From my manuscript of surreal-absurd prose poems, Smashing Time. This one, “Saint Sweat,” was published over at Tupelo Quarterly. A portfolio of my prose poems.
You can read more prose poems from the portfolio over here
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“Saint Sweat” by Marcus Slease -
A 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 the smiles of dead men, sure of their mission, munching on grass.
Lotsa journeys in these prose poems.
Warm thanks to Eva Heisler for selecting my work. Happy dayz!
Check em out over here
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“you wore your white gown, waded into the baptismal font resting on the statues of 12 oxen, after each short prayer, you were dunked in the water, 75 times for 75 names in 5 minutes, you were proud of it, the number of times they dunked you in the water, pushing the lungs to the limit, the names of the dead, rattling off one then another, the name and then the dunking, 75 names, it was more than Chad or Brad or Brock, 75, you were dunked so many times and you could take it, pushing your body, dunked 75 times with the names of the dead, you listened to each name and date before getting dunked, then later they handed out the names, they were the dead from the 19th century . . .”
Excerpt from my unpublished novella, The Dreamlife of Honey, just published over here at The Woodward Review at Wayne State University in Detroit.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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On the day between the dead and the living, returning again to the beginner’s mind of creation. On the day between the dead and the living, the spirit of The Green Monk has returned to me. There are so many countries floating through me. The country of childhood is one of them. That feeling of expansive possibilities. On the day between the dead and the living, remixing the past inside the present. Leonora Carrington and Cold Mountain. My painterly eye has returned to me. In the cutthroat night of capitalism, little journeys on the passion horse. Part of the process has been getting out of my own way. If you’re nothing doing what you do all things will be governed well. Strengthen bones and weaken ambition. There are so many words of wisdom. Language is the original cannibalism.
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Expansive 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 meets a hologram, and hologram meets electronic, improvised sounds. Together they form a more capacious whole. Asemic writing tries to better understand the Universe, analyzes the mysterious past and looks into the future completely unknown to us. It will always be an aesthetic, extremely important outpost of art, a kind of thinking about the meaning of life.” (Grzegorz Wróblewski)
Check out the interview over here:
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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 touches, forever touches, or maybe tweaks, to move the manuscript into book form, plus, of course, the luck of some press to publish it, but as a whole, it has been fun to make the shift in my prose stylings.
Travel tales for the weary of soul, part guidebook, part travel handbook, The Dreamlife of Honey is a surreal-absurd novel of hypnotic prose about love and loss, travel and freedom, poverty and imagination. Crossing borders and blurring boundaries, expanding into new ways of being.
Here is the opening to the autofiction novel, a sequel to Never Mind the Beasts.
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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.
Grzegorz Wróblewski, Shanty Town, Post-Asemic Press, 2022 
Grzegorz Wróblewski, Shanty Town, Post-Asemic Press, 2022 
Grzegorz Wróblewski, Shanty Town, Post-Asemic Press, 2022 -
“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 sacred and the profane.” – Peter Burzyński.
Peter Burzyński discusses the challenges and thrills of translating the unique prose poetry of Grzegorz Wróblewski Read the article over here at Jacket 2.
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Back in the day at the Horse Hospital in London versions of my poems from book Rides . . 2011 . . a different time . .
Reading at The Horse Hospital, London, 2011 -
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 can be found over here too at Poetry International.
Hasso Krull (Tallinn Estonia 1964). Translated by Brandon Lussier and Eva Liina Asu-Garcia -
Some surreal-absurd prose poems of Grzegorz Wróblewski over at Tupelo Quarterly, translated by Peter Burzinsky. The world of Mr Z. Check them out over here
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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 etc. And 10 euros for entry is a bit steep for such a small show with atmosphere of artful pretensions. Tychy is good for bike riders but nothing much else really. Still, despite all this, the paintings were interesting to finally see live in the flesh after 20 years of seeing them online and in books. Like all great art, you need the actual art in front of you. It pops.
