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Read more: Anthropocene PoetryDelighted to have two new prose poems over at Anthropocene poetry magazine. After the Mormon mission, searching for new spiritualities. Fleshy and soulful. One of the poems a part elegy for my uncle Billy in Portadown. A painter.
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Read more: Fly in the OintmentWorking on new prose poems for Smashing Time manuscript. From Northern Ireland to Mormonism and Utah and beyond. Maybe it will become a novel in prose poems. Or hybrid whatever. Here is one called “Fly in the Ointment.”
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Read more: Straw TimeAnother working class story. Somewhere America. Another immigrant story. But really, also, a father story. More than one father story. Identity tags, please. Northern Ireland. Belfast. Shankill. Somewhere Utah. Homeless. There are so many fathers. Too many fathers. Not enough…
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Read more: The Grass Grows Its Own Language
Earth, we are on it, unless we up there, above it. Apple trees apple & the earth peoples: Meanwhile, we look at the dogstar, since that’s where we come from, might as well say the whole universe, but what’s that?…
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Read more: Saint Sweat“The soul delights in the body. When we arrived, we discovered we had never left. When we departed, we discovered we had already arrived. The soul needs a sweaty handjob. Pretty souls in sweaty flavours. Perky souls in sweaty colours.”
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Read more: SMILE TIMEA little portfolio of new prose poems at Tupelo Quarterly. Thank you Eva Heisler. It makes me happy to be among such fab company of international writing. Here is a reading of one of my prose poems. It is called…
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Read more: Tupelo QuarterlyA portfolio of my poetry, from my manuscript Smashing Time, has just landed at Tupelo Quarterly. Mormon missions, pioneer days with armies of bonnets, candid camera as newly arrived immigrants in America. Fallen fathers, sick fathers, war fathers. Learning from…
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Read more: The Woodward ReviewExcerpt from my unpublished novella, The Dreamlife of Honey, just published over here at The Woodward Review at Wayne State University in Detroit. Happy Days!
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Read more: Follow up to The Green Monk in ProgressOn the day between the dead and the living, returning again to the beginner’s mind of creation. On the day between the dead and the living, the spirit of The Green Monk has returned to me. There are so many…
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Read more: Grzegorz Wróblewski interviewed by Jefferson Hanson about his book Shanty TownExpansive interview here with the artist Grzegorz Wróblewski about his book of asemic writing: Shanty Town. It is a book for the future as well as the ancient past. Cosmic and personal. “Asemic writing roams freely in the timeline. Calligraphy…
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Read more: OPENING TO DREAMLIFE OF HONEY
After devouring everything Édouard Levé, Thomas Bernhard, Clarice Lispector, Lydia Davis, Annie Ernaux, Rachel Cusk, David Markson, & Jon Fosse, I found a way to move forward with my second autoficiton novel, The Dreamlife of Honey. There are still some…
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Read more: SHANTY TOWN
Nice treat in the post today. It’s Shanty Town by the painter and poet Grzegorz Wróblewski. “Fragmentary jottings, sketchy doodles, proto signals.” “Manic notes from the underbelly.” What a journey! Asemic writing, published by Post-Asemic Press.
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Read more: Translating Grzegorz Wróblewski“I was interested in Grzegorz Wróblewski’s work from the very first pages. I devoured the English translation of the book Copenhagen. It was incredible. After rereading it I could also then appreciate the neobaroque and grotesque gestures of mixing the…
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Read more: Back in the day at The Horse HospitalBack in the day at the Horse Hospital in London versions of my poems from book Rides . . 2011 . . a different time . .
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Read more: Hasso Krull
Reading Six Estonia Poets from the New Voices from Europe & Beyond series from Arc Publications. Terrific project, & needed. Hasso Krull is becoming a fav poet, & others in there interesting too. Here is one of Krull’s poems. More…
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Read more: Grzegorz Wróblewski – Surreal-Absurd Prose poems – Translated by Peter BurzinskySome surreal-absurd prose poems of Grzegorz Wróblewski over at Tupelo Quarterly, translated by Peter Burzinsky.
