Surrealist Poetry
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MERCURIUS SURREAL ABSURD VIRTUAL READING MARATHON
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… Read more.
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New 21st Century Anthology of Surreal-Absurd Poetry Released
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… Read more.
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Stuart Ross Surreal-Absurd Sampler
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… Read more.
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Max Jacob’s ‘The Dice Cup’: Insights and Analysis
“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… Read more.
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The Visual Sonnets of Laura Wetherington
“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… Read more.
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Barton Smock
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… Read more.
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Ian McMillan Surreal-Absurd
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… Read more.
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Jeff Hilson Surreal-Absurd
“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… Read more.
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Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi
“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 .… Read more.
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Sin Yong-Mok Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“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… Read more.
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Natalie Shaw Surreal-Absurd Sampler
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.… Read more.
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Ailbhe Darcy Surreal-Absurd Sampler
To write poetry at all might be to see what in the world is beautiful because it is absurd. -Ailbhe Darcy Read more.
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Lee Sumyeong Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“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… Read more.
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Lesle Lewis Surreal-Absurd
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… Read more.
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Sawako Nakayasu Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“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… Read more.
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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… Read more.
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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… Read more.
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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.… Read more.
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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… Read more.
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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. Read more.
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NEW WORLD WRITING
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. Read more.
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Luke Kennard
“I think the poems I really love are the ones where the thought is happening (or being reanimated) in front of you.”— Luke Kennard Read more.
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Jenna Clake
“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… Read more.
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Patricia Farrell
“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… Read more.
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James Knight
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. Read more.
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Glen Armstrong
“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… Read more.
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Lorelei Bacht
“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… Read more.
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Vik Shirley
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,… Read more.
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Zachary Schomburg
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… Read more.
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Russell Edson 2021
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!!! Read more.
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POST APOCALYPTIC POEMS
The experimental writer, artist, and musician Stephen Emmerson has been running a podcast entitled “Post Apocalyptic Poems.” Post Apocalyptic Poems is a new series which imagines that an unspecified event… Read more.
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Lifescape by Vicente Huidobro
Landscape and lifescape, how can we know which is which, in other words inside outside, but we like to make the difference, isn’t it important to make the difference? If… Read more.
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Play Yr Kardz Right Part Two
Collage was invented by the surrealists and Max Ernst took it to another level. Now, of course, collage is a common method, but it is still magical. There are so… Read more.
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The Cough by Barbara Guest
A prose poem, by the great Barbara Guest, from 1999, before the turn of the millennium, which somehow seems significant. A nomadic surrealist dreams of real life. Read more.
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Creative Impermanence Studio
I am teaching an online class, in March 2020, for the The Poetry School in London. The nature of life is change and clinging to the illusion of permanence often… Read more.
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Lucifer by Ljiljana Đurđić
A surrealist poem from the Serbian poet Ljiljana Đurđić. Ljiljana Đurđić has published three collections of poetry, including Swedish Gymnastics. She is also a terrific translator of Sylvia Plath. Read more.
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Get Drunk
by Charles Baudelaire Read more.
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Earlids
This prose poem was written in the mid-seventeenth century by the Spanish Jesuit priest, scholar and philosopher Baltasar Gracian. It is taken from the book A Pocket Mirror for Heroes… Read more.
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Homage to the Lame Wolf
Poem: Vasko Popa. Translation: Charles Simic. Reading: Marcus Slease. Images: Dora Maar & Claude Cahun Read more.
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Forgetful Numbers by Vasko Popa
A fairy tale for numbers by the poet Vasko Popa. Terrific nighttime reading. Read more.
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Give Me Back My Rags by Vasko Popa
Falling in love, more and more, with Vasko Popa. His selected, translated by Charles Simic, is terrific. (Background Music: Jimmy Giuffre’s “Scootin’ About” & “Cry, Want.”) Read more.
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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… Read more.
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Surreal Irish Childhood
This is a song from my Irish childhood called chuck chuck cheese. It has been slightly altered. I sung it three times with different types of altered voices (high, deep,… Read more.
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THE AUTOMATIC CRYSTAL
by Aimé Césaire (trans. Mary Ann Caws). Read more.
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BROOMS
“Brooms” by Charles Simic. Performed by Marcus Slease. Read more.
Never Mind the Beasts 