Never Mind the Beasts

Website of surreal-absurd writer Marcus Silcock

about

Born in Portadown, Northern Ireland, Marcus Silcock has made his home in such places as Turkey, Poland, Italy, South Korea, the United States, Spain, and the United Kingdom – experiences that inform his surreal-absurd stories.

  • England’s Lane Bookshop

    I just purchased a ton of indie poetry books at a massive discount at the bookshop in London called England’s Lane. The bookseller in charge of poetry really knows their stuff.

    I now have a big hoard of mostly innovative American poetry books. Terrific. Here are some of the poets:

    Aram Saroyan, Bernadette Mayer, Bill Berkson, Clark Coolidge, Geraldine Kim, Glen Baxter, Piero Heliczer, Steve Carey.

    It is like being reborn when you find gems of indie poetry books. It is one of my favourite activities. When I lived in North Carolina I would spend hours and hours hunting for small press poetry books. Indie presses are the best!

     

    Here is a poem built of the indie books:

     

    England’s Lane



    American Ones:
    “salted as a ceasefire in a Christian Bakery”


    Sudden Address:
    “moveable panels or stretcher bars”


    All Poet’s Welcome
    “Includes C.D.”


    Trundling Grunts in The Book of Night Terrors
    Lady Air The Natural History
    This Time We are Both 
    Complete Minimal Poems
    Povel
    A Purchase in the White Botanica
    Art Chronicles Midwinter Day
    Selected Steve Carey




    Grafton Road Chalk Farm Gospel Oak
    Harringey Green Lanes

  • from Fractured Burps (in Progress)

    Marchmont Street Soaps


    02890446574


    via hand signals outside the window


    sucking the tips of impertinent fingers


    you get A to B


    huskypoint


    I have a big appetite for love


    sleeping on the floor on the sofa


    a number of fixed positions


    he was just complaints


    NVQ’s


    what am I?


    she got Spanish two months ago


    when she was born


    I turned it down


    what can I pour THIS into?


    silver flashes


    the flapping bellies of fishes


    no more Eng Lit Krits


    lookin to find your click thing


    women do it more


    you can use your imagination


    obviously wanting to get the money from IT


    three years


    I can’t afford IT but I can write IT down


    ahhh shucks


    beer and the good stew in the gardens


    gum brothers vitch vitch


    what do You want from ME?


    short shorts in Russell Square


    let’s get rich IN SPIRIT

  • crunching numbers second draft

    Crunching Numbers

    the price of beans of which I am constituted
    the dude behind all that rain
    time has this shadow 
    check this dog a bone
    every man jack gets to be a wife 
    the states
    somewhere does a sky bend into lassitude 
    a full court press 
    into high hips 
    into a form fitting sheet
    new jack sex
    thunder puddles
    in Wood Green
    no pev no gup ya
    no pa pa

  • some of my older work . . .from September 2005 . . . Desert City Reading . . . North Carolina

    http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/track=3285123286/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/

  • Jim Goar’s Past Simple 10

    up and ready to rock!!! Check it:


    Past Simple 10

  • ongoing from Fractured Burps manuscript . . . first draft

    Crunching Numbers
    an earcheck 
    breath from a hooded hook
    no pev no 
    gup ya
    part of a slipper 
    they call it a gulf
    time has this shadow 
    sometimes a chant
    the dude behind all that rain
    check this dog a bone
    every man jack gets to be a wife 
    the price of beans of which I am constituted
    somewhere does a sky bend into lassitude 
    full court press 
    no pev no
    thunder puddles
    at night the states
    into high hips into a form fitting sheet
    new jack sex
    what we call it could be worse
    thunder puddles
    in Wood Green
    no pa pa

  • reading from Hello Tiny Bird Brain (Knives Forks Spoons Press)

    Soho Curzon . .. Hello Tiny Bird Brain . . . new poetry collection from Knives Forks and Spoon Press . . . check it out here:


     Hello Tiny Bird Brain at Soho Curzon

  • Marcus Slease covers Steve Carey

  • Hello Tiny Bird Brain launch

     

    hello tiny bird brain

    marcus-slease
    Poetry at the Soho Curzon
    Wednesday August 31st 2011~ 7pm ~ Entrance free
    Marcus Slease launches ‘hello tiny bird brain’
    Wayne Clements launches ‘western philosophy’
    collections published by Knives forks & Spoons press
    also readings by
    Tim Atkins – Elizabeth Guthrie- Michael Zand
    Linus Slug – Patrick Coyle & SJ Fowler
    the Soho Curzon cinema, Mezzanine bar
    99 Shaftesbury Avenue London W1D 5DY 0871 703 3988

  • make your ways around London

    it’s

    PECKHAM IN FURS!!!!

    AND POETS AT THE URBAN PHYSICS GARDEN

  • play translated into English by Grzegorz Wroblewski

    we need many more plays of Grzegorz Wroblewski translated into English . . . please please . . . money . . relationships . .  happiness . . .  and of course the language here . . . works really well in English . . . great translation . . .

    check it out  . . .

    Turning Point:

    http://ustheater.blogspot.com/2011/08/grzegorz-wroblewski-turning-point.html

  • love Stan Brakhage . . . visionary film making . . . for real . . .


    Blues For Stan Brakhage from Michael Mayer on Vimeo.

  • first draft (for Smashing Time Manuscript)


    Brief Bio

    in sloppy joes in ear-muffs 
    dropping coins for Dr. Pepper 
    in the city of trailer parks 
    in the jerks of god 
    in a gumball machine 
    in the Hamburger Helper 
    in the nerf inside 
    the unobstructed science of free donuts 
    in Vallejo California  


    a rock hurled from a car window 
    the lack of snow oh 
    on the way to Rancho 
    camel trucking 
    partially submerged birds 
    a shooting in the aimless rivets 
    in bio-gents in bio-gents 
    pummeled into the museums 
    of Joseph Smith 
    of golden plates
    where the highway 
    jumbles into a shower 
    of thee and thou 
    of milk and eggs 
    a.k.a. the unobstructed science 
    of foreign things 


    on the open grid 
    on the edge 
    where the nods of god 
    are lunar rides 
    like the trembling traffic 
    of astrology 
    watching my looting 
    in the towns of dawn 
    in the hawks of sleep 
    in the dreams of fishtanks 
    of Spanish causeways 
    and vertigo dawns 


    and I am an Amazonian mess 
    in a mudskipper 
    in a rusted can 
    in the happy trails of squirrels 
    in the gyrations of North Las Vegas sunlight 


    I came this way 
    and this is my tiny plastic phallus 
    of the steakhouse 
    a mural for telemarketers 
    No Surrender! 
    all happy surfers 
    misplaced on-ramps
    inside the Pasternak seasoned rain 
    inside the fur of the buffs 
    of St. George in the dark 
    Arabian yoga sun worshippers 
    in the red rocks of Utah 
    in the Olympia of England 
    in the trucks of loaves 
    in the purple flowers 
    in the palace of Alexandra

  • interview with me for Hello Tiny Bird Brain

    interview for Hello Tiny Bird Brain

  • xing the line August 2011.m4v

    low quality recording . . lispy voice . . . part one from Jeff Hilson and Sean Bonney’s reading series X-ing the Line . .. read with the beguiling revenge poetics of Christie Ann Reynolds and the mind blowing mystical musings of Amy Evans . . part two (unrecorded) was a bit lighter with more recent mind bends . . .

  • in the great tradition of 20th century graphic poetry

    http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/seven-poems-oracle-lies-van-gasse/

  • Hello Tiny Bird Brain

    My new book with poems from Elblag, Poland; Trieste, Italy; and London (UK) out now with nice wee press from northern England.

