Julian Stannard Surreal-Absurd Sampler
I started writing in earnest when I moved to Genoa in 1984. I lived in the Centro Storico, the city within the city, the largest extant medieval settlement in Europe – a labyrinth. I didn’t realise how much the strangeness of the place would get under my skin. Dickens writes about Genoa in Pictures from Italy and his account holds true today - a phantasmagoric interaction between grandeur and squalor. I started off with a poetry of reportage, mapping out my new neighbourhood. Yet over the years the writing slipped the contours of factuality and found a weirder kind of truth. Peculiarity has its own poetic; the everyday is full of the absurd. Ultimately, the act of ‘making strange’ is, I believe, a subversive one, challenging commonsensical conservative-reactionary values. Poets whose work I’m fond of include Giorgio Caproni, Paul Durcan and Selima Hill and I particularly like the work of Leonora Carrington.
- Julian Stannard
Duck Corner
I’ll meet you at Duck Corner.
I’ll be riding Gauloises
my newly acquired horse.
He used to clop along
Boulevard Saint-Michel
singing Le Monde Entier Fait Boum!
with Simone de Beauvoir
and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Of course -
Now it’s Duck Corner…
In fact the only person who isn’t there
is you!
I like it when you’re late.
Even better when you’re dead -
So déjà vu.
I should be stricken by remorse.
If my mouth could open wider
I’d smoke the entire horse.
Have you noticed
our meetings at Duck Corner never work out?
The hooves of the horse are hoofing.
It’s so wretchedly déjà vu.
Have you read The Magnificent Smoking Horse
by Albert Camus?
Better Now Or Better Now Or Better Never?
Can you put your chin on the rest please. Super.
Look straight ahead into the light, if you can see the light.
Can you see the light? I didn’t think you could.
If it makes you feel better 90 percent of my patients
can see the light. You’ll have to imagine the light.
Can you look to the left? To the right. Look up, look down.
And now straight ahead. Super. You can sit back now.
Would you like a mint?
I’m going to put some drops in your eyes.
Might sting a bit. Look up. Super. Again. Super.
Can you read any of the letters on the chart?
I didn’t think so. If it makes you feel better
90 percent of my patients can read the first two rows.
Can you put your chin back on the rest. Super.
Look straight ahead into the light you cannot see
and when the orange mist lifts you’ll notice a road
which appears to be leading to eternity.
Can you see the long road which appears
to be leading to eternity? Yes I can actually. I can.
Beautiful. Does it remind you of that song
by Talking Heads, We’re on the road to nowhere?
Super. Keep looking down that long road.
Is it clearer now, or now? Is it clearer now, or now?
Or the same? The same. No - clearer now.
I can see a balloon. You can see a balloon?
Beautiful. Look closely at the balloon and tell me
whether you can see a person in a wicker basket.
You might like to think of the 1870 siege of Paris,
the Prussians are at the gates, elephant soup
is on the menu, the French are climbing into balloons,
trying to flee. Can you see anyone in the wicker basket?
I can see someone in the wicker basket. Can you tell me
who that person is? It’s rather blurred. Of course.
If it makes you feel better 80 percent of my patients
only see a balloon and have never heard of
the Franco-Prussian War and would not be having
this conversation. Wicker basket my arse…
Better now, or now, or now, or never?
Try again, better now, or now? Better now.
Beautiful. Are you able to tell me who the person
in the wicker basket is ? Strange as it may sound
I think it’s Priti Patel. Well, well, well
it is Priti Patel! You can sit back now.
There’s a knock at the door.
The ophthalmologist’s assistant comes in with a note.
She gives it to him and slips out. Did you notice anything
unusual about my assistant? She was somewhat blurred.
Of course she was. He calls out a name and
the assistant comes back. Is she clearer now, or now?
Clearer now? Or the same? Clearer now. Super -
Let me ask you again, did you notice anything unusual?
Yes, she looks like Priti Patel! Doesn’t she just!
Would you like another mint?
I’ve examined your retinal scans.
I’m sorry to say you have an eye disease
called Priti-Patelitis. It’s quite serious.
We need to check out its rate of progress.
If we diagnose early we might be able to slow it down.
You’re still likely to have unpleasant side effects.
Have to live with it I’m afraid.
Can you put your chin back on the rest. Super.
And could you hold this hand pump
in your right hand. Super-duper.
We’re going to watch an optic video simulator
called Corneal Protection Level Three.
