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Read more: Four Poems by Grzegorz WróblewskiEvolution 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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Read more: Eric ChevillardThe 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…
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Read more: The Best is yet to comeI’ve baked the memories, stirred the sugar bombs, opened the hatch, de-wormed the cat, the best is yet to come.
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Read more: What are you growing into?I stole boxing gloves from K-Mart, it is not in the story. I masturbated to MiGs, it is not in the story. I scraped the edges of my sundae with a wooden spoon, it is not in the story. I…
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Read more: THEY USED TO CALL ME CHISEL FACEThey used to call me chisel face. Happy to have an excerpt from my novel in progress, The Dreamlife of Honey, in new body issue of Lighthouse magazine from Norwich.
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Read more: Music & LiteratureI’ve started thinking more and more about when to order the paper book and when to order the digital book. In most cases, it seems, I am trying to order the paper books only when the book itself is both…
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Read more: SOUTH KOREA 2006Doraji doraji doraji! I walk over the pass where balloon flowers bloom. Hey-ya, hey! An ya hey say yo! I walk over the pass where balloon flowers bloom. Hey-ha hey! An ya hey say yo! Reminds me of mother and…
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Read more: NOMADIC SURREALIST TRILOGYI have finished the second novel of my nomadic surrealist trilogy. The first, Never Mind the Beasts, has the wide lens. The next two the zoom. First person genderless. I am writing a cosmos.
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Read more: THE DOCKLANDSDon Whiskers and Pineapple live in the Docklands, East London, in a council flat. They visit the river for ancient histories. They take the Mega Bus in the Mega City and visit Amsterdam. They stay on a boat called The…
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Read more: BORAWhile working in Trieste as a dog walker, and trying to become a writer, he imagines James Joyce, middle class or higher, like almost all artists and writers. He does not have the advantages but also the advantages, coming from…
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Read more: YOUNG LOVEHe took a long time to do it, or at least a long time for some. After the mission, at age 20, he went back to N.Ireland and England, tried on a condom at his cousin’s house, just for the…
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Read more: Polish elections 2020Sad disappointing scary day with Polish elections. Here are some poems from Grzegorz Wroblewski. He was there in Warsaw in 80’s. Part of the underground punk network, the fight against fascists and the beginning of democracy.
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Read more: THE TRIALAfter returning home early from the mission, I had my first sexual experience, it was called docking. I took off my secret garments and attended the trial, in a big wooden room. The devils were coming. I couldn’t return to…
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Read more: THE HOLY MISSIONMy debut novel, Never Mind the Beasts, has many movements, from many lifetimes and many countries. When I lived in North America, I lived in many states, both physically and mentally, and you might also say spiritually. I went on…
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Read more: COFFEE HALLWorzel Gummidge is on the telly. The father has a new calling in the new church to convert more converts, and also a job in London, driving a train in the underground. There is also Bletchley, a swimming pool with…
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Read more: NEVER MIND THE BEASTS OPENING
Never Mind the Beasts, an experimental working class novel, begins in Portadown, N. Ireland, with my biological father, The Troubles, in one way or another, and then the move to London, first a homeless hostel, and then later Milton Keynes,…
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Read more: Class consciousnessThere is so much of it, and from an early age it was all about the work, working hard to climb a ladder, and we are all climbing ladders, of some sort, hoping for something better, and too much moaning…
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Read more: VITAMINS AND MINERALS
Art can help us see and hear and smell and taste and touch with a more attentive mind. And there is so much to explore. Art can help us have a beginner’s mind. Empty and open. Art is my medicine…
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Read more: POST APOCALYPTIC POEMSThe experimental writer, artist, and musician Stephen Emmerson has been running a podcast entitled “Post Apocalyptic Poems.” Post Apocalyptic Poems is a new series which imagines that an unspecified event has taken place which forces families to take shelter in…
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Read more: HOT OFF THE PRESS
Super grateful. My debut novel, Never Mind the Beasts, 10 years in the making from many countries, is now available for ordering. You can choose Blackwell’s or Amazon. Waterstone’s, Foyles, and Barnes and Noble will be added as an ordering…
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Read more: MILTON KEYNES 2Here is an another excerpt from Part One of my novel, Never Mind the Beasts, coming this month (May 2020) from Dostoyevsky Wannabe. Religious conversion, E.T., a used Chopper, the dole, government housing, wow comics, the toothbrush lesson, Jesus Christ…
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Read more: MILTON KEYNES 1Field Day, the magic of bathtubs & Milton Keynes roundabouts, a pet gerbil, Copperfield Middle School lunch room, a popped football, peer pressures, Bletchley swimming pool, hot chocolate from a machine, brussel sprouts, a man in the bushes, play dough…
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Read more: Quarantine Report from spain, days 16-32The days are moving quickly, and also slowly, it is hard to remember where we started. I am watching the news less and less, and trying to stay healthy in mind as well as body. We are now allowed out,…
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Read more: WHAT IS YOUR NAME?Your surname is supposed to tell you all about your lineage and heritage and prestige. Authors, who want to be prestige, have prestige surnames, some even use initials for their first names. I am not prestige.