Here are a few pictures of the paintings from the exhibition of Beksiński. The more colourful ones are from the 1970s. Whitish ones from 1990s and sometimes 2000-2005. Happy Journeys!
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Today’s prose poem is “Vanity, Wisconsin” by Maxine Chernoff. Published in 1979. How far we have traveled with our snapshots.
“Vanity, Wisconsin” by Maxine Chernoff -
Here 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.
James Richardson, Vectors: Thirty-six Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays , 2001 
James Richardson, Vectors: Thirty-six Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays , 2001 
James Richardson, Vectors: Thirty-six Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays , 2001 
James Richardson, Vectors: Thirty-six Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays , 2001 
James Richardson, Vectors: Thirty-six Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays , 2001 -
I 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 Brighton. Forwards and backwards. It is about my mission.
“Train to Brighton” by Marcus Slease. From Rides (Bart Books, 2014) -
How 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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This week’s surreal-absurd sampler is Jeremy Over. Here is part of his intro:
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’ as Ron Padgett writes at the end of his poem ‘The Death Deal’.”—Jeremy Over
Check out the surreal-absurd poems over here at Mercurius.
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Laura Wetherington is one of my fav contemporary poets. She is a U.S. poet based in the Netherlands. Some of her new poems are over at The Lincoln Review. The 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 (Frank O’Hara) with connections to my book Rides (written on trains forwards and backwards around the UK). A great compliment.
Check out Laura’s poems over here
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Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing. In the new issue of OTOLITHS (Australia) we have the asemic paintings of Grzegorz Wroblewski. 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. Check out his asemic paintings over here
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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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Some terrific dark surrealism from the Swedish poet Aase Berg over at Mercurius. In the 1990s Aase was a member of Surrealistgruppen in Stockholm.
Lemurs and guinea pigs. Body horrors. Dark matter. The language dense and rich. Gothic post-human.
Check out the poems over here
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“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 at Mercurius.
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This week, over at Mercurius, terrific surreal-absurd sampler. South Korean poet Kim Hyesoon (translated by Don Mee Choi). The poems are from I’m Ok, I’m Pig!, her 2014 Bloodaxe collection.
Head over to Mercurius and check ’em out!
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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 cadence of the new sentence. The space between them. But lately, more and more surreal-absurd stories.
You can check out my prose poems, along with some other fabsters, over here at Periodicities. Thank you Rob Mclennan.
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Super thrilled, after a long spell of no-gos, to have five prose poems/microfictions at New World Writing. Sex dolls, rhinestones, squirrels, mojo, and a winter pouch.
Check out the journeys over here.
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“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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Jolly good journeys with trio of surreal-absurd readings 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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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
Untitled, by Alan Glass. 1965. Mixed media, 43 by 40 by 12 cm. (Private collection). -
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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My new book Puppy is available now from Buir Bua Press.
Here is a short reading from the opening few pages.
Written during lockdown in Spain. Welcome to the world of Puppy.
Words of Praise
“This gentle series of prose poems follows the adventures of a young dog and his boy as they negotiate life in a small Spanish town during the pandemic lockdown. In Marcus Slease’s world, Puppy is everywhere, like the proverbial jewel of interdependence in the Buddhist image of Indra’s Net that opens the book. This net reminds us that “no one knows where the soul sits.” Is it everywhere or is it nowhere, here or not here? On the way to find out, Puppy and boy romp through a range of everyday objects (urine, sand, wood) and not so everyday references (the New Testament, Greek Mythology, the music of Bach and Max Richter). Can they reconcile the domestic and the wild? Like so much of Slease’s writing, this book is at once ludic, lucid and profoundly welcoming.” – Peter Jaeger, author of Postamble : For an Invisible Sangha
“Feel the heat, the distance. The need for puppy. The awe at puppy. Slease walks his puppy along a threadbare path between knowing and not knowing – flashes of wisdom jump up at you from the puppy dog panting of ‘just trying to hold on’. Slease leads you into his worlds easily and it feels all right, anecdotal, familiar. The rhythm hooks, the pace builds. You’re dizzy. Something has happened to you but you’re not sure what. The person who enters the book is not the same as the person who leaves.” – Lydia Unsworth, poet (Mortar, Some Murmur, Certain Manoeuvres), based between Manchester and Amsterdam
“Whatever you do, do not chase the puppy. The puppy will come to you. The puppy will choose you. You can never own a puppy. But you can live with one. The puppy will teach you new tricks and remind you that each moment exists to be fully inhabited. Marcus Slease’s Puppy is a dog manual. A how to. A book not for the future or the past but for the present. For the right here and now. A puppy knows how to live. And so do you.” – Stephen Emmerson, author of Dungeness
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“I think the poems I really love are the ones where the thought is happening (or being reanimated) in front of you.”— Luke Kennard
Some terrific twisters of surreal-absurd poems by Luke Kennard over at Mercurius.
