NEVER MIND THE BEASTS: surreal-absurd poetry
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Post Punk
Terrific review of Never Mind the Beasts in Idler magazine by Robert Greer. “Stylewise it would appeal to fans of both abrupt American Lydia Davis and Soviet absurdist Daniil Kharms . . . A Portrait of the Artist for the Tyskie and Kimchi generation.”
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REVIEW OF THE GREEN MONK
Terrific review by Tom Jenks of my book The Green Monk. You can read it over at Stride magazine. Lydia Davis, Daniil Kharms. Yes please! The Green Monk is available from Boiler House Press. It has a very nice design. Good to touch. And also read.
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NOMADIC SURREALISM AND THE MOBILE IMAGINATION
“Slease refuses the comforts of rootedness, stability, permanence. In doing so, he represents what the philosopher Rose Braidotti identifies as the model of nomadic subjectivity “in flux, never opposed to a dominant hierarchy yet intrinsically other, always in the process of becoming, and perpetually engaged in dynamic power relations both creative and restrictive.” For many…
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Evan Nicholls Surreal-Absurd Sampler
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.
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Anthropocene Poetry
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.
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Fly in the Ointment
Working on new prose poems for Smashing Time manuscript. From Northern Ireland to Mormonism and Utah and beyond. Maybe it will become a novel in prose poems. Or hybrid whatever. Here is one called “Fly in the Ointment.”
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Straw Time
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.
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The Grass Grows Its Own Language
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…
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Saint Sweat
“The soul delights in the body. When we arrived, we discovered we had never left. When we departed, we discovered we had already arrived. The soul needs a sweaty handjob. Pretty souls in sweaty flavours. Perky souls in sweaty colours.”
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SMILE TIME
A little portfolio of new prose poems at Tupelo Quarterly. Thank you Eva Heisler. It makes me happy to be among such fab company of international writing. Here is a reading of one of my prose poems. It is called “Smile Time.”
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Tupelo Quarterly
A portfolio of my poetry, from my manuscript Smashing Time, has just landed at Tupelo Quarterly. Mormon missions, pioneer days with armies of bonnets, candid camera as newly arrived immigrants in America. Fallen fathers, sick fathers, war fathers. Learning from the smiles of dead men, sure of their mission, munching on grass. Lotsa journeys in…
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The Woodward Review
Excerpt from my unpublished novella, The Dreamlife of Honey, just published over here at The Woodward Review at Wayne State University in Detroit. Happy Days!
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Follow up to The Green Monk in Progress
On the day between the dead and the living, returning again to the beginner’s mind of creation. On the day between the dead and the living, the spirit of The Green Monk has returned to me. There are so many countries floating through me. The country of childhood is one of them. That feeling of…
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Grzegorz Wróblewski interviewed by Jefferson Hanson about his book Shanty Town
Expansive interview here with the artist Grzegorz Wróblewski about his book of asemic writing: Shanty Town. It is a book for the future as well as the ancient past. Cosmic and personal. “Asemic writing roams freely in the timeline. Calligraphy meets a hologram, and hologram meets electronic, improvised sounds. Together they form a more capacious…
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OPENING TO DREAMLIFE OF HONEY
After devouring everything Édouard Levé, Thomas Bernhard, Clarice Lispector, Lydia Davis, Annie Ernaux, Rachel Cusk, David Markson, & Jon Fosse, I found a way to move forward with my second autoficiton novel, The Dreamlife of Honey. There are still some touches, forever touches, or maybe tweaks, to move the manuscript into book form, plus, of…
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SHANTY TOWN
Nice treat in the post today. It’s Shanty Town by the painter and poet Grzegorz Wróblewski. “Fragmentary jottings, sketchy doodles, proto signals.” “Manic notes from the underbelly.” What a journey! Asemic writing, published by Post-Asemic Press.
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Translating Grzegorz Wróblewski
“I was interested in Grzegorz Wróblewski’s work from the very first pages. I devoured the English translation of the book Copenhagen. It was incredible. After rereading it I could also then appreciate the neobaroque and grotesque gestures of mixing the sacred and the profane.” – Peter Burzyński. Peter Burzyński discusses the challenges and thrills of…
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Back in the day at The Horse Hospital
Back in the day at the Horse Hospital in London versions of my poems from book Rides . . 2011 . . a different time . .
