about
Author: Marcus Silcock
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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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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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“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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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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Excerpt from my unpublished novella, The Dreamlife of Honey, just published over here at The Woodward Review at Wayne State University in Detroit.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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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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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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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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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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“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 in London versions of my poems from book Rides . . 2011 . . a different time . .
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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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Some surreal-absurd prose poems of Grzegorz Wróblewski over at Tupelo Quarterly, translated by Peter Burzinsky.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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“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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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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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…
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Super thrilled, after a long spell of no-gos, to have five prose poems at New World Writing. Sex dolls, rhinestones, squirrels, mojo, and a winter pouch.
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“The dirty old unconscious is always toiling away down there, cooking up something peculiar and true; day in, day out; night in, night out; which might be turned into a poem.”—Mark Waldron 2022 kicks off with Mark Waldron. A surreal-absurd sampler. You can read them here at Mercurius.
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Jolly good journeys with trio of surreal-absurd readings last night with launch of my book Puppy. Also Rhubarb by Tom Jenks and Vik Shirley’s Grotesquerie for the Apocalypse. Thank you to Michelle Moloney King and Beir Bua Press for organising.
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Online reading and launch of Puppy (Marcus Slease), Grotesquerie for the Apocalypse (Vik Shirley), and Rhubarb (Tom Jenks) this coming Friday Nov 26th 2021. A Surreal-absurd feast! Grab you free tickets here
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Puppy is being launched and celebrated with two other terrific books and writers next Friday 26th November 8PM UK time. A Surreal-absurd evening with Marcus Slease, Tom Jenks, and Vik Shirley. Come join us!!! Free tickets for the online event here
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“Are you back in your childhood, says Mandy. Back, says Charlie. There too, says Mandy. I’ve always loved my smurfs, says Mandy. The little blue people. It was hard not to chew them.”
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“I think the poems I really love are the ones where the thought is happening (or being reanimated) in front of you.”— Luke Kennard
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“My favourite Absurdist poetry is the kind that pulls you into a dreamlike situation, and makes you question what is real, what isn’t, and whether that even matters.”—Jenna Clake This week’s surreal-absurd sampler is a doozy over at Mercurius
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“These poems are from a manuscript I’m working on called The Vogue for Flatness, so we’re still learning about one another. Poems for me are a way to filter the world, to make sense of it, to live in it. Perhaps it’s having been raised in suburbia or a childhood steeped in comics and cable…
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“touching my dancing hands like a robot back walking that I don’t feel too sorry for but I know the cold that’s hitting me was hitting my face to the claws ”
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This surreal absurd sampler is a nice combo. Some psycho-sexual Bird King poems from James Knight and art from Alex Stevens. Check em out over here at Mercurius.
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“I’ve been writing requiems for people I admire lately, some of them fictional, some of them still alive. These folks may have ended up on gum wrappers or Mr. Cobain’s t-shirt or Mr. Zapruder’s movie. They usually share a unique talent that still can’t compensate for a unique and profound sadness. These are a few…
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“They mine the ways in which we deceive and are deceived; how our pursuit of meaning and intimacy so persistently misfires; how unremitting is the absurdity, and yet how heartily we laugh into it.”
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” . . . blame ‘the Other,’ who claims to be an ironic, apocalyptic iconoclast, who had nothing but a deadpan beside him and marijuana garden beneath to piss in whilst swinging from the gallows and birthing this into existence.” – Charles J March III Check out this terrific surreal-absurd sampler of erasure poems from…
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“There was a game I used to play as a child. My friends and I would turn off the lights of a room and stare at each other’s faces. Because we could only see vague outlines, our imaginations would fill in the details, would distort the faces we knew until they were strange and stranger.”…
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“I grew up on French surrealisme (my mother would read us Paul Eluard’s poetry at bedtime) and I visit this open-ended poetic space whenever I am struggling to make sense of things and/or to write anything sensical. Sometimes, I manage to catch a few sublime fish. Other times, I can only perceive a faint glimmer. ”…
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“During lockdown I explored the idea of immobility — especially the sessile animal known as the sponge. I began to think of myself as a sessile being.”