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Read more: COVER FOR NEVER MIND THE BEASTS
Feeling joy, excitement, gratefulness. Proofs finalized. My novel, Never Mind the Beasts, over 10 years in the making, coming out this month from Dostoyevsky Wannabe. The cover. A 1 dollar high roller Vegas chip, sent to the press by Jennifer…
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Read more: READING FROM NEVER MIND THE BEASTS PART ONEThe first part of Never Mind the Beasts begins in Portadown, N. Ireland, in 1974, during the height of The Troubles, and then moves to Milton Keynes, England in 1980s. Here is a sample reading, from part one of the…
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Read more: MutationTwo more days till the Stay at Home Fringe Lit Fest, out of Glasgow, and everywhere, and I am thinking about what to read at the Dostoyevsky Wannabe event, from my soon-to-be-released novel, Never Mind the Beasts, 10 plus years…
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Read more: Stay at Home Glasgow Fringe FestivalA week from today, on May 8th, 6PM UK time, I am reading from my first novel, Never Mind the Beasts, coming this month from Dostoyevsky Wannabe. Along with some other fab writers from Dostoyevsky Wannabe: Colin Herd, Maria Rose…
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Read more: Bath MaggI am super happy to a travelogue from the third novel of my trilogy in progress, The Dreamlife of Honey, in the new issue of Bath Magg.
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Read more: ZionIn my final year of high school, I moved to a small town in Utah, it was much different than Vegas. Here is a microfiction about small town America, in the early 90s, from my novel Never Mind the Beasts,…
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Read more: A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MANBattlestar Galactica is partly Mormon. Sci-fi is a big part of Mormon. Do you know the planet Kolob? When we immigrated to America, and my family converted to Mormonism, I had a hankering for sci-fi.
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Read more: Fruit FliesWhat did you do in biology? Frogs? Baby pigs? Did you colour the muscles. Identify bones? We had a special project with fruit flies. We had to make them mate. Here is a microfiction about fruit flies in high school,…
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Read more: Lockdown in Spain: Days 10 through 15 – life in quarantine in a foreign countryMy microfictions, a daily record of the lockdown in Spain, days 10-15, just published on The Growler.
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Read more: WHAT IS A BATHTUB?When I lived in Milton Keynes, before immigrating to the States, I wanted to take a bath with my 8 year old girlfriend. It was very exciting: the bathtub. What is your memory of bathtub? A lot can happen in…
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Read more: LOCKDOWN IN SPAIN (DAYS 1-9)What is lockdown like where you are? I am writing a third person autofiction of my experiences under lockdown down here in Spain. Days one through nine are published over at Bear Review / The Growler. There are two more…
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Read more: DESTROYER AND PRESERVERJohn Prine died yesterday, and I keep listening to “Hello in There.” I’ve been thinking also of a microfiction, from my novel Never Mind the Beasts, forthcoming from Dostoyevsky Wannabe next month, entitled “Destroyer and Preserver.” “Destroyer and Preserver” was written…
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Read more: WET N’WILDIn Vegas there was a water park. An exciting adventure, for the whole family. I was hitting puberty and my accent had changed, from Northern Irish to working class British to western American. I wanted to become hairy, it was…
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Read more: The StripWhen we immigrated to America, first it was Vallejo, a trailer park, and then later Las Vegas, where I attended middle school and high school. My mum kept saying the strip. What is the strip? It was something exciting!
