Surreal-Absurd Sampler Jenna Clake
“When I first started reading surreal and Absurd poetry, I was amazed by that the poems – and the poets – could do. I think this is what I’m always trying to do in my poems – see what I can do, and what the poem can do, what I can get away with. I want to always explode what poetry ‘should’ do…”
A Romp in the Bookish Dark of Technocracy
A review and riposte to “The Selling and Self-Regulation of Contemporary Poetry” by JT Welsch.
ROBIN
Robin is the opening chapter of Sara Baume’s novel A Line Made By Walking: Works about Carpet, I test myself: Mona Hatoum, 1995. An expanse of silicone rubber entrails fitted impeccably around one another to form a flawless floor. Our intestines are several metres long; a fact which has always astonished me. So maybe Hatoum’s piece is about the astonishing capacity of the human body. Or maybe it’s about how extravagantly attached we are to the things we own, as if they were the insides of our bodies and not just the insides of our houses. Furnishings, ornaments, even the upholstery. Such that we end up devoting more effort to preserving the carpet than we do preserving our intestines.
Surreal-Absurd Sampler Luke Kennard
“The surreal/absurd has always played a huge part in my work, I guess as a tool or a strategy or a thought experiment. Something I like about it is that it’s so easy to go wrong...”
Mosaic Poems
Two “mosaic” poems by the avant-garde artist and poem brut editor SJ Fowler
Autobiography of a Book
“Autobiography of a Book” is the story of a book willing itself into existence. Every word “Book” brings it closer to its dream of being what it claims to be, a real, honest-to-goodness book.
Translation
Gura learned to speak French because she heard a man once speaking it to his dog, and it sounded simpler than her native tongue.
Surreal-Absurd Sampler Jeff Alessandrelli
“I attempted to investigate what doesn’t fit and why that unfitting is often more important than that that fits. The songs on the record that I like best are the ones that momentarily skip before righting themselves. But you remember the skip later. “
The Affordable House
An architect's view on the housing crisis and what can be done to solve it.
Ode to Red Vienna
It was right when the quarantine was about to lift that the cases spiked again. A whole new strain they hadn’t seen before. The text came through this morning. Just when it seemed like the end, here we all were once more, back in the middle of it; or perhaps, still only at the very start.
Surreal-Absurd Sampler David Greenslade
During lockdown I explored the idea of immobility -- especially the sessile animal known as the sponge. I began to think of myself as a sessile being . . .
I Download a Baby
These poems are primarily about isolation and the anxiety associated with feeling different, strange, and alone. Another major thread is that of the absurdity of life, and the futility of trying to project any meaning onto it. At times these anxieties manifest themselves as humour, at other times, as surreal dreams or nightmares.
Jean Paul Sartre’s Scratch ‘n’ Sniff Badge Maker
This was written after remembering a gallery show by the fashion label Boudicca. Visitors were given white badges to wear, which were sprayed with the label's signature perfume, Wode, initially making the badge blue, which then slowly disappeared as if by magic, leaving nothing but the white badge plus the scent.
Surreal-Absurd Sampler Mark Russell
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.
Afterlives
The inspiration for these two poems comes from the nature of time and the inner workings of the natural world, from the subatomic to the cosmological.
Parade (and other poems)
These poems are from a manuscript composed entirely of prose poems.
Angela (and other poems)
Just to show off, or win an argument, or just out of spite, Angela would die in meetings. It became a joke in the staff room – did you know who did you know what, again? I would be embarrassed. I could die better than she can. But she was ingenious. And she had done her homework.
The Tale of the Elephant Tail
It is well known that people of means prove their status in society by indulging in luxuries that few can afford. Some may prefer an over-priced artwork by a master, while the more adventurous among us will no doubt include an elephant hunt on their bucket list.
Surreal-Absurd Sampler Judson Hamilton
"These poems are from a manuscript I’m working on called The Vogue for Flatness, so we’re still learning about one another. Poems for me are a way to filter the world, to make sense of it, to live in it. 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
A Knife in the Face
Cai Draper flows seamlessly between prose and poetry to recount his days as a kitchen worker. The anger, the stress, the pressure, the long hours and the occasional threats of horrendous violence all laid bare.
The never-ending quest…
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