Look at the long road which appears to be
going absolutely nowhere and when you hear the beep
you’ll find your plane of vision inundated
with microscopic Patels, some striding out
of White Hall looking smug, some marching
through Jerusalem with members of the Likud,
some leaping up and down like Rumple what’s his name.
As the eye pressure increases
a miniature Patel will seek to penetrate
your nasolacrimal duct
and push into the hippocampus.
Try and zap Home Secretary Patel
the bat out of hell
by squeezing the hand pump.
Are you ready?
Beautiful. You can sit back now.
Shot of brandy?
Might as well enjoy things whilst you can.
He calls for his assistant.
Could you run these off please. Beautiful.
We’ll have the results in twenty minutes.
Do you mind if we listen to some Ravel?
A Gash in Your Head
What if
you thought you could tie your laces?
But all this time you were just wrapping
a whole roll of sellotape round your shoe and
hoping for the best?
- Caroline Bird
You walk through the city
with a gash in your head.
The crowds part like the Red Sea.
The blood drips on the pavement.
Someone takes a picture
and puts it on social media.
Oh DADA is back, they say.
Did DADA ever go away?
You walk through the city
with your heart on your sleeve.
Heart doesn’t look good
nor does the sleeve.
You need psychosurgery,
several therapy dogs…
No one hangs about.
The only dog in town savages your foot.
You walk through the city
with an eviction notice.
In the grand scheme of things
it’s not a great deal of money.
You don’t have any money
You hope for the kindness of strangers.
The crowds part like the Red Sea.
The homeless man follows you
up and down the street
assiduously.
You walk through the city
with your shoelace undone.
The whole city stops and trembles.
The city has not one visceral clutch
but two.
Your friendly dealer puts an arm around you
like a brother.
Mate, he says, I’m not your mother.
but I have to warn you about that lace.
It’s a disgrace. It’s out of order: it’s undone.
You happen to know your friendly dealer carries a gun.
The bus driver stops his bus
opens a window and shouts
Oi, your lace is undone!
You try and look grateful.
You look sheepish.
So many people on the case.
They want you to bend over
and rectify the situation
without hesitation
The Kray Twins appear.
Their footwear’s always been impeccable.
Nothing’s ever unravelled
though they have used shoelaces
to carry out unspeakable acts.
On a good day
Ronnie can put his nose in the air
and pluck out that elusive smell in Ravel.
Don’t mind us Sonny Jim.
You want a lump of ice?
You could do yourself an injury
What with that lace of yours.
You need to take care of yourself,
What with that lace of yours.
You don’t want to bend over
in front of Ronnie
there on the street
arse
sticking out -
You need to find a low wall,
a bench -
you need a little space
a little privacy.
You don’t want to tie your lace
in front of the whole city
watching and waiting and trembling
You walk on.
The country’s run by liars and crooks.
Across the planet there are wars going on.
There’s famine and starvation.
You guess the city’s losing interest in your lace.
About time.
A convent of nuns crosses the road.
They’re following Sister Marie
and Sister Marie is following you.
The city was having a breather.
You’re in the clutches of nuns.
Sisters of Rectitude
Brides of Christ
Sister Marie blesses you -
she says
You don’t want to fall over
and have yourself another gash.
Oh my child.
A novice bends
and ties the lace.
Partake of the sacraments
says Sister Marie
and swirls off into the city.
Now your lace is tied
the crowds part like the Red Sea.
You almost have the city to yourself.
You feel skittish
and embark on a little tap dancing
with a gash in your head.
The blood drips on the pavement.
Someone takes a picture
and puts it on social media.
DADA is back, they say.
Did DADA ever go away?
You don’t realise the other lace
is unravelling.
Ronnie puts his nose in the air.
Colonel Crust is wearing jodhpurs.
He’s a decorated soldier
with a Rogan Josh on his left shoulder.
He waves a stick at you.
Men with shaved heads and necks
covered in tattoos who are capable
of violence are fretting.
Pope Innocent X appears
with a packet of Marlboro.
His boots are beautiful.
He smells a little of the Tiber.
His English is so-so-so.
I’m much concernèd about your shoe.
La scarpa, la scarpa.
You stoop and kiss his ringed finger.
He doesn’t linger.
You imagined he’d performed a miracle
that the lace had tied itself
so although you were blessed
you were nevertheless undone.
The Kray Twins
are getting hot under the collar.
