NEVER MIND THE BEASTS: surreal-absurd poetry
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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.
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Mark Waldron Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“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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PUPPY LAUNCH!
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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Triple Humdinger from Beir Bua Press
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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BOOK LAUNCH OF PUPPY
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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Legeia
“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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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
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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 week’s surreal-absurd sampler is a doozy over at Mercurius
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Judson Hamilton
“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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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 claws ”
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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.
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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 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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Mark Russell
“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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Charles J. March III
” . . . 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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Brian Clifton
“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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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 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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David Greenslade
“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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Jeff Alessandrelli
“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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NEW BOOK COMING SOON!
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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Waking Life
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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LYRIKLINE
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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The Dreamlife of Shawarmas
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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The Lincoln Review
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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Death’s Door
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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Hugh Behm-Steinberg
“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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Mr Peabody
Here is Thursday’s microfiction. A little romantic story. It’s called “Mr Peabody.” From Hermit Kingdom. My book in progress.
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Army
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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Matthew Haigh
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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Three from Silesian Soul
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.
Never Mind the Beasts 