    Check out Hello Tiny Brain here:

    http://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/theknivesforksandspoonspress/HOME.html

  • Marcus Slease reading at Maintenant Slovakia

    Held at the rich mix arts centre in Brick Lane, London on June 18th 2011, Emilia Haugovà and Ivan Štrpka were joined by a half dozen London-based poets to celebrate the sixth event in the Maintenant series. As ever, the Maintenant series advocated a diverse selection of poetic methodologies, ages & nationalities – collecting together some of the most interesting performers Europe has to offer.

  • The Herbarium – Marcus Slease

    A translated Korean folk poem . . for the anthology of plant poems at the Urban Physics Garden in South London last week . . yippie . . . .

  • some hot new translations of Grzegorz Wroblewski

    3:am magazine is kickin in some fresh hot poetry . . . . check out G. Wroblewski . . . stellar as usual:

    http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/grzegorz-wroblewski-5-poems/

  • Regent Street

    30th June 2011


    I want to go more oval in the face
    or perhaps triangle
    this is a sonata for spoiling eyes
    a book left open in the rain
    I’m sitting on an egg timer
    I don’t know
    what a sonata is but is sounds
    good with my morning coffee
    who can water these belching eyes?
    stroll past All Souls
    today’s morning lesson is on birds
    WHO is the you in this?
    “glad I’m not wearing those cream shoes”
    suitcase: ROLL ROLL ROLL
    CLACK CLACK CLACK


    1st July 2011


    ode to Nero
    I suck yr warm frothy milk
    oh frothjoy
    on fashion street
    today two women sit on steps
    next to Ponti’s pizza
    smoking sipping
    hand signals
    cozy morning animals
    it’s Friday and the beginning of July
    for two weeks hazed
    into new job
    a week of metallic throat
    & flem
    I need to wake up
    AGAIN

    the sign on the corner
    says 271 Regent Street: flexible
    offices

    the underground has tweaked out my nose!

    I’ve got to remember I’m
    a visitor

    HERE! THERE! EVERYWHERE!

    an alien & a resident
    so as to be
    possible

    this path is full of pre-chewed
    breadcrumbs
    leaf shadows & bright reflections

    in the garden’s of Nero

    in Rose of York

    insert yr hairy tale

    hairs in the nose grab debris

    whose nose? whose debris?

    big mamma lick my stick

    take yr places please!

    6th July 2011

    Nero. 271 Regent Street. Shuffles in power suit
    gawk ward
    in high heels

    bags slung over

    a sip and a drag

    what does it feel like
    to be human?

    it rained

    there are puddles

    the world grew very small

    spondee
    how did you get in them
    jeans?

    a poke behind the sun

    shiny faces nose skin
    double dragging
    on the way to the office

    the London College of Fashion
    is behind Ponti’s

    a day of light slaps

    this poem is called

    i have an inkling!

    I have a coat I don’t have a coat
    and that’s how
    this day goes

    7th July 2011

    Regent Street

    Nero

    8.16AM

    new allergy pill
    only three hacks
    into tissue
    and now I’ve got an ilk
    no sunny hills
    i watch my jaw move
    as i write

    lookin at passerbys

    what’s in THAT BRAIN?
    &
    THAT BRAIN?

    & THAT ONE! AND THAT ONE!

    Are you a fan of Ezra Pound?
    Richard Parker is
    he made a conference
    I like his Mtns of California

    a skirt with strawberries on a rainy Tuesday

    “I’m not feeling particularly bad today”

    DISCUSS

    TO LOOK UP:

    Robert Elms
    John the jazzman
    the Hanging Gardner of Babylon
    Stoke Newington High Street

    11th July 2011


    Nero. Regent Street. Got all my stamps. And now a free froth joy! I went to Folkstone and my face redenned it is still. The morning sun shines upon it. There is no rock to sit upon. From miles around and to no purpose flies and insects come hither. on my right a middle aged woman rummages a handbag on my left an older man with cane coughs into his hanky and in front a man plays with his Kindle. Where did I place my drive?

    hair tut tut tut!!!

    I have too much
    in my bag
    in my pocket
    in my head
    oh no ya
    blissle
    DOFF!
    to punt
    another man’s
    breathing
    I will buy
    a new shirt today
    I’m no longer
    on the mtn

    14th July


    In twenty years I’ll be dead
    or alive
    but less likely
    neither

    made of this feverish culture
    charge instant steal plate
    called me entirely
    with gray matter
    with everything
    already there
    OOOOPPPPP
    I shall be
    someone else
    BOOK BOOK
    COUGH!
    wiggle under
    the colours
    this is not
    the music
    of the universe
    candy ass
    of childhood
    I’ll blow you a bone
    for the library
    of congressional
    hearings
    you better
    take
    what you have
    human skin

    relaxin into a straight jacket
    positive charge negative charge

    what’s left?

    still reading into life
    fill in the blanks later

  • cool interesting new magazine from Norway

    esp dig Peter Jaeger and Thomas Krogsbol . . . .

    check it out:

    http://lagranada.no/

  • SZMATA – Kelner & Mikes – SHITASS (with lyrics)

    TEXT

  • one of my poem plays published in Everday Genius

    YIPPIE: . . .  love publishing genius and everday genius . .  a happy camper. . . thank you Adam . . .

    check it out:

    http://www.everyday-genius.com/2011/06/marcus-slease.html

  • now one of my favourite literary journals

    great great magazine!! Picked up two issues last night at the x-ing the line reading of Vincent Katz and Barry Schwabsky. Great reading. Really terrific stuff.

    All the greats in Vanitas. NY and beyond!!! Good critical and thematic stuff. Art and poetry. Good for the eyes and ears and all-around brain.

    Feels nice in the hands as well.

    One of the issues I picked up has poems and reflections and stills from films etc.

    Will be my tube reading for a few weeks:

    http://vanitasmagazine.blogspot.com/


    http://www.vanitasmagazine.net/

  • Marcus Slease reading at Maintenant Slovakia in east London 18th June 2011

  • The possibilities of life/art/community

    Fun reading last night!!! Really super enjoyed it. Good to feel the enjoyment. The pleasures of poetry/language/community.

    Really super happy to read from new work in the chapbook Balloons . .

    I like Balloons . . .

    I like the chapbook . . .

    Ewa rocks!!!

    the paper and string and smell of nail varnish on the cover . .

    Did an exchange with Colin Herd and picked up his book

    too ok:

    http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com/2011/04/kevin-killian-welcomes-colin-herds-too.html

    and excellent magazine Anything Anymore Anywhere:

    http://www.anything-anymore-anywhere.com/

    YIPPIE!!!

    Really excited to dig in!!!

    great conversations and gatherings . . .

    great to meet so many fine folks . . .

    great to see Jonty Tiplady with Balloons down his trousers . .

    great to catch up with close friend Michael Zand . . .

    ah the possibilities of language and beings . .

    Big big big thank you to Steven Fowler for being one hella of a host and organising these readings and doing something really different and gutsy for the London poetry world with his Maintenant reading series with European poets  . . .

    exciting times in London!!!

    http://www.sjfowlerpoetry.com/

  • reading tonight in east london

    i am reading tonight with nice mix of poets. If you are around, come on out!!!! Will read some short short poem plays inspired by mr kenneth koch :-)

    Maintenant Slovakia in association with Literature across Frontiers & Arc Publications
    June Saturday 18th 2011 – 7pm – Entrance Free – The Rich Mix arts centre. London
    Ivan Štrpka – Mila Haugova – Marcus Slease
    Tamarin Norwood – Jonty Tiplady – Colin Herd 

  • Marcus Slease Chapbook Balloons (cover art Grzegorz Wroblewki. Made by Ewa))

  • gonna see this band next week in East London . . . yippie!!! Japanese Underground!!