Yves Saint Laurent appears
as does Jimmy Choo.
In Stoke Newington
you lie down in the beautiful arms
of a beautiful Jew.
Escalator City
Last month you’d never heard of it –
Now you’re there hook, line and sinker
stepping onto an escalator
which is going up and up and up
the sunlight streaking your face -
and sometimes - what longing - you glimpse a city
(a real city) Berlin, Athens, London, Budapest, Rome.
Weren’t you glad when you reached
the gates of Hyderabad?
Now you’re rising
and then, as if it were a game
of snakes and ladders,
you’re going down …
A moment of reflection - oh no, not that - reflection!
One moment you’re up like a Tiramisu.
The next you’re going down like a plum pudding.
By the way
it’s not the sort of place you can get away from in a hurry.
There was, I think, an entrance -
Welcome
We Appreciate Slow -Walkers, Non-Talkers
and – please note - Staring Is Forbidden!
No point running up the escalator
because you imagined you saw something
plucked from the world - a white horse say,
a house with a garden and some befuddled shed.
Saying shed makes you feel giddy.
Shed, shed -giddy - giddy – oh!
Some people are sent to Escalator City
as a punishment - I did something wrong.
No one used to lie in bed saying:
Please don’t send me to Escalator City.
I’d rather shove a stick in my eye.
You’ve been sentenced to a month in Escalator City.
Oh weep for me.
You’ve been sentenced to six months.
Oh weep for me even more
Up and up, in search of redemption.
The city on the hill with moving walkways –
Tiramisu with whips!
Some come to Escalator City for therapy.
The rhythms of ascent (Apotheosis)
and descent (Gehenna) etc etc will nudge
the frontal cortex into the right position
and have an improving effect
on the buttocks – a cosmic re-alignment.
Two months of therapeutic escalators
and you will step into the horizontal world
like an evangelical toaster.
You will be new - like a wedding gift.
A walking miracle.
Sometimes the warmest aromatic winds
greet you on the escalator
and your private parts buzz with satisfaction.
On those occasions the escalators
are full of tantalising opportunities.
The next escalator sends an Artic wind
which stops you in your tracks.
Oh Lord Shiva what have I done?
Have I not suffered enough?
I’m afraid not, there’s always more to come.
The steps of the escalator
are onto you like the teeth of a shark.
There are more announcements.
Escalators are moving pieces of machinery.
Please hold onto the handrail at all times.
Please do not stare – don’t fall asleep.
No kissing, no horse play - no horses.
Don’t touch anyone inappropriately.
Please be aware you are about to step off
the escalator - there will be a jolt
as if you were about to leap off a turret.
No turret to leap off – concentrate.
See it, say it, shag it (shag what?)
Escalator City would seem a shagless kind of place.
Sometimes a pigeon zips through.
Sometimes music.
The least interesting songs of Steely Dan.
Some days everybody looks like Bamber Gascoigne.
Sometimes an advert - Are you feeling tired?
Yes!
There are walkways between the escalators
and designated food stations
where they serve durian fruit
and beef cheek with pearl barley (Paul Bailey?)
and reconstituted cattle burgers,
whose gherkins were consecrated by the pope.
And there are lavatorial breaks which are,
without doubt, the most agreeable thing.
Your buttocks are washed with kumquat spray
and dried to perfection by a Kyoto breeze.
You look forward to your next evacuation.
(Montaigne was fond of his bowels.)
The excrement is sucked into the oubliette
which goes down and down and down
to a state-of -the-art recycling plant
and which then climbs up and up and up
in a Nietzschean loop of everlastingness.
The Magnificence of Death
We could hear the hooves of the Mongols -
our walled city was hanging fruit, hanging low.
I could see my head on a pole –
Our bowmen had slipped away in the night.
We could kneel down and beg mercy and then
have our heads cut off or we could have our heads
cut off without the bother of kneeling down.
What say you?
There was some opium left. I’ll have that.
The beetroot merchant had fled too,
The smartest thing he’d ever done.
Although we have no cannon ball, the captain said
we have beets the size of giants’ gonads.
Let’s boil them and make a pool of blood.
And when the Mongols climb the ramparts
we’ll let the beet rain down upon them.
Is that some kind of joke captain?
The reason I’m standing here
and you’re standing there
is because I passed the Imperial Exams.
I read Li Po’s treatise on warfare
at least most of it -
Do you have a better idea?
