. Endless hours of techno narcissism. Little narrow alleys of specialised professional niches. No thank you. I want the bigger picture!
Grzegorz Wróblewski has always been a favourite. A good friend. Someone whose art nourishes. Even if at first glance it might seem heavy and pessimistic. It is not one thing only. It is sometimes like the poetry of James Tate and Charles Simic, direct and often humorous. Surreal-absurd. It cuts through the bullshit.
Here are three new poems (translated into English) of Grzegorz Wróblewski. They deal with life and death. Directly. Also birds. Solipsism and hot mammals. The flow of life. Read them over at North Of Oxford.
Hurrah!! I have a new book coming in March 2025 from Broken Sleep Books in the U.K. Broken Sleep makes very fine books. Super happy and grateful. It is called Dream Dust. microfiction/prose poems from Berlin, Barcelona, London, Poland, Prague, Utah and more.
I have been working on some of these prose poems since 2018. So it’s nice to have them birthed into the world.
Here is a prose poem from the new book. It is called “White Elephants” and was written in Prague while searching for the biggest medieval square in Europe. Instead we found large sculptures of alien crawling babies by David Černý. And then the great underground cabaret.
Here is a reading of “White Elephants” from my upcoming book Dream Dust.
Surrealism has spread it’s wings far and wide, of course. It is less and less interesting to pursue some kind of pure surrealism. It seems the most interesting surrealism is often mixed. For example, pure Surrealist automatism can sometimes feel like someone trying to tell you their fascinating dream. It is often not every interesting. But as a starting point, yes.
So I suppose, at least for me, I enjoy super reality and the uncanny, rather than abstract surrealism, or automatism as an end point. A grounding with a nice rug that is pulled out from under you.
However, I also enjoy some abstract surrealism (Miro for example). I am less and less interested in word salads and verbal gymnastics as the main driving force of linguistically innovative poetry. Also, I have grown more and more disillusioned with post-modern theories and sensibilities with their obsessive focus on power as the centre of human experience (Foucault etc.). Ditto overly academic poetics tied to dense specialisation often obscuring rather than opening up and revealing.
The liberation of thought and language, change, randomness, and unpredictability, and transgressing boundaries. Those are the legacies of surrealism that stick with me.
Also dreamlike imagery that expands the narrowly constructed realms of the real.
I am pulled towards surrealism for its intersection of psychology and art.
Here is this morning’s new surrealism painting by Inka Essenhigh. It is called Predawn in Spring 2020. It is an example of figurative surrealism. Haunting and beautiful. Those ghost like figures are welcoming. The sun is warm in the centre and the skeleton trees are also beautiful. Death is there, but also beauty. Also those elemental energies of yin and yang, masculine and feminine.
A new prose poem from my ongoing manuscript. This one is called “Dear Working Man with Tarred Leggings.” Winter poem. A little morning broth to heat the bones. Beauty does not only exist for the leisure class.
Working on a new manuscript. Letters to objects. Some of it memoir. Some of it stories. Maybe prose poetry. Some with pathos (but hopefully not bathos). Tis the season for the invasion of memories. Here is one about growing up in Oakwood Place in Portadown, N. Ireland. My Granda. Roses. It can never do it justice. It being language. It being the passing of time and people.
Here is my first letter. It is called “Dear Roses”
I’ve been reactivating my German from high school and college. Dreaming of Berlin. But also other things in the air. Like the prose poems of Max Jacob.
Max Jacob (1876-1944) was a French poet, painter, and writer who played a significant role in the early 20th-century literary scene. He was a close friend of Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire, and his work is known for its blend of surrealism and symbolism. Jacob’s prose poems, such as those in his collection “Le Cornet à dés” (The Dice Box), often explore themes of dreams, spirituality, and the subconscious.
Here is a little prose poem from a new collection of travel prose poems coming in March 2025 from Broken Sleep Books in the UK. Lots of them are based on dreams. This one was in the air. It is called “Pulse of the Nation.”
“Pulse of the Nation” explores the collective consciousness, maybe, partially. It draws from history of the now.
I am super chuffed to have a new prose poem in issue 2 of Strings literary magazine. Written during the summer of 2024. I found inspiration in reading various translations of Rilke. I also acquired a new technique of writing in pencil. Rilke brought to mind my days in Trieste as a dog walker.
I moved to Trieste after spending a year teaching in Turkey. Trieste had a statue of James Joyce and I kissed it in the mornings. I wore some sort of balloon trousers (semi hippy) and walked a big golden retriever and a small pug. The bora howled. I was pulled in two directions. It was semi-romantic.