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Read more: SKULLWhen the virus came to Spain, it gathered momentum quickly. The fear. Death is hanging over us, always, but it is here even closer, disrupting our usual distractions. Fear and more fear. Did you touch it? Do I bleach it?…
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Read more: SQUIRRELSSpain is in strict lock down, stricter than Italy, no exercise outside, only outside for groceries, pharmacy. But still the numbers are spiking. Following the trend of Italy, soon the health services will be overrun. The whole world is moving…
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Read more: DANCE THERAPYHere in Spain, nearing the end of the first week of strict lockdown, no walking or exercising outside. Just brief and quick visits to Lidl every few days to buy groceries. 80% or so of people in masks on the…
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Read more: ONE SENTENCE STORIESNice mix of one sentence stories over at Monkeybicycle. Happy to have my microfiction, “Merry-go-round,” in the mix. It is from my novel in progress, The Dreamlife of Honey. The Dreamlife of Honey is part of my nomadic surrealist trilogy.…
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Read more: ROMEHere is microfiction, a kind of postcard, or vignette, from Rome, from my novel Never Mind the Beasts, forthcoming from Dostoyevsky Wannabe in May 2020.
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Read more: COLONYYou need the good ones, and not too much of the bad ones, but sometimes in killing the bad ones, you also kill the good ones. You need enough of the good ones, to kill the bad ones. How do…
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Read more: RABBIT HATIt is hard to find a good hat. Back then, more than now, I was searching for a good hat. Although a good hat is always a good hat. Here is a microfiction from my novel Never Mind the Beasts, forthcoming…
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Read more: 920Shame. Too much or too little. I have it too much. Before leaving London for Madrid, I was gifted a free massage, via Groupon, in the fancy part of London, near South Kensington. Here is a microfiction from my novel Never…
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Read more: HUNKDid you know the hunks? I was never a hunk, but I learned to love the word. Hunk. It feels chunky. I love chunky. I like my chocolate chunky, and also my peanut butter. A hunk of hair is also…
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Read more: MEAT HELPERWhen we immigrated to America, in the 1980s, we started off in a trailer park, in Vallejo, California. We sat on a sofa and watched the telly. There were so many adverts. We weren’t used to the adverts. There were…
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Read more: JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTARIn the 1980s I lived in Coffee Hall, in Milton Keynes. Near coffee Hall, there was Bean Hill. The underpass between Beanhill and Coffee Hall was painted with a Wizard of Oz theme. Magic! I went to Copperfield Middle School,…
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Read more: Sacred SpringIn 2016, I received a commission from the Austrian Cultural Forum in London to write something in the spirit of the Vienna Secessionists. I was super happy to have one of the poems from the commission in the faith issue…
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Read more: WANKERThe crowd is dangerous, and also liberating, but mostly dangerous. A mob. When you’re younger: peer pressure. When I lived in Milton Keynes, Coffee Hall housing estate, there was a place for playing football, next to the playground. I showed…
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Read more: A BUG IN THE HOUSEWhen I moved to Madrid, in the summer of 2016, I learned Spanish expressions. One of them was “a bug in the house.” It was also my first year with the famous Spanish lottery. Lower middle class living per always,…
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Read more: LEFTOVERSI used to deal with the body and blood of Jesus, on a Sunday, kneeling over it. I was mostly an introverted quiet kid and Jerry was stud muffin. I lifted weights in gym, but only my legs got bigger.…
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Read more: AMERICAN HORROR STORYAmerican Horror Story broke new ground. It is horror, with a timely message. It also plays with genre. Interesting television. When I was living in Madrid, we streamed it on the computer. Sat down with it in the evenings. A…
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Read more: GREAT EXPECTATIONSIn 2016, I received a commission from the Austrian Cultural Forum in London to write something in the spirit of the Vienna Secessionists. Here is one part of the commission, published in The Green Monk as “Great Expectations.”
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Read more: BUILT TO SPILLHere is a prose poem from The Green Monk. Written in a poorly ventilated, black mold infested room in London, reminiscing about the glory days of the late 90s, bleached hair, bar dips for bigger bums. It is called “Built…
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Read more: The Green Monk InterviewWhat is The Green Monk? It is many things. Hopefully, a good journey. Here are some questions, and brief answers, about influences, images, nomadic surrealism. The great project of reconciling dream and reality. Thank you Boiler House Press.