    TEXT

  • recovery mission: Tim Dlugos by Barry Schwabsky

  • North Carolina in 2005

    from my notebook in 2005. Greensboro, North Carolina.

    26 MARCH 2005

    still breathing

    A very intense dream the other night. don’t know if any of you out there ever feels a bit of despair over becoming wormfood, but lately the cycle has been a bit on the downside. Hence a dream to release my anxiety.

    Quite a few of friends in this one: Angie and Jake Decola, Ezra Plemmons, Fay Dacey, Adam and Melissa, Dan Albergotti, Tony Tost, and a lot of people with bits of people I know.

    So we are all in an old house lining up to be executed by firing squad. The soliders tell us if we don’t put up a fuss they will shoot us right in the head rather than riddling us with bullets (and more pain). I ask one soldier if he feels guilty about doing this and he says he’s just doing his job. So we all line up (in a manner familiar to receiving the eucharist). Some old men are excited. One 92 yr. old man tells me he is ready to go with drama. He tells me he is from London and lived through World War Two and is tired of his body. So I watch all these people I don’t know being shot in the head via firing squad. and then when they get to me and my friends they tell us we can go upstairs and compose ourselves for our execution. All of us go upstairs except Dan Albergotti. We are all in one room and some of us begin to cry. I try to imagine what it will feel like not to feel. Angie says she’s not ready. I sneak downstairs and Dan is in a chair and a twin Dan shoots him in the head and both the shot dan and the Dan shooting laugh. I run upstairs. Tony is playing with a large pot of jelly and says he wants to feel one last time. Ezra leads me to the balcony and it turns out it’s about a 100ft. drop to the rocks and ocean. He shakes his head and I get excited. I tell everyone we can tie some bedsheets together and try and climb down. Adam tells us we don’t have a 100ft of bedsheets. Fay tells us we must move into a circle and dance one last time. I move out to the balcony and find a large rain stick. a small camera is located in the top part of the stick. Jake tells me this is the camera they use to line up their guns. He asks me if I can reprogram it so the soldiers misfire. I dismantle the rainstick and somehow extract energy from it via some hand feeling technique. Melissa asks if we should consider an orgy before we are called down to be executed. Tony asks us all to feel the pot of jelly and estimate our lives. we all hear a few shots downstairs and then some screams. a man comes into our room with a bloody white smock and tells us he’s the barber and would we care for some opera? I quickly say no thinking it is code for something other than opera. He tells us all the girls must go to another room to prevent fraternization. So Tiffany, Angie, Fay, and Melissa all move to the room next door. We all hug. I begin to sweat wondering if I should just jump. Ezra suggests we steal the canons downstairs and put up a fight. Tony says he doesn’t want to be tortured by The Barber. Then we are called downstairs. We all sit in rows and watch a video of the conversations in our room. The chief of police pauses the video and tells us to get ready for some humor. He presses play and we all watch me singing and chanting with the rainstick. we all laugh. I realize my pointless ritual. We are then ordered to line up for our execution. Dan waves at us. The chief of police reminds us if we try anything funny the barber will make our endings less than pleasant. I look at Ezra and he nods. I look at Jake and he nods. Tony begins to sing a beautiful song to distract the firing squad. His song is something like Dancer in the Dark. Just as we are about to make our move the house peels back and the chief informs us we are released to enjoy the sea air one last time. But we will be rounded up again very soon. We run out onto the beach and I find Tiffany and we hug and breathe and weep. Tony sings to us as we all hug. Melissa and Angie and Jake and Dan and Adam and Ezra and Fay and me and Tiffany hug and laugh and sing as we run down the beach. I feel Relieved to breathe the fresh air. To watch the waves one last time.

    I woke up relieved feeling fantastic. As cliche as it is, the morning air felt great.

    Two nights before the dream, I watched this movie:

    BRAZIL

  • The Unbearables . . . Mike Topp . . . etc.

    The Unbearables are lightin my fire!! Mike Topp’s Shorts are Wrong is super super!!

    Still exploring Sharon Mesmer. Hm . . .

    thanks to Grzegorz Wroblewski over in Copenhagen for pointing me in their direction . . .

    http://virginformica.blogspot.com/

    The Unbearables:

    http://www.unbearables.com/blog/

    mike topp shorts are wrong.jpgthe unbearables.jpg

  • colin herd

    just read the poems again . . . and became even happier!!! Very very happy!!! So many possibilities for poetry just when I was feeling that straight jacket again . . . .

    Eileen Myles, Kenneth Koch, Bernadette Mayer

    meet

    Colin Herd!!!

    Please don’t leave the island mr. Colin Herd . . . we need you!!!

    Read them again and weep!!!

    http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/six-poems-colin-herd/

  • poems and interview with Colin Herd

    This poet makes me excited about the future of poetry on this island . . . good interview too . . .

    really dig the poetry A LOT!

    interview:

    http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/maintenant-63-colin-herd/


    Poetry


    http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/six-poems-colin-herd/

  • a few new poems recorded

    http://soundcloud.com/marcus-slease/audio-recording-on-tuesday

  • "Godzenie" play in Stimulus/respond

    my poem play “Godzenie” in the latest issue of Stimulus/Respond . . .

    a fashion/architecture/art mag with some literature . . .

    visually centred mag  . .

    check it out here:

    http://www.stimulusrespond.com

  • lucifer poetics/ desert city reading series

    The lucifer Poetics Group and the Desert City Reading Series (run by Ken Rumble) and the Blue Door (Todd and Laura Sandvik) and Carborro International Poetry Festival (organized by Patrick Heron) and lots of spontaneous events . . .  this is where I was given wings . . . . so much generosity . .  this is what it is about . . . community . . .

    sooooooooooo much was happening . . . .

    2004 season

    http://715space.bandcamp.com/album/desert-city-2004-05-season

    2005 season

    http://715space.bandcamp.com/album/desert-city-2004-05-season

    The Band ( I missed this):

    http://715space.bandcamp.com/track/reading-in-the-mirror

  • my reading from 2005 . . . lucifer poetics . . . north carolina

    I was surprised by this . . . forgot about this work . . . and my voice/accent has changed from all the foreign traveling and isolation . . . i kinda miss this guy in the video . . . coming back around to that playfulness now again . . .  phew :-)

    http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/track=3285123286/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/

  • narratives (still very much in progress)