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Read more: Dark Surrealism of Zdzisław Beksiński
At Beksiński na Śląsku in Tychy, we viewed some nice paintings. Dark surrealist journeys from the 1970s to somewhere like 2005. The gallery itself was not so great. They could have done a much better job of the lighting, set up…
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Read more: Friday Prose Poem
Today’s prose poem is “Vanity, Wisconsin” by Maxine Chernoff. Published in 1979. How far we have traveled with our snapshots.
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Read more: Wednesday Wisdom NuggetsHere are some sultry and less sultry wisdom nuggets for Wednesday. Courtesy of the poet James Richardson. In the year 2001. Oh the beginning of centuries.
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Read more: TRAIN TO BRIGHTONI used to write on trains. I wrote a whole book of train rides. It is called Rides. You can buy it here. It is maybe my favourite book. Here is a sample. This one is the train ride to…
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Read more: Hearts Emitting Sparks to Other Hearts in Deep SpaceHow is your heart. Does it spark. Here is a prose poem from my book Puppy (Beir Bua Press). Available over here.
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Read more: Jeremy Over
I’m not sure why I persist in associating absurdity with happiness when the concept is rooted in death and when a human induced sixth mass extinction has recently upped the absurdity stakes significantly. But here we are. ‘Now for lunch’…
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Read more: Laura WetheringtonThe Lincoln Review is one of the best new lit mags on the planet. Probably the best in the UK. So yeah. Great new issue over there now and Laura’s poems are terrific! Midwinter’s Day (Bernadette Mayer) meets Lunch Poems…
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Read more: Asemic Paintings
Grzegorz Wroblewski is a painter, poet, playwright, essayist, and more. He left Poland in 1985 to live in Copenhagen. He is one of my favourite surreal-absurd poets. Also a terrific painter. I have two of his paintings on my wall.…
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Read more: LOST IN SPACE
Here is a poem, recently published in New World Writing, about sex dolls, love, and The Cure. It takes place on a Friday.
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Read more: Aase Berg Surreal-Absurd SamplerSome terrific dark surrealism from the Swedish poet Aase Berg over at Mercurius. In the 1990s Aase was a member of Surrealistgruppen in Stockholm. Lemurs and guinea pigs. Body horrors. Dark matter. The language dense and rich. Gothic post-human. Check…
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Read more: 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 week’s surreal-absurd sampler is Luke Palmer. Check em out over…
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Read more: Kim Hyesoon Surreal-Absurd SamplerThis week, over at Mercurius, terrific surreal-absurd sampler. South Korean poet Kim Hyesoon (translated by Don Mee Choi). The poems are from I’m Ok, I’m Pig!, her 2014 Bloodaxe collection.
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Read more: folio : twenty-eight short takes on the prose poem:Happy to have my work in this folio of prose poems. It is an interesting one- the prose poem. Sometimes I think I will go back to line breaks, but then the prose poem pulls me back in there. The…
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Read more: NEW WORLD WRITINGSuper 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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Read more: 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…
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Read more: 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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Read more: 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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Read more: 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…
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Read more: 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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Read more: 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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Read more: 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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Read more: 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.…
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Read more: 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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Read more: James KnightThis 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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Read more: 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…
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Read more: 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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Read more: 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.”…
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Read more: 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…
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Read more: 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…
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Read more: 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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Read more: 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…
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Read more: 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.…
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Read more: Waking LifeHere 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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Read more: 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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Read more: 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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Read more: 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…
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Read more: 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…
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Read more: 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…
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Read more: Mr PeabodyHere is Thursday’s microfiction. A little romantic story. It’s called “Mr Peabody.” From Hermit Kingdom. My book in progress.
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Read more: 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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Read more: Matthew HaighThis 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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Read more: 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.