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“I attempted to investigate what doesn’t fit and why that unfitting is often more important than that that fits. The songs on the record that I like best are the ones that momentarily skip before righting themselves. But you remember the skip later.” — Jeff Alessandrelli
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There was loneliness and isolation in a foreign country. We all wanted to go for a walk. Out there in nature where we all belong. Having a puppy is not easy. There is lots to learn about training a puppy. We are in a big net full of jewels and each jewel reflects the other…
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Here is a little alien poem from my book Play Yr Kardz Right (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2017). The poem is called “Waking Leif.”
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Some of my surreal-absurd poems (from 2010-2014) have been translated into Polish and Danish at Lyrikline, from various collections, most especially Rides (Blart Books) and Smashing Time (miPoesias).
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Here is a reading of four prose poems recently published in The Lincoln Review. From the streets of Barcelona (Gracia) and Castelldefels.
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Happy to have some new work in issue 2 of The Lincoln Review. A literary magazine produced by students at the University of Lincoln. Some prose poems from my manuscript in progress (currently entitled Hermit Kingdom). You can read the poems here.
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Hairy time at hospital for seven days. Emergency operation. Death’s door creaked open, then shut again. I am still here. Loving what I loved ever more! Here is a prose poem about the universe. From my book The Green Monk (Boiler House Press, 2018).
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“One of the things that most frustrated me about living in B_________ was its absence of mammals. Except for people, their cats and dogs, and the bats that flitted around at sunset, I never saw a single squirrel, mouse, or wolf, anywhere. So I ordered five pairs of red breeding squirrels on Amazon using my…
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Art and life are coming together. Puppy training is leaking into my micro stories. Here is one from today. It’s called Hand Signals:
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This week’s surreal-absurd sampler is Matthew Haigh. Poems that use the cut up technique and “centre around cult television shows with a warm, gay-icon slant (The Golden Girls and Murder, She Wrote respectively). Utilising the internet movie database (IMDB).”
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Finally finding my feet again after a long year teaching high school. Working on a book of micro fictions (tentatively called Hermit Kingdom). Here are three from the “Silesian Soul” section. Sailors, moon rabbits, a bardo pond.
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I have a new prose poem of Hungry Ghosts over at Ghost City Press. There is also a white monkey (Biała Małpa). It’s from my manuscript in progress entitled Hermit Kingdom. A nice summer July issue. You can read it over here: https://ghostcitypress.com/jul21poetry/2021/7/18/marcus-slease Here is a little reading of it.
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“Gallons of Gertrude Stein, smatterings of Edith Sitwell and Stevie Smith. Mouthfuls of Michaux, currents of Kafka and Carrington, Donald Barthelme dropping around for tea.” Some terrific new poems by Adam J Maynard. Check em out in the surreal-absurd weekly sampler at Mercurius.
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“The world, of course, is absurd, even more so because it thinks it’s making perfect sense.” – Tom Jenks This week’s absurd-surreal sampler is from Tom Jenks. Humboldt squid, Subbuteo, ducks, druids, and the tragically overlooked 19th century Russian novelist. There are many delights for the fancies. Check out the poems over at this week’s…
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Bean Spasms, a collaborative book between Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett, continues to tickle my fancies. I am writing the puppy section of my work in progress, and ran across “Dog.” Here is a recording.
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After an exhausting year of high school teaching, summer has arrived and I am finally writing. Tim Atkin’s new big Buddhist book of everything, NOTHING CONCLUSIVE HAS YET TAKEN PLACE IN THE WORLD THE ULTIMATE WORD OF THE WORLD AND ABOUT THE WORLD HAS NOT YET BEEN SPOKEN THE WORLD IS OPEN AND FREE EVERYTHING…
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“I like to surprise my reader and myself as I write. To do that, I have to set up a familiar situation on the page in which expectations are clear, then subvert those expectations. To zag instead of zig. Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s weird and creepy and feels like a ghost is typing through…
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A nice simple surrealist poem by Pablo Neruda. Socks. & more.
