about
Author: Marcus Silcock
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In the 1980s we moved from Northern Ireland to Milton Keynes England. They had lots of roundabouts. Here is a new prose poem about the roundabouts. Just published in the new issue of Elsewhere Magazine. https://elsewheremag.org/issue-28/
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A new microfiction, from my manuscript in progress, Seaside Saints, is now up at The Argyle Review. Seaside Saints might become a novella in microfiction about various characters in a small seaside town in Catalunya. There are twenty or so stories so far. This one is about an organ grinder whose golden retriever retrieves the…
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“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…
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I have a new horror microfiction up at Hawkeye Magazine. It is partly inspired by a visit to the magical ancient house of Hugh Behm-Steinberg in Barcelona. Emperors and hermits. Wars and demons and spirits. You can read it over here
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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
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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).
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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…
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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
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“. . . 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…
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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/
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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/
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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/
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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🎉 Double Whammy: Two New Micro Fictions Just Dropped! I’m thrilled to share two fresh micro fictions out in the wild. 🥋👑 The Judo King 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 🌀 Wiggle A love…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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🔥 New Microfiction Published: Bunker at Blood+Honey “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…
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“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.”
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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
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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
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“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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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“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…
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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…
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“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:…
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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. https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/broken-sleep-books-march-2025-launch-tickets-1270331508739?aff=ebdsoporgprofile&keep_tld=1
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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“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!!
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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…
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“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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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“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.”
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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.
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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.”
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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…
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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
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Half Day Moon Press has just released The Life of a Tenement House by Grzegorz Wroblewski (in terrific translation). 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.
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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!
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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
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“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…
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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
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Three surreal-absurd poems by by Grzegorz Wróblewski, translation by Grzegorz Wróblewski and Marcus Silcock Slease. Over at Eunoia Review. Check them out here: Listen Singing Birds Witnesses
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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.
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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…
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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
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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…
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“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.…
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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…
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“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
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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…
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“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…
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A surreal-absurd prose poem from my manuscript Dream Dust. Written while visiting southern Utah. This is called “The Narrows.”
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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!
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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…
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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
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To write poetry at all might be to see what in the world is beautiful because it is absurd. -Ailbhe Darcy
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“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.”
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Read a new poem by Grzegorz Wróblewski from his forthcoming collection of poetry in English: I Really Like Lovers of Poetry. Translated directly by Grzegorz and myself.
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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.
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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.
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An ongoing nomadic surrealist journey. That’s what I’ll call it. Also funk. Nomadic surrealist funk. Here is a sample from the ongoing project: Tangling Llamas on the Tresses of the Sun.
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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.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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“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
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Are you the stinky thinker? It is hard to not become the stinky thinker. There are so many games and we forget to play them. Pull my finger. Pull my finger. Here is a low-key reading of the prose poem “Moon Pie.”
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Here is a low key reading of my prose poem “Sandals” in issue Sprung Formal 18. Perhaps my last publication as Slease.
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We’ll drown before getting devoured by the Swedish dragon
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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.
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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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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.
Never Mind the Beasts 