Stephen Sunderland Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“When I found Surrealism, I was attracted by its extremism – but whilst automatism is invigorating it’s also exhausting. I’m glad to have found other surrealist methods enabling me to ‘manifest’ my writing using chance…”
Heat and Money
When I came to “A Dream Within a Dream,” I felt both repelled and attracted not by the common thought that we are all characters in someone else’s dream but by the idea of a dream within a dream, suggesting to some the interminable repeating images in a mirror before and behind one.
Swag
Swag is part memoir fragment, part automatic-writing, typed and used in one of many explorations of images and words placed together without an obvious, explicit relationship.
Songlines in the City
For those armed with stories, the city can be a place as deep as the wild ever was. If you know your city, its legends, its soul, its songlines, then walking through it can be an almost hallucinogenic experience, every building, every alleyway, every pub prickling with life, yielding myths and associations.
A Review of James Knight’s (dis/re)membered (Steel Incisors, 2022) by Dan Caldwell
Dan Caldwell reviews James Knight’s (dis/re)membered (Steel Incisors, 2022).
Swamp
What’s the swamp? The swamp is a feeling. It’s a feeling of being stuck. The first time the inside of my head felt like a swamp I was eleven years old; it was 1982. Today, I’m stuck in the swamp and remembering that first time. Then I was living somewhere else. Now I live in London.
Between the Lines
1. A word gets written, thought better of, deleted. Replaced. Did it exist?
2. A letter is mistyped and corrected into oblivion. It was never the letter’s fault.
3. Letters can also be misplaced and misdirected. As well as misleading.
4. A word is a family of letters.
5. How many families are misspelled?
6. Many words are written knowing they’ll never make the final cut. Some.
The Paw is Golden & Delicious
Beginning to see my life is a Monkey’s Paw. Body perfectly formed, a miniature among giants, vinyl gloves pointing to mutancy…
Caught in the Wheels of Justice
Six digital drawings
Extract from Instructions from Light
This extract is from pages 155–7 of Instructions from Light by Emma Bolland published by Joan in 2023. Kristen Kreider writes 'Complex, crafted, acerbic, un-nerving, Instructions from Light is writing at its most lucid'. An illustrated poem / novella / screenplay, Jake Arnott writes that it is ‘A startlingly bold act of adaptation that renders a lost film as an illuminated manuscript, where text itself is transfigured into moving images. A compelling drama of language and silence'. Instructions from Light contains the first translation into English of the French Impressionist film maker Louis Delluc's 1920 screenplay Le Silence.
Approved Abuse and other poems
Three poems by Neal Mason.
Evan Nicholls Surreal-Absurd Sampler
My work engages the surreal for two reasons: fun and ease. In writing, I haven’t found anything that comes as natural as the absurd and unnatural. Or as entertaining.
Great Novels of the Twenty-First Century
This is less a list than a series of recommendations; it is unranked and serves as a jumping off point into the fabulous world of twenty-first century fiction. Some of the authors are well-known, others may surprise you. Each book has been lovingly hand-picked by a Mercurius editor/contributor. No doubt the list contains glaring omissions. But perhaps that doesn’t matter.
A Review of Amanda Earl’s Genesis by Katy Wimhurst
Katy Wimhurst reviews Amanda Earl’s Genesis (Timglaset, 2022).
Weeping in the Middle of a Roundabout
When they were a couple, Sam and Pam constantly disagreed with each other. Drinks vessels rim up or down? Windows open or closed. Monogamy or affairs? Sam, a lecturer in aesthetics (notable articles on Stravinsky’s ambivalence to radio) would argue cups go up and down with so-called monogamy. Pam – an abstract painter (compared to John Hoyland) thought the opposite.
Liam Bates Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“My interest in the surreal and absurd predates my interest in poetry. We almost all have dreams, I guess, but not everybody wants to hear about them. I have always wanted to hear about them, to have a poke around in someone's selfhood, beyond those pesky impositions like veracity and linear time.”
2 Mouths
I can’t concentrate. I lie down in the afternoon when I sh/could be working. I lie down like my mother lay down. I thought she’d been sunbathing, until I realised she’d been resting before dying. I used to think she was lazy, lying down when there’s so much to do.
Rereading Stein
Andrea Mason, Alex Mazey, Franco Cortese and Susie Campbell respond to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Magazine’s 1978 feature, Reading Stein.
Sascha A. Akhtar Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“The surreal and the absurd are the twin axes along which the expanse of my work may well be plotted. I would say my introduction to Salvador Dali at a young age had a profound effect on my ideas of the imagination and what forms it could and indeed must produce…”
Famine: An Artwork
With God, the dirty ould bodach, running around in ditches spying on us, my childhood was a very watched event. The concept of privacy didn’t hit me (and it was a good schkelp across the face) until much later, and when it did hit (in my early adulthood) I was able to identify those scratchy doubts I’d had as a kid as privacy’s absence. A bodach in every step, God was one helluvanopponent. He was the demon that I battled right from the beginning, right from when I was able to form a memorable thought. Think Jam. Lovely. Suffer. The basics.
Food.
Thwart.
The never-ending quest…
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