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“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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“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 TV, but there seems to me no other honest way to do this than through the surreal, absurd, and grotesque.” – Judson Hamilton
The surreal-absurd world of our evolving technology. Over here at Mercurius.
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“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 “Terrific surreal-absurd sampler of Patricia Farrell over here at Mercurius.
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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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“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 of those requiems.” – Glen Armstrong
Fab surreal-absurd sampler over here at Mercurius.
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“The poems here are from a new project titled It’s Going To Be a Long Night, Melissa. 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.” – Mark Russell
Check out this surreal-absurd sampler over at Mercurius.
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” . . . 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 the bible over here at Mercurius.
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“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.” – Brian Clifton
Terrific surreal-absurd sampler over here at Mercurius.
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“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. ” -Lorelei Bacht
Check out this surreal-absurd sampler of sublime fish over here.
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Terrific surreal-absurd sampler over at Mercurius by David Greenslade. The world of the sponge.
“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. I have written a number of prose poems about imaginary sponges with illustrations. The words and images are a blend of invention and fact.” – David Greenslade
Check it out here
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“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
This week’s surreal-absurd sampler is Jeff Alessandrelli. Check it out over here
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Leaping the moon!!! My next book is coming soon from an exciting press out of Ireland. Beir Bua Press. It is called Puppy. 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 jewel. The puppy is a jewel reflecting our jewel but the puppy is also its own jewel. Puppy is on a growth spurt and I am on a down spurt. We all exit on the ground floor. This prose poem sequence is about life. Hearts emitting sparks to other hearts in deep space. Welcome to the world of puppy. Thanks to the editor Michelle Moloney King for publishing it. More info on their website here
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Here is a little alien poem from my book Play Yr Kardz Right (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2017). The poem is called “Waking Leif.”
We are still here.
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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).
These collage poems are influenced in part by NY School poetry. Folks such as Eileen Myles, Maureen Owen, Ron Padgett, Ted Berrigan. Also 70’s punk music, like The Raincoats. Lots of train rides, also, all over the U.K. (part of my book Rides). And also, Ali Pali, the local big park when I lived in Wood Green, North London.
Thank you Adam Zdrodowski and Louise Rosengreen.
Lyrikline (based out of Berlin) has an amazing collection of international poets in translation from all over the world. What a resource. Very happy to have some of my writing there.
Check em out over here
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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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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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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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This week’s surreal-absurd sampler is Hugh Behm-Steinberg. A very good absurdist story about squirrels and time travel.
Check it out here at Mercurius.
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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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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).”
Check them out over at Mercurius.
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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.
Three micro fictions from “Silesian Soul” by Marcus Slease 
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I 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 over here:
https://ghostcitypress.com/jul21poetry/2021/7/18/marcus-slease
Here is a little reading of it.
“Hungry Ghosts” by Marcus Slease -
“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 sampler at Mercurius.
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“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. There are many delights for the fancies.
Check out the poems over at this week’s surreal-absurd feature
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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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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 ABOUT THE WORLD HAS NOT YET BEEN SPOKEN THE WORLD IS OPEN AND FREE EVERYTHING IS STILL IN THE FUTURE AND WILL ALWAYS BE, is opening me to expansive mind states. It is excellent journeys!