This collage prose poem is about travel. Travel can sometimes help with beginner’s mind and that’s the place that feels fresh. Travel literature as language in movement. Also impermanent like my pencil. Poetry is about freshening up the mind via language. Opening our perceptions. Visual art freshening the eyes. Music freshening the ears. Poetry can freshen the ears, eyes, heart, mind, language. And so on.
Who doesn’t want to feel fresh. It is a continual process.
You can read the poem here (check out the terrific issue as well).
Here is a slap dap reading of the poem this morning. Happy Friday folks!!
“Surprises” by Max Jacob (translated by Ian Seed). From Max Jacob’s mind bending collection of prose poems: The Dice Cup. Available from Wakefield Press.
Here is quick slap dash reading of the poem. Everything in this book is terrific!!
It’s been an epic journey from Barcelona through France and Germany to the mountains of Poland.
Currently in the oldest spa town in Poland called Cieplice. It’s been around since 1281.
Lushing out in the green, I wrote a prose poem on the fly.
It’s called The Green Ticket.
It is part of my new book of travel prose poems called Dream Dust. Forthcoming in March 2025 from Broken Sleep Books in the UK.
“Thylias Moss once said to me that the knots and turns in a tree’s branches are all evidence of failures, but in the context of a complex system, they make the tree beautiful and unique. I turned to the trees, first with tree rubbings, and then with collage. I am making new sonnets, visual ones then, in the spirit of Antonin Artaud’s desire to get outside of language.”- Laura Wetherington
Super chuffed to publish the surreal-absurd visual poems of Laura Wetherington over at Mercurius this week.
Check out her visual poems over here
Terrific surreal-absurd sampler from Barton Smock at Mercurius Magazine. It’s kinda partly neo creationism with Adam and Eve.
“Surrealism steals the past from nostalgia. It’s not an escape. It’s a sustainable staying. A personal ruin that ruins nothing. My love for transformation is unchanged. Angels hate art.” – Barton Smock
Check Barton Smock’s sampler out here
Here is a Swan Song for the old life. It was written a few years ago right before Christmas and travel to Poland. After emergency surgery and feeling alive.
It is also about middle age. Shame. Suffering.
There is a little chisel in there as well. It’s a reference to C.S. Lewis and his answer to why we suffer.
There is no good answer except a lot of suffering is mental. A lot of clinging. Holding too tight.
After playing touch and go with this world and the next (world or non-world), perspectives shift.
So here it is. A wee prose poem for middle age, suffering, surviving emergency surgery, and the naked beach of Sitges etc.
“I can more or less remember when I first tried to be surrealistically creative: it was on a church youth club trip to London in around 1969 when I was 13. On the way home my mates and I were spectacularly bored on the rattling bus and I said, apropos of nothing, that when I got home I was going wash my hands in a bowl made from old leather cucumbers when I got home. That collision of leather and cucumbers got a laugh and a surreal door was opened in my mind.” – Ian McMillan
Terrific surreal-absurd sampler at Mercurius this week. It’s The Verb’s Ian McMillan.
Some of his poetry reminds me of the playfulness of Ron Padgett (one of my favourite poets).
Check out Ian McMillan’s surreal-absurd sampler over here.
“Do you want to show your baby face to the world or wrap yourself in hair blankets? I think you look better wrapped in hair blankets, says Eimear.”
Super happy to have my poem “Whirlpool” in volume 3 of Buffalo (x 8). Terrific issue!!
Check out volume 3 and my poem here
“No future. Reality in a nutshell and fear in a handful of dust. All dusty dream glitter.”
Here are a few new surreal-absurd prose poems. Written in summer 2023 while visiting Berlin and Wroclaw. Just published at talking about strawberries all the time.
4 new surreal-absurd prose poems, written during summer 2023 in Berlin and Wrocław , are now up at the magazine talking about strawberries all the time.
From immigration to Las Vegas from Northern Ireland (and a new Starsky and Hutch car) to anarchist squat flags and Turkish meze in Berlin.
The poems hopscotch between our two-fold consciousness. Outside/inside. Inside/outside.
They are “reality in a nutshell and fear in a handful of dust.” They are “all dusty dream glitter.”
Check out the new poems over here.
This bi-weekly feature surreal-absurd at Mercurius is chalk-full of freshness. The latest, the poetry of Aaron Kent, features the belly of a dinosaur, avatar’s eating themselves from the inside, making the milk rounds, oceans of flame and the universe as a diamond. It is activism. The serious colliding with the absurd.
Check out the poems over here.
Grzegorz Wróblewski’s “Earth Research” has just been published in SUBURBIA magazine in Poland.