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Read more: GHOST CITY PRESSI have a new prose poem of Hungry Ghosts over at Ghost City Press. There is also a white monkey (Biała Małpa). It’s from my manuscript in progress entitled Hermit Kingdom. A nice summer July issue. You can read it…
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Read more: Adam J Maynard“Gallons of Gertrude Stein, smatterings of Edith Sitwell and Stevie Smith. Mouthfuls of Michaux, currents of Kafka and Carrington, Donald Barthelme dropping around for tea.” Some terrific new poems by Adam J Maynard. Check em out in the surreal-absurd weekly…
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Read more: Tom Jenks
“The world, of course, is absurd, even more so because it thinks it’s making perfect sense.” – Tom Jenks This week’s absurd-surreal sampler is from Tom Jenks. Humboldt squid, Subbuteo, ducks, druids, and the tragically overlooked 19th century Russian novelist.…
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Read more: BEAN SPASMS
Bean Spasms, a collaborative book between Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett, continues to tickle my fancies. I am writing the puppy section of my work in progress, and ran across “Dog.” Here is a recording.
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Read more: Liberating Literature
After an exhausting year of high school teaching, summer has arrived and I am finally writing. Tim Atkin’s new big Buddhist book of everything, NOTHING CONCLUSIVE HAS YET TAKEN PLACE IN THE WORLD THE ULTIMATE WORD OF THE WORLD AND…
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Read more: Jennifer L Knox
“I like to surprise my reader and myself as I write. To do that, I have to set up a familiar situation on the page in which expectations are clear, then subvert those expectations. To zag instead of zig. Sometimes…
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Read more: Ode to My Socks
A nice simple surrealist poem by Pablo Neruda. Socks. & more.
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Read more: MEET THE POETA recording of my reading and discussion from The Green Monk and Hermit Kingdom (my manuscript in progress), along with the fabulous poet Colin Herd, is now up with Home Stage on Youtube. Some animal prose poems, fables, magic, surrealism,…
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Read more: HOME STAGE LIVE READINGOn Wednesday June 9th, I am reading with the fabulous Colin Herd for Home Stage in the U.K. The event will be streamed live via Youtube. I’ll be reading animal prose poems from my book The Green Monk, as well…
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Read more: Chrissy WilliamsHere is another installment of the surreal-absurd feature at Mercurius Magazine. The poet Chrissy Williams. From her just released book Low (Bloodaxe).
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Read more: Vik ShirleyEnjoying curating the surreal-absurd feature in Mercurius magazine. So much interesting work out there. Here is a selection of poems from Vik Shirley. From her chapbook Corpses and her collection, The Continued Closure of the Blue Door. The surreal is…
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Read more: Mercurius Surreal-Absurd FeatureI am just getting started with the surreal-absurd feature for Mercurius Mag. In the coming weeks, we have some stellar poems from Vik Shirley and Chrissy Williams. To join the conversation, I have featured a few of my own surreal-absurd…
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Read more: Zachary SchomburgI am editing a surreal-absurdist feature for Mercurius magazine. Every other Monday, I will feature an absurdist/surrealist writer to tickle your fancies. First up, we have Zachary Schomburg. A selection of prose poems from his book Fjords vol.2, forthcoming from…
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Read more: Gravity BubblesIn the heat of the first wave of Lockdown, I participated in an collaboration with the poets Calliope Michail and Chris Gutkind. We decided to call it Gravity Bubbles to emphasize both the gravity of the situation (we were all…
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Read more: WadsIn my youth I ate Jesus body. With Jerry. It was Wonder Bread. Here is the story. A prose poem from The Green Monk (Boiler House Press). It’s called “Leftovers.”
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Read more: Puppy
Just got 2 month year old puppy from the shelter. My life has become Pavlovian.
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Read more: Isolation CollaborationMy friend in London, Chris Gutkind, created an art project to cope with isolation and lockdown. Photos on a cheapo phone camera. Paying attention to small details around his house. Day to day hopes, despairs, and wonders. Hopefully it will…
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Read more: Ticks from Hareskov
A selection of Grzegorz Wroblewski’s poetry (translated by Piotr Gwiazda) is now up at Mercurius Magazine from Barcelona. Check them out over here.