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Hasso Krull
Reading Six Estonia Poets from the New Voices from Europe & Beyond series from Arc Publications. Terrific project, & needed. Hasso Krull is becoming a fav poet, & others in there interesting too. Here is one of Krull’s poems. More can be found over here too at Poetry International.
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Grzegorz Wróblewski – Surreal-Absurd Prose poems – Translated by Peter Burzinsky
Some surreal-absurd prose poems of Grzegorz Wróblewski over at Tupelo Quarterly, translated by Peter Burzinsky.
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Dark Surrealism of Zdzisław Beksiński
At Beksiński na Śląsku in Tychy, we viewed some nice paintings. Dark surrealist journeys from the 1970s to somewhere like 2005. The gallery itself was not so great. They could have done a much better job of the lighting, set up etc. And 10 euros for entry is a bit steep for such a small show…
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Friday Prose Poem
Today’s prose poem is “Vanity, Wisconsin” by Maxine Chernoff. Published in 1979. How far we have traveled with our snapshots.
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Wednesday Wisdom Nuggets
Here are some sultry and less sultry wisdom nuggets for Wednesday. Courtesy of the poet James Richardson. In the year 2001. Oh the beginning of centuries.
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TRAIN TO BRIGHTON
I used to write on trains. I wrote a whole book of train rides. It is called Rides. You can buy it here. It is maybe my favourite book. Here is a sample. This one is the train ride to Brighton. Forwards and backwards. It is about my mission.
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Hearts Emitting Sparks to Other Hearts in Deep Space
How is your heart. Does it spark. Here is a prose poem from my book Puppy (Beir Bua Press). Available over here.
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Jeremy Over
I’m not sure why I persist in associating absurdity with happiness when the concept is rooted in death and when a human induced sixth mass extinction has recently upped the absurdity stakes significantly. But here we are. ‘Now for lunch’ as Ron Padgett writes at the end of his poem ‘The Death Deal’.”
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Laura Wetherington
The Lincoln Review is one of the best new lit mags on the planet. Probably the best in the UK. So yeah. Great new issue over there now and Laura’s poems are terrific! Midwinter’s Day (Bernadette Mayer) meets Lunch Poems (Frank O’Hara) with connections to my book Rides (written on trains forwards and backwards around…
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Asemic Paintings
Grzegorz Wroblewski is a painter, poet, playwright, essayist, and more. He left Poland in 1985 to live in Copenhagen. He is one of my favourite surreal-absurd poets. Also a terrific painter. I have two of his paintings on my wall. Check out his asemic paintings over here
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LOST IN SPACE
Here is a poem, recently published in New World Writing, about sex dolls, love, and The Cure. It takes place on a Friday.
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Aase Berg Surreal-Absurd Sampler
Some terrific dark surrealism from the Swedish poet Aase Berg over at Mercurius. In the 1990s Aase was a member of Surrealistgruppen in Stockholm. Lemurs and guinea pigs. Body horrors. Dark matter. The language dense and rich. Gothic post-human. Check out the poems over here
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Luke Palmer Surreal Absurd Sampler
“There’s a freedom and a weightlessness that comes with working alongside another version of yourself.” Surreal pop art with Brad Pitt, Matthew Broderick, Jeff Goldblum, Bruce Forsyth. And more. This week’s surreal-absurd sampler is Luke Palmer. Check em out over at Mercurius.
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Kim Hyesoon Surreal-Absurd Sampler
This week, over at Mercurius, terrific surreal-absurd sampler. South Korean poet Kim Hyesoon (translated by Don Mee Choi). The poems are from I’m Ok, I’m Pig!, her 2014 Bloodaxe collection.
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folio : twenty-eight short takes on the prose poem:
Happy to have my work in this folio of prose poems. It is an interesting one- the prose poem. Sometimes I think I will go back to line breaks, but then the prose poem pulls me back in there. The cadence of the new sentence. The space between them. But lately, more and more surreal-absurd…
Never Mind the Beasts 