Photography of various materials and textures. Close ups of what is often overlooked. Sticks, bark, crumbling stones.
Check out the photography over here
Hello folks. It is always something when the poetry of Grzegorz Wroblewski is translated into English.
Half Day Moon Press has just released The Life of a Tenement House by Grzegorz Wroblewski (in terrific translation from Polish to English by Adam Zdrodowski and Ben Borek). It is a poetry of a doomed and hopeful humanity trying to make the best of it. A poetry of awe and compassion and surreal-absurd gritty reality.
It is available for free over here
Cabbage has been with me a long time. It is comfort. Whether German or Polish or Irish. There are lots of cabbages.
Also green. My favourite Garcia Lorca poems are green.
Here is a poem about cabbage. And the colour green. Recently published in Laurel Review.
Stay green!
Hello friends. Do you feel overloaded? “Real Humans” is about movement breaks. So much stimulus. Content overload. Whatever you wanna call it. It features a wing chair. Here is a wee reading of the poem. Featured at Hidden Peak Press.
You can check out the prose poem over here
“Is there anything more beautifully absurd than Kenneth Koch’s tiny play about the island of Madagascar breaking away from the African continent, or Hannah Weiner’s code of signals Romeo and Juliet? I’m currently writing a series of very short plays about fungi, as well as making a record of all the dreams I’ve been having since lockdown about British poets.”—Jeff Hilson
This week’s Mercurius Surreal-Absurd is Jeff Hilson (the legend).
Check out his new work over at Mercurius
This week’s surreal-absurd at Mercurius is Chris Gutkind. Wild rides through layers of the surreal. There’s even Rilke! Here is one of the poems from the universe.
Read more of Chris Gutkind’s poems over here at Mercurius
Three surreal-absurd poems by by Grzegorz Wróblewski, translation by Grzegorz Wróblewski and Marcus Silcock Slease. Over at Eunoia Review.
Check them out here:
Terrific end of the year 2023 sampler over at Mercurius. Some surreal-absurd poems of Kristin Bock. Glass Bikini and Cloisters. Definetely want to hold and read those ones.
Read the sampler and mini essay of Kristen Bock over here.
First time I have something published on Christmas Day. 3 surreal-absurd prose poems over at Hobart today. Thank you Jessica Almereyda for selecting and editing. A rarity to have an editor who pays such close attention to the work.
Here is one of them. Nostalgia/not nostalgia. It will be the title of my new book of prose poems/microfictions.
Two more surreal-absurd prose poems over here at HOBART
I have 3 new prose poems in Bruiser. Sheep shearing in Warrington. The Fall Guy with Hamburger Helper and Lee Majors in a trailer park in Vallejo. Goshiwon with tiny television spitting out gameshows in Seoul. Plato’s cave in Utah. Enjoy the journeys.
Check out the surreal-absurd prose poems over here
Terrific surreal-absurd feature at Mercurius this week. It’s William Erikson.
There are many doozies. Here is part of one called BBC:
“A young man lifts his hands to the sun and the sun becomes / honey. He opens his mouth to the moon and the moon becomes / breath mints.”
Read more of William Erikson’s work over here
“When you look up anti-poetry you are likely to run into the work of Nicanor Parra. Parra said something like “real seriousness” resides in the “comic.” We can of course go further. It is also cosmic. Like Parra, Grzegorz Wróblewski’s poetry is often anti-poetic and minimalist. Many of the speakers resemble visitors from another planet. There is a kind of unblinking reportage of the absurdity of our existence. It is sometimes terrible and sometimes humorous and often both.”
I wrote a review of Grzegorz Wróblewski’s Dear Beloved Humans. A selection of his poetry translated into English from the 1980s-2020s. There are many strands in Wróblewski’s poetry. I focused on the absurdist “anti-poetic” realism. Also the absurdism. Thanks to Cody Sexton for publishing the review.
Check out the review at A Thin Slice of Anxiety
I have been finding new ways forward with various kinds of prose poetry. My new manuscript in progress, Dream Dust, is a mix of fables, serial poetry, microfictions, flash non-fiction. Maybe I’ll throw in a few flash plays.
Here is a fable/prose poem. It is about Granny Winegums. American flop houses, bog butter on wheat toast, the Giant’s Causeway. It is partly true. Partly fiction.
“Living is a language of hunger
I want to make love to a man
No not a man exactly but I want to
Make love to something extremely hairy . . .”
This week’s surreal absurd sample of Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi will tingle yr pineal.
Head on over here to read more: tingletingle
The unicorn is magic. I dreamed of unicorns in Istanbul. It is very ancient.
