Lila Matsumoto Surreal-Absurd Sampler

This week we have Lila Matsumoto, poems from her collection Urn & Drum (Shearsman). Here is her artistic statement:

I love writing that may be called absurd or surreal, but which presents the world within their text as absolutely logical. This logic might be manifested through po-faced intonation, curlicued yet grammatically correct syntax, lush landscapes described in a pointillist fashion. Prose for me was one way into this kind of writing - what so-called absurdism can be encased in the rules and conventions of the sentence? Writing by Charles Simic, Grace Paley, Russell Edson, and Emily Toder were formative experiences. Their work inspired me to attempt to not so much reconfigure the world through language but to take notice of the weird details already present and singing.

Lila Matsumoto is a writer who works with music and art. Her poetry publications include the collection Urn & Drum (Shearsman, 2018) and the pamphlets Soft Troika (If a Leaf Falls Press, 2016) and Allegories from my Kitchen (Sad Press, 2015). A second collection of poetry, Two Twin Pipes Sprout Water, is forthcoming from Prototype in November 2021. She is in the bands Food People, Cloth, and Geranium Slips and teaches creative writing and poetics at the University of Nottingham.

Top image provided by Wellcome Library, London, from their collection.