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A recording of my reading and discussion from The Green Monk and Hermit Kingdom (my manuscript in progress), along with the fabulous poet Colin Herd, is now up with Home Stage on Youtube. Some animal prose poems, fables, magic, surrealism, absurdism, and optimism.
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On Wednesday June 9th, I am reading with the fabulous Colin Herd for Home Stage in the U.K. The event will be streamed live via Youtube. I’ll be reading animal prose poems from my book The Green Monk, as well as some new work from my manuscript in progress: Hermit Kingdom. Surrealistic, minimalist, and sometimes…
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Here is another installment of the surreal-absurd feature at Mercurius Magazine. The poet Chrissy Williams. From her just released book Low (Bloodaxe).
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Enjoying curating the surreal-absurd feature in Mercurius magazine. So much interesting work out there. Here is a selection of poems from Vik Shirley. From her chapbook Corpses and her collection, The Continued Closure of the Blue Door. The surreal is alive and well! Check em out over here
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I am just getting started with the surreal-absurd feature for Mercurius Mag. In the coming weeks, we have some stellar poems from Vik Shirley and Chrissy Williams. To join the conversation, I have featured a few of my own surreal-absurd tales and prose poems. Click HERE to read the selection of surreal absurd tales from…
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I am editing a surreal-absurdist feature for Mercurius magazine. Every other Monday, I will feature an absurdist/surrealist writer to tickle your fancies. First up, we have Zachary Schomburg. A selection of prose poems from his book Fjords vol.2, forthcoming from Black Ocean in May 2021. Read the selection over here.
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In the heat of the first wave of Lockdown, I participated in an collaboration with the poets Calliope Michail and Chris Gutkind. We decided to call it Gravity Bubbles to emphasize both the gravity of the situation (we were all feeling the heaviness of lockdown in the UK and Spain), and the power of art…
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In my youth I ate Jesus body. With Jerry. It was Wonder Bread. Here is the story. A prose poem from The Green Monk (Boiler House Press). It’s called “Leftovers.”
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Just got 2 month year old puppy from the shelter. My life has become Pavlovian.
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My friend in London, Chris Gutkind, created an art project to cope with isolation and lockdown. Photos on a cheapo phone camera. Paying attention to small details around his house. Day to day hopes, despairs, and wonders. Hopefully it will displayed in a gallery sometime this year. It is available to view now at PERMEABLE…
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A selection of Grzegorz Wroblewski’s poetry (translated by Piotr Gwiazda) is now up at Mercurius Magazine from Barcelona. Check them out over here.
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In 2014, I read with Grzegorz Wroblewski at the Rich Mix in East London. My poems, from this collaborative reading in 2014, have now been edited into a new manuscript entitled HUNGRY GHOSTS. Sometimes it takes a while to find the right frame for a book. Hopefully someday it will be published. A recording of…
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Do you like shiny? There is a nice shiny issue of BOAAT from BOAAT Press. I have a shiny poem in there. check it out: http://www.boaatpress.com/bathtub-25
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I’ve got some horses over at Bear Review. The horses are Leonora Carrington’s horses too. The poem is part of my book The Green Monk (Boiler House Press). Check out the horses here
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I’m coining my work nomadic surrealist punk. Punk aesthetics determine the type of art punks enjoy, which typically has underground, minimalist, and satirical sensibilities. Nomadic travels. Nomadic cuttings. Naive art. Surrealist/irrealist/absurdist / conceptual. We could keep tacking on the labels. There’s freedom there, in the hybrids. That’s why I travel, really. 20,000 words into my…
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I am super happy to have an excerpt from my novel Never Mind the Beasts in Mercurius Magazine (out of Barcelona and the world). The excerpt is from the immigration to Vegas section. Circus Circus. Meat loaf and bishops. Irish ninjas. Lotsa hunks. You can read it over here.