The personal fork was invented by the Byzantines. Then our teeth changed. We developed the overbite. We bite off more than we can chew. This is a prose poem about the golden horn of Turkey. Also Byzantines. But really unicorns.
Here is a prose poem about the unicorn. From my manuscript in progress: Dream Dust.
“Ghosts appear in many plays. A long time ago the actor who played the Ghost had to get rid of his body. Only his voice was left. It must have been before someone wearing a white sheet took on the role of the Ghost.“
This week’s surreal-absurd sampler is Sin Yong-Mok. Translated from the Korean by Brother Anthony. Check out his amazing work over here
A surreal-absurd prose poem from my manuscript Dream Dust. Written while visiting southern Utah. This is called “The Narrows.”
A selection of my surreal-absurd prose poems from The Green Monk has just been published in Slovak in the magazine Vertigo.
Such beautiful book art. Nice to hold in the hand.
The poet Vik Shirley is also in there.
Happy as Larry!
Peculiarity has its own poetic; the everyday is full of the absurd. Ultimately, the act of ‘making strange’ is, I believe, a subversive one, challenging commonsensical conservative-reactionary values. Poets whose work I’m fond of include Giorgio Caproni, Paul Durcan and Selima Hill and I particularly like the work of Leonora Carrington. – Julian Stannard
This week over at Mercurius we present the surreal-absurd poems of Julian Stannard.
Check out the poems here
They are magical boxes, or very intricate paper pop-ups, or entire carved worlds waiting to be tipped out of a hollowed-out bean. Each one has its own logic and necessariness. – Natalie Shaw
This week’s surreal-absurd at Mercurius magazine is Natalie Shaw.
Check out her wild poems over here
To write poetry at all might be to see what in the world is beautiful because it is absurd. -Ailbhe Darcy
Ailbhe Darcy’s surreal-absurd sampler at Mercurius is a doozy. Painterly. Visceral. Lobster claws, robot cats. A little machine demanding to be plugged in again. Flowers and bruises.
Check out her surreal-absurd sampler over here
This week at Mercurius it is Lee Sumyeong. Translated by Colin Leemarshall.
“In his 1924 Surrealist Manifesto, Andre Breton wrote that “Swift is Surrealist in malice, / Sade is Surrealist in sadism. / Chateaubriand is Surrealist in exoticism.” Lee Sumyeong might be described as being surrealist in the quotidian.” – Colin Leemarshall
Check out Lee Sumyeong’s poetry over here
Beatnik Cowboy. That’s the title of the magazine. It’s a grand title. They recently published the title poem from Grzegorz Wróblewski’s forthcoming collection of poetry in English: I Really Like Lovers of Poetry.
The poems in the forthcoming collection were translated directly by Grzegorz and myself.
Read the poem over here
I’ve known Grzegorz since maybe 2007. That’s a few years. I’ll never forget the trip to see him in Copenhagen. We have collaborated and read together with various projects. In London and Madrid. Some of the highlights of my writing life.
Grzegorz is one of a kind. Yeah. No doubt.
Here are six minimalist poems by Grzegorz Wroblewski. Translated by Grzegorz and myself. Terrific poems. View them over here
It doesn’t seem to me true to be one or the other. I think of it as a spectrum and not a binary division of real from surreal or sense from nonsense. I think of it as inclusive, the surreal being part of the real, the real as part of the surreal, the sensical in nonsense and the nonsense in sense, a new sense.
-Lesle Lewis
This week’s surreal-absurd sampler at Mercurius is Lesle Lewis. Dizzying delights. Prose poems with sentences as composition structure. Irony and sincerity. The big questions of life and consciousness.
“The house is one-sided and you’re flat in it.
In the mouth of your pillows are teeth.”
Check out Lesle’s prose poems over here
I’ve finally found a stride. Wrong/right paths since maybe 2019. Now finding the way thru.
An ongoing nomadic surrealist journey. That’s what I’ll call it. Also funk. Nomadic surrealist funk.
Here is the first poem from the ongoing project: Tangling Llamas on the Tresses of the Sun.
“The tools we need for a reversal of fortunes are right in front of us, easily to hand. We must simply take up the weapons that harm us and REVERSE them. Thus the Surrealist/absurdist logics of reversal, especially of scale, but also of such elements as up and down, big and little, strong and weak, cause and effect– may– MUST– be reversed in the artwork, releasing a scouring bolt that renders the work of art an ENGINE AGAINST THE ALMIGHTY.” – Joyelle McSweeney
Delighted to feature the war on heaven of Joyelle McSweeney at Mercurius. Check it out over here
Great night at The Betsey Trotwood in London for Mercurius Magazine’s Surreal-Absurd feature. Our first live event with readings by Vik Shirley, Marcus Silcock, Jane Yeh, and Mark Waldron.