There is the Black Sea and the wine dark sea. There is writing under the bed and on the bed. There is Barcelona and London and Turkey and San Francisco. There are elegies to Sean Bonney and Peter Gizzi. There are Buddhist poets and Beat Poets and NY School Poets and Chinese and Russian poets like Tu Fu & Marina Tsvetaeva. Daughters. Buddhism and attachments. Erotics and anarchy. Crossings & radical compassionate mindfulness. Art as experience rather than art as about things. It is a book about the book and not the book. It is book that asks why make anything.
I would take this book to my cave. I would take this book to park benches and bus commutes and long train journeys. I was moved by this book more than any other book for many long years. It spells the end of my dry years. Available soon from Crater Press.
NOTHING CONCLUSIVE HAS YET TAKEN PLACE IN THE WORLD THE ULTIMATE WORD OF THE WORLD AND ABOUT THE WORLD HAS NOT YET BEEN SPOKEN THE WORLD IS OPEN AND FREE EVERYTHING IS STILL IN THE FUTURE AND WILL ALWAYS BE by Tim Atkins -
“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 it’s funny. Sometimes it’s weird and creepy and feels like a ghost is typing through me.”
Project Jupiter. Surreal-absurd feature. Jennifer L Knox. Now over at Mercurius.
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A nice simple surrealist poem by Pablo Neruda. Socks. & more.
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A 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, absurdism, and optimism.
Thanks so much to Home Stage and Florrie Crass for hosting me.
You can watch the recording of the live broadcast over here.
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On 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 as some new work from my manuscript in progress: Hermit Kingdom.
Surrealistic, minimalist, and sometimes fabulist. There’ll be magical journeys. Come join us. Tune in here at 8PM UK time (9th June 2021).
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Enjoying curating the surreal-absurd feature in Mercurius magazine. So much interesting work out there.
Here is a selection of poems from Vik Shirley. From her chapbook Corpses and her collection, The Continued Closure of the Blue Door. The surreal is alive and well!
Check em out over here
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I 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 tales and prose poems.
Click HERE to read the selection of surreal absurd tales from The Green Monk (Boiler House Press).
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I am editing a surreal-absurdist feature for Mercurius magazine. Every other Monday, I will feature an absurdist/surrealist writer to tickle your fancies. First up, we have Zachary Schomburg. A selection of prose poems from his book Fjords vol.2, forthcoming from Black Ocean in May 2021.
Read the selection over here.
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In 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 feeling the heaviness of lockdown in the UK and Spain), and the power of art to lift us, distract, redirect us, recreate us.
The collaboration has just been published at The Babel Tower Notice Board. You can read the collaborative project over here.
Later this year, it will appear in print with Prototype Press, in their annual anthology.
Yeah for indie presses. Yeah for keeping on. Yeah for art and survival.
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“Leftovers” from The Green Monk (by Marcus Slease) In 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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Just got 2 month year old puppy from the shelter. My life has become Pavlovian.
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My 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 displayed in a gallery sometime this year.
It is available to view now at PERMEABLE BARRIER (an internet art magazine).
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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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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 the right frame for a book.
Hopefully someday it will be published.
A recording of our reading is available over at PennSound
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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:
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I’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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I’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. There’s freedom there, in the hybrids. That’s why I travel, really.
20,000 words into my book of hybrids (lyric essays, flash stories, prose poems, micro plays). It’s called The Planets. Some Mormonism. Some missions. Some craggy Northern Ireland. Some Martian Utah desert. Some pony tails. Some chums. Medieval London and Barcelona. The history of sound compression from Germany. Black hole miracles. The history of pockets. An experiment in fermentation. There is so much in there really.
Might as well call it a lyric essay.
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I 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 ninjas. Lotsa hunks. You can read it over here.
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Before 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 walked the Shankill.
