Website of the writer Marcus Slease
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.”
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.
“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 years now this “world alien,” as he jokingly calls himself in the interview with Wetherington, has been writing poems that celebrate flexible identity and mobile imagination. Equally introspective and retrospective, Play Yr Kardz Right beautifully illustrates his nomadic poetics” (Piotr Gwiazda in Jacket 2).
The literary scholar, translator, and poet Piotr Gwiazda wrote a very thoughtful review of my nomadic surrealist work, especially Play Yr Kardz Right.
Also, there is a nice pic of Desperate Literature bookshop. Madrid’s answer to Shakespeare and Company in Paris and where Play Yr Kardz Right was launched.
The review of my work, entitled”Nomad Life,” is available over here at
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 we lost it. The little bean wasn’t sticking. It was very painful. We left London for Madrid. We started over.
Here is an excerpt from those journeys. From my novel Never Mind the Beasts. Available now from Dostoyevsky Wannabe.
“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 ripple. We were reading and thinking people. We read Sunstone, a Mormon intellectual magazine, and thought about our heavenly mother. You are not supposed to think about heavenly mother, only heavenly father. Heavenly mother is sacred. You cannot talk about her.”
“I don’t wear the sacred garments, shake the secret handshakes, whisper my secret name. I carry a slew of identities. I do not believe any of it. The still small voice. The tingles and bosom burning, but I still search for it, through the altered states of art and language. A spirituality. I leave one country for another and another and another and another and another and another. Where do you come from is a question I receive in every new country.”
Mormonism, small town Utah, baptism for the dead, Prague, Katowice, hippy days in the Northwest of America.
My lyric essay, “Chums,” just published at The Art of Everyone.
Read it here
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 Christmas time five years ago in Katowice, Poland.
“The Bloated Moon,” “Palms,” “Spring Fever,” and “Sacred Spring” were written during Easter in Madrid.
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!!!
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!
Have you squirreled away yr nuts? Are you a hidden oogler?
Winter is upon us.
Here is a short reading from
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. The visits to the continent inspired us to move from old Britannia. Easier lower middle class living. Healthier. More sunshine.
Never Mind the Beasts is a hybrid novel: essay, memoir, prose poetry, flash fiction, travelogues.
Here is an excerpt from some of the travels. It starts in Poland at Christmas in 2014. Later it moves to Faro (in Portugal).
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 good to keep your gums pink.
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.
Here is an excerpt, about my brother and family and Christmas in East London, from my first novel Never Mind the Beasts. Available now from Dostoyevsky Wannabe.