Here is a phone recording of my reading with poems from my books The Green Monk & Rides & Tangling llamas on the Tresses of the Sun (a new book in progress).
My first public reading since 2017. Live at The Betsey Trotwood in London on 15th July. Happy as Larry to read with some stellar poets (Vik Shirley, Jane Yeh, Mark Waldron).
Tickets are limited. Available over here at Eventbrite for the price of a fancy muffin (maybe):
Ahead of the reading, here is a preview of my nomadic surrealist funk. From my book Rides (2014):
If you are in London, come hang with us!!
(Music samples remixed from: Sun Araw’s Ancient Romans, The Caretaker’s An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, and Bracken-Slow Release.Film sample: The General. 1926. Buster Keaton.)
it was only here for a short time. The book Puppy. Hope the dog puppy is here longer. Puppy love is short. This is not puppy love.
Here is a reading of the opening to Puppy. The book sinks into oblivion, like everything, on June 30th 2023 when the press closes its shop. If you fancy words on paper, it is over here.
Happy Tuesday. Here are “The Leftovers.” From my book The Green Monk. A poem about the wonder bread of Jesus. But really Jerry. His gold chain. His hardness. This was back in my days of Vegas. Mid 1980s. Very tangy!
Terrific surreal-absurd sampler of Sawako Nakayasu’s poems over at Mercurius this week. The poems are from Some Girls Walk Into The Country They Are From (Wave Books).
“At some point, as if there was some kind of tipping point, there seemed to be enough surreal aspects to the supposedly real world, which made it simply a more honest way to try to reckon with said world.” – Sawako Nakayasu
Check out Nakayasu’s poems over here
Moon Pie, a prose poem written, partly, in a snowy winter in Seoul, South Korea. Delighted to have the poem in Sprung Formal 18.
Stinky thinker alert. Stinky thinker alert.
There are so many games and we forget to play them. Pull my finger. Pull my finger. Here comes the moon. White crisp and shining.
My prose poem “Sandals” in issue Sprung Formal 18. Perhaps my last publication as Slease. I am no longer wearing socks with my sandals.
2 surreal-absurd poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski over at the new issue of Anthropocene. Translated by Agnieszka Pokojska. Japanese poetry and wood pigeons. A Swedish dragon.
“We’ll drown
before getting devoured
by the Swedish dragon”
Read the poems over here
(Image: EXODUS FROM CHRISTIANSHAVN – PAINTING BY GRZEGORZ WROBLEWSKI)
Happy as Larry to have prose poems in new issue of Sprung Formal from the Kansas City Art Institute. Beautiful art object too. Maybe my last publication as Slease.
Stinky thinker alerts in South Korea. Fiestas in Sitges. I am no longer wearing socks with my sandals.
Check out the super issue over here
We have many fab surreal-absurd samplers over at Mercurius magazine. Evan Nicholls Surreal-Absurd Sampler is stellar. Love those surreal-absurd little bundles. Tiny crossbows. Those little songs of the tooth. Ear as nibbled coin.
We have much more coming, including more poetry in translation from South Korea and Jake Levine’s zingers later in the summer.
Check them out, and others, over here at Mercurius
Delighted to have two new prose poems over at Anthropocene poetry magazine. After the Mormon mission, searching for new spiritualities. Fleshy and soulful. One of the poems a part elegy for my uncle Billy in Portadown. A painter.
You can read them over here
Another working class story. Somewhere America. Another immigrant story. But really, also, a father story. More than one father story. Identity tags, please. Northern Ireland. Belfast. Shankill. Somewhere Utah. Homeless. There are so many fathers. Too many fathers. Not enough fathers. These pyramids of fathers.
Here is an excerpt from my unpublished manuscript, Smashing Time. Recently published as a portfolio of prose poems in Tupelo Quarterly.
It’s called Straw Time.
Earth, we are on it, unless we up there, above it. Apple trees apple & the earth peoples: Meanwhile, we look at the dogstar, since that’s where we come from, might as well say the whole universe, but what’s that? Meanwhile, down here on earth, doing earth research, is Grzegorz Wroblewski, the Polish artist and writer and poet living in Copenhagen since the 1980s. We first met after my book Godzenie. Also a kind of earth research, in Poland, like Stalker, by Andrei Tarkovsky, in some ways.
Some of Grzegorz’s earth research is over at Otoliths. Check em out here.
Never Mind the Beasts 