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Read more: God is Watching YouHere is a small excerpt, from my novel in Microfiction, Never Mind the Beasts, forthcoming in May 2020 from Dostoyevsky Wannabe. This one takes place in Milton Keynes, England, after the conversion, before immigrating to America. It is called “God…
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Read more: HOWLING DOGS & CRINKLED WHISPERSThe first place we landed, upon immigrating to America, was Vallejo California, a trailer park. I had a funny accent. Part working class British and part Northern Irish. No one can understand me. We ate something Hamburger Helper every evening.…
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Read more: Survival of the FittestLong ago, in another lifetime, I lived in Milton Keynes, England, on a government housing estate called Coffee Hall. Long ago, in another lifetime, I was knocked down by a car, in Portadown, with a poke in my hand. Long…
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Read more: Lifescape by Vicente HuidobroLandscape and lifescape, how can we know which is which, in other words inside outside, but we like to make the difference, isn’t it important to make the difference? If your outside becomes your inside, or vice versa, well you’re…
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Read more: THE BIG FIRE AT THE ARCHITECTURAL COLLEGE“The Big Fire at the Architectural College” by Andrei Voznesensky (translated by Anselm Hollo) originally appeared in City Lights Pocket Poets Series No 16. Published in 1962, and entitled Red Cats, Hollo included translations of three Russian poets: Yevgeni Yevtushenko,…
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Read more: Meat from the StonesTime is moving fast and faster. 3 years in Spain after over 8 years in London, plus many other countries besides. The thrill of new places, like the thrill of anything, has a short lifespan, but it is still good,…
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Read more: Play Yr Kardz Right Part TwoCollage was invented by the surrealists and Max Ernst took it to another level. Now, of course, collage is a common method, but it is still magical. There are so many ways to do it, in language and visual arts…
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Read more: Han ShanHan Shan/Cold Mountain is a figure from the Chinese Tang Dynasty. His poetry is in the Taoist and Chan Buddhist tradition. No one knows who he was, when he lived and died, or whether he actually existed. He was a…
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Read more: Blackbox Manifold 23Happy to have some of my nomadic surrealist prose poems in issue 23 of Blackbox Manifold. These prose poems/microfictions are from The Dreamlife of Honey, the third book of my nomadic surrealist trilogy, still in progress. Thank you to the…
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Read more: Waiting Underground (Transitions) by Natasza GoerkeFarewells to Plasma by Natasza Goerke is bloody brilliant. Playful and mind expanding short stories. Maybe my fav surrealist short story writer. Along with Leonora Carrington. I want more!
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Read more: The Feast Day Is Fast Approaching
This prose poem/flash fiction, entitled “Feast Day,” from my book The Green Monk (Boiler House Press 2018), is about the anticipation of the feast day. There are many feast days. You can create your own. Leonora Carrington and Salvador Dali…
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Read more: Sentient SunWhat is that big ball of energy? Is it alive? What is alive? Here is a prose poem from my book The Green Monk. It is all about the sun.
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Read more: HAMMER AND PIGGYHere is a story from Milton Keynes, England, in 1982, Coffee Hall Housing Estate. It is close to Christmas and after Guy Fawkes. Everything is shiny, especially the new 20P coin, an equilateral curve heptagon. This microfiction is from Never…
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Read more: Nomination for Best Microfiction 2020I’m honored to announce that my story “Jitters” has been nominated for inclusion in Best Microfiction, 2020. The Best Microfiction anthology series considers stories of only 400 words or fewer. Co-edited by award-winning microfiction writer/editor Meg Pokrass, and Flannery O’Connor…
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Read more: The Cough by Barbara GuestA prose poem, by the great Barbara Guest, from 1999, before the turn of the millennium, which somehow seems significant. A nomadic surrealist dreams of real life.
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Read more: Wróblewski / Bloom ExhibitionA collaboration between the Polish artist and writer Grzegorz Wroblewski and the South African artist Doris Bloom, at the Warsaw Literary Museum, takes as it’s starting point The New Colony (2003), an experimental treatise/novel/play, in the tradition of Kafka and…
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Read more: Creative Impermanence StudioI am teaching an online class, in March 2020, for the The Poetry School in London. The nature of life is change and clinging to the illusion of permanence often leads to suffering, of one kind or another, but rather…
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Read more: All AmericanNewly married, working as telemarketers and cleaners, the midnight beam, in Utah, pulled them to a used car lot. This is their story. From Never Mind the Beasts, the first novel in my nomadic surrealist trilogy, forthcoming from Dostoyevsky Wannabe…
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Read more: Miniature GorillaI don’t like to sell. Perhaps you are a seller. I am not a good seller. Long ago, at Matrixx Marketing I was a seller, but I am no longer a seller. I am not motivated by numbers and targets.…
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Read more: Lucifer by Ljiljana ĐurđićA surrealist poem from the Serbian poet Ljiljana Đurđić. Ljiljana Đurđić has published three collections of poetry, including Swedish Gymnastics. She is also a terrific translator of Sylvia Plath.