Here is the journey. From my novel Never Mind the Beasts. Available from Dostoyevsky Wannabe.
from Never Mind the Beasts by Marcus Slease -
In 2016, when I lived in London, I went on many journeys. I was trying to align my mind with my body. Lunch room tongue assessments. Spine alignment. A doom drone concert. A magic rabbit hat. In the basement where I worked, I got the phone call. I was going to become a father. Then we lost it. The little bean wasn’t sticking. It was very painful. We left London for Madrid. We started over.
Here is an excerpt from those journeys. From my novel Never Mind the Beasts. Available now from Dostoyevsky Wannabe.
“Doom Drone” by Marcus Slease (from Never Mind the Beasts) -
“It was The Great Purge of the 90s. “Religion faced the greatest threat from three groups: feminists, homosexuals and intellectuals,” said Boyd K. Packer, a General Authority, in a speech in 1993. In the fall of 1993, six Mormon writers were rebuked for their feminist intellectual leanings. They became the “September Six.” We felt the ripple. We were reading and thinking people. We read Sunstone, a Mormon intellectual magazine, and thought about our heavenly mother. You are not supposed to think about heavenly mother, only heavenly father. Heavenly mother is sacred. You cannot talk about her.”
“I don’t wear the sacred garments, shake the secret handshakes, whisper my secret name. I carry a slew of identities. I do not believe any of it. The still small voice. The tingles and bosom burning, but I still search for it, through the altered states of art and language. A spirituality. I leave one country for another and another and another and another and another and another. Where do you come from is a question I receive in every new country.”
Mormonism, small town Utah, baptism for the dead, Prague, Katowice, hippy days in the Northwest of America.
My lyric essay, “Chums,” just published at The Art of Everyone.
Read it here
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Alchemia is a place in the old Jewish area of Krakow. Old world Bohemian. It is also a practice. I wrote “Alchemia” in Alchemia with the aid of the mercurial paintings of Leonora Carrington.
“Communion” and “First Star” and “Snow Globe” and “Trinkets” in “Psychic Marmalade” (from my book The Green Monk) were written around Christmas time five years ago in Katowice, Poland.
“The Bloated Moon,” “Palms,” “Spring Fever,” and “Sacred Spring” were written during Easter in Madrid.
from Psychic Marmalade by Marcus Slease -
A little reading of Russell Edson classics. From his book The Very Thing That Happens (1964). New Years Day. 2021. It is a good time for fire rituals!!!
“A Man Who Writes” by Russell Edson. Read by Marcus Slease “Love” by Russell Edson. Read by Marcus Slease “Fire Is Not A Nice Guest” by Russell Edson. Read by Marcus Slease -
Terrific review of Never Mind the Beasts in Idler magazine by Robert Greer.
“Stylewise it would appeal to fans of both abrupt American Lydia Davis and Soviet absurdist Daniil Kharms . . . A Portrait of the Artist for the Tyskie and Kimchi generation.”
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A little winter journey through The Green Monk. Written, mostly, while staying in the old Jewish quarter of Kraków (Kazimierz), right before Christmas. The year 2016. Inspired by various surrealisms, especially Leonora Carrington and Salvador Dali.
The Green Monk is available from Boiler House Press. They make very fine books!
“Psychic Marmalade pt.1 ” by Marcus Slease -
Have you squirreled away yr nuts? Are you a hidden oogler?
Winter is upon us.
Here is a short reading from
“Squirrels and Ooglers” by Marcus Slease
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When I lived in London, I visited Poland twice a year with my partner. The Polish mountains in the summer. The Manhattan Estate in Katowice for Christmas. For a few years, during spring break, and also summer, we also visited Portugal, Italy, and Spain. We have tried many things for healthier living, mentally and physically. The visits to the continent inspired us to move from old Britannia. Easier lower middle class living. Healthier. More sunshine.
Never Mind the Beasts is a hybrid novel: essay, memoir, prose poetry, flash fiction, travelogues.