    Irish Ninja
    Somewhere around the age of 20 I had been looking to get my accent back that would
    have been 1995 when I first came back to Milton Keynes & Portadown
    BOYO after moving to Vegas 
    where the middle school 
    was full of Mexicans hombre
    and a girl named Candy squinted 
    when she smoked a cigarette through her gaped tooth and BOYO 
    did she love Duran
    Duran and French kissing
    I hadn’t learned the French and loved
    Jesus but did play
    spin the bottle with no
    tongue for Jesus I
    hadn’t learned the cursive 
    so the curly haired Mexican teacher 
    who was a finalist for space 
    but Christa McAuliffe beat him to it & 
    was blown up in the process showed us 
    an experiment with a glass tube and a cigarette and the tube filled up with smoke 
    and the glass bottom got yellow and he said 
    this is what happens to your glass belly 
    BOYO my accent was still thick 
    and the girls wanted to play four
    square but I hadn’t learned the cursive 
    so I was after school with a shy Mexican girl and I was her 
    Irish ninja & made up some move I called
    the slot machine jackpot arm twister and I told her I was 
    on the run and if any Irish 
    ninjas showed up to keep 
    the beans in her belly
    after school I stayed up late looking 
    into the mirror & tired of not 
    being understood I elongated 
    my a’s & listened to Grandmaster Flash & tried to breakdance 
    on a piece of cardboard and a Vegas 
    Mormon accent began to kick in 
    then which was really 1950’s America 
    but I didn’t know that then & on Sundays we took on Elizabethan English with thee 
    & thou & brother & sister & handshakes & half moons under shirts & I got all mixed 
    up in 1995 after visiting Portadown 
    & Milton Keynes & leaving a Mormon mission which was in Boise 
    Idaho & for the first time since 
    I left I wanted to turn back 
    the clock get back what I lost 
    that whale in the belly UGH
    and now I am back in London
    hello again & this is 2011 & 
    I have an American accent 
    and my past is still my past 
    and my present is three steps
    behind my past oh God-
    Zenie and I have a British passport 
    YUCK and an American accent 
    hm whatever that means 
    & that’s OK too I guess I am ok 
    with that & I guess whatever 
    it means is sort of up for grabs and I am really up for grabs 
    with Portadown somewhere down there in the cities of the belly
    my green card for America has expired 
    my Northern Irish accent has expired 
    my Mormon accent has expired and I will expire too

  • third revision

    THE PRINCE OF MIST BY THE BEST SELLING AUTHOR OF THE SHADOW OF THE WIND
    this version left blank due to rules regarding blog posted poems and submissions to mags . . hm . . . not sure about that . .  ah well . . .

  • saturday morning revision

    THE PRINCE OF MIST BY THE BEST SELLING AUTHOR OF THE SHADOW OF THE WIND
    I’m petite Asian and can handle any cock
    they fix everything here
    take your sandals to the shop
    i have cabbed upon this 
    mind barking like a cork
    this is eski yeni
    in other words Samsara
    hello kebab
    hello clam
    hello sweeeeet buttery balik ekmek
    I weep too much
    or not at all
    highway of plastic gunk
    hello beer and no sex 
    hello dear hello
    WAKE UP
    we live in a desert
    in spring it is mud
    in summer it is brittle
    in winter it snows
    Oh Ankara
    father is getting old
    Turks sell turquoise 
    when god stiffens yr spine
    serve a nut to yr squirrel
    Oh Joseph Smith
    do you want my hand
    or my bed
    yr front is hiding yr rear

  • Friday night makings and readings

    Ewa is putting nail polish on chapbook cover of chapbook Balloons. The ink with title and name did not dry on Napalese paper. 


    Some copies of cover painting have now been printed on tracing paper. 


    Grzegorz Wroblewski’s These Extraordinary People:


    http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljm5dqlW6n1qc8hseo1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1306620007&Signature=WWRskYoycHtVOxghlSSKFB12IrU%3D




    Getting dizzy with fumes. We need to make a mock up for the chap. Print. Glue. We have a bone to make the pages flatten. A brush for gluing. A bowl.


    Should be ready to go for my reading at Rich Mix in London on 18th June.


    Earlier read some mighty good Hungarian gypsy poetry over at Milk Magazine


    Attila Balogh:
    http://milkmag.org/balogh.html 

  • THE PRINCE OF MIST BY THE BEST SELLING AUTHOR OF THE SHADOW OF THE WIND

    (friday afternoon. Tasmac. Northwest London. 10 min break time . . . recollecting in tranquility the delights of living in Ankara and feeling that thing commonly called nostalgia but for something that isn’t quite grasped or expressed  . .  what is IT?)

    many times

    i have cabbed upon this

    in eski YENI

    this is my brain

    on Turkish skirts

    hello kebab

    hello clam

    hello sweeeeet buttery balik ekmek

    hello beer and no sex

    hello dear hello

    we live in a desert

    in spring it is mud

    in summer it is brittle

    in winter it snows

    Oh Ankara!

    do you want my hand

    or my bed?

                                                                                                     

  • bored no longer

    Jeff Hilson’s In the Assarts (My fav Hilson yet!!!)

    Tim Atkins Petrarch (from Barque Press) (my fav Atkins yet!!)

    Hilson and Atkins Atkins and Hilson a cold drink of water in the desert of British poetry!!!

    Kenneth Koch’s poem “On Beauty”

    Elffish Jon (the unassarts) . . . . from Linus Slug . . .

    Now I remember why poetry matters!!!

    Language lives!!!

    More to come . . .

  • where is boredom?

    It is raining in London. I am in Kingsbury. At a business school teaching EFL. The job will end next Thursday.

    I am searching for jobs again. To survive (shelter and food etc. )

    This is a continual process.

    In the meantime, I have become bored (temporarily) of poetry.

    Perhaps boredom can be a good thing, however.

    Getting tired of the same type of poetry being written, or poetry in general.

    I guess if it is not interesting to me it is not worth writing (reading). There are better things to do than write/read poetry. Such as interacting with friends (not virtually). Eating some curry with friends. Having a BBQ with friends.

    I guess I want those worlds of writing and the everyday to come closer to together. I write to awake! To pay attention.

    I guess that is why the NY school has been the most influential for me (and some of the beats). It allows the poetry to enter my life rather than be removed for further study.  It is not a specialized activity.

    I am trying hard to be a generalist. To be humane. Interactions are the most important thing to me, not ideas. At least not all the world’s abstract ideas/philosophies. Whatever the utopian dream. I guess in that sense I prefer the empiricism of Buddhism. The down to earth pacticality. I am most interested in easing my suffering and the suffering of others. How much of that suffering is based on our choices which originate in the mind/state?

    OR

    How did I get here?

    I am not fond of this rain today.

  • Being Generous

    Tim Atkins has written a fantastic review about a book that influenced me a lot when I lived in Poland and continues to inform me sense of what is possible. It is absolutely one of my favourite books of poetry from the last 15 years.

    It is interesting because I love Rhode Island Notebook a lot. And I love the review. I hardly ever love reviews because they feel stiff, insincere, formulaic and who the hell reads them anyway. I trust more the recommendations of my friends (same for music and films). And this review makes me curious about another book and helps me r-engage with Rhode Island Notebook.

    A review should be as interesting as the poetry/art/music we love right? Not an exercise in abstract theory or simply to spurn out another review for the CV to climb the ranks and get that pie in the sky academic position at such and such university.

    And theory. Well . . . with the folks doing phds and getting more estranged from what’s out there . . and more and more limiting in their references and perhaps delusional in the political power of their use of words . . . perhaps think stamp collecting as a political act . . which of course it could be . . . if the people love it . . . and it enhances their lives . . . if it helps them to be more awake more compassionate loving etc. . . . . well more and more and more poets seem to be going to university and never leaving it . . . from student to professor without stepping out into a larger lived world . . . and more often than not I think this has to limit the range . . .

    but of course it is also a very very exciting time to be a poet . . . to write . . . is there ever time when it was wasn’t/isn’t . . .

    And I do think poetry for me . . . well I read it because it enhances my life . . . and I want to connect with the worlds that are contained there . .  and I do think a lived life . .. or an awakening life . . . informs the writing . .

    well . . this review of Rhode Island Notebook has a light touch. and it makes me curious. It is generous. And humane. And honest. And that is the kind of poetry that lights me up. And I want more of these kind of reviews. And I wish we could step out of the careerism of poetry (which is really tied to the university) and just try to be as open as we can with each other as a community . . as communities . .  I mean that is one of the great potential powers of poetry . .. the communities . . .