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Read more: Little Shop of HorrorsThe Little Shop of Horrors, a classic from America, about an accidental mass murderer, feeding humans to a plant, from my novel in progress, The Dreamlife of Honey.
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Read more: My Heart is Shuffled it is intelligent it is a lot like meA Sunday flashback. A wee reading, from my book Rides (2014), with cut ups and collages, straight from the heart and shuffled from the surrealist deck of cards called life.
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Read more: The Time of the DovesBarcelona is burning. Brexit keeps going and going. Hong Kong is rioting. Syria and Turkey. And most importantly the human extinction project. There is so much happening. Here is a story. It’s about doves in Catalunya.
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Read more: Flora and FaunaMy prose poem, “Flora and Fauna,” part of my nomadic surrealist novel The Dreamlife of Honey, the third in a trilogy, still in progress, just published at OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters. Based on experiences teaching English in Bielsko…
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Read more: Best of the Net NominationSuper happy to have my surreal prose poem “Horses” (inspired in part by Leonora Carrington) nominated for the Best of the Net. Thank you Bear Review!!
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Read more: Get Drunk
by Charles Baudelaire
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Read more: EarlidsThis prose poem was written in the mid-seventeenth century by the Spanish Jesuit priest, scholar and philosopher Baltasar Gracian. It is taken from the book A Pocket Mirror for Heroes (trans. Christopher Maurer).
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Read more: MermaidFrom The Doll’s Alphabet, by Camilla Grudova, Fitzcarraldo Editions. A fantastic collection of stories, with hints of Margaret Atwood, Angela Cater, Richard Brautigan, and Leonora Carrington.
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Read more: Plaster CocktailSuper happy to have an excerpt from my forthcoming novel Never Mind the Beasts (formerly The Autobiography of Don Whiskers) in the new issue of Plaster Cocktail: Invisible Monsters. Thanks to the editors Polina Riabova and Stephanie Maida for including…
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Read more: Stranger ThingsThis is a very brief excerpt from the opening of my new hybrid novel in progress: Squid on the Barbie. What is relationship between your environment and happiness? Influenced by the classical philosophy of the Epicureans and Buddhists, as well…
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Read more: Homage to the Lame WolfPoem: Vasko Popa. Translation: Charles Simic. Reading: Marcus Slease. Images: Dora Maar & Claude Cahun
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Read more: The Decline of Bourgeois Society
By Andre Breton. 1935.
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Read more: Forgetful Numbers by Vasko PopaA fairy tale for numbers by the poet Vasko Popa. Terrific nighttime reading.
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Read more: Give Me Back My Rags by Vasko PopaFalling in love, more and more, with Vasko Popa. His selected, translated by Charles Simic, is terrific. (Background Music: Jimmy Giuffre’s “Scootin’ About” & “Cry, Want.”)
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Read more: BLACK HOLEA story about cosmic evolution, romance, beards & shaggy carpets. From my book The Green Monk. “Where is your black hole? Only survival of the fittest. Black holes.”
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Read more: REVIEW OF THE GREEN MONKTerrific review by Tom Jenks of my book The Green Monk. You can read it over at Stride magazine. Lydia Davis, Daniil Kharms. Yes please! The Green Monk is available from Boiler House Press. It has a very nice design.…
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Read more: The EmissarySaliva at high tide. The sun soaks in your gastric pool. From The Emissary by Yoko Tawada.
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Read more: Surreal Irish ChildhoodThis is a song from my Irish childhood called chuck chuck cheese. It has been slightly altered. I sung it three times with different types of altered voices (high, deep, child’s voice) then combined them into one track and added…
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Read more: Invisible MonstersI have a flash fiction invisible monster in new issue of Plastic Cocktail. Plastic Cocktail is in Bushwick. Bushwick is in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is in New York City. Someday maybe I will see Bushwick. I have seen New York City,…
Never Mind the Beasts 