Here is an excerpt from some of the travels. It starts in Poland at Christmas in 2014. Later it moves to Faro (in Portugal).
from Never Mind the Beasts by Marcus Slease -
When I lived in the Docklands of East London, next to Commercial Road, it was a battle to keep my gums pink.
Here is a short reading, from my novel Never Mind the Beasts, about the many routines from my time in the Docklands. Close to Poplar, in the Lansbury Public Housing Estate.
It is good to keep your gums pink.
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When I lived in East London, we walked along the canal near Christmas and ate the Christmas cake. I thought about my family, especially my brother Aaron, gone now 8 years. We were very close growing up as new immigrants in America, and also in Milton Keynes, where he was born.
Here is an excerpt, about my brother and family and Christmas in East London, from my first novel Never Mind the Beasts. Available now from Dostoyevsky Wannabe.
from Never Mind the Beasts by Marcus Slease -
I 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 coarse hair, often unruly, I prefer to tame it. My hippy phases were Jesus phases, full of Venus. During my Venus days, I was glazed and the wave of my locks was pleasing, but upon return it blew into my eyeballs in the windy Docklands of East London, it became a nuisance, and too much of a spectacle, since I prefer to remain invisible, watching rather than being watched.”
Here is an essay. It is called “Spectacles.”
“Spectacles” by Marcus Slease -
I 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 am remembering the importance of community. No one an island. Etc. Readings and prompts and sharing. And Amy is amazing. And the other writers are amazing. A sense of community.
I am working on some essays, creative non-fiction, and I am starting to realize maybe I’ve been leaning towards creative non-fiction for a while now. A hybrid form. Poetry and essay. Narrative and essay. The lyrical essay. So yes. A book of essays. In the future. Here is an essay. It’s about chimps and bonobos.
‘Chimps and Bonobos” by Marcus Slease -
Five fresh poems by Grzegorz Wroblewski. Translated by by Piotr Gwiazda.
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Back 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. Now part of my behind-the-scenes novel-in-progress, The Dreamlife of Honey. The second in my nomadic surrealist trilogy.
Behold, here is a reading:
“Moon Hermit” by Marcus Slease -
After 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 garde poetry community and starts to write a novel from his experiences living in various countries. Feels the joy of NY school poetry. His brother, in Utah, dies suddenly from an overdose and he visits his family for the first time in over seven years.
An excerpt from the first of my nomadic surrealist novels, Never Mind the Beasts, available now from Dostoyevsky Wannabe.
from Never Mind the Beasts by Marcus Slease -
Evolution
Humans and animals. Hittites, wolves, Charles Manson, bipedalism. What are we really? There is no great plan. Some terrific poems by Grzegorz Wroblewski over at Partisan Hotel. Translated from the Polish by Piotr Gwiazda.
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The novelist I pretend to be is a character invented, for the sole purpose of being obliterated, by the writer I am. The writer I am wants nothing to do with novelist. He suspects the novelist of wanting to restore to fiction the particular order of reality that suffocated him and drove him to write in the first place. The impossibility of swimming in a bathtub greatly increases the risk of drowning. Death is an archaic holdover from barbarian times. He eats nothing, and so his stomach will ascend to heaven after his death. Extraterrestrials exist, far superior to us technically and scientifically- and they will overrun the world. Everyone conceived tonight and tomorrow will be one of them.
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I’ve sunk myself deep into Norwegian and French, modern and postmodern, and my writing has grown a new tendril. The best is yet to come. I’ve moved away from words in music, the best is yet to come. I’ve grown naive and not-naive, the best is yet to come. I’ve sucked the marrow and plucked the daisies, the best is yet to come. I’ve baked the memories, stirred the sugar bombs, opened the hatch, de-wormed the cat, the best is yet to come. I’ve materialized my life with my language, the best is yet to come. Welcome to my hermit kingdom, the best is yet to come. What is the dreamlife of language, the best is yet to come.
Boiling two eggs, a simple procedure. The perfect boiled eggs, somewhere in the heavens.
Never Mind the Beasts 