    Yes!

    Reviews need to be as good as poetry and perhaps even the movies:

    Rhode Island Notebook

  • my interview and poems over at 3:AM magazine

    interview at 3:AM magazine

    poems from smashing time at 3:AM magazine

    big thanks to Steven Fowler . . .

  • WHAT’S HOT!

    I just ate a pig’s ear. I am trying to forget about it. It was chewy and from Bulgaria. A Bulgarian gave it to me. I can still taste it. I will forget soon.

    Southbank for the day. Books borrowed from the poetry library:

    1) The Nancy Book by Joe Brainard (cartoons, narratives, ahhhhhhh boyo it doesn’t get much better than Joe Brainard)

    2) Apprehend by Elizabeth Robinson (read half on the tube. So so. If I read it fast there are some interesting lines I can steal)

    3) Just Space (poems 1979-1989) by Joanne Kyger (looking forward to diggin in) (Philip Whalen, Joanne Kyger, Bernadette Mayer, Joe Ceravolo, Ted Berrigan, Kenneth Koch . . . the centre of the universe . . .)

    4) Ny Poesi (collaborations between British and European poets). Knives Forks and Spoons Press.

    My fav collaborations with My Poesi are between Jeff Hilson (one of the most interesting British poets full stop) and Auden Mortensen (an interesting Swedish poet). Also some mighty fine political poetry from Sean Bonney (one of the best performers of poetry full stop) and Paal Bjelke Andersen.

    Actually I have ordered three books from Knives Forks and Spoons Press. There is some seriously hot hot action happening over there.

    The Knives Forks and Spoons Press is one of the new centres for hot innovative poetry from the UK.

    There is an amazing range of work. And some great flexibility. British poetry can be mighty stiff whether labeled mainstream or innovative (eg Cambridge/the school of Keston Sutherland etc.)

    Arthur Shilling, Oystercatcher, and Crater Press are also stellar presses for chapbooks/pamphlets!!!

    The Knives Forks and Spoons Press is not too expensive either. The editor, Alec Newman, makes it all by hand. I am wondering if Alec Newman is human.

    if you are curious about the interesting shit going down in the UK . . . this is the press worth checking out . . . you might not like it all . . . of course . . . but there is some explosive energy happening . . . long may it continue . . .

    and don’t be fooled by the purposefully “amateur” looking websites . . .

    There is a boatload of very very boring stale poetry.

    These are the presses for interesting fresh poetry from the UK (in no particular order):

    Arthur Shilling Press

    Knives Forks and Spoons Press

    Crater Press

    (Tim Atkins esp. rocks it here)

    Reality Stret

    (see esp. James Davies book Plants and Jeff Hilson’s Stetchers and Peter Jaeger’s Rapid Eye Movement and Jim Goar’s Seoul Bus Poems)

    Veer Books

    (check out In the Assarts for the latest in yummy goodness)

  • Mike Topp

    THE FAVOURITE THINGS OF MIKE TOPP AT THE MAGAZINE THE RUMPUS.

    IT IS A KIND OF OBJECT INTERVIEW.

    MIKE TOPP IS SOMEWHERE BETWEEN ABSURDISM AND 21ST CENTURY SURREALISM.

    WHO IS MIKE TOPP?

     

    blue velvet.jpg

  • some paintings by Grzegorz Wroblewski

    some paintings of Grzegorz Wroblewski

    they are even better live in person . . . .

    so happy happy gluck lick Ewa and I have two of his paintings on our wall . . .

  • publishing genius

    terrific indie publishing . . . restores my hope . . .

    check it out:

    publishing genius

  • Chris Toll’s Disinformation Phase: The Pilgrim Dreaming

    Publishing Genius has some interesting work . . . no reason poetry can’t connect like Indie music scenes in the 80’s and 90’s or punk music in the 70’s . . . etc. etc.

    check out this trailer for a book of poetry forthcoming

    TEXT

  • power money and fame

    small time?

  • DEUTER – PUSTA ZIEMIA

    The empty earth . . . .

    TEXT

  • The Latest from the Netherlands (Hague)

  • from Wonderland manuscript (revised)

    Trendy Club
    (Elblag, Poland)

    put a hole in your skull
    says Roger
    the lid
    is open
    but where are my eyes
    my balcony opens
    don’t let them
    keep you here
    i am giving you
    a ride home
    I have not adapted
    I envy my neighbours
    their incredible skill

  • current readings for week 8th May-?

    Philip Whalen’s Collected Poems

    Kenneth Koch’s Collected Poems

    Kenneth Koch’s The Gold Standard

    Lew Welch’s Ring of Bone

  • Copenhagen+bikes+strand+Christiana+wild west+paintings+poetry ++++

    what a city. What time. Grzegorz Wroblewski. Paintings. Books. Louise Rosengreen (another terrific Danish poet). A journey to a place called Christiana. A freetown. A town at the end of the world. The wild west reborn.

    And the strand. Ahhh what a strand. I was in a painting. It was a nice painting.

    And the bikes. And the colours. I must go again soon!!!

    Pics from the life changing trip:

    some pics from Copenhagen

    poet Louise Rosengreen in action:

    Louise Rosengreen

    This was incredible . .. a bit of spaceman feeling . . . dreamy . . . a town within a town at the end of the world:

    Freetown Christiania

  • poet portraits from HOWL reading some weeks ago in central London

    poet portraits

  • reading from my ms Smashing Time

    poem plays from Smashing Time

  • from Smashing Time (revised)

    on the third day I walked again to the rynek of Rybnik and met a girl who told me to come to the electricity plant and I asked her about poetry and she said Milosz and I said I know and she said that was all she knew plus someone named Szymborska and I said I know but I wanted the underground and she said she could show me the electricity by the lake and I could take a bike or bus and meet her brother who spoke English and all this more or less took two or three hours of hand gestures in the rynek of Rybnik

    on the fourth day I rolled up my sleeves and went into the rynek of Rybnik and combed the place and ate at an Egyptian chain shop called Spinx and they gave me little bits of meat with three different sauces: hot, garlic, and another one I can’t remember and I went again to the discotech which was down down down in the basement in the underground like most Polish pubs and clubs and I saw all the flowers and some statues and I pulled out my camera in the rynek of Rybnik where they minted their own money for the summer and everything seemed named after bugs like Biedronka or amphibians like Zabka and my guidebook to pronunciation didn’t help an iota and I met a 19 year old who gave me her father’s jumper and I felt like her father but ate her dinner and she told me of her modeling ways as we wandered the rynek of Rybnik after 2am in the fog

    on the fifth day I did nothing but sweep the room and plan how I could say slices in Polish and count to ten and count change but on the fifth night I returned again to the rynek of Rybnik and drank drinks and looked at the beautiful peeps gathered in groups to drink and behold there we did dance again in the rynek of Rybnik

  • a wee soundcloud reading from Godzenie

    Godzenie samples

  • Tomas S. Butkus

    Great reading series with interviews and poetry from European poets. Steven Fowler’s Maintenant Series (if you didn’t know).

    This Lithuanian poet rocked it a few weeks ago at Rich Mix in east London and Europe house. Fab fab fab work.

    Check out the interview and poems here:

    Interview

    poems

  • war . . . humankind . . . progress????

    r.i.p. Tim Hetherington

  • playful good snuff!!!

    this poet just keeps on keeping on and spurns out some seriously good language play

    Clark Coolidge chapbook

  • smashing Time (in progress)

    from smashing time

  • Reading a lot of Philip Whalen and Kenneth Koch

    Friday night. A week drawing to a close. Indian stomach rumbles again from the buffet. Settling in with some ginger tea and reading some plays of Kenneth Koch collected in The Gold Standard. Leaning over bed in this small North London room to type on laptop which rests on a foldable chair.

