Never Mind the Beasts

Website of surreal-absurd writer Marcus Silcock

Tag: Dostoyevsky Wannabe

  • Here is a little alien poem from my book Play Yr Kardz Right (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2017). The poem is called “Waking Leif.”

  • Have you squirreled away yr nuts? Are you a hidden oogler? Winter is upon us. Here is a short reading.

  • Don 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 Gandalf. Back home, they stand on the balcony from the cheap seats and look at…

  • 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 and also my spiritual practice. Here is an interview, upon the release of my first…

  • 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 option soon. Here is a description: Never Mind The Beasts is Marcus Slease’s second book for…

  • 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 Hodgson (She is the person responsible for re-publishing Ann Quin’s works with And Other Stories…

  • The 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 novel, in N. Ireland and Milton Keynes, England (a homeless shelter, a rocket ship in…

  • A 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 Sledmere Ruthie Kennedy, and Rhian Williams. It’s part of this virtual fringe festival, out of…

  • 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 a bathtub. Here is a microfiction about bathtubs, in the 1980s, from my novel Never…

  • The 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. And NBC movies, with so many adverts, with Clint Eastwood and monkeys, and also Lee…

  • Collage 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 etc. Play Yr Kardz Right is almost 3 years old. It came after Rides, which…

  • Here 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 Mind the Beasts, my novel in flash fictions, forthcoming from Dostoyevsky Wannabe in April 2020.

  • Newly 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 in 2020.

  • Super 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 me in this fab issue. Cathartic art and reading! The novel is coming out in…

  • Image: Trilogy of the Desert, Salvador Dali, 1946. Dali painted The Trilogy of the Desert shortly after moving to the United States in 1946. The desert was new to me, as an immigrant in America, from Northern Ireland to the Vegas desert. Snakes, also new, since St. Patrick chased them out. And also legs, since…

  • A nice spotlight on Dostoyevsky Wannabe over at The London Magazine by Robert Greer. Greer describes the presses radical approach to publishing, in both design, distribution, and content: “With their books retailing at around £5 each, accessibility seems to me an important part of Dostoyevsky Wannabe, and the most obvious comparison for me is the independent record…

  • Las Vegas had a show on the telly, it was exotic and foreign, hard to imagine, and we were going there, as immigrant pioneers, for a better life, like immigrants and migrants the world over, changing their languages and also adding to the host languages, the big mixing bowl, maybe. Play Yr Kardz Right, my…

  • My poem “Feedback” (part of my manuscript The Green Monk forthcoming from Boiler House Press) was published in the November issue of Poetry magazine. Nice! Folks published in the Nov issue of Poetry magazine were asked for readings lists. I’ve added mine. Some Tim Atkins, Jeff Hilson, Colin Herd, bill bissett, Victoria Brown, Isabel Waidner,…

  • Nice book launch last night. Lots of folks scattered around the bookshop. Great chats with fab folks afterwards. Thanks for coming! Thank you Desperate Literature and Dostoyevsky Wannabe. Gud Tymz!  

  • indie-pop, post-punk, new wave and sixties music. Scared to Dance. London. Wee interview over at Swimmer’s Club: https://www.all-new.swimmersclub.co.uk/scared-to-dance/  

  • The all new swimmer’s club. Now over at the classic indie press Dostoyevsky Wannabe:  

  • FASCINATING 12 MIN DOCUMENTARY FROM FAYETTEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA “Less a confessional documentary than a mixtape that samples a copious personal archive, “This is Yates” pan-n-scans a wide track of time, running from the near-present back beyond pre-pubescence to home movies of time before birth.” Available over here from the classic indie press Dostoyevsky Wannabe: https://switchboard.dostoyevskywannabe.com/kiddiepunk-this-is-yates/

  • Seven of my current loves over at Swimmer’s Club. It is hard to choose seven. They are only seven. But maybe a good seven. There is  the Czech nomadic surrealism of Lukas Tomin, the Canadian surrealism of Guy Maddin. Sun Araw, The Seventh Seal, Leonora Carrington, Chika Sagawa. So many greats. What a life! Check…

  • AN INTERVIEW WITH POET MARCUS SLEASE IN CELEBRATION OF HIS UPCOMING BOOK FROM DOSTOYEVSKY WANNABE OVER AT ENTROPY https://entropymag.org/mushee-piez-fried-pineappulz-an-interview-with-poet-marcus-slease/  

  • https://www.swimmersclub.co.uk/treadingwater/syntax_error FROM GIRL AT END COMING SOON FROM RICHARD BRAMMER AND DOSTOYEVSKY WANNABE EXPERIMENT https://www.swimmersclub.co.uk/treadingwater/syntax_error    

  • Sneaky peek slash preview of some poems from Play Yr Kardz Right coming soon from the fabulous indie press Dostoyevsky Wannabe. Over at Swimmer’s Club: https://www.swimmersclub.co.uk/treadingwater/play_yr_kardz_right  

  • I am performing with London based poet Chris Gutkind at Desperate Literature bookshop in Madrid. April 14th. Tonight two poets (one local, one not) in a wham bam double thankya mam. Chris Gutkind mostly started out in Montreal and has lived in London for many years. He worked as a librarian in universities during most…

  • MY MARRIED TO THE MOB VEGAS MIX, IN ANTICIPATION OF MY FORTHCOMING BOOK, PLAY YR KARDZ RIGHT. THERE ARE SOME VEGAS POEMS IN THERE (THE FIRST REAL CITY OF MY AMERICAN IMMIGRATION) COMING SOON FROM INDIE PRESS DOSTOEVSKY WANNABE IN AUGUST 2017. CHECK OUT THE MIXTAPE OF MUSIC AT ASTRONAUT WIVES CLUB: https://www.mixcloud.com/richardbrammer2/astronaut-wives-club-marcus-slease-married-to-the-mob-vegas-mix/