Hi there! I’m Marcus Silcock, but you might also know me as Marcus Slease. I was born Silcock and adopted as Slease upon immigrating to the U.S. I could be Marcus Silcock or Marcus Slease. I really can't decide.
I’m an Irish writer from historic Portadown, N. Ireland. My family met American missionaries on a council estate in Milton Keynes, England and converted to Mormonism. When I was just 12 years old, the missionaries helped us immigrate to the United States in 1985. Our first home was a cozy trailer park in Vallejo, California, and then we moved to a former crack HUD home in North Las Vegas and then Hurricane, Utah for small town Norman Rockwell living. My mum dropped out of school at 14 and my step-father at 16. We kept trying to climb the snaky ladders of grotesque American capitalism. From Amyway to door-to-door selling of water conditioners to chocolate moulds and All-American Burpie seeds.
In 2005, I said goodbye to my resident alien card, and extreme capitalism and Mormonism of the United States of America, reduced my life to just 15 kilos, and set off to travel the world and teach English, live a simple and minimalist existence, and work on my art.
I’ve had many jobs in many places. Some of my jobs include construction worker, fast food worker, dishwasher, telemarketer for accidental death insurance, DirectTV, and AOL, warehouse shrink wrapper, door-to-door salesperson, Chevron gas attendant, and many others.
For the past 20 years, I’ve worked as an English teacher at various colleges, universities, high schools and institutes. This allows me to keep breathing.
Currently, I teach English literature and creative writing at a high school in Barcelona.
I’ve performed my work at various festivals and events such as Carrboro Poetry Festival in North Carolina, Soundeye in Cork, Ireland, The Prague Microfestival in Prague, The Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol, U.K., and Cafe OTO, Austrian Cultural Forum, The Parasol Unit, The British Library, The Southbank Centre, Free Word Centre, The Rich Mix, The Horse Hospital and Hardy Tree Gallery in London.
My writing has been collected at The National Poetry Library (London), nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction, featured in Best British Poetry 2015, translated into Polish, Slovak and Danish and has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies in the U.K., Ireland, U.S., Norway and Poland including: Tin House, The Elephants, Fence, New World Writing, Tupelo Quarterly, Ghost City Review, Conduit, Diagram, Little White Lies, The Lincoln Review, POETRY, Bath Maag, Rain Taxi, and Versopolis Review.
I am the co-editor of Surreal-Absurd at Mercurius magazine. Check out the fab features of surreal-absurd poets and poetry over here.
I’ve made my home in such places as Turkey, Poland, Italy, South Korea, the United States, and the United Kingdom – experiences that inform my writing. Currently I live just outside Barcelona (hanging onto my shoestrings with mad rents and far from the typical ex-pats of Europe with their property and luxuries).
Nab one of my books. Enjoy the ride. We are still alive.
Never Mind the Beasts 