I rather liked peeling the beets
even as the hooves got nearer
occasionally having a bite,
not bad, not great either.
Before long we could see the Mongol flags.
Water ran down our soldiers’ legs
even as we cracked jokes to keep our spirits up.
Have you heard the one about the Mongol
and the Archbishop of Budapest?
My hands were bloodied like a murderer’s.
No one could say we lived dull lives.
And the musicians reached for instruments
and played a piece long before its time
that would be copied by some doleful goth
a name like Beet-Hosan many years hence
called Speaking Unto Nations.
If only we could speak to the Mongols
and ask them to go away.
I don’t know how or why I know this
or what prompted the court musicians to refrain
from their usual din but thank God they did.
A moment of genius, a moment of terror.
By now the Mongols were catapulting
the severed heads of concubines.
I was in a reverie:
as fragrant as the Emperor’s Vale of Stars.
Wet-cheeked I remembered afternoons
of gentle spooning followed by
the choicest parts of armadillo.
Sweet faraway non-Mongolian days!
Oi soldier, concentrate -
Pierced by arrows
my head not yet mounted on a pole
(getting there…)
we let them have it.
The CLA
Sectioned, I was sent to the Cicada Lunatic Asylum.
Doctor Coppola signed the papers.
His patients, he explained,
were beleaguered by obsessions.
Hence the cicadas which colonised the trees
in the great courtyard.
We were encouraged to adore them.
This was Doctor Coppola’s radical way
of defying insanity, he was known across Europe.
It wasn’t easy at first.
Spalgiando, si impara.
Practice makes perfect.
Imagine locked wards of relatively decent people
flapping their tongues.
Even the cicadas thought we were cicadas.
Saturdays
Doctor Coppola conducted his monomaniacal troupe
from the gazebo.
People came from Spoleto: wooden benches,
jugs of wine, hand-rolled cigarettes.
Bravissimo! Bravissimo!
Pimpinella
After ten years in the Cicada Lunatic Asylum
I was cured. Doctor Coppola signed the papers
and was almost brotherly. After a decade of cicadas
you may call me by my Christian name.
We are releasing you into Umbria - the lungs of Italy -
and he shook me by the hand. Tante cose!
I walked into the world with a healed mind
and when I felt hunger
Lanfranco the shepherd fed me on yesterday’s bread.
His sheep had left him but later he found them,
alive - yes - but they had suffered a change.
And peasant women who talked with mushrooms
and an English-speaking woman called Daria
who’d long ago eaten fish with Doctor Jagger
and a German who showed me his lederhosen.
I walked past medieval turrets, I saw castles
on the tops of mountains and heard tales
of the Knights Templar. I was never alone:
wild boar, red fox, deer, goats, bears shuffling down
from the Apennines and I delighted in the dragonfly
and the gecko and lovelorn donkeys
and mystical mules. Stray dogs befriended me
and I swam naked in the rivers, patrolled by kingfishers.
And lay under the lavendered blanket of the night
listening to wolves.
Somewhere swallows swooping over Trasimeno.
I faced the sun, the winds, the snow.
Strangers would give me a shed, a bed,
a plate of strangozzi, a suckling pig
and I came across villages wrecked by earthquakes
high on pimpinella, lentil flowers,
mustard flowers, poppies, legousia and fennel
and by the stream the lord prince, the Purple Heron.
I spent a week with a hermit. A month. A year.
Then I reached Bastardo
where I felt at home. They found me a house,
one up, one down, and because I spoke cicada fluently
I asked for a gentle symphony.
A black cat rubbed against my leg.
I had my own place – the Small House in Bastardo -
and I wrote to Doctor Coppola as he’d instructed,
without using his first name, I couldn’t somehow,
even though I tried. Doctor Coppola, Doctor Coppola.
As promised he sent me a mental health worker
who was an olive-grower.
Eat these, he said, the olives of salvation
as if a green god were caressing my spleen
with the wing of a butterfly.
Buttocks
In the spring of 1967 a cloud in the shape of human buttocks
appeared over Krakow
Nina Fitzpatrick
A pair of buttocks forging along Shirley High Street
without feet, legs, arms, without anything -
Only when Adeline tried to sit down
did she realise something was wrong.
Too late now.
She shouldn’t have spent so much time
on TikTok. She shouldn’t have abandoned
Russian literature.
Cut me some slack, the buttocks said
and made a dash for it.
A magnificently large pair of buttocks
with no little swag.