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Read more: Collaborative Reading with Grzegorz Wroblewski
In 2014, I read with Grzegorz Wroblewski at the Rich Mix in East London. My poems, from this collaborative reading in 2014, have now been edited into a new manuscript entitled HUNGRY GHOSTS. Sometimes it takes a while to find…
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Read more: BOAAT POETRY MAGAZINE
Do you like shiny? There is a nice shiny issue of BOAAT from BOAAT Press. I have a shiny poem in there. check it out: http://www.boaatpress.com/bathtub-25
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Read more: Sperm CoffinsI’ve got some horses over at Bear Review. The horses are Leonora Carrington’s horses too. The poem is part of my book The Green Monk (Boiler House Press). Check out the horses here
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Read more: Nomadic Surrealist PunkI’m coining my work nomadic surrealist punk. Punk aesthetics determine the type of art punks enjoy, which typically has underground, minimalist, and satirical sensibilities. Nomadic travels. Nomadic cuttings. Naive art. Surrealist/irrealist/absurdist / conceptual. We could keep tacking on the labels.…
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Read more: Mercurius MagazineI am super happy to have an excerpt from my novel Never Mind the Beasts in Mercurius Magazine (out of Barcelona and the world). The excerpt is from the immigration to Vegas section. Circus Circus. Meat loaf and bishops. Irish…
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Read more: Down the ShankillBefore moving to Spain, I visited my birth country. Portadown, N. Ireland and then Belfast, to see my biological father. He was a gardener. His wife died. I got an old worker´s hat from her father. World War I. We…
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Read more: Doom DroneIn 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…
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Read more: CHUMS“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…
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Read more: Psychic Marmalade Part Two
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…
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Read more: Russell Edson 2021A little reading of Russell Edson classics. From his book The Very Thing That Happens (1964). New Years Day. 2021. It is a good time for fire rituals!!!
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Read more: Post PunkTerrific 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…
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Read more: PSYCHIC MARMALADE (part one)
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…
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Read more: Squirrels and OoglersHave you squirreled away yr nuts? Are you a hidden oogler? Winter is upon us. Here is a short reading.
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Read more: Travels from Never Mind the Beasts (Part One)
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…
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Read more: Pink GumsWhen 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…
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Read more: The Future is in the Wind
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…
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Read more: SpectaclesI am working on a new book of lyrical essays, inspired by my creative non-fiction workshop, run by the terrific Amy (McDaniel) Robinson. Highly recommended. “My hair should have nothing to do with it, and yet it does, this thick…
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Read more: Chimps and BonobosI am taking an online creative non-fiction workshop, with some terrific folks from Atlanta and the U.K. Taught by Amy (McDaniel) Robinson. It is part of The Art of Everyone and Studio Friend. Composing the Self and the World. I…
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Read more: How are your Jollies?
From North Las Vegas to a dentist in Turkey, to the house of 100 beers in Northern Poland, there are many travels. Dear Mercury, patron saint of thieves, these are my multi-faced identities. Dear readers & listeners & fellow travellers,…
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Read more: Asymptote“A new Polish reality show will feature opposite-sex couples only a family means a man and a woman a man and a woman!”
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Read more: The Art of Everyone” I take the train to Barcelona. The train enters a tunnel. A baby coughs very lightly, an older man clears his throat. The tunnel, that’s where we all go, light or no light no one is to know. My…
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Read more: MOON HERMITBack in the day, when the days were longer, and then shorter, much like today but faster, I began to write poetry under cover of full moon during my Mormon mission. Bloating/unbloating. This was the beginning of my behind-the-scenes spirituality.…
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Read more: LOVE IS TO SPOON AS ROCK IS TO CHIPAfter Turkey, and a stint of dog walking in Italy, he moves to London, falls in love, lands a gig as an adjunct professor at an American style university in London. He feels a sense of community with the avant…
Never Mind the Beasts 