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Before moving to Spain, I visited my birth country. Portadown, N. Ireland and then Belfast, to see my biological father. He was a gardener. His wife died. I got an old worker´s hat from her father. World War I. We walked the Shankill. Here is the journey. From my novel Never Mind the Beasts. Available…
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In 2016, when I lived in London, I went on many journeys. I was trying to align my mind with my body. Lunch room tongue assessments. Spine alignment. A doom drone concert. A magic rabbit hat. In the basement where I worked, I got the phone call. I was going to become a father. Then…
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“It was The Great Purge of the 90s. “Religion faced the greatest threat from three groups: feminists, homosexuals and intellectuals,” said Boyd K. Packer, a General Authority, in a speech in 1993. In the fall of 1993, six Mormon writers were rebuked for their feminist intellectual leanings. They became the “September Six.” We felt the…
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Alchemia is a place in the old Jewish area of Krakow. Old world Bohemian. It is also a practice. I wrote “Alchemia” in Alchemia with the aid of the mercurial paintings of Leonora Carrington. “Communion” and “First Star” and “Snow Globe” and “Trinkets” in “Psychic Marmalade” (from my book The Green Monk) were written around…
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A little reading of Russell Edson classics. From his book The Very Thing That Happens (1964). New Years Day. 2021. It is a good time for fire rituals!!!
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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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A little winter journey through The Green Monk. Written, mostly, while staying in the old Jewish quarter of Kraków (Kazimierz), right before Christmas. The year 2016. Inspired by various surrealisms, especially Leonora Carrington and Salvador Dali. The Green Monk is available from Boiler House Press. They make very fine books!
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Have you squirreled away yr nuts? Are you a hidden oogler? Winter is upon us. Here is a short reading.
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When I lived in London, I visited Poland twice a year with my partner. The Polish mountains in the summer. The Manhattan Estate in Katowice for Christmas. For a few years, during spring break, and also summer, we also visited Portugal, Italy, and Spain. We have tried many things for healthier living, mentally and physically.…
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When I lived in the Docklands of East London, next to Commercial Road, it was a battle to keep my gums pink. Here is a short reading, from my novel Never Mind the Beasts, about the many routines from my time in the Docklands. Close to Poplar, in the Lansbury Public Housing Estate. It is…
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When I lived in East London, we walked along the canal near Christmas and ate the Christmas cake. I thought about my family, especially my brother Aaron, gone now 8 years. We were very close growing up as new immigrants in America, and also in Milton Keynes, where he was born.
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I am working on a new book of lyrical essays, inspired by my creative non-fiction workshop, run by the terrific Amy (McDaniel) Robinson. Highly recommended. “My hair should have nothing to do with it, and yet it does, this thick coarse hair, often unruly, I prefer to tame it. My hippy phases were Jesus phases,…
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I am taking an online creative non-fiction workshop, with some terrific folks from Atlanta and the U.K. Taught by Amy (McDaniel) Robinson. It is part of The Art of Everyone and Studio Friend. Composing the Self and the World. I am remembering the importance of community. No one an island. Etc. Readings and prompts and…
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“A new Polish reality show will feature opposite-sex couples only a family means a man and a woman a man and a woman!”
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Back in the day, when the days were longer, and then shorter, much like today but faster, I began to write poetry under cover of full moon during my Mormon mission. Bloating/unbloating. This was the beginning of my behind-the-scenes spirituality. Now part of my behind-the-scenes novel-in-progress, The Dreamlife of Honey. The second in my nomadic…
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After Turkey, and a stint of dog walking in Italy, he moves to London, falls in love, lands a gig as an adjunct professor at an American style university in London. He feels a sense of community with the avant garde poetry community iand starts to write a novel from his experiences living in various…
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Evolution Humans and animals. Hittites, wolves, Charles Manson, bipedalism. What are we really? There is no great plan. Some terrific poems by Grzegorz Wroblewski over at Partisan Hotel. Translated from the Polish by Piotr Gwiazda.
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The novelist I pretend to be is a character invented, for the sole purpose of being obliterated, by the writer I am. The writer I am wants nothing to do with novelist. He suspects the novelist of wanting to restore to fiction the particular order of reality that suffocated him and drove him to write…
Never Mind the Beasts 