They were going for Egalité, Fraternité and Liberté.
They wanted to sing La Marseillaise.
They couldn’t remember the words.
The buttocks drop into Boots
and buy some Coco Mademoiselle.
They make their way down Shirley High Street
in a vapoury halo of lime and patchouli.
Workmen high in the sky with hard hats
whistle so hard
their teeth hurtle across the city.
A small but growing number of youths
start following.
What a day!
The pied piper of buttocks
swinging their way down Shirley High Street.
Jouissance!
They pass the Pie Shop. Nice.
And the Pawn shop.
Nothing to pawn. Only denim
made in that faraway country
EL-AL Chutzpah.
The buttocks nip into the Black Sea Supermarket.
Welcome, welcome,
when it comes to goats and/or buttocks
there’s no discrimination here.
They pop some Bulgarian goat cheese
into a back pocket.
The buttocks pass the Turkish Barber’s
and the barbers say
Come in! Come in!
I have no hair to cut my lovelies
Come in anyway, please…
We could do a head massage.
You couldn’t, you couldn’t.
They sail past the Bingo Hall and the Catholic church
and there’s the beginning of a traffic jam
and the hooting
of horns but the buttocks are unconcerned
and move with purpose and panache.
They cross the road
and wave to the held-up cars.
They’re waving without hands.
The buttocks make their way
to the local library
which is next to Lidl.
They ordered a book a long time ago.
Where on earth are we?
says one of the men.
Shit happens says another.
The librarians smile -
an unusual occurrence.
Why not borrow some crime fiction,
the un-official biography of Prince Andrew?
Why not borrow some fantasy? People love fantasy.
No, the buttocks say, we’d like something by Gogol.
Who? they say.
Google it!
The book has arrived
and now the buttocks are collecting it.
It had taken the library a long time
to track Gogol down who was happy
not to be tracked down
but they tracked him down.
Now the buttocks are going
to take him on a road trip
and they leave the library
with some Bulgarian goat cheese
in one pocket and Gogol in the other.
If one pair of buttocks weren’t enough
on the other side of the road
going in the opposite direction
there’s another.
These are wearing football shorts.
They were tired of losing matches
and just as Alfie was taking a shower
they said Oh no what’s that over there?
Where? There! And when
he turned
the buttocks ducked and shimmied,
patted themselves down
with a towel, threw on a pair
of clean shorts and legged it
(without legs of course)
down Cawte Road.
If one were preparing
a spreadsheet of buttocks
these would go in a different column.
As if Aphrodite had called on Polykleitos of Argos
saying, I don’t want common-or-garden buttocks.
I want buttocks which sail through
the theatre of Dionysius like a chariot of fire -
I want buttocks which shimmer
in the bathhouse like the sun rising over the hill.
I want buttocks which give Tom of Finland
a run for his money.
Get out your chisel Polykleitos.
These buttocks aren’t without followers either:
Women, men and a three-legged Golden Retriever.
People are opening their windows
and playing that old game lobbing the nut.
(Any nut will do -)
If they hit the spot the buttocks crack them.
Crack! Crack! Crack! left right and centre
as if they were setting off firecrackers
in the back streets of Naples
as if they were at the Festival of San Gennaro
waiting for blood.
The buttocks slip into the Misty Magic Tattoo Parlour.
India says I have been waiting for you
and the buttocks begin their lamentation:
Alfie has tattoos
on his arms and legs and chest and thighs
and we’re a tabula rasa.
India wanted to put an arm round their shoulder.
There weren’t any shoulders.
.
It is what it is India said.
They are what they are.
Move over Michelangelo, these are mine.
Shall we do the elephant god on one,
and Lord Shiva on the other?
The buttocks slip back into their shorts
throbbing paradoxically.
.
The buttocks in denim head for the Pig ’N Whistle.
The others are heading for the hinterland.
There’s a choice.
Oh no, Oh no
choice
is
despair!
Julian Stannard has written nine books of poetry including Sottoripa: Genoese Poems (a bilingual publication, Canneto, 2018). His most recent collection is Please Don’t Bomb the Ghost of my Brother (Salt, 2023). He teaches at the university of Winchester, having spent many years working at the University of Genoa. He has been awarded the International Troubadour Prize for Poetry and nominated various times for the Forward. You can view the 'Sottoripa' film a collaboration with Guglielmo Trupia based on a poem by Julian Stannard here