    Will return to Koch’s play George Washington Crossing the Delaware very soon. NY School Poetry is taking my writing in new directions.

    As we all know it is information overload. So much on the internet. Jacket 2. MFA programme grads. it is nice to hunker down with something like Kenneth Koch’s collected and his plays. Focus attention.

    Just ordered Philip Whalen’s collected with parent’s gift certificate for 37th birthday. Be here in a month or less. Whalen’s and Koch and Padgett and Mayer are opening me up.

    I am weighed by memories. So many lifetimes, identities, experiences, countries. I am finding writing as a way to let them go. See them as me and not me. That flickering between existing and not existing. In short, I am finding my way back to writing as life and life as a practice and that practice ultimately as spiritually but not spiritual in the sense of separate from the body. An expansive spirituality. All encompassing. More a perspective. A mindfulness.

    And so it goes . . .

    back to George Washington.

    He just chopped down the cherry tree . . .

    some interesting essays over at Big Bridge (perhaps actually much more enjoyable than Jacket in many ways):

    Philip Whalen essays at Big Bridge

  • Grzegorz Wróblewski, These Extraordinary People, 100 x 100 cm (2011)

    The primitive art of Grzegorz Wroblewki

     

    THESE EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE

  • in and out

    what will and what won’t go. Books are coming in again. All those hundreds upon hundred of books let go in North Carolina to travel the world.

    On the way from parent’s gift certificate:

    Collected Poems of Philip Whalen

    still reading collected poems of Kenneth Koch (the “short ones”)

    wondering about getting Joanne Kyger’s collected poems.

    These are huge books. Whalen and Kyger. “Zen cowboys” as Silliman likes to say.

    Work work work. How much time is spent thinking of “the work.” Whether writing or the day job etc. etc.

    and somehow getting as close as possible to life itself. That membrane of language between. Sometimes in the way. Experience. That is what we crave. Why organized religion does not satisfy. Why anything doesn’t. Including poetry. As it develops into rigor mortis. Keep it fluid. Life is fluid whether we like it or not.

    is anything new? What I am typing as I am looking at the door to catch the tube for a 1 hr 20 min ride on the tube for work is NOT NEW.

    I listen to zen lectures almost every night. Zencast. I want to get closer to life. To you.

  • top dog!!!

    best and most interesting literary journal . . perhaps . . . full stop . . .

    with a new look . .. and layout . . . get your fill . . .

    Jacket 2

    REVISED FOUR DAYS LATER:

    OH NO, HAS JACKET DONE A MERGER TO BECOME AN INSTITUTION. WHO’S IN AND WHO’S OUT. AGH! THE SAME, AGAIN?

    SO IT GOES . . . .

  • via the openned site

    John A. and K. Koch in conversation:

    sense making

  • cathy Wagner on blogtalk radio

    books coming this week with the brown santa for 37th b-day:

    1) The Sore Throat and other poems by Aaron Kunin

    2) The Gold Standard a book of plays by Kenneth Koch

    3) Pink and Hot Pink Habitat by Natalie Lyalin

    4) My New Job by Cathy Wagner

    interesting radio reading and talk with Cathy Wagner over here:

    http://www.blogtalkradio.com/joe-milford-show/2011/04/01/joe-milford-hosts-catherine-wqagner

    Cathy Wagner rocks!!!

  • against national poetry month in America

    Bernstein against national poetry month

  • smashing Time (in progress)

    site specific . . . environment specific . . . time specific . . . music specific . . . and so on . . .

    first take no revisions from notebook . . . 6.30PM-6.45PM . . . Tues 29th March . . .

    Balloons

    *****

    I’ve got a little hill with little green men and green tanks
    in the hills of Milton Keynes

    a bottle of pop
    &
    a bumble bee

    summer ’83

    *****
    Peter Tooth is delightfully
    sane
    (Jubilee Line. Wembley to Kings Cross)

    *****

    the boy scouts of America
    yeeeeeeeee
    still smiling into gorge
    way to dry lake
    to blow off bottle rockets
    with little red white blue flags

    ******
    wee boy bat
    in back-
    seat

    santa on dash

    2 galloons

    of coca cola

    hershey’s kiss
    twinkling in moonlight

    unwrap what you got

    i’m itchy in eyelids

    *****

    the lizards are still
    waiting
    in Vegas

    ******
    man leans over
    notebook
    on tube
    from Wembley to King’s Cross
    as I write what woman
    across said

    ******

    ah cretins

    goodbye

    such clarity come

    help you
    , the horrors ,

    *******

    my scum is so so
    deep
    skanky

    lovebottom

    I’m taking

    my hat off

    it’s almost a midsummer

    night’s

    popcorn

    popping

    on the apricot tree

    adios!

    ego!

    SPLASH!

    ******

    we’re all together

    at Wet N’ Wild

    but you do not

    remember

    stay, o, stay

    amid the hideous faces

    hidden

    behind
    balloons balloons balloons

    BALLOONS

    ******

    now i’ve found

    the poem

    it’s called Balloons

    uhhhhgh

    so quickly

    hop into magnetic field

    balloons contain

    lolly’s

    and clowned out voices

    I can do it, too

    this is where

    we want to go

    to the b-day party

    or the hot dog party

    the balloons in Elblag

    northern Poland

    near station

    a room of cheeseburgers

    squeeze into

    how do you feel

    what do you think

    balloons

    ******

    you’ve heard the poem
    you’ll love the glove

    this is the passage of the arkvark

    *****

    thank you

    steamy

    *****

    I’m squeezing my head thru

    a hole

    in the wall

    you’re the wall

    or I’m the wall

    yr wall or my wall

    it’s your head

    head+hole

    hole+head

    we’re all in

    THIS

    together!

  • listening to The National

    quiet nostalgia . . . a bit of the old alternative sounds . . .

  • revision from Primitive Pianos

    might change previous manuscript title to Gypsy Moth instead of Primitive Pianos. Still thinking of titles.

    Poems written in Spanish Fork, Ankara, Istanbul, Trieste, Elblag, London.

    Revision in progress from Trieste section:

    ******************************

    in heaven

    there is television

    I’m forever blowing 

    bubbles bubbles
    
senora senora

    I’m hung up on 
love

    and love I’m there
    
in a thin white
towel

    what if getting old
    means 
no one
    ever finds you?
    
I’m always in the tunnel

    not older 
not younger

    I’m tired of this 
poem
    but want
    
to give you 
everything

    senorita senorita

  • MY LATEST NY SCHOOL POETRY BOOKS

    It is the 28th March. The weather, of course, is mostly overcast. But I am mostly inside so that’s OK. I spend over two hours everyday on trains, commuting to work. Sometimes teaching at two different campuses at different parts of London. So reading, well, it is a form of sanity. I can do a lot of reading on the tube/subway. This week I am going to continue for education in NY School Poetry (or poetry at least inspired by what NY School poetry opened up in terms of possibilities for poetry). I have read many. There is never enough. Eventually I will read something else but it always feels good to get sucked into something and disappear. OK. Maybe not always. But often. Can anything be qualified with the word always. I am not sure.

    Here are the four NY School Poetry books for this week’s tube commuting. I managed to check them out from The British Poetry Library at the Southbank. A treasure house of all treasure houses.

    Memorial Day (Ted Berrigan and Anne Waldman)

     

    The Joe 82 Creation Poems (Rochelle Owens)

    New and Selected Padgett (Ron Padgett)

    The Collected Kenneth Koch (Kenneth Koch)

     

    What’s in your bag?

  • prague microfest

    it seems like a dream now. flying out of Trieste Italy to Prague to read at the Prague Microfest. Louis Armand. Stephen Delbos. Jason Mashak. Others. Ex-pats and poets and artists and Anglo American university.

    So anyway. Yes I flew from Trieste to Prague. Stayed not far from the main square. Felt the energy from the poetry community in Prague and had some wild nights and some good readings and film screenings. Not big crowds but certainly a friendly bunch. And it reminded me why poetry matters. Or one of the reasons. Community.

    So I had just moved from Anakara and was waiting in Trieste to hear about a uni teaching gig at METU. I waited for months for the paperwork and it never happened. And then it did. And I was torn cause I was tired of the traveling and wanted to reconnect to readings and get some stimulus from poetry community. So I chose to return to London at the last minute instead of Ankara.

    And here I am. 35 pages into a new manuscript called Smashing Time! Which is much different than my previous manuscripts. More fluid and speech based. Raveling around in narrative. I have been to two readings in three months. Consumed over 20 books of poetry. And I am awake.

    Sometimes I do feel that tug for adventure out in foreign lands again. But I am realising that i can have that right here. I can feel awake in the day to day moments of my existence and I can also visit other lands with London as the hub.

    In the last five years of my world travels it is the people that have mattered most. not the food. Not the “exotic” cultures.

    I have also wrestled a lot with my mind. I was in a state of emergency most of the time. Never having a settled mind. Lacking comforts. And I think my writing reflected that. Godzenie and Primitive Pianos reflect those mind states.

    And Smashing Time is something else. I have a written a few short plays. I am returning to playfulness. An openness. A more expansive mindstate which perhaps paradoxically comes through the personal and day to day living of life. Which surrounds me. My journeys on the tube. My mind in reverse. Memories. And getting at it cleanly.

    I have looked at the pics of some of ex-pat poets in Prague on facebook. It all seems like a gas. I like gas. I also like solids.

    and I guess that is where i live.

  • authenticity

    so here i sit on a friday afternoon i got a view so that helps and the weather has changed into spring almost summer and i am flooded with all the memories of countries and people and it is getting crowded in my head plus there’s the net with its endless streams of words information images and emails to catch up on and how many presses publish poetry now and how many books are of interest not that i am a gatekeeper of course but i want to see interesting things taking shape like they sometimes do in the indie music world i mean what is interesting anyway yes we know it is partly subjective but not completely i mean the advance guard in art is still around fully in the present and there are armies of imitators and how to know the real thing anyway if it is smack dab in the language of the tribes of the now in the now so here i sit

    and there is a man in the park outside wandering among the paths and there are voices in other rooms i cannot see

    i am feeling some authentic stirring inside and distrust the rhetoric of poetry

    my authentic is not your authentic but sometimes the authentic leaks through and we all jump up and down with glee

    yes

    the authentic exists but maybe it has a limited lifespan

    kill poet when dead

    human beings are better than poets

  • BRYGADA KRYZYS Centrala

    link from friend Grzegorz Wroblewski . . . legendary Polish punk . .. waiting for a signal from “central”

  • copulating and happy with NY School Poetry

    I just received Joe Brainard’s I Remember in the post today. I am sure many folks have read it. I am late to the game. It is a classic of conceptualism and NY School Poetry. I am sure the French writers have already been influenced by it. It seems NY School Poetry has much more in common with French poetry than anything at all British. British poetry is very isolated. It is stuck in the 19th century with a few early modernists. Agh. Too bad for British poetry.

    I just finished the following NY School Poetry books while commuting on the tube/subway. I highly recommend all of them.

    Great Ball of Fire (Ron Padgett)

    Poetry State Forest (Bernadette Mayer)

    How To Be Perfect ( Ron Padgett)

    My plans for next week’s tube reading:

    Tulsa Kid (Ron Padgett)

    I Remember (Joe Brainard)

    NY School Poetry is of course a united singular aesthetic. But is seems, without getting into scholarly nit-picky mode, the poets do have some things in common. I especially like how so many of them, Ron Padgett and Joe Brainard especially, use their everyday lives. An attempt to bring art and life closer together. The original avant garde art project.

    So here is my everyday life today.

    There was a Polish birthday party in Leicester Square, followed by crowd immersion at British museum. Currently, I am experiencing acid reflux.

    My friend Joe, just back from living and teaching English in Portugal, brought his own blow up mattress to stay with us in London. Our place is very small. Maybe it can fit a blow up mattress.

    I thought about fish and chips tonight but there is no fish and chips tonight. We are trying to eat more healthy.

    I also looked at LOOT for place to live with Ewa. If I can keep a job for decent amount of time, it would be nice to have a place, even a small one, but a bit bigger than this small bedroom we share in North London (Wood Green).

    And so we tread forward. Nomadic travels await. Ewa has made some green tea.

    Tea helps to centre me.

  • back in the saddle

    American surrealism . . .

    zachary schomburg

    I need to get my hands on some of his books . .. and Cathy Wagner’s My New Job and Matthew Roher’s books . .. haven’t read Matthew Rohrer since 2005 when he came to Greensboro . . .

    Just read Maureen Owen’s Zombie Notes and loved it . . .

    take the tube for over two hours every day for work.

    Tube reading for this week:

    Tulsa Kid by Ron Padgett

    Great Balls of Fire by Ron Padgett

    How to Be Perfect by Ron Padgett

    Tarantula by Bob Dylan

    Poetry State Forest by Bernadette Mayer

  • some very interesting work in this mag from San Francisco

    eleven eleven journal

  • from smashing time!

  • from Smashing Time (ms in progress)

    S.B.’s Ghost Shit

    soap me sock me I got a table at the rainbow room
    big ship
    approaching the dock
    I’ve got you heavy in this London sunshine
    Wood Green March 4th 2011
    and an Indian at the table is really a hyena
    that’s who I am
    suppose has some facts around
    yep! imaginary income! UGH!
    well the crooks are out
    spastic garage feedback blues
    S.B.’s GHOST SHIT!
    and look at these steeples
    shaking
    in the first degree
    the devil won’t let me be

    . . . to be cont . . . . . .

  • Department Poetry Magazine

    Got my copy in the post today!!! Super super super good!!!! Ahhhh now this refreshes me big time!! Stuff is happening over here in the U.K.. I mean fresh fresh interesting poetry and essays!! And it’s a really handsome handmade nice on the eyes production!

    check it and grab yourself a copy quick:

    DEPARTMENT POETRY MAGAZINE

  • from Smashing Time (ms in progress)

    trace . . . . . .

  • review of Godzenie

    Nice review of Godzenie in Goodreads. Kept meaning to post it. Thanks Fish.

    Fish’s review Oct 13, 09
    bookshelves: transculture

    Finally got a copy of this in Japan. Read it almost immediately! Here’s part of what I wrote in my journal immediately afterwards:

    Still processing but:

    A. It is full of truth moment coins, singular phrasal objects– the units, it would seem, of his poems. At times these beauties are rough and bring the larger object out of focus– its jarring at times, but that, at least in [Block 7A:], the fact that there is such consistent play (and to whatever degree this “play” is controlled) may be a clue to help understand Marcus’ project at least in a rudimentary, structural way… I lost myself just then thinking about mortgage brokers in the early 2000s drinking expensive liquor with b-list celebrities.

    B. Lets see– other than the presence of these truth coins that Marcus Block 7A is full of, there is def. some prankishness– a quality, a sense of humor that attracted me to Marcus’ writing initially when I met him in Spring & Summer 2004 or 2005 I guess it was. It’s not just a clever-ness, but its still very boyish at times– playful– there’s that word, ‘play’ again. Some of his truth beauty coin moments are mixed/ spring from a sort of teenage giggle-snort kind of entertainment value– “clubbing a fish in the bathtub” or “cum” or splattering bird poo. It’s distinctly silly at times and charming.

    C. I want to say something about the connection to place. The section title page locates the poems in a town in Poland. And each iteration of Block 7A seems to further flesh out some otherwise stale, numerical place that could just as easily be a prison cell block as anywhere. That each successive Block 7A is labeled as such gives the sense of a recycling motion, an elastic piston-turn back and back and back to BLOCK 7A. If these are successive visits are they attempts towards some goal? Are they a full realization of BLOCK 7A, or are we supposed to read an elipsis at the end fo the section? As the next section moves to a new location (or at least a new name– the Hotel Diament– perhaps alluded to in BLOCK 7A as the “Diamond Hotel” or something– it seems unlikely that what felt like continuous returns to BLOCK 7A would be resolved or actually continued in any clear or meaningful way.

    D. Joe Donahue in a blurb says that (and I’m paraphrasing here) uses Poland to access a poetics. I believe that Joe knows what he’s talking about. But I’m not sure this poetics is fully activated until the final section of GODZENIE. I want to read through section one again with an eye out for some certain clues dropped in section three regarding the connection between WHERE these poems are and HOW these poems are. HOW does Marcus extract a poetics from a study of some place? How? And how can I– how will I? A compelling read and re-read!

    -Fish

  • DEPARTMENT 3

    The UK revolution in language continues . . . . Department 3 now available. . .

    edited by the super duper editorial vision of

    Richard Barrett & Simon Howard

    writing from Marie-Angelique Bueler, Wayne Clements, Matt Dalby, David Grundy, Catherine Hales, Ryan Ormonde, Posie Rider, Marcus Slease, & Tom Watts.

    check it:

    Department Magazine

  • Books borrowed from poetry library in London

    1) Many Happy Returns by Ted Berrigan

    2) Train Ride by Ted Berrigan

    3) Tuned Droves by Eric Baus

    4) Nothing to You by Ted Berrigan

    Finished those fine books this week. Love to hold them in my hand. Fine specimens.

    Heading to poetry library now.

    Hoping to pick up

    1) Alice Notely: Grave of Light (or some rare chapbooks from the 70’s and 80’s)

    2) Eileen Myles School of Fish

    3) Philip Whalen (some hard to find rare shit)

    ONWARDS!!!

  • some poems gone for a wee while

    some poems in progress taken off . . . . poems sent onward to magazines who count this humble blog as already publishing them . . . . yadda yadda yadda

  • Lunch break

    I’m thinking of the human voice. Of speech. Of the subversion of communication. Of the pre-fabrication of meaning. Of Emotions language and meanings. What slips past.

    What infer requires of the logic of thinking. A systematic ordering may go, have gone, too far into a systematic disordering. What is the form or norm for variation? Who are WE fighting?

    I’m enriched by the everyday and how to awaken the discarded the disused language. There is a lot to discover or re-discover in the rubbish that surrounds us. We are smothered and inundated by the language of persuasion, by deadened rhetoric.

    A slip of the tongue: a slip thru the wet head.

    Or/and the exuberance of song.

    I want to walk, or perhaps tear, thru the contempt. The contemplative. Sometimes veer off into the impure pleasures of sounds. Somewhere between a song and a chant.

    There is no I shan’t. No commandments.

    I find pleasures in these language arts, an impure poetics, which is a motion and a delay. A pedestrian poetics. A nomadic poetics. Always an impurity.

    A steady beat or wobbly but something that tracks and derails the mind, the constrictive mind awakened not deadened by language visual rhetoric theatre music education etc. etc.

    We think we know what we think but we seldom know what thinks thru us.

    Someone has already said this.

    L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetics of the 80’s and 90’s and form as content. The structure/grammar of a language is also content. Artifices of absorption and all the rest.

    Considerations of audience and crass marketing. I DO NOT write from the hill above the city but IN the city. Among the rubble of everyday. The discarded. The cliched.

    THIS is also a kind of difficulty: the complexity of the simple. Mind it.

    Modernist techniques: collage, weird little juxtapositions, (even lineation) are used in advertising but often tells us little, or perhaps a lot, in terms of depth? Is there a faux depth? A foxy depth? A foxy death?

    Intellectual and or emotional. Abstractness can be both.

    (14/2/2011 from the notebook)

  • some new work . . . . check it

    MiPOeasias

  • back against the wall

    perfect position to write.

    not sure if the heat from this laptop will decrease the potency of my sperm.

    I do not need potent sperm at this time, or perhaps ever.

    wondering bout Neil Gaiman?

    Children’s stories etc.

    It is time for M&M, peanuts, yellow, mostly.

    A pedestrian poetics??????

    Tomorrow is Monday. How does that feel?

  • some Sunday reading

    some fascinating answers and questions . . . not the usual fluff:

    Interview with Sean Bonney

    some interesting new translations of the poet Grzegorz Wróblewski:

    Grzegorz Wróblewski

  • and now back to life!!!

    now after a very intense month in London of nothing but almost mindless work my mind is coming round again. memories. Turkey. Italy. poland. nights of flickers and shadows. revising primitive pianos. lookin for a good poetry reading. will be reading at poetry cafe in covent garden in march with a bunch of other poets to celebrate the launch of the movie Howl in the UK. Should be interesting. Nice announcement today about a poetry reading in Oxford at a bookshop called Albion Beatnik. Nice name for a bookshop. Live jazz. poetry. Albion is the oldest name for England. oh white cliffs of Dover etc. Beatnik is the counter culture of the 50’s in America. Yeah. God there needs to be some serious juice. So many youngish and young poets workin sooooo hard to connect communities and build bridges. small presses. labours of love. readings. mighty fine poets out here. Hope the energy explodes again. miss the Openned readings in London. Just gotta not let job stuff suck me dry. Must reconnect with poetry communities soon!!!

  • from the notebook

    Treetop Flyers

    “not common speech / a dead level / but the uncommon speech of paradise /
    tongue in which oracles/ speak to beggars and pilgrims.”
    — Denise Levertov “A Common Ground”

    “A language / excelling itself to be itself”
    –Denise Levertov “A Common Ground”

    ————————–

    the anti-poetic for the peeps
    ok
    there’s beauty
    a drop kick
    a tune or tone
    ironic detached warm
    compassionate love riddled
    the academy is back
    lets build another lemon
    teaching English as a foreign
    grammar

    ———————————

    fine hairs on the white
    bedsheet
    toast crumbs and sperm stains and malt vinegar and curry
    stain (small)

    in a dream after a snowy Christmas
    in London and eating
    a £2 frozen dinner
    he said goodbye
    to former lovers
    in Turkey in Poland in Korea
    in a double-bedded room
    overlooking the waves

    In Wood Green he found
    the pound shop

    the fan from the old laptop was constant

    the rain: stopped. Blue sky patches.

    has he shit in
    his nose

    from the underground

    or

    from the fresh flowers

    blowing out their fluff
    to mate?

    if you fail to talk
    do you fail
    to wake up?

    the hypnotist all over
    YOU TUBE
    tricked people into taking
    blank pieces
    of paper for money

    sleepwalkers

    how to know or believe
    we are more than machines
    ———————————–

  • concrete poetry

    check it

  • cool find

    publishing genius